Page 42 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)

42

Boston, September 26, 2024

Client Transcript

Naturally you’re questioning my phrasing when I say that I “let” Dracula kill me. After all, the Lucy that Dracula found was a child.

But she was also a fool. A sad, lost, confused little fool. When Dracula came to her, when he pursued her with relentless fixation, it really did seem like love. Or at least like being wanted. Not for money, or looks, or status. But for her whole self.

I speak of that Lucy in the third person because she feels like another person. Like a dream barely remembered. That Lucy, tragically young, had never been her whole self with anyone. That much I recall. But Dracula didn’t care about any of it. He wanted me regardless.

It wasn’t romantic. I never felt affection or attraction for Dracula. He terrified me. It’s horrible in ways even now I can’t let myself think about, lest I tip over that careful line of sanity and never come back.

I wonder, though. Whether I wanted what happened, one way or another. I hadn’t wanted to die, but had I really wanted to keep living my life? Because Dracula didn’t choose me, not at first. He wanted Mina.

I put myself in front of him on purpose. I offered myself up to him willingly. And I didn’t fight tooth and nail to get away once he started, because by then it felt inevitable. I was always going to be devoured by an uncaring man; it was just a far quicker, more violent draining.

So, I couldn’t judge the Lover for her choices. By being her stalker’s victim over and over, she was saving countless Parisian dancers from the same fate. Did that make her noble? I thought it might.

And so I took the Lover home, and we kept dancing in circles. The same routines with different costumes and backdrops. Coral and René became Marie, then Adelaide and Pierre, then Josephine.

While I was finding beautiful women and men, trying not to feel so empty all the time, I watched the Lover’s own endless cycle. She went through it four, five, a dozen more times. I tried to talk her out of it, tried to scare her—what if he decided to dump her body in the river? What if he decided to burn her? But she never listened.

Then one night I found a body in the familiar alley. Three stab wounds in the back. Gutted in the front. Her skull half smashed in, carefully leaving her eyes staring blank and unseeing. But the blood was fresh. It was a different girl, another dancer, an innocent who couldn’t ever wake up again. And I was livid.

The Lover was a fool, just like I had been. I hadn’t saved Mina by offering myself to Dracula. I died and left her alone, and he stalked her anyway. The only reason she survived was because the men in her life made the right choices to protect her. Because she was smarter and stronger and better than me. Because she deserved to survive in ways I never had.

I gently carried the dead dancer to our apartment and laid her on the chaise longue. The Lover, busy pinning up her hair, glanced over in confusion and disapproval.

“Lucy,” she said, “we don’t kill people!”

“We don’t,” I agreed. “But your paramour does. You aren’t saving women by being his victim. You need to stop him, not pause him.” I was angrier with myself than with her, really. I’d let myself be killed as though that was the only way I could protect Mina. It had been worthless. Meaningless. A sacrifice no one asked for or needed.

“Oh, Lucy,” she said with a sigh, sitting next to the corpse and brushing the girl’s hair back into place. “It doesn’t matter, does it? None of it matters. Not really.”

“It has to matter. She has to matter.” Because if she didn’t, nothing did. I walked out. I was never going back to that apartment. Paris was poisoned for me.

But I wouldn’t simply disappear. I waited, and I watched. I stalked the Lover from audiences, just like he did. And the next time she went electric with anticipation, the next time she glowed with the thrill of being seen and desired, I paid attention.

He worked doing filing, paperwork, and the occasional suspect sketch art for the police. There was something dry and lifeless about him, skin flaking around his nostrils, scalp splotchy beneath his thinning hair. His eyes were his only lively feature. They had the intensity of a rodent, hyperalert, always watching. He didn’t see me, though. Not until it was too late.

I wasn’t like him. I didn’t make a production of his death. I didn’t even bite him; I wanted no part of him in me. I snapped his neck and then dumped his worthless body in the Seine.

I knew the Lover would be on stage, frantic with hope. I took away the one thing my friend looked forward to. The one thing that kept her going, that made her infinite afterlife worthwhile. And I didn’t tell her I’d done it, because I wanted her to keep waiting and hoping. It was pathetic. I hated her for it, because I hated myself for the same thing.

We were fools, throwing our bodies in front of men because that was the only way we could ever feel like we mattered.

And so, having at least saved a few of the beautiful dancers who had distracted me in such lovely ways, I left Paris. I thought the Lover incapable of revenge; I was wrong about that.