Page 99 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)

99

Salt Lake City, January 26, 2025

Lucy

I come back to myself slowly, like a fever breaking.

What did they put over my head? Flashing lights, blaring noise, and pressure strong enough to burst my eardrums. Every sense was overloaded to the breaking point. Whoever designed it knew exactly how to disarm a vampire. I’d admire it if it hadn’t been used on me .

My head is free now, but I’m chained to a chair. I tug experimentally. The chains were also designed by someone familiar with vampires. I’m in a small room partitioned by a curtain. I’m not in Iris’s house anymore, and Iris—

Iris.

I lose some time to a blackout moment of rage and panic. Eventually I shut that down, because it won’t do me any good. I can’t break out by brute force. That’s never been my forte, anyway. I find a single link in the chain and begin working at it.

Then I close my eyes and search. There. A whisper on the edge of my thoughts. Iris is alive, but she’s not awake. I try to wrap my consciousness around her to tug her free of whatever has ahold of her in her dreams, but there’s so much resistance. It takes all my concentration.

If only I could talk to her. I’m getting more frantic, and my fear leaks through into the atmosphere of her dreams. I keep finding her and then losing her again. Dracula is fighting me for control, which means he’s already started his final assault on her.

My stomach turns, sick at the thought. He has so much more experience. How can I win? How can I save Iris from this when I couldn’t save myself?

“Where did you come from?” a man asks.

I open my eyes. He’s tall and gaunt, with paper-thin skin and hooded eyes. A gloriously full head of hair sits atop his head like a leech feeding off the rest of him.

“That’s a complicated question!” I give him my glassiest-eyed smile. “Where do any of us come from?”

He’s not amused. He looks exhausted. I’d swear he’d been drained were he not clearly alive by the sound of his heart and breathing. “I just need to know when Dracula created you.”

I drop my act, too angry to pretend. “He didn’t create me. He killed me. Don’t give him credit for anything else.”

The gaunt man’s eyebrows draw low. I’ve heard his voice before, but I can’t place it. “You look young. I don’t think you are. That’s good. Both because I don’t have to figure out when he slipped through our protective measures and killed you, and because older vampires are more valuable to harvest.”

“ Dick! ” I declare, figuring it out.

Lawyer Dickie looks briefly offended, then sighs. “I’d ask how you know Iris, but it hardly matters now.”

“Does he have her?” I ask, desperate. I’ll tell Dickie anything he wants, I’ll give him anything he needs. “Is she safe?”

He pauses, surprise at last shifting his features as he considers me. “The blood is life. She’s a Goldaming. We’ll always protect her.”

I smile brightly once more. “Doing a brilliant job. Like when she was in London and your guard dogs didn’t notice she was dating a vampire. Or here in your own territory, letting Dracula stalk her. He was going to kill her in the kitchen; I’m the one who stopped him. Let me go and I’ll protect her myself. The blood might be your life, but Iris is mine. I’ll keep her safe.”

He walks out. I let my head fall back. It was worth a shot. The link I’ve been sawing at with my fingernail is starting to get warm. In another few hours I’ll be through it. But I don’t think I have another few hours.

“Full harvest,” he says to someone outside. “Make it quick.”

The curtain parts again and the Doctor walks in. My old friend, working for my enemies. That’s who Iris met. That’s why everything fell apart.

“I’m going to rip you into pieces and drop you in the ocean,” I say. “But I’ll make certain the pieces are big enough that you can still think and hear and feel. I want you to experience every agonizingly powerless moment of your slow descent into starvation and madness.”

“Hello, Lucy,” the Doctor says, all business in her white lab coat. “You’ve changed. It’s nice. Out of professional curiosity, what did you think of the sensory overload helmet? I never did try it on myself.”

“You love your hands most, so I’m going to rip them off first.”

“Stop being dramatic. We have work to do.”

I’m tempted to plead, but I know it won’t matter. How many men did I hear pleading on her operating tables? “Dracula’s trying to kill someone I love,” I say. “They’ve been working with him, protecting him this whole time, looking the other way while he stalks and kills women. It never stopped. It will never stop unless we stop it. You have to care about that. You can’t be working for him, after what he did to us. You just can’t. It’s breaking my heart.”

The Doctor’s look is so withering it erases nearly a century and a half of life, reduces me to a girl once more. “ Lucy. I said we have work to do. You and me. Together.” She pulls a key out of her pocket and unlocks the chains.

“Oh.” I brush them off me and stand, embarrassed. “Sorry. I saw you here and I assumed…”

“It was a mutual agreement at first,” she says, unapologetic. “You inspired me to look into vampirism and its possible medical benefits, which eventually led me to the Goldamings. I assure you I was unaware of the connection to Dracula. They hid him quite tidily. And I liked my work, for a while. It was very promising. But they changed the terms, and I no longer wish to partner with them. Here, drink this.” She reaches into a white box next to the bed and hands me a bag of blood.

“This is Iris’s.” I know the smell, and now I know the taste, because I already drank it as it pulsed through Dracula’s veins.

“Better you consume it than they turn it into products to lure in new acolytes. Besides, Goldaming blood is special. You’ll need your strength to break us out of here. I’ve tried, but fighting and fleeing are not my skill set.”

All good points. It feels wrong to drink Iris’s stolen blood, but I do understand a little more why she read the transcript of my life story. She was desperate, and she needed me, and I wasn’t there. I’m desperate, and I need Iris, and she’s not here.

The scent of the plastic container lingers in my nose, and it’s awkward to drink from. The blood is lukewarm. And still, it’s euphoric. Iris’s blood, her life, her taste, coating my tongue, rushing down my throat, filling my stomach and surging outward in waves of warmth and power.

She already had my heart, but now she powers it. Now she’s part of me, down to my veins. And the Doctor is right: Iris’s blood is different. I was too enraged to notice before when I drained Dracula. Blood is blood, despite what the Lover said about champagne blood, but this is…

This is so heady, so potent even one small bag has me feeling like I’ve been lit on fire. Like I’m alive.

“It feels like your whole body is an orgasm,” the Doctor says bluntly. “I know. I’ve sampled Goldaming blood, out of scientific curiosity. Please focus, though. We have to get off this floor. There’s an elevator, but I can’t get it open on my own. Together, we might stand a chance.”

Beyond the curtain, we’re surrounded by heartbeats. Seven…eight. Eight people. “What about the—”

The Doctor moves faster than I’ve ever seen her. Before I can come out from behind the curtain, there are no more heartbeats.

“Can’t have them tripping an alarm.” She wipes the corner of her mouth, then sweeps her eyes over her carnage. “Wasteful,” she mutters, stepping over the bodies on her way to the elevator.

I join her. I can feel the immovable boundaries of my body. It’s not long before twilight, but not long is still too long. I can’t change form until then, which means moonlight and mist aren’t going to get us out of here.

“Are they keeping Iris in this building?” I ask, examining the door. It’s solid metal. It would take me ages to punch my way through.

“I doubt it, but we can check. Assuming you can get us out of the basement.”

“Put your fingers in the seam. We’ll try pulling together.”

Before we can, the doors slide open with a cheery ding. Inside is a young vampire with silky brunette hair, big brown eyes, and a haunted expression. She’s wearing a security guard uniform, complete with a badge declaring her name Del Toro. “Come on.” She holds the door for us.

“I know you,” I say. “You were the vampire on Iris’s doorstep.” The first one there who was so desperate to get in and stop Dracula.

She nods. “I was following her. I wanted to talk to her. To ask about— It doesn’t matter. I saw what I needed to in the kitchen.” She pushes the button to take us up.

“Why are you helping?” the Doctor asks.

The elevator slows, then stops. Del Toro leads us out. We’re trapped by several inches of clear plastic. But Del Toro solves that, too. She presses her palm to a pad and the sealed door opens. Beyond that is a plain wooden door, and beyond that, we’re free in a hallway leading to a lobby.

“Because,” Del Toro says, “they told me I would be a living god. They told me I would help people. That I was changing lives for the better. But they lied about everything. You tried to save Iris from that monster. They punished you, and whisked him away to safety. That’s who I sold my soul to. I’m not a god, I’m just another vampire. Doesn’t mean I have to be their vampire, though. Good luck.”

She walks back through the wooden door toward the elevator.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“To help people and change lives for the better. By destroying the lab.” She smiles sadly over her shoulder, then the door closes.

“Come on. There might be alarms,” the Doctor says. We race down the hallway to the main lobby. It’s almost twilight. I can feel it creeping closer, the body around me less like a demand and more like a choice. I flex my fingers, ready. Waiting. I’m going to be unbound, and then everyone in this building will be—

“Everyone on this floor is already dead,” the Doctor says, frowning. “No heartbeats at all.”

“Oh, hi!” The Lover pops up from behind the reception desk. “We found you! Look, I found them!” She points excitedly.

The Queen steps out of a nearby hall, golden blades dripping blood. She nods regally at us.

“More friends of yours?” the Doctor asks.

I could swear she’s jealous, but I don’t have time to feel happy about it. I always knew she loved me, though. “I’m going to check all the floors. Where Iris is, we’ll find Dracula, right? He’s in charge here.”

“Oh no, they took Iris?” The Lover’s eyes get big and sad.

The Doctor answers me. “Dracula’s not in charge.”

“What? But all these vampires smell like him. I thought—”

The Queen shakes her head. “She’s right. That devil could never run a billion-dollar company. All he’s capable of are small, petty intrigues in pursuit of his next conquest. This requires vision. Determination. Clever industriousness. It has to be someone else’s work.”

“The Goldamings,” the Doctor says. “They’re the brains, and also the blood. It’s their blood that hooks people. It gives them a flush of youth and a renewed hunger for life. I could have done such great things if I’d been given the chance.” She looks longingly in the direction of the lab entrance, then shakes her head. “No matter. It’s all meaningless in the end. They only turn the most loyal fools into vampires. I assume that’s where Dracula comes in. He’s their pet plague rat. They’ll be keeping him hidden somewhere. If you get me upstairs, I can find out where he is.”

I want the Doctor’s help, but I want it freely given. I won’t make the mistake I made with Iris. “We’re going to kill Dracula,” I tell her.

“Of course we are,” she says, as simple as that. After several lifetimes of trying to beat disease and death, she’s come to the same conclusion: The best thing we can do for humanity is end Dracula, once and for all. Even if it means ending ourselves, too.

My heart swells, both with Iris’s blood and with pride in my friends. The Doctor, the Queen, and the Lover. We all changed, eventually. Together.

We prowl floor by floor, leaving the living intact, with some exceptions, accidental or otherwise. By the time we’ve cleared the fifth floor of everything undead, it’s twilight. Things go much faster after that. I move from scent to scent, that metal clang calling me. No one can catch me, because there’s nothing to catch until it’s too late.

I don’t even notice I’m on the seventeenth floor until the Lover sweetly calls my name, bringing me back to myself. There’s some sobbing and a few small screams behind us. I remember nothing else about how I got here, and choose not to examine the evidence on my hands.

The Lover skips down the hall after the Doctor. “You’re beautiful to watch at work, Lucy.”

There’s grudging respect in the Queen’s voice. “?‘Beautiful’ is not the word I would use.”

“It’s interesting to meet you both,” the Doctor says. “Lucy told me about you before we last parted ways. Clearly, I’m not the only vampire she influenced. But Lucy, how did you change?” the Doctor asks me. “I thought you never would. This determined, fierce woman is not the girl who moped out of Istanbul.”

“She forgave herself and fell in love,” the Lover says.

I expect the Doctor to scoff, but to my surprise she nods like it explains everything. She stops outside an office door that reads “Kyle Palmer, CFO.” She pushes it open. A man waits in the dark. Even though screams and sobbing drift down the hall, Kyle sits perfectly straight at his desk, an eager, almost beatific look on his face as he stares at the Doctor.

“Is he—” the Queen asks, horror cracking her serene expression.

The Doctor shrugs. “I was curious about familiars. I conducted some clandestine experiments. This one was successful.”

“I knew you’d come.” Kyle’s eyes practically roll back in his head in ecstasy. “I can smell the blood on you. The blood is life, and you are life, and I will do whatever you need, my god, my mas—”

“That’s enough of that,” the Doctor says. “Tell us where they’re keeping Dracula and Iris.”

“There’s a safe house in the desert. I can take you there myself!”

“The location is sufficient.”

His whole face falls, like an infant on the verge of bawling. It’s repulsive, but useful. “Let him take us,” I say. The easier it is for us to get in the door, the sooner we can save Iris and end Dracula.

I don’t have to think about what happens then. One step at a time.