Page 32 of Lucy Undying

“Why don’t you change into moonlight,” I suggested, waiting.

She just kept thrashing. The barbed wire wrapped tighter, cutting her in a thousand places. She didn’t bleed, which was curious. Even with this many bodies around, she hadn’t been feeding much.

I crouched next to her. “Moonlight,” I prodded again. “Or dust. Or mist.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, exasperated. She stopped trying to roll free, instead glaring at me.

“Shift your form so the wire isn’t holding you anymore. And then we can have a proper fight, if you want.”

Her tone dripped derision like her body wasn’t dripping blood. “Why would I want that?”

“Well, I don’t know!” I perched on a discarded helmet, watching as she tried to get free with more methodical efforts. “You attacked me. But I’m not going to let you drain that poor dying boy.”

Disgust rippled through her, making the barbed wire quiver. “I’m not going to drain him! I was stopping you!”

I mirrored her disgust. “I would never.” I paused, because it was obvious to both of us I was well-fed. A bit sheepish, I leaned forward and began slicing through the barbed wire. When I needed, I could make my fingers into claws to rival the Queen’s. “I did bite a commanding officer. A few of them. All right, every officer I find, whenever I can. But only when they’re comfortably far from the trenches, safe and cozy and well-fed. I would never attack these boys, though. They’re children. I heard him dying and didn’t want him to be alone. Oh, no!” I finished with the barbed wire and climbed back into the trench. He was gone. He’d died alone.

I sat in the muck and wept for him.

“Wasteful,” the other vampire muttered, standing atop the lip of the trench. And then she tromped away.

But I wasn’t finished with her yet. There was something familiar about her. Or maybe it was just that I hadn’t had a conversation since the Queen, and I was desperate for company that wasn’t dead or dying.

“You don’t attack them, either?” I asked, scurrying after her. “How long have you been here? What’s happening, anyway? This is ghastly.” I kicked a femur out of the way, then made myself a little less solid so I could walk without sinking into the mud. My companion was struggling with each step, using her strength to power through. “Why don’t you turn into moonlight and float above everything? Where are you going?”

“Is this not bad enough without the torment of your questions?” she asked, gesturing to the cratered, corpse-littered battlefield around us. A string of barbed wire barred her way and I helpfully darted ahead, cutting a path.

She stepped through without a single thanks. Then, when it was clear I wasn’t going to stop following her, she ticked off answers like she was checking them on a chart. “I don’t attack soldiers. There are far more valuable uses for their suffering than sating my own base needs. I’ve been here since the first trench was dug in this pointless battle, which is a war being waged by most of Europe because someone was assassinated and every country had agreed to fight another country in such a circumstance and no one had the sense to say Perhaps we shouldn’t. I don’t turn into moonlight or dust because that’s nonsense. And I’m returning to my field office so I can continue my studies.”

“What are you studying? I was studying painting. I think. I remember paintbrushes, at least.”

“Who are you?” she asked, looking at me in bewilderment.

“Lucy,” I said brightly, holding out my hand. She ignored it.

“I’m a doctor,” she said, leaving it at that.

I know what you’re thinking. Hadn’t I learned my lesson with Raven and then the Queen? But the answer is no. I hadn’t learned my lesson. I was still desperate for companionship and connection. I didn’t know why, but something about her was familiar, like she was humming a song I knew in my heart. It wasn’t a song I liked, necessarily, but sometimes familiar is better than good.

She kept waving her hand at me like trying to shoo a fly, and I kept dodging it and peppering her with questions she ignored. We arrived, at last, at a factory. It was half caved in from a recent bombing. The side that still stood had been efficiently turned into a field hospital. There was an assembly line of beds. Each was occupied by soldiers in various states of catastrophic injury. There were tools, blades, bandages, bags of liquid suspended above the soldiers, and blood.

So much blood.

I got a little dizzy, my borders fuzzing.

“If you can’t control yourself, I’ll kill you,” the Doctor snapped.

“I can!” I said, ever eager to please. I stood primly in the center of the room, hands clasped, idiotically angelic smile pasted on my face. “What exactly are you doing here?”

The Doctor was already moving from body to body, injecting things, checking pulses, frowning. “Studying all the ways humans can be broken.”

“Oh, that’s nice!” I paused. “Actually, that’s not nice at all. Why are you studying that?”

“If I can examine enough dying and death, if I can map out all the ways in which mortal bodies fail, then I can protect them.”

“Protect who?” I asked.

“Protect mortal bodies,” she said, as though I should have known. “Are you really still here?”

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