Now Comes the Mist

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I drift to the surface of sleep. A chilly wind ruffles my hair, and I try to pull my blankets up to my neck but cannot. Someone is sitting on the edge of my bed, pinning the covers in place. The room is full of thick grey mist creeping in from the wide-open windows.

“Wake up,” Vlad says.

At the sound of his voice, I gasp and reel back against my headboard, shivering in the cold. Outside my bedroom, the house is silent. “How did you get in here?” I ask, looking around in a panic. “Where has all the garlic gone?”

He crosses one leg over the other. “It was none of my doing, I assure you. Well, not directly . I persuaded your simple-minded housekeeper to invite me in and get rid of the disgusting bulbs and flowers, and she was very obliging. Was that truly the best your doctor could do to keep me out? Such folly for a supposedly intelligent man.”

“Where is he? What have you done to all of them?” I demand, my heart in my mouth.

Vlad raises a dark brow. “Calm yourself. I have not harmed anyone, especially not your mother. She seemed quite touched by my concern upon hearing how you had been attacked by the same creature for a second time. If only she knew you had asked for it.”

I grit my teeth. “Where is she?”

“Drugged into slumber, like all the rest.” With a movement of his fingers, the mist rises and bleeds even more thickly through my window and into the hall. “I think you’ll find that none of them are a match for me. Or you, for that matter. We are creatures that hell spat out, as the doctor so aptly put. He actually believes himself to be a worthy opponent for me! I have to say, I admire his arrogance. I came in here to kill him, but I think I will keep him around a bit longer.” He smiles at me. “You know how I love to be entertained.”

“I asked you to help me cheat death,” I say, struggling to remain calm. “I gave myself to you instead of to Arthur. Did you ever truly intend to grant me my request?”

Vlad’s dark blue-green eyes are maddeningly serene. “No.”

“That’s all you have to say to me?” I ask, and he shrugs, enjoying my anger. “After biting me to trick me into thinking that you had accepted my bargain?”

“There was no bargain. I agreed to nothing, and I made you no promises. I asked if you wanted me to bite you, and you said yes, and I obliged. Quite generous of me, I must say.”

“But you knew what I wanted!” I shout, and he turns away in distaste. Fear and anxiety rise in my throat like bile. I force myself to speak in a more even, measured tone. “Both of the times you bit me, you took enough blood from me to sicken me for days. How could you be certain that Dr. Van Helsing would know how to save my life?”

“I wasn’t.”

I stare at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“I wasn’t certain he would know how to save your life.” He places a hand over his chest, feigning apology. “Do not take this the wrong way. I am glad he did save you. You have been a most welcome diversion for me, but no, I have never seriously contemplated making you my companion. You have not the qualities I seek, as beautiful and charming as you are.”

“You were just going to let me die,” I say in disbelief. “After all I have been to you?”

Vlad looks around my room with casual detachment. “I told you, I talk nonsense when I am infatuated with a woman. But my infatuations always run their course, Lucy, as this one has.”

“That is a lie,” I say, my jaw clenched. “You do care for me. Why else spend so many evenings listening to my troubles? Why share so much with me about your life and what you are? Why release Jonathan Harker at my request?”

“To keep your trust in this game I am playing with you,” he says patiently. “But just as I was unsure whether you would survive my bites, so, too, did I let Mr. Harker go without any hope of his survival. My mountain home is rather treacherous to humans, you see. I assumed he would die in a snowbank or a ravine or be eaten alive by wild animals. I planned to have a telegram sent to Miss Murray, telling her of his untimely death whilst traveling home. And I would be there to comfort her when she received it.” He gives me a conspiratorial wink.

“You know nothing about love,” I seethe. “It was because of love that Jonathan survived. Knowing that Mina was waiting for him helped him fight his way through those dangers.”

“How touching,” Vlad says, bored. “He is a minor problem, easily eliminated. I think I will wait, however, with regard to the doctor. He knows too much, but he interests me quite a bit. Yes, I’m curious to see what else he can do, this irritating little man from the Orient.”

“His name is Dr. Van Helsing,” I bite out.

“Yes, him.”

I take him in, this man who is a stranger and yet not a stranger. Tonight, there is no affection or kindness in his manner. His eyes are the North Sea, cold and unyielding, and he will destroy anyone he considers to be “a minor problem” without mercy or a second thought. Jonathan Harker, who knows who and what he is and where he lives. Dr. Van Helsing, who is unearthing the truth about him bit by bit. And me. What of me? “You will not hurt them, Vlad. Any of them,” I say. He ignores me, so I lean forward and touch his cold hand. He looks at me, his face impassive. “You are lying to yourself. You talk of people like pawns in your game, and perhaps they are, but I am not. What I have been to you and what you have been to me … on the cliffs, in the mist … all of it is much more than you will admit to yourself.”

“You think you know my own mind better than I do?” His quiet tone is laced with an undercurrent of malice. “You think after five hundred years that I don’t know myself?”

“I think that in five hundred years of loneliness, you have never met anyone like me. You became angry when I said we were equals. I struck a nerve because you are afraid of me and what I have come to mean to you.” I tighten my fingers on his hand. “I don’t believe for one moment that you left me to die. You knew I would have help, but you also knew that I am like you. A fighter. A survivor. Someone who surrenders easily to no opponent, least of all death.”

Vlad turns to face me more fully, his eyes gleaming in the shadows. I have surprised him. Or impressed him. Or angered him. Likely all three.

“We are kindred souls, you and I, and it frightens you,” I say quietly. “That is why you will not make me a vampire, though you took my blood and my virtue.”

His voice is low and soft, coiled like an adder. “I took nothing from you. What you gave me, you gave of your own free will. Do not blame me. You alone are responsible, you who are so fond of making your own choices. I told you that my existence is a curse, yet you refused to listen. I bit you with violence that first time as a kindness—”

My laugh is full of derision and disbelief. “You call what you did to me a kindness ?”

Vlad’s face changes, like a mask slipping, and I press back against the headboard. It is like looking into an abyss, cold, dark, and utterly without pity. Sharp pinpricks of pain blossom at my temples. I gasp at the invasion of my thoughts and clutch my head, berating myself for not being on my guard. “You blame me for distressing your friends and sickening your mother with the prospect of your death. I can see it in here,” he says, tapping an icy fingertip against my forehead. “But the fault is yours alone. Twice have you manipulated me into biting you, wanton and disgraceful as you are. You forced my hand and now you play the innocent victim?”

“I forced nothing!”

“You are no lady, Lucy Westenra. You disgust me. No upstanding, well-bred young woman of good society would even think of doing what you have done. You have overstepped, my dear. You have reached too high.” He regards me, his expression cool and smug like that of a judge delivering a well-deserved punishment. “But perhaps Arthur will still have you. He seems noble enough to accept damaged goods. He may not reject a glass of champagne that bears the marks of another man’s lips. I will leave you all to him now.”

I hate myself for crying at his cruel words, but I cannot stop my quiet, hopeless sobs as Vlad gets up and walks over to the door. “Where are you going?” I demand. “You have made me yours. You cannot leave me like this. You have soiled and dirtied me!”

“Goodbye, Lucy,” he says pleasantly. “Enjoy your married life. I am sorry I cannot attend the wedding. Perhaps we will see each other again … or perhaps not.”

I get up and follow him with rising desperation, still weak and unsteady on my feet. He cannot be let loose in this house, not with Mamma and the others sleeping and helpless. And he cannot leave me, not when I have been thoroughly poisoned with his venom twice, brought to the brink of dying twice, felt my fingertips brush immortality twice. I have given up everything I have to evade death, driven my own mother to illness, betrayed my beloved Arthur, and lied to my friends. I have come this far, and I must not, will not let my chance slip away.

In the doorway, I seize Vlad’s arm. “Do not leave me. You cannot show me a way out and then take it away from me. I will reveal everything you are.”

He laughs. “And reveal yourself at the same time? The doctor has seen your reflection. He will put two and two together, and they will all know what you have done to yourself. What will Arthur or Mina think then?” He smiles at me. “I did enjoy you, my na?ve little Lucy. Thank you. But our affair has run its course, and you have bled me of quite enough of my time.”

You have bled me.

The words are a wind stirring the embers of my mind. That is the answer. That was the memory I had been trying to find in the depths of my illness. “I bite my victim multiple times,” he had told me when we danced at the ball. “And when they are sufficiently infected with my venom, they must drink my blood and make their first kill before the next sunrise.”

I must drink Vlad’s blood.

I must complete what I have begun, but I must be cautious or I will lose my chance forever. I must tread into the lair of the great grey wolf one silent step at a time—prey hunting the predator with a rope behind my back, ready to slip over his neck when he least suspects it.

Mina once said that we have to live according to the rules of men, because men own this world. Well, then. If this is a game, then I will play by Vlad’s rules. And I will win.

I tighten my grip on his arm, envisioning once more the shield of silver protecting my mind. I hold it there with sheer force of will and fix my eyes upon his face. “You are right,” I say, humble and appealing. “I am to blame, and not you. You warned me, and I refused to listen.”

Vlad’s brows come together as he studies me.

“You were kind to me. You made me feel understood. I think perhaps you are the only person to have ever seen me.” My voice quivers with genuine emotion and I am glad of it, for the most convincing lies are the ones threaded with truth. I put my arms around him and look up into his face. “You once called me your friend. And so I ask you, I entreat you, as a mark of that favor of which you once thought me worthy, to please release me. End my misery and suffering. I do not want to live on, unwanted by you and too stained for Arthur. Free me from the guilt of what I have done and let me die without further blemishing my soul. It is my final request, Vlad.”

A thousand needles dig into my scalp, probing at the tender skin, coaxing it to yield my innermost thoughts. But I am too angry, too determined. Papa used to say that I am as stubborn as a storm—that once begun, I am all thunder and lightning, wind and rain, and the sun will not show its face until I am done. Vlad does not know he is standing in the arms of a hurricane.

“How are you doing that?” he demands, the line between his brows deepening. He takes my chin roughly in his hand as though he can rip my thoughts from me by brute force.

The pinpricks in my head strengthen, but so, too, do my efforts to keep him out. “You are right to doubt me,” I say, my voice strained. I can feel my energy sapping, still low from my illness. “But I am ready to accept the consequences of my choice. I wish to die.” The words burn my throat like acid, but I remind myself that this is only a game. A part I have to play.

Vlad’s gaze sharpens. “Then you admit that you deserve to be punished?”

“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “I tricked you into biting me. I forced you to take what rightfully belongs to Arthur. He thinks I am an angel. If you give me a merciful, dignified death, then perhaps I can leave him still thinking well of me.” I let go of him and slowly back up until I reach my bed. “Bite me one last time. Drain me completely of this poison. Take it all. Take me.”

His eyes never leave me as I lie back down and turn my head to the side, exposing the left side of my throat, my black hair fanning over my pillow. The ocean hue of his gaze darkens as he takes me in, my body soft and fragile and yielding in white silk.

“You gave me so much pleasure that night,” I breathe as he approaches me like a predator stalking his next meal. “Let me remember, one last time, how it was with you.”

And then so suddenly I do not see him move, he is on the bed with me, elbows and knees braced on either side of me, his face inches from mine. His eyes are now as black as ink or blood in the shadows. “You were hungry for me,” he whispers against my lips. “You moved against me like waves on the shore. You moaned my name. You gave me everything.”

Every inch of me is starving for him. I think of his fang catching on my lip, of the feel of him between my thighs. I want to lock my arms and legs around him. But he wants a woman who will run, who will deny him. A victim. So I ignore how my body aches for him as his eyes rake down the length of my throat to the soft swell of my breasts beneath my nightdress.

The mist coming in through the windows thins to a trickle.

“Everything you said is true,” I whisper. “I cannot deny it. I deserve to be punished for giving you something that was not mine to give. Something that belongs to—”

His nose brushes mine. “If you say Arthur one more time,” he says, low and vicious, “I will tear your head from your shoulders, Lucy. I swear I will.”

“Then do it,” I say through gritted teeth. “It would be a mercy. Kill me, Vlad.”

I feel his cold breath as he angles his mouth toward the wounds on my neck. “Then you have come to your senses?” he asks quietly. “You will no longer make demands of me and call yourself my equal? You will die a pure, clean, and virtuous death?”

It takes everything in me not to pull him closer. My nerves roar with unbearable longing, but I lie still and pliant beneath him. “Give me a goodbye worthy of my memory,” I whisper, and I shiver as his icy lips find my neck. But I do not feel his fangs, only his gentle kisses.

“Yes,” he says, smiling against my skin, “I have enjoyed you more than I thought I ever would, Lucy. And I think I may miss you as much as you will clearly miss me.” He looks down at where my traitorous hips have lifted of their own accord to press desperately against him. His hand curves around my waist, his stroking thumb further strumming my need for him. “Look at you. Your body cannot deny me, even when you are about to die.”

I touch his cheek. “Give me what I need. Please. Give me mercy.”

He looks at me with eyes as black as night. His lips part to reveal sharp white fangs. “Goodbye, Lucy,” he murmurs. And then his teeth are sinking into my half-healed wounds with unerring, pitiless precision. I gasp at the bright, blinding pain mixed with the pleasure of his arctic lips and tongue on my skin. His huge, heavy body crushes mine, pressing me into the mattress, and I hold him tight as he drinks from me for the third time.

Stars explode in my vision. My heart beats weakly against his deadened chest. The life is quickly fading from me, and I cannot wait any longer to do what I must.

I slide my hand beneath his collar and yank it down to bare his shoulder. And then, with all the force left in my jaws, I clamp my teeth down, ripping open his cold flesh to taste the thick, metallic, sour-sweet gush of his blood. My body is on fire. I am a wanderer in the desert who has been given a draught of fresh cold water. I cling to him greedily, but my drink is short lived.

Vlad jerks upright, his knees still on either side of me. My blood drips from his mouth, as his does from mine. He touches the wound on his shoulder. “You little bitch. You dare to drink from me.” There is a quiet and inexorable hatred in his voice, much more frightening than if he had shouted. But there is also wary recognition. In his face, I see the two halves of him: the man who had called to me on the cliffs, with his fleeting tenderness and manipulative charm, and also the dark menace, the beast of the shadows hiding beneath the guise of a benevolent friend.

“I am not sorry, Vlad,” I say softly. “I let you drink from me, and I have drunk from you. I have made my choice, even if you hate me for it.”

His laugh is low and almost gentle. “Do you know what you have done, you stupid girl? Do you understand the existence you have chosen?” He looks at me with those red-ringed onyx eyes, his bloody mouth still stretched in disbelief at my daring. I have impressed him against his will and regained his interest. So much for his infatuation running its course.

“Yes. I have chosen to belong to myself. Only myself.”

And then, as he watches, I pull my nightdress up over my head and throw it on the floor, which is now fully visible through the thinning wisps of mist.

The ring of blood around his pupils glows an even deeper scarlet. His breathing becomes ragged as he takes me in. “Lucy,” he whispers. “You would give up your soul for this?”

“A soul,” I say, “is a very small price to pay.”

And then we are kissing, angry and hateful and venomous. He kisses me as though he would like to kill me with his lips, taking no care with his fangs this time. They cut my fragile skin, adding more blood to the mess around our mouths, but I scarcely feel the pain through my uncontrollable desire. My hunger for him has only intensified after my first taste of him.

He tears down his breeches and yanks my hips upward to meet him. The violent force of our joining sends the headboard crashing against the wall. A pillow flies into the lamp on the bedside table, knocking it over with a shattering of glass. I arch my back, crying out for more, my appetite growing with every rough, slick, delicious glide. With every moan I utter, I strip away the remains of my old self. With every movement I make, I declare that my body is my own, my soul is my own, and the old Lucy Westenra has vanished entirely. I have given myself up not to Vlad, but to a new world in which I will have the power to choose whatever I wish.

I raise my hips higher, inviting him in even deeper, his iciness never melting in the scalding heat of my body. If I am to be infected, then let it be fully. Let it be complete. Let there be no ambiguity or regret. There is no going back now.

I pull Vlad’s face down to mine and kiss him again, our mouths melding in a bloody brawl as our bodies collide in a rising frenzy. More glass shatters as a painting above the bed comes plummeting down. Vlad buries his fangs into my neck again and I lap up what blood is left on his shoulder, taking in every drop of him hungrily as my excitement retraces its steps up the now-familiar ascent. But my release does not come this time. Instead, I feel a sudden terrible, shocking cold, as though what little blood is left in my veins has been replaced with ice water. I cry out, not in pleasure, but because my body is racked with chills.

Vlad stays still on top of me, his face pressed into my neck as he finishes with a long, low groan. And then he gets up and turns his back on me, tugging up his breeches and tucking his shirt neatly in. The mist is now completely gone, and I can see him clearly silhouetted against the night sky outside my window.

The bed shakes with my shivering as an intense, devastating cold grips my body. I grab at my remaining pillows and any blankets that have not slipped to the floor, but I cannot get warm. The cold has reached into my very bones. “What’s happening to me?” I gasp.

“You’re dying,” Vlad says shortly, broken glass crunching under his feet as he moves toward the window. “That is what you wanted, is it not?”

“No! I thought that …” I trail off, my teeth chattering as the realization strikes me. “I have to kill before sunrise. I have to take a life.”

He keeps his back to me, hands braced on the windowsill. “If you stay in that bed, you will die as a human at sunrise. I have drained you completely, though you do not deserve that mercy, and the only thing keeping you alive now is the blood you stole from me.” His voice is flat with loathing. “But if you drain and kill someone before the night ends, you will die and reawaken with the curse for which you have given up everything.”

My head swims with pain and cold and anger. My vision blurs as panic rises within me at the thought of Mamma, of Arthur or Mina coming to find me dead. “I will lose my life, no matter what I choose? You never told me that! I thought—”

Vlad turns, his teeth gleaming red in the hollow of his smile. “Yes, either way, you will have to die. Vampires must first relinquish their human lives. Did I neglect to share that? How careless of me.” His smile twists into a grotesque leer as he turns back to the window. “I doubt you have the courage, but I certainly don’t care enough to stay and find out.”

My muscles are so tense with cold that it is excruciating. “Vlad, don’t leave me!” I beg.

“You have a house full of people to choose from. And if I’m not mistaken, two of them are watching you right now.” And then, in the space of a breath, Vlad disappears. A monstrous bat the size of a small dog spreads its jagged wings wide to catch a current of night air. It sails out of my window and melts into the black sky as I turn my head slowly, painfully, to the door.

Dr. Van Helsing and Mamma stand there, gazing with horror upon my naked, ravaged body and the chaos and destruction around me. Vlad had allowed the mist to fade in his distraction, freeing my mother and the doctor from their induced slumber. Even as I feel myself drifting away weakly, not knowing whether it is into sleep or into death, I wonder how much of our encounter they saw.

And then Mamma collapses to her knees. Her eyes do not even close as her lifeless body sinks to the floor, rigid and still and lost to me forever.