Page 65 of Lucy Undying

Feeling vaguely incestuous but also sad for how her bright, vivid life is going to be gradually worn down by being trapped in the closet, I close the diary.

I can’t quite understand why the information that Lucy was a Goldaming is so disappointing. Obviously, I should have assumed she was related to me. But I hate my family and all their poisonous history so much. Knowing Lucy was part of it makes her feel tarnished. Tainted. Just like me.

I don’t hear the door, so I jump like I’ve been caught doing something shameful when Elle says, “Where did you get that?”

56

Boston, September 26, 2024

Client Transcript

“Dracula is dead,” I said. Though I don’t need to breathe, it still felt like I wasn’t getting any air. I grabbed the Doctor’s arm. “Dracula is dead. He’s dead. The Queen told me. She has spies all over. He tried to take a woman who people loved, and they saved her, and they killed him.”

I needed him to be dead. If he wasn’t gone, if he was out there somewhere? Mina had been in danger this whole time while I’d been lounging around Paris or trying to fix the world in small, stupid ways that never mattered.

If Dracula was still alive, then I’d failed Mina. My life and death and everything after were utterly meaningless, just as I’d always feared.

“Dracula can’t be dead,” the Doctor said, removing my hand from her arm. “If he were, every vampire he created would be dead, too. Which means you and I wouldn’t be standing here having this conversation, interrupting my very critical task of slicing tumors out of this man.” She turned back to her work. I wedged myself between her and the body.

“Explain it to me. Please. Make it make sense. If I kill the next vampire I meet, would dozens of other vampires cease to exist?”

Annoyance and eagerness warred on her face. The Doctor hated to be delayed in her work, but she loved explaining things she’d figured out, or things she knew that I didn’t, which was a lot. I wish I could accurately capture what it felt like to be on the receiving end of one of the Doctor’s lectures. Pretend I’m far taller and take up space like it exists for me to fill it, like I’m as beautiful and cold as an alpine mountain, like when I look at you I’m studying you for flaws down to your very genes, and I’m finding them all.

“Have you ever made another vampire?” she asked. “No? Neither have I. Have you met any other vampires creating more vampires?”

I had not. Not even the Queen had made any of her girls into vampires. Her infinite loneliness, longing for an equal but refusing to allow anyone to be that for her, hadn’t been enough to make her cross that line. The Lover had strict rules about never killing anyone. And Raven only cared about Dracula and what he was doing.

The Doctor continued, hands behind her back, as still as a statue. Not calm, but rigid, holding herself as tightly as she could. “Dracula is the only vampire I’m aware of who creates new vampires. He’s not content to consume. He wants to sow the whole world with his corrupted seed, plant us in the dirt like flags of conquest. Whatever we were, whatever we could have been: remade in his image. His.”

She paused, and for a moment I could see who the Doctor had been, before. Eager, inquisitive, yearning. Heartbroken by a world that rejected a genius mind in a woman’s body. Desperate for a chance to do what she knew she could. Dying despite her abilities. That was who Dracula had found, who he had taken.

But then she snipped the thread of humanity away from herself and continued her lecture. “Besides, it takes so much patience. He bit you over and over again, yes? You remember that much, right?”

My hand went to my throat. Hers echoed the gesture, both of us lost in the memory of pain.

She recovered first. “My theory is that this method spreads out the blood loss, giving the infection time to take hold before the tissue dies. And he fed you his own blood, too, did he not? It’s a tedious, involved process, bound to draw attention and expose the vampire to risk of discovery. So many nights returning to the same victim. Voluntary weakness by losing blood. Who would bother with it?”

“Maybe someone who doesn’t want to be alone,” I said. I knew what it was to want someone so much that you’d sacrifice everything for them. That you’d accept their sacrifice of everything, even if it was wrong. Even if it was selfish. Even if it would have destroyed you both.

It was exactly why I fled England to search for Dracula. To keep Mina safe—from Dracula, but also from me. We were the same monster.

The Doctor shook her head. “As we’ve both confirmed, Dracula was not there when you awoke. Your theory of his loneliness is disproved by our experience. Dracula doesn’t care about being alone. He doesn’t want companions, or relationships. He only wants control. And he still has it, doesn’t he? Can’t you feel him, somewhere out there? That shadow in your heart, that sting at your neck?”

She quieted, her eyes the empty black of the grave. Then she blinked it away. “Fortunately for us, he has a short attention span when it comes to his new toys.”

“How does it work, though? Why are we connected to him? What happens when we change? Why can I—”

The doctor waved a dismissive hand, her fingernails sharp as scalpels. “I don’t know, and I don’t care. We’re parasites. We aren’t human, Lucy. We’re just disease.” She slit the man on her table from sternum to pubic bone. “This is what I care about, this is what I can learn with perfection, this is what matters. Stay here and help me, Lucy,” she said, disproving her claim that she wasn’t lonely.

I think she was the loneliest of all of us.

She held out her clean hand to me, the other sunk into the remains of a soul released at the end of his life. “Forget about Dracula, forget whatever connects you to him. We have all the time in the world. Let’s spend it on things that can still be fixed.”

Once again, the Doctor was proving that she cared about me. She wanted me to stay. But I was livid. I was pointless, and aimless, and I’d wasted so much time. I’d stayed away from London thinking it was keeping Mina safe, when this whole time Dracula was still out there. She’d been in danger. She might still be in danger. I had to find her.

The Doctor wanted me to forget about who I was, who I had been, who had made me this way. As though I could become like her, a swift scalpel to cut out all my feelings and emotions. As though she was somehow better than me.

“You’re not doing anything people won’t figure out on their own, eventually,” I said. “This isn’t noble. You’re wasting time, exactly like I have been. You’re ignoring what and who you are because you can’t understand it, and so it scares you. But just because vampires shouldn’t exist doesn’t mean we don’t. Why can’t you care about us, too? Come with me, instead. Help me. Dracula is still out there, holding answers for us. Hurting women like us.” I stumbled on the last word, because it wasn’t true, was it? Those women weren’t like us. Not anymore. But they would be, if Dracula found them.

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