Page 90 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)

90

Salt Lake City, January 25, 2025

Dracula

He retires to the dirt basement of his house. Beneath it lie graves of victims no one knows he’s taken.

Time is a circle, and he’s spun around it this long because he is vicious and bold, yes, but also cunning. His is a legacy spanning centuries and continents, an infinite cycle of obsession and death and rebirth. Wherever he has killed, he can dwell. His home is in the death of countless women, his bed in their resting places, final or otherwise.

The demon vampire woman has the dirt of his first home, the clotted and blood-soaked earth that renews him fastest. Because of that, she thinks she has some measure of control over him. She thinks him satisfied with her offerings and pathetic protection. But he’s finished with the languorous stupor of ease that lulled him into this life. The idle curiosity of what it would be to merely consume, never hunt. The luxury of servants, of sycophants, of travel without fear or threat.

He is no useless noble, no pampered boyar. He is a warrior. A conqueror. He is death. The other vampires may have forgotten, but he’ll remind them, before the end. And then he’ll return at last to his castle, his first resting place, his place of greatest power. He’ll take you with him, in his belly and his veins, sustaining him.

He sleeps, eyes open and dead to the world. He doesn’t dream, and if he did dream, he would not dream of you. Only ever of himself.

He shores up strength, biding his time. The longer he’s away, the more desperate to see him you’ll be. And it works. When he awakes and searches, he sees you on the trail again. Pacing, afraid and upset. You’re looking for him, as you’ve been looking for him—waiting for him, longing for him—your whole life. You’re terrified you’ve lost him. Which means that, at last, you’re ready to invite him in. To accept the gift of his blood, the blessing of his bite.

But he won’t be caught off guard again. The other vampires believe him horrified by weakness, unwilling to be bound by the sun. Fools. He is never vulnerable. Even held in one form by the circle of the sun, he has more power and violence in him than the infant vampires could ever hope to.

And so, beneath the vicious light of day, he strolls along the streets and sidewalks that will take him to you when you least expect it.