Page 50 of Lucy Undying

I’m returning from grabbing a water bottle for us when I see a guy, more muscle than man, grab Elle by the waist. He lifts her up like because she’s small, he’s entitled to do whatever he wants to her body.

“Hey!” I shout, but no one, including him, can hear me. I throw the water bottle at his face. It bounces off his forehead and he drops Elle.

Her pupils are dilated, eyes flashing with panic or fear or anger, I can’t tell which. But I know what I’m feeling. I grab the guy by his enormous arms, pull him close, and knee him right between the legs.

He goes down with a howl loud enough that I hear it over the music. And then he glares at me with all the rage a shriveled soul in a muscled body can hold. Elle looks like she’s about to do something crazy, too, so I rip off my headphones and chuck them at his face. Then I snag Elle’s arm. This time I’m the one with catlike grace, tugging her along as I dodge between dancing bodies. I spy a passageway through a fallen wall. We duck in it, pressing our backs against the bricks, waiting.

Waiting.

I turn my face toward hers. She’s watching me, expression unreadable.

“Sorry,” I say. “I know you can handle yourself. I’m pretty sure you were about to royally fuck him up anyway. But in my defense, it was my turn to save you.”

Her eyes are as dark as the night around us, but her smile is like starlight. “It’s been a long time since anyone tried to defend my honor.”

I bow. “M’lady, I solemnly swear I will knee every sack of balls that comes between your honor and me, forever.”

“You are so strange.” Her laughter is cut short by the roar of rage behind us in the abbey. The guy is shouting, demanding to know if anyone saw where we went.

I grab Elle’s hand and we run into the graveyard, laughing as we weave among the headstones. We’re both distracted, barely paying attention to where we are, constantly darting glances over our shoulders to check for pursuit. Half because we’re scared, and half because it’s hilarious.

A flash of lightning illuminates our path. “Stop!” I scream. I barely pull us to a halt at the cliff’s edge, nothing between us and the ocean below but empty, cold air.

“Oh my god,” Elle gasps. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry. I had no idea how far we’d gone.” She turns to me, frantic, putting her hand on my cheek, on my chest, on my shoulder, checking to make certain I’m still beside her and not plummeting to my death. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. I’m okay! But it’s about to start—”

The rain hits us with startling intensity, pouring down from the sky as the clouds move directly overhead. Elle stares upward, her face so white it glows, her expression horrified. I’m about to laugh when I realize there’s something more to this. Either she’s remembering something, or she has a genuine phobia about storms. Or the drugs have fully kicked in, and not in a good way.

I can’t stay out in this rain either, though. It’s already chilly enough that my heart rate is ticking up. I haven’t been careful. I wasn’t prepared for cold. Every time I experience it, I have to wonder: Is this it? The chill that will trigger my end?

Not tonight. I refuse to let it be tonight.

There’s nothing around us but headstones, no shelter. I don’t want to return to the abbey and risk running into our roided-out foe. The church isn’t too far, though. I guide Elle in that direction. We run together, heads ducked against the lashing rain. The church is locked, but we find a deep doorway and huddle there, sheltered from the wind and the rain.

Elle’s shaking like she’s going to vibrate right out of her body. I put my arms around her, holding her close, stroking her hair. “It’s just a storm,” I tell her.

“I should never have come here,” she says, teeth chattering. “I’ll never find my way back out.”

“It’ll pass. We’ll wait right here together, and it’ll pass. I’ve got you. I promise.”

She nods, burying her face in my shoulder. So she doesn’t see what I do: a pair of glowing eyes among the gravestones, watching us.

I bare my teeth in defiance, daring it to show itself. There’s a blinding flash of lightning. When my vision clears again, the eyes have disappeared. The night keeps its secrets. And I keep mine, too, as Elle trembles against me and I murmur soothing nonsense, knowing full well I’m putting us both in danger.

Tomorrow, I’ll drive her away forever. It’s the only way I can keep my promise to protect her.

44

August 10, 1890

Journal of Lucy Westenra

At the funeral today there was a dog.

Large and gray with eyes that looked ageless, twin dark pools of experience he didn’t have the language to share. He was sitting, placid, as well-behaved as any dog. Then his owner decided he wanted him to move. The dog trembled and froze, staring ahead at nothing, or perhaps sensing something we lacked the ability to comprehend. The dog wasn’t threatening, he was threatened. He refused to move. The owner, frustrated when his possession failed to respond to his every whim, got more and more abusive. At last, he struck the poor beast. He made the dog cower, broken, not even allowed to feel fear.

Mina could tell I was upset. She assumed I was saddened by the deaths of the ship captain, whom I didn’t know, and the boring old man, whom I didn’t like. Trying to cheer me up, she took me on a long walk. And it worked, for a while. We cut across a field and were chased by a bull, went for tea at the inn, and laughed until it almost felt like old times. Mother’s dinner guest, a local curate, was impossibly tedious, but Mina and I kept joking, pretending to be afraid that the bull was still coming for us. And then we stayed up late, sitting on my bed with our knees pressed together, talking. Almost like old times, but I felt it as a goodbye. My own farewell to the Mina I’d hoped to someday find. I’ve been unfair. Looking for something in her that I have no right to demand.

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