Page 78 of Now Comes the Mist

His eyes never leave me as I lie back down and turn my head to the side, exposing the left side of my throat, my black hair fanning over my pillow. The ocean hue of his gaze darkens as he takes me in, my body soft and fragile and yielding in white silk.

“You gave me so much pleasure that night,” I breathe as he approaches me like a predator stalking his next meal. “Let me remember, one last time, how it was with you.”

And then so suddenly I do not see him move, he is on the bed with me, elbows and knees braced on either side of me, his face inches from mine. His eyes are now as black as ink or blood in the shadows. “You were hungry for me,” he whispers against my lips. “You moved against me like waves on the shore. You moaned my name. You gave me everything.”

Every inch of me is starving for him. I think of his fang catching on my lip, of the feel of him between my thighs. I want to lock my arms and legs around him. But he wants a woman who will run, who will deny him. Avictim. So I ignore how my body aches for him as his eyes rake down the length of my throat to the soft swell of my breasts beneath my nightdress.

The mist coming in through the windows thins to a trickle.

“Everything you said is true,” I whisper. “I cannot deny it. I deserve to be punished for giving you something that was not mine to give. Something that belongs to—”

His nose brushes mine. “If you sayArthurone more time,” he says, low and vicious, “I will tear your head from your shoulders, Lucy. I swear I will.”

“Then do it,” I say through gritted teeth. “It would be a mercy. Kill me, Vlad.”

I feel his cold breath as he angles his mouth toward the wounds on my neck. “Then you have come to your senses?” he asks quietly. “You will no longer make demands of me and call yourself my equal? You will die a pure, clean, and virtuous death?”

It takes everything in me not to pull him closer. My nerves roar with unbearable longing, but I lie still and pliant beneath him. “Give me a goodbye worthy of my memory,” I whisper, and I shiver as his icy lips find my neck. But I do not feel his fangs, only his gentle kisses.

“Yes,” he says, smiling against my skin, “I have enjoyed you more than I thought I ever would, Lucy. And I think I may miss you as much as you will clearly miss me.” He looks down at where my traitorous hips have lifted of their own accord to press desperately against him. His hand curves around my waist, his stroking thumb further strumming my need for him. “Look at you. Your body cannot deny me, even when you are about to die.”

I touch his cheek. “Give me what I need. Please. Give me mercy.”

He looks at me with eyes as black as night. His lips part to reveal sharp white fangs. “Goodbye, Lucy,” he murmurs. And then his teeth are sinking into my half-healed wounds with unerring, pitiless precision. I gasp at the bright, blinding pain mixed with the pleasure of his arctic lips and tongue on my skin. His huge, heavy body crushes mine, pressing me into the mattress, and I hold him tight as he drinks from me for the third time.

Stars explode in my vision. My heart beats weakly against his deadened chest. The life is quickly fading from me, and I cannot wait any longer to do what I must.

I slide my hand beneath his collar and yank it down to bare his shoulder. And then, with all the force left in my jaws, I clamp my teeth down, ripping open his cold flesh to taste the thick, metallic, sour-sweet gush ofhis blood. My body is on fire. I am a wanderer in the desert who has been given a draught of fresh cold water. I cling to him greedily, but my drink is short lived.

Vlad jerks upright, his knees still on either side of me. My blood drips from his mouth, as his does from mine. He touches the wound on his shoulder. “You little bitch. Youdareto drink from me.” There is a quiet and inexorable hatred in his voice, much more frightening than if he had shouted. But there is also wary recognition. In his face, I see the two halves of him: the man who had called to me on the cliffs, with his fleeting tenderness and manipulative charm, and also the dark menace, the beast of the shadows hiding beneath the guise of a benevolent friend.

“I am not sorry, Vlad,” I say softly. “I let you drink from me, and I have drunk from you. I have made my choice, even if you hate me for it.”

His laugh is low and almost gentle. “Do you know what you have done, you stupid girl? Do you understand the existence you have chosen?” He looks at me with those red-ringed onyx eyes, his bloody mouth still stretched in disbelief at my daring. I have impressed him against his will and regained his interest. So much for his infatuation running its course.

“Yes. I have chosen to belong to myself. Only myself.”

And then, as he watches, I pull my nightdress up over my head and throw it on the floor, which is now fully visible through the thinning wisps of mist.

The ring of blood around his pupils glows an even deeper scarlet. His breathing becomes ragged as he takes me in. “Lucy,” he whispers. “You would give up your soul for this?”

“A soul,” I say, “is a very small price to pay.”

And then we are kissing, angry and hateful and venomous. He kisses me as though he would like to kill me with his lips, taking no care with his fangs this time. They cut my fragile skin, adding more blood to the mess around our mouths, but I scarcely feel the pain through my uncontrollable desire. My hunger for him has only intensified after my first taste of him.

He tears down his breeches and yanks my hips upward to meet him. The violent force of our joining sends the headboard crashing against the wall. A pillow flies into the lamp on the bedside table, knocking it over with a shattering of glass. I arch my back, crying out for more, my appetite growing with every rough, slick, delicious glide. With every moan I utter, I strip away the remains of my old self. With every movement I make, I declare that my body is my own, my soul is my own, andthe old Lucy Westenra has vanished entirely. I have given myself up not to Vlad, but to a new world in which I will have the power to choose whatever I wish.

I raise my hips higher, inviting him in even deeper, his iciness never melting in the scalding heat of my body. If I am to be infected, then let it be fully. Let it be complete. Let there be no ambiguity or regret. There is no going back now.

I pull Vlad’s face down to mine and kiss him again, our mouths melding in a bloody brawl as our bodies collide in a rising frenzy. More glass shatters as a painting above the bed comes plummeting down. Vlad buries his fangs into my neck again and I lap up what blood is left on his shoulder, taking in every drop of him hungrily as my excitement retraces its steps up the now-familiar ascent. But my release does not come this time. Instead, I feel a sudden terrible, shocking cold, as though what little blood is left in my veins has been replaced with ice water. I cry out, not in pleasure, but because my body is racked with chills.

Vlad stays still on top of me, his face pressed into my neck as he finishes with a long, low groan. And then he gets up and turns his back on me, tugging up his breeches and tucking his shirt neatly in. The mist is now completely gone, and I can see him clearly silhouetted against the night sky outside my window.

The bed shakes with my shivering as an intense, devastating cold grips my body. I grab at my remaining pillows and any blankets that have not slipped to the floor, but I cannot get warm. The cold has reached into my very bones. “What’s happening to me?” I gasp.

“You’re dying,” Vlad says shortly, broken glass crunching under his feet as he moves toward the window. “That is what you wanted, is it not?”

“No! I thought that …” I trail off, my teeth chattering as the realization strikes me. “I have to kill before sunrise. I have to take a life.”

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