Page 78 of Lucy Undying

“But you read me her journal. Mina was her friend.”

“Mina was a monster.” This is the part that makes me the sickest, that makes me wish someone would remove the blood of hers that flows in my own veins. “Two years after all this happened? Jonathan died. You guessed it—Doctor Seward signed the death certificate. Within a month, Mina and Arthur married. But they’d finally attracted too much attention, so they moved to America to avoid the press, with Doctor Seward in tow.”

Elle sits right in the middle of all the papers, staring down at them. “This can’t be right. It’s absurd.”

I crouch in front of her. “I know it sounds insane. But I read Lucy’s journal. I read about what was hunting her. I read what the men said in their papers. I don’t think Van Helsing was in on the inheritance scheme, he was just an old creep they brought in out of desperation to keep Lucy alive a little longer. I trust his account. Read it. Read it, please. He describes the vampire; he knows all about them.” I push Van Helsing’s papers toward Elle, but she doesn’t take them. “The worst part is, they claimed they hunted down and ended the vampire who killed Lucy. There are all these receipts, tickets, travel itineraries, and diary entries. All about chasing Dracula back to Transylvania and destroying him there. But that was a lie, too.”

Elle looks up at me, her face a mask of confusion. “What?”

I pick up the watercolors, toss aside portrait after portrait, most of which I’m sure are of Mina. Her eyes seem different to me now, not teasing or playful, but viciously knowing. She sat for this portrait; she looked right at Lucy, held her gaze, and knew. She knew what she was doing the whole time. The last painting is the one I’m after, though. It’s done with a weaker hand, the strokes less confident, the color washed out except for a few details: the distinctive heavy brow, the aquiline nose, the upsettingly wet lips. But it’s in the eyes. I’d know their hungry, soulless red gaze anywhere.

I hold it up. “This is the vampire who killed Lucy. This is Dracula. And I’m positive they didn’t destroy him, because I fucking know him. When I was a kid, he almost killed my dad after I invited him in.”

68

Boston, September 26, 2024

Client Transcript

I chased rumors, I followed ghosts, I stalked shadows, on the hunt for one thing: vampires.

I found them, too. That acrid metal sting was like a lighthouse in the dark, guiding me to them. Every time I met a new vampire, I asked if they knew where Dracula was. Every time they said no. Their stories were the same as mine. Young women, on the cusp of the rest of their lives, instead abandoned in this nightmare wasteland.

I killed most of them. Not out of any altruistic sense of purpose or a desire to protect humanity. Most didn’t like being found and attacked me first. But also I was angry. The search was taking me years. Every vampire I found got my hopes up, and every vampire I found brought them crashing back down.

But no. It wasn’t just anger. I let myself think that, before tonight. But now that you’ve had me lay my afterlife out in a neat pathway from beginning to end, I can see it was more than that. These vampires were mirrors. Bottomless pits of need, never sated, never happy. Living the same cycles, over and over, without hope of progression or change. I looked at them, and I saw myself, and I hated it. So I smashed a lot of mirrors.

The saner ones who didn’t try to kill me I usually just fucked, though. Even an undead girl has needs.

I never found a vampire that predated Dracula, though. Not a single one that didn’t smell like him. Was he the first? Or were there others out there, older and smarter than him, that I couldn’t sniff out? But the Doctor proved right—none of the vampires I found had been making other vampires. We were monsters, all of us, but not like him. Never like him.

Eventually, I found myself in Lagos, Nigeria. If any city can be said to be living, Lagos is it. Everything is movement and chaos, all these intricate social systems balancing and striving and pushing and pulling. If I hadn’t been so far into my search and so very tired, I think I could have stayed there for a long time, absorbing the sheer life of it all. I even liked the noise. The honking, the shouting, the constant, inescapable humanity. Overwhelming in the best way.

But I had caught my scent. This one was different. I was used to the thrill of the hunt, to the hope that even now stirred in my veins: Maybe this time, maybe this time. But I was possessed by this scent. I blurred through the night streets, dodging motorcycles and vendors, wishing I were electricity that could be carried along the wires strung everywhere like nerves in a body.

I arrived at a house clinging to the edge of the city. At last close enough to fill myself with the scent, I understood what it was that triggered such urgency. It wasn’t just a vampire. It was a vampire I knew.

Two of them, in fact.

I didn’t need to be invited in, but I knocked to be polite. The Lover opened the door, no surprise in her cloudy-day gray eyes. She took my hand the way she used to and led me inside.

Even if I couldn’t smell her companion, I would have known the Lover wasn’t living there by herself. The place was ruthlessly tidy. Floors swept clean, minimal furniture, clothes relegated to an actual closet. Several mugs were drying on the table, recently rinsed clean of blood because their owner still preferred to drink that way. The Queen stood perfectly still in the center of the kitchen, watching me.

“How did you two even meet?” I asked. Though they had been major figures in my history, I never imagined them together. Both geographically and temperamentally, they had been as far apart as possible. I turned to the Queen. “I looked for you in Liaoning, but everything was gone.” I didn’t add that I didn’t look for the Lover. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

The Queen’s face was as unreadable as ever. “I lost a favorite companion. It made me realize all my girls deserved better. I let them go. Eventually the new government remembered the palace existed, and I was forced to wander.”

“Someone ruined Paris for me,” the Lover said, squeezing my hand a little too tight. “After that, I had to go out and find hungry men on my own, over and over. And I had to kill them instead of reusing them, because that same someone told me I was being selfish.”

The Queen held my gaze as steadily and ready as she held herself, like a rabbit waiting to dart away…or a leopard waiting to pounce. “We heard whispers that someone was hunting down all of Dracula’s vampires.”

“Oh.” I laughed. “Yes, that’s me.”

The Queen raised one eyebrow, the perfect smooth plains of her face untouched by the expression. She no longer wore silk robes, and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, but her clothes were immaculate and regal nonetheless. “Eventually we found each other. Satisfied that neither of us was the hunter, we banded together. The world used to be a vast place, filled with secrets. Now it is too small for us to hide in. Too small to carve out our own domains. Even Lagos will not work for long.” She cut her eyes toward the Lover. “Mostly because she cannot stop attracting and then killing murderers.”

I didn’t mention that the golden knives still fused to each of the Queen’s fingers probably drew attention, too.

The Lover didn’t react to the Queen’s criticism. She watched me, curious. “I think I never understood you,” she said.

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