Page 75 of Now Comes the Mist

“These, my young friends, are garlic flowers,” Dr. Van Helsing says at last, laying at least seven bunches along the two closed windows of my room. He bends to scatter two or three more bouquets under and around my bed. “And in that second box over there, which you so kindly brought at my request, Jack, must be the garlic bulbs themselves.”

“I cleaned out the shopkeeper’s entire stock,” Jack says, shaking his head ruefully at me. “He must have thought I was planning some sort of pungent feast.”

But I am not listening. I am thinking, as my blood runs cold, that one of Vlad’s limitations is garlic. He told me that the sight and smell of it offended him. “Something to do with its ability to cleanse the blood, which is anathema to the venom I carry,” he had said.

Van Helsing knows. Heknows.

Neither he nor Jack seem to notice my discomfiture. “As I was saying,” the doctor goes on, still happily absorbed in distributing the garlic flowers around the room, “I was reading an interesting book I found in Amsterdam shortly after your first attack, Lucy. It spoke of creatures that feed upon the blood of humans. For I strongly believe that is what happened to you.”

Jack shakes his head and mumbles something.

Dr. Van Helsing ignores him. “I suspected from the very beginning that you had endured no dog bite. Dogs bite out of fear, protectiveness, anger … a host of reasons that do not include the drinking of blood. But you had lost so much from your person, and not even half of it was found on your clothing or the terrace. It must have gonesomewhere. So the logical question would be:wheredid it go? And the answer is: into the creature that hell spat out.”

I shiver and pull the bedclothes to my neck. If the doctor knew what had truly happened, would he think thatIwas a creature that hell spat out? Would Arthur and Mina and Mamma?

“I have also read essays and articles from leading men in science across multiple continents,” the doctor continues. “Not just Europe, but my native Asia also, where they have seen attacks of this kind before. They are rare, but thereisdocumentation. Creatures such as bats, for instance, sometimes live upon the blood of large farm animals. And there are other beasts and beings, though where science touches folklore, I cannot tell. Their threads are blended together.”

“What do you mean by folklore?” I ask, my voice thin and strained.

Jack glances at me. “Sir, are you sure Lucy should be hearing this?”

“It will not frighten her. The most frightening event has already happened, no? Twice, in fact.” Dr. Van Helsing lifts heavy white stalks of garlic from the second box and begins stringing them over the windows and door of my bedroom like strange, bulbous wreaths. “By folklore, I mean accounts of supernatural beings throughout history that subsist on the blood of the living. Some stories are mere fairy tales, told by firelight to thrill the soul. Others are more poisonous, propaganda originating from prejudice and hatred of certain peoples and religions.”

I have to remind myself to breathe as he drapes the garlic over my full-length mirror.

“Some of the tales, however, are so plausible as to seem like first-hand accounts of true events. Fortunately, I have not one of those minds that rejects theories for being passed around by mouth and not gained by research.” Dr. Van Helsing frowns at Jack, who has just scoffed. “I take all precautions. I look at nothing as impossible. And I read of how country people—farmers, peasants, the nomadic groups who migrate from land to land—deal with blood-drinking beings.”

I clutch the purple blooms in my hand. “By using garlic?”

“It is one of the most common methods of repelling them, yes.” Dr. Van Helsing surveys my room, which now feels stuffy and pungent with the heavy scent of garlic. “The wild rose has also been used. Some turn their clothes inside out and sleep with their heads at the foot of the bed, so as to confuse any bloodthirsty creatures who visit in the night.”

“Forgive me, but this is errant nonsense and superstition,” Jack interjects.

Dr. Van Helsing paces with his hands behind his back, as though lecturing in a classroom. “Perhaps. But perhaps not. Are you willing to take that chance?” he asks soberly, and Jack falls silent. “I have also read of these creatures being repulsed by sacred objects and images. It does not matter what religion. It seems that any item pertaining to faith may be harmful, from prayer books and scrolls to beads, candles, and statues of deities.”

“And crosses, I suppose,” I say quietly. “I saw how you watched me last night.”

“I knew you were a sharp young lady, Lucy Westenra,” he says, nodding with approval. “Yes, my eye was on you when Mr. Morris took out his silver cross and began to pray. But the sight of it affected you not, nor does the smell of garlic.”

Nor the sun, I think.Nor does human food taste repellent to me.Perhaps the limitations do not take effect unless I am a full vampire. Then again, my own face has changed in the mirror. My hands tighten around the garlic flowers, and I hear a stem snap under the pressure of my fingers. “Then I have a question for you, Dr. Van Helsing,” I say. “If these hellish creatures are kept at bay by such items as you mention, why, then, canItolerate them?”

Jack looks shocked. “Lucy! You are not one of those creatures.”

“Do not classify yourself thus,” Dr. Van Helsing says, his face fierce and intent. “You may have been infected by one, that is possible. But you are not and can never be one.”

“Why not?” I ask softly. They regard me in silence. “Why could I not transform into a creature such as you describe, after having been attacked twice?”

“Because you are inherently good,” Jack says, and the older man nods in agreement. “Because you are a young lady who lives a clean, pious, and modest life. What Dr. Van Helsing speaks of is the stuff of penny dreadfuls, not fit to be read, in my opinion. But if there is any truth in it at all, none of it would apply to you, so pure and virtuous as you are.”

I long to scream at their determination to think of me as some perfect angel. All I have ever asked, all I have ever wanted, is to be treated as a person.But women are not people, I think bitterly, knowing that if I said as much to Mina, she would have a thing or two to say back. “I am tired,” I say, dropping the flowers on my bedside table. “Could I be alone for a while? To sleep?”

Dr. Van Helsing shakes his head. “I’m afraid one of us will have to sit with you.”

“What for, Doctor?” I ask, exasperated. “Are you afraid that this creature will somehow fly through my windows and drink my blood again?”

“As it happens, yes,” he says solemnly. “That is precisely what I fear.”

I grit my teeth, longing for the peace and solitude of the mist. Of the churchyard in my dreams, cool and grey and silent. “I would prefer to sleep without being watched every minute, as though I might attack someone. For that is why you pulled Arthur away from me last night, did you not, Doctor? Because you thought I might bite him?”

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