Page 79 of Now Comes the Mist

He keeps his back to me, hands braced on the windowsill. “If you stay in that bed, you will die as a human at sunrise. I have drained you completely, though you do not deserve that mercy, and the only thing keeping you alive now is the blood you stole from me.” His voice is flat with loathing. “But if you drain and kill someone before the night ends, you will die and reawaken with the curse for which you have given up everything.”

My head swims with pain and cold and anger. My vision blurs as panic rises within me at the thought of Mamma, of Arthur or Mina coming to find me dead. “I will lose my life, no matter what I choose? You never told me that! I thought—”

Vlad turns, his teeth gleaming red in the hollow of his smile. “Yes, either way, you will have to die. Vampires must first relinquish their human lives. Did I neglect to share that? How careless of me.” His smile twists into a grotesque leer as he turns back to the window. “I doubt you have the courage, but I certainly don’t care enough to stay and find out.”

My muscles are so tense with cold that it is excruciating. “Vlad, don’t leave me!” I beg.

“You have a house full of people to choose from. And if I’m not mistaken, two of them are watching you right now.” And then, in the space of a breath, Vlad disappears. A monstrous bat the size of a small dog spreads its jagged wings wide to catch a current of night air. It sails out of my window and melts into the black sky as I turn my head slowly, painfully, to the door.

Dr. Van Helsing and Mamma stand there, gazing with horror upon my naked, ravaged body and the chaos and destruction around me. Vlad had allowed the mist to fade in his distraction, freeing my mother and the doctor from their induced slumber. Even as I feel myself drifting away weakly, not knowing whether it is into sleep or into death, I wonder how much of our encounter they saw.

And then Mamma collapses to her knees. Her eyes do not even close as her lifeless body sinks to the floor, rigid and still and lost to me forever.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Ihave no time to grieve for Mamma or reflect on what has passed between Vlad and myself. I do not even have time to get dressed. As the household awakens from its unnatural slumber and my room becomes a maelstrom of panic, with Jack Seward barking orders, Quincey Morris carrying my mother’s lifeless body from the room, and the servants crying and scurrying about in the mess, Dr. Van Helsing strides over to my bed and picks me up, blankets and all, with more strength than I would have expected from his slender form. Without speaking or looking at me, he carries me into the next room, where maids scramble to fill a tub with steaming water.

“More water! The hotter, the better!” Dr. Van Helsing shouts, depositing me into the bath. “Harriet, ensure that Miss Lucy stays in the tub. It is imperative that she get warm.”

Jack appears, looking pale and harried, and he and Dr. Van Helsing turn their backs to preserve my modesty. Even in my cold and pain and terror, I cannot help laughing, knowing that the doctor must have seen or at least guessed what had happened between Vlad and me. But my mirth dissolves into violent shivers. The hot water is doing nothing to warm me, even though Harriet and Agatha are frantically pouring bowls of it over my shoulders.

“What’s wrong with her?” Jack asks. “I could kick myself for being dead asleep.”

“Then you must kick me as well,” Dr. Van Helsing says grimly, “though I think it was not our fault that we fell into such a heavy slumber. Did you see that strange mist?”

An infernal buzzing begins in my ears, growing into a steady roar like the rushing of the ocean. It is so distracting that I barely notice whenHarriet pours another bucket of steaming hot water into the tub. Through the din, I hear an odd cacophony of noise: a water glass clinking on a nightstand three houses away, the flapping of an owl’s wings in the park, carriage wheels rattling in the next neighborhood, a man coughing and guzzling liquor at a streetlamp two miles away. I can smell the liquor, too, and the fetid sourness of his breath. My nose is assaulted by a thousand different scents, rank and heady and intoxicating, but always there is the underlying iron velvet fragrance of blood, thick and rich and pure. I hear it pulsing through Harriet’s veins as she leans over me, worried, saying, “Do not fear, Miss Lucy. We will get you warm.”

“Harriet, be careful,” Dr. Van Helsing says sharply, striding over. “Do not get too close.”

“Is it infectious, Doctor? Whatever poor Miss Lucy has?” she asks. The beating of her heart is like the fluttering of butterfly wings, frail and hypnotic, beneath her sensible apron.

“It may be.” The doctor looks at me, ever honorable and dignified, his eyes fixed only on my face though the whole of my naked body is visible in the water.

I can hearhisheart, too, and smell the contents of his veins. His blood is like himself: swift, determined, and clever, and I can guess at the surprising sweetness of its taste. Something in my face must alarm him, for he takes a full two steps away from the tub and pulls out a large bulb of garlic from his pocket. Watching my eyes, he holds it up in the air.

The scent of it fills my nostrils, cloying and powerful. It gently tickles the passages of my nose and throat. I close my eyes, and I can see the soil from which the bulb had sprung. I can smell rain running into the earth, tenderly encouraging the plant to grow. I think of Papa and the meals he had loved that his grandmother had made for him, dishes that he had asked our cook to practice, filling our house with the savory aroma of fried garlic. I think of his big, warm laugh as Mamma hurried about, opening windows and shaking her head at him even as she hid a smile.

They had loved each other so very much. And they had loved me, but will love me no more.

“Stop it, Van Helsing,” Jack pleads. “Whatever you are doing to her, stop it!”

I realize that I am sobbing as though my heart will break. As Harriet and Agatha pour hot water over my thin shoulders, I bury my face in my hands and I weep and weep and weep.

“I do nothing, my friend, but what I have done before,” Dr. Van Helsing says, watching me with calm despair. “Remember how I placed these bulbs all around her room for protection earlier. I gave her the flowers to hold and none of it hurt her. Notice how she reacts now.”

Yes, the garlic has hurt me. But not in the way he imagines.

The doctor sighs. “The creature has done his work. He has done it well.”

“He?” Jack repeats.

“He was with her on the bed. He flew out of the window when he saw me. His eyes …” The doctor does not finish his sentence. He puts the garlic back into his pocket and turns away, but not before I can see that he, too, has tears in his eyes.

“Lucy, are you all right?” Jack asks. His eyes find my breasts, pale and buoyant in the water, and he looks away hastily. “Get her out of the bath and dry her well. Take her to bed.”

The maids obey, wrapping me in thick towels, but I am so cold that it does not make a difference. Something about the garlic has sedated me. I feel numb, drained.

“I am so sorry, Doctor,” I say weakly as the maids help me stumble past him.

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