Page 19 of Lucy Undying

I had learned my lesson from watching Arthur laboriously hack away at Dove. I laid the familiar’s sharpest knife flat against his neck—which was difficult, because I had to keep slapping away his scrabbling hands—and then slammed a brick down into it. My method severed everything at once. Awful, but efficient. He was dead, permanently.

I pushed the remains into a corner of the alley with the rest of the heaped trash. He blended right in. Then I sat and thought of Mina and had a nice, self-indulgent cry. Sometimes a girl finds herself alone at the feet of an unknown land, covered in grime, having just decapitated a stranger, and it’s all too much.

Once I calmed, I remembered the letter. I opened the envelope and scanned the writing. I shot a regretful grimace at the remains of the hollow man. He had been dragging me away, yes. But not to devourme.

I assumed the letter was from Raven. It sounded like her. She opened with a plea for any news of Dracula, and then warned the familiar to be on the lookout for me. “She’s young and stupid,” Raven wrote, “but because she’s Dracula’s, he can safely rest wherever she leaves a victim. If she fills some graves for our master to sleep in, at last he’ll have a foothold in the East. We’ll both be rewarded with his love. Help her. Lie to her. Do whatever you must to encourage her to kill as many as she can before they find and destroy her.”

I threw the letter on top of the man’s bloody remains. I felt as fragile as spiders’ thread, a few strands strung hopefully between branches, never strong enough to catch anything.

I had been sent across the world as a plague rat. My job was to make corpses and plant them in the ground like flags of conquest, each a safe place for Dracula to rest. Because he had infected me, any vampire or grave I created was his by default, too. A pyramid of death, with Dracula always at the top.

A devastating lethargy came over me. All that time, all that travel, pointless. Meaningless. Done in unknowing service of Dracula, who had abandoned me. Tricked by his bride and further than ever from any answers or purpose. Where was he?

I lugged the remains of the familiar to the harbor and unceremoniously dumped his pieces into the water. No grave for him meant no grave for Dracula. No triumph for Raven. They could have my mausoleum; I wouldn’t give them anywhere else safe to rest.

I drifted until I was out of the inhabited spaces, up into the hills. It was beautiful, rolling land curved lovingly around a crystal harbor. All those shacks and buildings looked like barnacles from this far, clinging to the edges of uncaring forces. I admired their tenacity, their industry, their humanity. And I needed to remove myself from it so I wouldn’t unhallow any ground for Dracula.

I sat on a rock. I was too tired to go on, too sad and betrayed. I didn’t stand as I heard footsteps approaching. Not even when those footsteps had no accompanying heartbeat. I had failed yet again, undertaken a task without thought or planning and doomed to failure, just like Mina had always cautioned me against.

I was so very, very far from her, and I realized for the first time that I always would be. So when the other vampire grasped my neck, I did nothing.

I was ready to die, again.

21

May 19, 1890

Journal of Lucy Westenra

Mina is engaged.

I suppose this is punishment for my callous attitude toward Mother’s failing health.

I met Mina over tea at the Rose and Thorn Inn, brimming with excitement to tell her that her worries about money and employment were forever ended. No more a governess or schoolmistress! No longer forced to guide graceless youths such as myself into a graceful and secure future denied to her!

It was all planned out in my head. I would remind her of our long walks, when she’d listen as I confessed my darkest secrets, then press her lips to mine to seal the darkness between the two of us, where it would never get out. I’ve thought of those kisses so often. Sometimes it feels as though my whole soul was sealed between us. But I wasn’t going to tell her that. I was just going to remind her of that happy intimacy before giving her this last, best secret: that I was free, and she would be free with me. And then we would press our lips together again, but linger there, and

It breaks my heart now, thinking of this morning. All the hope in my heart as I told Mina I had news. She held up a hand, begging to go first.

“I am engaged to Jonathan Harker.” She presented it as she would have a lesson in geography. Here is Europe, here is Asia, here is the shattered remnant of Lucy’s dreams, and here is Africa.

“Who?” I asked.

“I told you about him,” she said. “Jonathan Harker. He works as a solicitor—well, he will be one soon—for a wealthy man. Mister Hawkins has a tremendous estate and he looks on Jonathan as a son.”

“Jonathan?” I asked again, my mind spinning. I felt as I did last year when I got into Mother’s liquor cabinet trying to soothe myself after what my art teacher did. Everything was too fast and too loud and too confusing. “Wait, not that man who picked you up from my house two months ago! The one who was all forehead and no personality?” I should not have said any of that, even if it was true.

Mina’s eyes flared. “We cannot all be pursued by charming, handsome lords!” she snapped.

Immediately I burst into tears and apologized, and Mina forgave me, as she always does when I’m rotten, which is often. I asked how she knew about Arthur Holmwood. She blinked prettily at me before saying, “Who?” And then she went on to reassure me. “I understand you’re upset because you want me to be happy, but I’m quite certain I can secure a future through Jonathan.”

“I do want you to be happy!” I insisted. “But I thought I could help you, by—”

Mina shook her head. “How could you help me? You’ll have a husband of your own soon and have no use for me. Besides, I’m the one who’s taken care of you all these years we’ve known each other. I take care of everything.”

I grasped her hand, eager for reconciliation, still spinning from this news. “Of course you do. You’re the most capable, clever woman I’ve ever known.”

She looked away, as she always does when she’s confident that I will accept whatever point she’s making. She never looks at me for approval; why should she? Mina is steady and wise, and I am a silly, stupid girl who came to tea hoping for secrets and kisses.

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