Page 75 of Lucy Undying

“I’m dead?”

Resisting the urge to sigh, I crouched in front of her. “What do you remember, from your life?”

“I’m dead,” she repeated, frowning.

“Don’t bother,” Raven said. “I found her on my journey back here. I thought she could be a bride, but she’s worthless.” She grabbed me, trying to slip her fingers somewhere they were no longer welcome.

I gripped her wrist, stopping her. “When did you find her? How long after I left you?”

Raven tilted her head in confusion. She’d been there for so long, the passage of time was meaningless. There were only two states of being for her: with Dracula, and waiting for Dracula.

I pushed her away and turned back to the other vampire. “What year is it?” I asked, keeping my voice soft and gentle.

Her eyes brightened a little at a question she could answer. “It’s 1891! We just celebrated the new year.”

She’d been killed after me—and after the Queen received her report of Dracula’s death. I closed my eyes, relieved. He was out there. The four fools hadn’t killed him. Which meant I could still find him and drain him.

I turned to leave, at a loss for where to look next, but at least hopeful that there was a goal at the end of all my journeying.

Raven threw herself at me, clawing, weeping without tears. “Please. Stay with me. If there are three of us, we can lure him back. He’ll want us again, I know he will. I know he will.”

Sickening as it was, I understood her desperation. He was my focus, too. I still wanted answers. I still needed to look him in the eyes and ask why he had turned me into this. What the point of it all had been. The idea that he might have tasted Mina’s blood was just the excuse I needed to get back on this path. It was the same path I’d always been walking. The one that would take me back to him so I could understand myself.

“We need one more,” Raven screeched.

“Two more,” I corrected her. And then I killed the lost little Greek vampire. It was the only kindness I could think to give her.

Raven’s howls of rage and despair echoed behind me as I walked away. She had welcomed me into this life, but she didn’t have any power over me. And I wanted her to suffer.

I had few friends in the world—and “friend” was a stretch for some of them—but I tried them all. Revisiting Istanbul was surreal. The old buildings were still there, but everything was different. The same and yet irrevocably changed. It was beautiful, rich with history and people and tradition, but lessened. There were absences I didn’t know how to explain, whole sections of the city that had been forcibly erased and changed to conform.

I wondered if I had remade myself so many times that I, too, would be recognizable but devastating to behold. No one lived who loved me, though. No one could trace the history of my gradual decline, because no one was left who knew where I started. Except Dracula, of course.

As soon as I arrived, I knew the Doctor was gone. Istanbul held no scent of her scalpel-sharp heart. I kept traveling east. The Queen had her network of spies. They had been wrong before, but perhaps they had unearthed new information.

Liaoning was unrecognizable. The harbor was bustling, the surrounding empty hills now filled with buildings and people. Though I remembered the way well enough, in place of her hidden sanctuary was a regular street lined with homes and businesses. No trace remained of her compound or her scent. All her work to build her gilded cage, to rescue and protect and trap her collection of girls, come to naught.

While I’d slept in my mausoleum, the world had gotten smaller. I hoped the Queen and the Doctor still existed somewhere, but I doubted it. I was beginning to suspect that only the solitary vampires like me, the ones who drifted along impacting no one, changing nothing, were safe. There were so few secret dark spaces anymore.

After that, I didn’t bother with Paris. If the Lover was still there—I couldn’t imagine her anywhere else—she wouldn’t have information, and she certainly wouldn’t be willing to help me. I was well and truly alone.

But thanks to the Lover, I was excellent at changing my face and blending in. Thanks to the Doctor, I knew how to obsessively apply myself to a difficult task. And thanks to the Queen, I knew exactly how to kill vampires.

I started hunting.

65

London, October 8, 2024

Iris

By the time my doorbell rings, I’ve got it almost all laid out. The safe ended up being extremely helpful. Just not for my immediate financial needs.

I drag myself to the front door and find Albert Fallis standing there, looking disheveled and disgruntled like a crab caught mid-molt. He’s holding a box of files.

“These are all originals,” he says, “and I must insist that—”

I grab the box and slam the door in his face. I’m not proud of how I threatened him on the phone this morning, but manipulating the legal system is a long family tradition. One that his firm has been participating in the whole time.

---