Page 42 of Now Comes the Mist

I go still. “I have not yet shown it to you.”

“And yet I tell you, I have seen it before,” he says calmly. “Perhaps your Mina is the perfect woman of this age, and it issheI have been seeking and not you at all.”

Fear knifes through me at the thought of Mina helpless on this bench, drowsy and unable to ask questions, crying from the prickling pain in her head. It is impossible, utterly impossible for a man I have only imagined to hurt her, and yet my chest is tight with dread. I stand up. “Leave her be,” I say. “I don’t want you involved with her or Arthur or anyone else in my life.”

The man is smiling. “You don’t wish to share me.” And then he is standing, too, with his arms locked around me. It happens between heartbeats, similar to the way I move from my bed to being on these night-smothered cliffs with him. Where his previous embraces had been tender, I now feel as though I have been swallowed up by some cold dark star or a column of granite, for there is no affection in the way he holds me. Only possession. I am a butterfly caught in an iron net, and with one movement, he could extinguish the whole of my existence. “Do you truly think you can turn me away, Lucy? After all that we have been to each other? After I told you my secrets and shared with you what scraps of my soul remain?”

I cannot respond. My answer is trapped in my throat by his strange, intangible power, and I can only look up into his face, as brutal and wild and beautiful as the arctic.

“You say you belong to yourself.” He pushes my head back with one hand, exposing the length of my neck to him. His teeth graze me, harder this time. “But I can make you mine if I want to. I can make it so that no one on this earth could fight my claim upon you.”

This is no longer a dream. It is a nightmare.

Wake up, Lucy, I tell myself fiercely as the points of his teeth threaten to penetrate me.

But then drowsy, aching, uncontrollable desire returns, so suddenly that it is almost like a spell. I tilt my head back even more, my blood galloping, even as some rational part of me presses my hands hard against his chest, trying to push him away. He looks down at them and gives a low, pleased laugh. He likes when I fight him. When I fit his definition of a virtuous andperfectwoman, it makes him want me even more. I am a helpless creature in his thrall, but lord help me, this dangling thread of power that I hold, weak as it may be, is utterly intoxicating.

“I do not belong to you,” I say again. “You are a stranger. And you are not really here.”

He presses his smile to my ear and whispers, “My name is Vlad. And I am here at last.”

I wake up.

An enormous clap of thunder has shattered the air and torn me violently from my dream.

A heavy, relentless rain that must have begun some time ago pummels me. I am soaked to the skin and freezing cold, my thin nightgown plastered against my body, and I shiver uncontrollably in the maelstrom that came upon me unawares. The wind howls through the willow tree, ripping leaves down with wild abandon, and several hard branches slap at my back and shoulders like desperate hands pushing me to go, go, go.

But before I can run back down the path toward home, a ship’s horn screams in the night, drawing my attention to the vicious, roaring sea below. In between brutal, disorienting flashes of lightning, I see a gargantuan vessel approach Whitby harbor with inexorable speed, careening madly in the white-capped waves: a battered foreign ship with black sails, jagged as bats’ wings.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Asoft knock sounds on my bedroom door. “Is she still asleep?” my mother whispers.

“Yes,” Mina whispers back. “She hasn’t moved an inch.”

Slippered feet pad over to me, and a soft hand touches my forehead. “She doesn’t feel feverish, but it was wise of you to cover her well,” my mother murmurs to Mina. “Who knows what sort of chill she might have caught last night, wandering around in that storm?”

I breathe as evenly as I can, pretending to be asleep. To awaken to their fussing would mean fully returning to reality and leaving the frightening, puzzling, enthralling dream of the lightning-ripped seas, the rain, and the man’s lips on my neck.Vlad’slips.

“She was soaked to the bone,” Mina says in a low voice. “It was my fault, Mrs. Westenra. I should have heard her leave, but I was so tired. To think I could have prevented this—”

“Nonsense. It isn’t your fault,” my mother reassures her. “No one else heard her go, either. At least she got back safely without any injuries.”

“Not a scratch. Though Harriet and I did see a little bruise last night when we put dry clothing on her. Just there, on the side of her neck.”

A bruise, where he had kissed me. I almost stir in my surprise but manage to remain still as Mamma lifts my hair away from my jaw. “Yes, I see it. Nothing serious, thank goodness,” she says, and the bed shifts as she sits down beside me. “Lucy? Wake up, dear.”

I open my eyes and yawn. “Good morning. Are you already dressed to pay calls?”

“Goodafternoon, you mean,” Mamma says, touching my forehead again. “You slept the whole morning away. How do you feel? Any aches or shivers?”

I sit up against my lace-edged pillows. “I feel wonderful. I slept like a stone. I’m sorry to have worried you so last night, Mina,” I add, holding my hand out to her.

“Harriet and I feared you had fallen into the sea,” Mina says. “You were dripping water all over the rug and shivering dreadfully. When on earth did you slip out of bed?”

“I’m afraid that’s rather the nature of sleepwalking, darling. I can’t remember a thing.”

“Well, we will put an end to that,” Mamma says as my maid enters the room. “Harriet went into town just now and says there are wild dogs running about. Isn’t that so?”

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