Page 132 of Lucy Undying

Dracula

He knows where they’ll be. His demon loves to surround herself with finery and flattery. He loathes her for it, even though he took someone else’s name because his own never merited so much as a scratch on the great scroll of history.

But he has gouged himself into history. Punctured and drained and terrorized his way across the ages. He’s important. She’ll be no more than a footnote in his story after this. Less than a footnote. He’ll forget her as soon as it’s over. He’ll forget all of them.

No animals have heeded his call, though. He notices it only now, as he nears the building holding her, holding you. Why have none come to him? He brings them without a thought, without effort, but tonight—

He cannot muster the blade of demand to cut through the natural world.

He’s just tired. He needs more blood. Besides, he doesn’t want animals to do this for him. He wants to do it himself. That’s the real reason. But clambering gracelessly over the fence, crawling like a beast on his belly toward the ballroom windows, he realizes that something else is wrong.

He doesn’t smell his demon or her servants. There’s some fresh blood, but mostly rot. Death, final death, long delayed and at last come to call. Only, there—

One vital scent left. One foe remaining.

He presses a red eye against one of the windowpanes. He sees her. His demon. Mina. The only one who ever forced him to learn her name. The only one who ever tricked him, who ever manipulated him, who ever wielded power over him. The only one he ever feared. He knows, now, that he feared her. There are no more lies, not even to himself. Because he was afraid of Mina, afraid of her confidence and her cleverness, afraid of the core of absolute self-belief that rendered her holy and impossible for him to touch.

Someone else was powerful enough to kill her, though.

His fear swells and grows. Sitting in the middle of the room, clutching your lifeless, useless body, is…

What was her name? He forgot it as soon as she said it. But her face. Her face, he will never forget. It’s blazed on his mind, branded there. Eyes like the ocean, hair like gold flame, face like an avenging angel.

She nearly killed him. She tore his jaw off. She took you when even he couldn’t. And she ended Mina, once and for all, without a plan. Without decades of preparation. Without his infinite lifetimes of strength and darkness and cunning.

His borders shimmer and quiver. He tries to shift into a bat, but he can’t change. Fear holds him like a lover whispering in his ear, saying that she’ll find him again, and she’ll end him.

No. No, he’s not afraid. He’s slinking away into the night because it’s what he wants to do. Because she’s not worth his time. Because he doesn’t need or even want to kill her. It’s beneath him. He’ll feed, he’ll rest, he’ll build up his strength once more.

And then he’ll take care of her, once and for all. He can be patient. He can wait as long as it takes for her to drop her guard. Years. Decades. Centuries. He’ll disappear, and then, when he’s ready, when he chooses to, he’ll find her. He’s not fleeing. He doesn’t run from anyone or anything.

But he can’t stop looking over his shoulder as he goes.

111

Salt Lake City, January 28, 2025

Iris

Everything is too bright, too loud. The air moves in ways I can see now, smell, even hear, it’s all too much and not enough and I’m so thirsty, so aching and raw that I feel every nerve in my entire body, which is being cradled by a stunningly beautiful woman. She gazes down at me and then shoves something plastic into my mouth and squeezes. By the time I’ve swallowed it all, I’m coherent enough to realize she’s been happily chattering this whole time.

“…a whole supply of it back there, like juice pouches. But now you won’t be out of your mind with thirst, so even if it takes you awhile to come back to yourself, I’ve got you. You’re not alone. I’ll take care of you, Iris, for as long as—”

Iris. My name floods into me with more power than the blood, filling me up, reconnecting those pathways in my brain. A link to who I was before I became…whatever I am now. Iris. I’m Iris. And she’s Lucy.

I pull her down to my lips. Her lips aren’t cool anymore; they’re the same temperature as mine. I can feel her and smell her and she’s real and I’m real and everything is too much but just enough. I laugh against her mouth and she smiles, so big we can’t kiss anymore, and that’s okay, too, because Lucy.

Lucy, and me.

“I’ve been saying your name over and over,” she says. “I hoped if I gave it back to you as soon as you woke up, it would help. It made a difference for me.”

“It did help. It made me remember, who I was and— Oh my god, it worked. I’m a vampire. I am a vampire, right?” I look down at my hands. They’re still just hands. My body seems like my body. But my senses—I have a hundred where I used to have a handful.

Lucy’s eyebrows knit close together as if to reassure each other. “Is that—is that okay?”

I nod, but there’s one detail bothering me. It will always bother me if I don’t know. “Do I smell like him? Was it his blood that changed me, or yours?”

Lucy presses her face against my neck, lingering there. Then she leans back and shrugs. “I don’t know. And I don’t care. I’m not his because he changed me, am I?”

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