Page 102 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)

102

Moab, January 27, 2025

Lucy

Dracula, at last, looks at me.

I’m nineteen again. Real nineteen, new nineteen, raw and open and heartbroken nineteen. The whole world ahead of me, but a world so claustrophobic it feels as though my life has already ended. In love with someone who would never love me back, and lacking even the words to explain what I was feeling.

Waves of his will wash over me, and I understand why it happened. I see exactly the way he left me vulnerable and unable to fight back. The manipulation that had me questioning whether I somehow wanted that to happen, whether it was my fault, whether I deserved it. The way he turned my guilt and confusion back on me, making me feel complicit in my own assault.

I look in his eyes, and at last I find my answer. Why he took what he did, why he changed me forever. It had nothing to do with me. It wasn’t my choice, or my fault, or even because I was somehow special. It was only ever about him.

That’s the answer. The horrific, utterly banal answer. He did that to a nineteen-year-old girl because he could.

His power is still there. He’s the same predator, the same elemental force with cunning violence behind his gaze. Waves of his compulsion begin to pull me under once more. They draw me into his thrall with promises that if I let him do what he wants, things will be easier. If I stay small and quiet, if I give in, he’ll invite me into his world. I can be safe in his shadow. Iris will be safe there, too.

Through him is the only way we can ever be together. He’s already started his dance with her. Nothing can stop him, so why try? This is how I save myself. This is how I keep going, keep living. And this is how I get Iris, forever. I missed my chance with Mina, but this is a new opportunity.

His power flows into me through those little points of pain in my throat. Those hooks left inside, tugging me through time ever since. Iris, he reminds me. He’ll give her to me, after. When he’s finished.

I smile.

He picked exactly the wrong pressure point. Iris is the reason I’m no longer the girl he left broken and lost and alone. I look away from his eyes. He lets out a small noise of disbelief that I could break the gravity of his existence, but I don’t have time for his feelings. I’m worried about my friends. They all had the same hooks put into them when they were young, so very long ago.

The Doctor, the Queen, and the Lover each meet my gaze. Not his. My smile grows, because none of us are his victims. Not anymore. The suffering and the experiences and the growth we’ve gone through since? We’re mausoleums, holding the girls we were with tenderness, and love, and strength. His violence turned us into our own unhallowed ground, our own safe spaces to rest, carried with us wherever we go. And he’s no longer welcome.

He stands taller, glowering at us with a seductive twist of his lip. “Listen to me, my children of the—”

“You don’t get to speak anymore.” This time I don’t go for his head, merely his jaw. I twist and pull. With a wet pop and a ripping noise, the entire thing comes off in my hands.

His scream is a keening knife, but it sounds like music to my ears. He flails, a gargling noise pouring out of him along with a sludge of inky black blood. We watch impassively as, with the frenzied violence of a cornered and injured animal, he climbs up and down the wall, looking for a way out.

He leaps at the Lover and she meets him midair, flinging him back into the wall. He crawls, darting across the floor toward the door. The Queen moves in, statue turned to lightning. She stomps on his spine with brutal efficiency. The screaming pitches higher and more pathetic.

He drags himself toward the Doctor, blood and drool draining from his useless fangs. She gazes disinterestedly down at him. “No,” she says as he swipes at her ankle. She picks him up by the base of his neck, holding him away from herself like one might hold a leaking garbage bag.

“Iris isn’t here,” I say. “She’s not safe yet. Not in the Goldamings’ clutches.” If she’s right about what happened to me back when I was alive, Arthur Goldaming and his descendants have been perfecting the art of slowly draining women for several generations. That Iris is one of their own will make no difference. Not if they can profit off her. “Can you call your familiar?”

The Doctor lets out a sharp whistle. The familiar slinks into the room, eyes feverish and gleaming as he takes in the evidence of our violence.

“Yes, Master?”

The Doctor’s nose wrinkles in distaste. “We’ve talked about that term.”

He cringes, fawning, hands extended like he would pet her if he could, pull on her clothes and beg forgiveness. But there’s a writhing, jawless vampire in the way, so Kyle stays where he is. “Yes, Goddess?”

“Not much better,” she says wearily. “Do you know where Iris Goldaming is?”

“Yes!”

My hopes rise, but then he flinches and corrects himself. “No. But I know where she will be! Tonight! They’re having a gala for the Celestial Circle in the Goldaming Life Center. Iris is going to be inducted, and her mother will reveal herself in her final, glorious form.”

“Her mother ?” I ask, shocked. “Her mother is still alive?”

“Alive again, yes. A living goddess, like the four of you.” He gazes at the Doctor, rapt.

“Can I kill him?” the Lover asks. “Please? Even if he hasn’t murdered anyone yet, he’s definitely done it in his heart.”

“Oh, but I have! I’ve killed several people, to prepare! To show my devotion!” Kyle turns to the Lover, a smile like a child’s asking for an allowance.

Dracula tries to claw the Doctor’s arm. She shakes him until he goes back to screaming and writhing. We should kill him now. I know we should.

But.

“I’m going to ask for a favor, and you each have to agree. If even one of you doesn’t, I’ll accept it. But the Doctor and the Queen are right: Dracula was never in charge here. It’s Iris’s mother pulling the strings. Keeping Dracula as a pampered pet, letting him prowl unhindered and protected as she took her family’s empire to new heights. She’s in charge of all of this. And she’s got Iris. She’ll use her up and drain her dry. I can’t leave existence until I know Iris is free.”

“But all their vampires smell like Dracula. When we kill him,” the Queen says, “they all die. She’ll be safe.”

“Vampires aren’t the only monsters.” The Lover crouches in front of Dracula, hitting his legs so he swings wildly back and forth. He hisses and spits and she hits his legs again.

“A lot of Goldaming Life leadership is human,” the Doctor admits. “If you use the term ‘human’ loosely. Even if they lose all the vampires, they’ll still have Iris and her blood. Which will be even more valuable then. They’ll never let her go, not willingly. What are you proposing, Lucy?”

“Can you take Dracula somewhere? Keep him hidden until I get Iris out? And then, once she’s safe, you kill him.”

The Doctor nods. The Lover looks up from where she’s breaking Dracula’s fingers as he tries to claw at her. She shrugs. “Oui.”

But the Queen hasn’t said anything. I look to her. I know her story best of all. I know what she went through, what was done to her, what Dracula represents. She’s going to say no, and I’ll accept it. Iris is brave and tough and clever. I have to believe she’ll be able to save herself after we do our part.

“We deserve better,” the Queen says, so softly I can barely hear her. Then she looks at me, chin held high, as regal as the day we met despite her lack of silk and jewels. “You changed our lives. We can keep hold of those lives long enough for you to save the girl.”

“Yay!” The Lover claps. “This is exciting!”

Dracula swings at her, raking his remaining nails down her arm. She hisses and breaks his wrists as if she were snapping pencils. She looks down at the damage to her arm, thoughtful and concerned. “How do we transport him? He’s dangerous.”

The Doctor, still holding Dracula suspended by the back of his neck, twists. With a crack, the rest of his body goes limp. “Internal decapitation. Not permanent like the external variety. We’ll have to redo it every few hours, but we’ll be fine.”

“What about when it gets dark?” I ask. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“Look.” The Doctor points to Dracula’s jaw, or lack thereof. When none of us understand what she’s pointing to, she closes her eyes, nostrils flaring with irritation. “The blood.”

“There is no blood,” the Lover says, slowly and sweetly, as though talking to someone who has lost all connection to reality. I know, because it’s how I talk to her.

“Exactly. He’s already spent it all bleeding from this wound and trying to heal. He has none in reserve, and we aren’t going to put him in unhallowed ground or allow him to drink. He can’t finish healing if I keep breaking his neck, and he can’t shift without any blood in his system. Honestly, Lucy, you’re the one who told me to study vampires.” She’s disappointed in me, but I can’t even care, I’m so relieved.

“Where will you go? How will I tell you when I have Iris?”

“Iris can call me on my little birdie box!” The Lover pulls a phone out of one of her many pockets. She’s wearing enormous jeans, but only a bra on top. I hadn’t noticed before now. Apparently her fashion sense has deteriorated over the decades. That, or I’m the one who’s out of touch.

“You can come to my house!” Kyle, whom I had happily forgotten existed for a few brief minutes, skips toward the front of the building. “They’ll never look for you there!”

The Doctor shrugs. “I’d rather not, but we know he’s loyal.”

The Queen smiles. “Dracula’s final moments, spent in the soulless home of someone else’s familiar. No dignity, no grandeur, no gravitas.”

He snarls and glares, tongue lolling, eyes rolling madly in his head. The overall effect is deeply pathetic. I don’t know if I have a soul, but whatever’s still inside me is nourished by the sight.

We toss Dracula into the trunk of Kyle’s car. I grab keys for another vehicle off one of the headless vampire guards. Then I pause and take in my three friends. The Queen who held me captive because she was so lonely, the Lover who let herself be murdered just to feel something, and the Doctor who dismantled countless humans trying to find humanity.

“My friends,” I say. Each of them were vital parts of my journey. I’m glad they’re here as we near the final steps. “It’s been an honor knowing you. I love you all, and if there is anything waiting for us beyond this, I’ll—”

Kyle interrupts. “I can give you detailed instructions on how to drive to the Goldaming Life Center! All the best routes and exactly how much time each will take you, as well as—”

“Shut the fuck up, Kyle,” I say. “No one needs travel itineraries.”

“I’m so excited to kill him,” the Lover sings to herself.

With one final shared look of understanding between us, I leave my friends and head toward the last, best, most important thing I’ll ever do. I defeated Dracula; now I’m going to save Iris, and there’s no force in the world that can stop me.