Page 111 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)

111

Salt Lake City, January 28, 2025

Iris

Everything is too bright, too loud. The air moves in ways I can see now, smell, even hear, it’s all too much and not enough and I’m so thirsty, so aching and raw that I feel every nerve in my entire body, which is being cradled by a stunningly beautiful woman. She gazes down at me and then shoves something plastic into my mouth and squeezes. By the time I’ve swallowed it all, I’m coherent enough to realize she’s been happily chattering this whole time.

“…a whole supply of it back there, like juice pouches. But now you won’t be out of your mind with thirst, so even if it takes you awhile to come back to yourself, I’ve got you. You’re not alone. I’ll take care of you, Iris, for as long as—”

Iris. My name floods into me with more power than the blood, filling me up, reconnecting those pathways in my brain. A link to who I was before I became…whatever I am now. Iris. I’m Iris. And she’s Lucy.

I pull her down to my lips. Her lips aren’t cool anymore; they’re the same temperature as mine. I can feel her and smell her and she’s real and I’m real and everything is too much but just enough. I laugh against her mouth and she smiles, so big we can’t kiss anymore, and that’s okay, too, because Lucy.

Lucy, and me.

“I’ve been saying your name over and over,” she says. “I hoped if I gave it back to you as soon as you woke up, it would help. It made a difference for me.”

“It did help. It made me remember, who I was and— Oh my god, it worked. I’m a vampire. I am a vampire, right?” I look down at my hands. They’re still just hands. My body seems like my body. But my senses—I have a hundred where I used to have a handful.

Lucy’s eyebrows knit close together as if to reassure each other. “Is that—is that okay?”

I nod, but there’s one detail bothering me. It will always bother me if I don’t know. “Do I smell like him? Was it his blood that changed me, or yours?”

Lucy presses her face against my neck, lingering there. Then she leans back and shrugs. “I don’t know. And I don’t care. I’m not his because he changed me, am I?”

I shake my head rapidly.

“So, you aren’t, either. And you’re not mine because I changed you. You belong to yourself, complete and whole and beloved. But for the record, I think you smell delicious. ”

I laugh and pull her close. “Likewise. So. What now?”

“Well, first I’m going to teach you how to be a vampire so you don’t go out of your mind and do things you might regret. Though no judgment here if you do.”

“Right, yes, good. I’d like to stay in my mind. And then?”

“And then, if you want, I thought we could go kill Dracula.” Lucy is both hopeful and tentative as she searches my face for my reaction. “I promised my friends I would, and I’d like to keep that promise. That would mean an ending for us, too. But you should know, I spent decades searching for him, and that was before I ripped his jaw off—”

“You what ?” I’m delighted. “Is that what you were holding when you came in here? I couldn’t see it!”

She beams proudly. “He was so pathetic, drooling impotently, tongue lolling. You would have laughed.”

“I definitely would have. I also might have vomited, but that’s neither here nor there.”

“Anyhow, he was hard to find before I nearly killed him. I suspect he’ll be even harder to find now. It could take ages. A lifetime. Two or three lifetimes, even.” She’s soft and hesitant again, like she’s reaching out to take my hand for the first time. Unsure if I’ll accept the offering of her fingers in mine.

I don’t know what my core is yet, what defining thing I brought back over that line between life and death. I don’t know what will give me strength and purpose and also weakness in equal measure.

I suspect I’m looking at her, though. Loving someone is always giving them the power to destroy you. But I trust both of us enough to know it’s worth it.

“Well,” I say, “if it’s going to take awhile, good thing I’m immortal and rich now.” Even with the family pyramid-scheme cult destroyed. The obscenely rich never actually lose their money, and I’m the only Goldaming left. No one needs to know that I’m also technically dead until I’ve cashed out.

Lucy isn’t working alone now. I have resources she never could have. All the access and connections money can buy. This time used not to hide Dracula, but to hunt him. We’ll find him together, sooner or later.

I might prefer later, though. I lean my forehead against Lucy’s and close my eyes, letting all my miraculous senses explore her in new ways. “Ask me to spend my afterlife with you,” I whisper.

She kisses me, and I’m free. We both are.