Page 49 of Now Comes the Mist

“In a way. But death is forever the last, the greatest, and the ultimate enemy, and it holds sway even over the bargain I made.” Vlad gazes out the window to where the sea roars, invisible in the shadows. “I was accepted into a … what is the English word? An academy, deep in the dark heart of the Carpathians. A school to which all of the sons of my family had been invited for centuries but had always refused out of fear. This place is a secret I must keep even from you, Lucy. Its whereabouts, what I learned … and who taught there. But this I can tell you: I was the first of my family to go, the only one brave enough.” His eyes meet mine once more. “Seven students are accepted every seven years, and the greatest of these, the Master takes for his own.”

“You.”

“Me. At his feet, I learned about immortality and traded in my soul to become what I am now: vampyr. A vampire. But in return for my gifts of power, strength, and long life, I must drink the blood of mankind.” He looks down at the corpse with detachment. “That is how I sustain myself and how I repay death for escaping its gaze: by taking other lives in the place of my own. Just as there must be a balance in the natural world, there must be a balance in theunnatural.”

I exhale at last, my body shuddering with relief. “You are the only one of your kind?”

“No,” he says, soft and contemplative. “There are two others like me, created by me, but far inferior. Over the centuries, I have taken a small number of men and women as lovers and confidantes, but I always end them when the time comes, and I am careful when I drink now. I will not be like the Greeks’ Cronus, forever waiting for one of my children to overthrow me.”

“Createdby you? You turn them into vampires by drinking their blood?” I ask, looking down at Mrs. Edgerton’s corpse in mingled anxiety and fascination. “Will she revive?”

“No. Nor will any of the crew of theDemeter, I’m afraid.” Vlad gets up and walks over to the window to gaze up at the moon. “Draining a human of every drop will simply kill them. Creating another of my kind takes a bit more forethought than that.”

I wait eagerly, but he does not explain further, and something about his pensive silence warns me not to press him now. “Why are you telling me all this?” I ask instead. “You were evasive when I asked you about theDemeterearlier.”

“You expected me to speak of this in front of Mina, that fragile flower you love so much? No, I cannot be open with her. Only with you.” He turns and looks at me with wonder and affection. “I never expected the mist to bring you. I never called to you those times before you came to Whitby, you know. And yet some sense or awareness helped you find me somehow.”

“The mist?” In my mind, I see open graves, marble statues, a moonlit ballroom. A path of thorns tipped with red and all around us, the silvery blanket of the mist rising, hiding our kisses and my bare arms around his neck and his head tucked against mine.

He lifts his hand, and outside the window a thread of mist appears. “I use it to call to other dreamers. It is how I came to see the land I would call home whilst still on board a ship. It was a tedious necessity, that long route by sea. It took more than a month, but had I gone over land, there would have been curious eyes, train delays, and prying tax collectors. A ship is a world of its own, one that humans cannot easily leave any time they wish.”

“How frightened the crew must have been of you,” I say softly. I imagine being trapped on a vessel tossing in the turbulent sea, unable to escape as something with red-ringed pupils and teeth like knives stalked me in the shadows. Bodies being drained, one by one, with ruthless efficiency. I resist the urge to shudder, for Vlad is watching me closely. “My maid heard that theDemetercarried a curious cargo: thirty boxes full of earth.”

“It is the soil of my homeland. The earth on which my many castles, my sanctuaries sit. I plan to distribute the boxes throughout England, so that I may have a resting place wherever I go, away from human eyes and from the sun, which I cannot abide, as you saw this afternoon.”

“The sun hurts you? Powerful and immortal as you are?”

He chuckles, pleased, though I had been stating a fact and not attempting flattery. “Yes. I, too, have my limitations, insignificant as they are.” He approaches a mirror on the wall, and I expect to see his reflection looking at me, but the glass only shows the room around us. “Mirrors no longersee me. They are backed by silver, which is said to repel evil. Nor can I be painted, for any attempt to capture my likeness becomes warped. Twisted. But these are mere trifles in exchange for everlasting life, do you not agree?”

“I don’t know,” I whisper, staring at the empty place where his reflection ought to be.

“I cannot enter a home without invitation. But that would be rude, so I am glad for that limitation.” He turns to me with a touch of humor. “The very sight or smell of garlic offends me. Something to do with its ability to cleanse the blood, which is anathema to the venom I carry. But I have never liked pungent flavors and smells anyway, and all human food is repellent to me now.”

For some perverse reason, I am reminded of Mamma and Arthur and their aversion to Papa’s tea and incense, and I marvel at the ridiculousness of having such a thought at such a moment. “But the drinking of blood must be a heavy limitation indeed,” I say, looking down at Mrs. Egerton’s crumpled body, my heart aching at how fragile and pale she looks in death. At how easily her flame was snuffed out. “To take a life as though you are a god.”

Vlad shakes his head dismissively. “That cannot stop me. I can subsist on animals if need be. And as for the sun burning my skin, that matters little when I have always preferred the night. So many more interesting things can happen in the dark, don’t you think?” There is a hunger now in the way he looks at me, not that of a beast for his prey, but an empty, fathomless longing.

And God help me, I feel my heart and soul respond to him, this being of unnatural gifts and untold power who, even in his invincibility, might just understand my loneliness. Perhaps that is why I do not feel as afraid as I should be … because I know that beneath his monstrous nature, he is vulnerable, and he has chosen to show that to me. This man who trusts no one.

“I almost died from boredom on that ship,” he says, mouth quirking at his own choice of words, “as we sailed slowly west through Gibraltar and then north through the Celtic Sea. But I had you, Lucy. You who are young and innocent and yet seem to understand that I did not so much as take this woman’s life as I gave her a moment of the perfect happiness that had always eluded her. The grand passion of which she dreamed … and of which you dream, too,” he adds, so knowingly that I blush. “And now that I have told you everything, I would like you to do something forme. I am in need of music. Will you play?”

I glance at the harp in surprise. “I am much better at the piano.”

“Indulge me.”

I tentatively touch the strings, half fearing that they might still be warm from the widow’s touch, but they are not. “You request that I play? You do not compel me as you did her?”

His eyes gleam. “I like you with free will. Now, no more talking. Play something.”

Mamma had always insisted that I learn and excel at music. I had hated the piano as a child, but as I grew older, I saw that it was a useful excuse to be the center of attention at parties and allowed men to watch me openly. I had only ever played the harp with Mina, who had taught me some duets, sitting side by side, our four hands making a beautiful harmony. It is the opening chord of one of those duets that I play now, though I will perform alone … or so I think.

As my fingers play the notes with an ease that does justice to Mina’s teaching, I sense Vlad moving behind me. I hold my breath at the nearness of him, and my heart races as his white hands reach out on either side of me. But instead of touching me, his fingers find the harp and he begins to play, with perfect precision, the other half of the duet. His breath stirs my hair as he moves even closer to me, the buttons of his waistcoat pressing into the back of my nightgown.

In a daze, I shift forward to the very edge of the velvet stool, my knees touching the sides of the harp. There is no break in the music as Vlad sits behind me, his arms and legs framing mine. He buries his face in my hair as he plays, and I shiver uncontrollably, never having felt so close to him before, even after so many embraces in the night. I am helpless, lost in his body like a shell in the arms of the sea. I lean into him and feel his icy lips on my bare shoulder.

The tempo of the music increases with the intensity of his kisses. His mouth explores me with light scrapes of his teeth, and I gasp. This passage of the duet requires him to play the strings at the very center of the harp, and his arms tighten around me as he takes the melody and I the harmony, my fingers somehow steady even though every nerve is blazing with need for him. His lips push my nightdress off my shoulder, exposing the vulnerable, pristine skin of my neck.

Half of me is terribly afraid, remembering the holes in Mrs. Edgerton’s neck and imagining my fragile flesh tearing beneath his teeth. But the other half burns with unquenchable lust and desire, needing him to enter me as badly as I need air. “Please,” I moan, though I am not even certain what I am begging for. “Please, Vlad.”

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