Now Comes the Mist

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

T ime is hurtling toward sunrise as I move to the open window, stumbling and weak. The mist on my face seems to give me a few precious fragments of energy. It smells of soothing earth and dew, and every step I take feels easier than the last. I gasp as it helps me, lifting my feet so that I am floating inches above the floor, my long white nightdress fluttering around my ankles. I do not feel afraid as the mist gently carries me out the window.

I fly along the side of the house, light as a feather, breathless when I realize how far the ground is below me. I want to see my mother, and through the windows of her room, I do. Despite the shock of her death, her lovely face is serene on her pillow. I press my hands longingly against the glass, watching the candlelight flicker over her closed lids, pale and veined with blue. I want to stay there all night. I want to hold vigil and to grieve, kneeling by her side.

But there is a powerful, gnawing void at my core, impossible to ignore. I am starving. My body is screaming out for the blood that will render my transformation complete. I have no time to linger, for the sunrise is inexorable and the sky is already lightening from the darkest hours of the night. I drift downward in the arms of the mist, my long black hair floating behind me.

I fear for these empty streets, and for whoever will encounter me first. My prey.

The word makes me physically ill, and for a moment, I am forced to lean against a lamppost, heaving at the thought of killing someone. Of taking an innocent life. But I remind myself that I did not hurt Arthur. Even in my ravenous need, I had summoned the presence of mind to push him from me, and I will not hurt anyone else. I take deep, calming breaths as my ears pick up sounds from every direction: owls hooting, rats scurrying, foxes slipping through bushes. I will drink from an animal, I decide, and allow its blood to finish what I have begun.

“You stupid girl,” I hear Vlad say in my mind, mocking and hateful.

“Curse you,” I whisper.

“You’re a fool.”

I plug my ears with my fingers, a childish gesture that does nothing to keep his voice from my thoughts. I run through the mist, my bare feet making soft sounds on the pavement, and through sheer force of habit, I find myself at the churchyard gates once more. But this time, I have not sleepwalked there. This time, I lift the mist with my hands until it churns like the sea, making phantasmagoric shapes in the light of the gas lamps. I smell blood everywhere, pulsing through small animals. It is not as tantalizing as human blood, but it is blood nonetheless.

And then I hear it.

A strong, young heart beating. The rushing of fresh, hot blood.

I pause, listening. My newly sharpened senses focus on a creature behind me. There is an odd note to its smell, something I cannot place. No matter. The mist swirls around me as I stroll along the gate as though I have not a care in the world. I hear myself singing a soft lullaby, my low sweet voice lilting through the heavy silence of the dead. Why am I walking like this? From whence comes this music? I sing with a joy I do not feel, but I am as compelled to do it as I am to take air into my lungs. It is bait, I realize. I am setting a trap without even knowing how.

The animal approaches. The intoxicating scent of its blood strokes my nose, rich and savory. Everything slips from my mind but the bone-deep need to taste it. To feed. I continue to walk and sing, soft and blithe, but my muscles are already tensing, preparing to lunge and seize the prey that comes to me so willingly. Somehow, I know I could descend upon it in the blink of an eye, and that I am faster and stronger than anything within a hundred-mile radius. I could tear this creature limb from limb before it even had time to draw its next breath.

I turn to look at my prey, and my breath stops within me.

It is not an animal. It is a little girl.

She is about six or seven years old. She wears a long, shapeless coat too big for her, and her mousy brown hair hangs limp around her thin face. That was the odd note I had detected. I had been smelling the innocence and the fresh, tender skin of a child. Her enormous dark eyes never stray from my face as she stands there looking at me.

No , I think, recoiling. No! I cannot.

“I’m scared,” she says in a small voice. “Will you help me, miss?”

The smell of her blood is overpowering. I am like a lost sailor seeing land or a thirsty man discovering an oasis in the desert. My ferocious hunger roars as the little girl scurries forward. My prey is hurrying toward me.

The new and evil instinct inside of me has me kneel with a smile, bringing my eyes level with hers. “Hello, little one,” I hear myself croon, warm and kind, the way I have heard other women speak to children. “How did you come to be here all by yourself?”

I am a predator now, a monster whose sustenance is blood. But even through the presence of the newly awakened murderous beast inside me, I can still feel the human part of me reeling back in disgust, my stomach roiling with nausea even through my hunger. Never in my life have I had the gift or the liking for children that comes so easily to other women. This tiny being with its wet mouth and dirty hands and seeping eyes may be full of the blood I crave, but I am still repulsed by it. I cannot kill it. I will not.

Hope blooms on the child’s face. “I’m glad you found me, miss,” she says rapturously.

Why is she so happy to see me?

And then, as I stare into the wide darkness of her large eyes, I see the answer. I see my own reflection, and it is nothing like what I saw in the mirror after my transformation. In death, my beauty has magnified a thousandfold. My skin glows pale gold, as soft and flawless as the petal of a rose, and my hair and lashes are blacker and more luxuriant than they have ever been. My cheeks are a warm pink, but my lips are a brilliant rose-red as though I have rubbed them with rouge. I am transfixed by my own appearance in the child’s eyes, for something in the giving of my blood and the taking of Vlad’s has caused me to look this way.

As a human, I had been lovely. But as a vampire, I am utterly irresistible.

The child is relieved to see me because instead of being found by a vagrant or a drunk or whoever wanders these streets at night, I have come to her instead: a soft-eyed young woman in a spotless nightgown with an angelic smile and hair like the evening sky.

I am in awe and terror of the cleverness of this curse. This venom Vlad has introduced into my blood understands the concept of self-preservation. It knows that if it makes its host attractive and alluring, then the prey cannot help but come running.

As I had to Vlad. And as this girl has to me.

I think of what other children have called me before: a “bloofer” lady. A beautiful lady, one whose face attracts both their attention and their trust.

The girl throws herself into my arms and tucks her head under my chin, seeking the comfort of a mother. Oh, God, what am I to do? I am torn between devastating hunger for her blood, horror at the deed I am contemplating, and sheer disgust at the feel of this tiny, dirty, doll-like creature attaching itself to me like a tumor. My gums ache as my fangs threaten to snap down again, and I press my lips so tightly together that it hurts.

I will not do this. I will not kill an innocent child.

Awkwardly, I put a hand on the little girl’s back, my fingers catching on her lanky hair. I remember that there is an orphanage nearby, an establishment patronized by some of the ladies of Mamma’s circle. Indeed, my mother and I have given money every Christmas to help feed and clothe the orphans. This girl must have wandered from there.

“Come, darling,” I say, patting her head as my mouth waters at the seductive smell of her clean, fresh blood a spare inch away. “Let me walk you back.”

She snuggles tighter against me, reluctant to leave my arms, and I think of how this is everything society has asked of me: to be a woman holding a child protectively, just like this. To first be a daughter, and then a wife, and then this , a nurturer of small lives sprouted from my own body like damp mushrooms from a moist log. Weeds from the wetness of my womb. I hold her against my weakly beating heart, trying to contain my revulsion at the stench of her innocence, tortured and unsure of what to do as the mist gently swirls around us.

The mist.

I can put her to sleep. I can push her far away from me so that the stains on my soul do not deepen and the reflection in the mirror does not grow bloodier with the blood on my hands.

But before I can take action, I smell new blood approaching, fanning the flames of my steadily increasing and unsatisfied hunger. In the dim light, they appear shoulder to shoulder like sentries in the fog: eight or nine small figures, their bodies frail, their clothes hanging loosely, and their eyes too big for their faces. They home in on us like an army of puppets moving in perfect unison, with identical expressions of hope and relief at the sight of me.

“Oh, miss!”

“We are lost.”

“Help us,” they chant. “Please help us, miss.”

Their grubby doll hands find my face and my hair, their smelly bodies swarming around me like pale grubs on a festering wound. I am faint with horror and my senses are assaulted by these children I have somehow drawn to me through the mist, with their small voices, searching hands, and longing eyes. My head aches with the rhythm of their heartbeats. I can taste my own blood in my mouth as my fangs snap down, piercing through my gums in preparation for a feast.

I stand up and back away as the children paw at me, their plaintive voices shrill and the smell of their blood, velvety and unctuous, clings to my nose with invisible hooks. I am losing my sanity and my control as the tiny sacks of blood surround me. This will become a massacre.

“I told you.” I hear a smile of triumph in Vlad’s whisper. “I told you, I told you.”

I clench my fists and scream, “No!”

The children go still.

Quickly, with trembling hands, I sweep the mist upon them like a shroud. One by one, they fall to the ground, their heartbeats slowing as they sink into deep slumber. I touch my face and realize that I am crying, looking down at these fragile, helpless bodies who had sought a loving young mother through the mist and found a monster instead. Found me .

“I can’t do this,” I sob. “You were right, Vlad. I have not the courage.”

There is no response. Desperately, my insides quaking with hunger, I lick my own blood from my fangs. And then I use the mist to lift the children into the air before me, moving them back to the orphanage. Even before I reach the building, I can hear the worried voices of adults seeking them. Gently, I lower the bodies beneath a large tree and cry, “Here! I’ve found them!”

And then I flee, because I know I would not be able to help myself if the adults came upon me, too. I half run, half float, weeping as I move through the empty streets. The sky is several shades lighter. Sunrise will come soon enough, and I will die as a human. There will be no returning from that, no seeing Arthur’s smile or Mina’s bright eyes ever again.

“What am I to do?” I utter. “Oh, God, what shall I do?”

“Hello, love. What’s a pretty piece like you doing out here all alone?” A man is leaning on a wall nearby, grinning at me with an almost toothless mouth. He is perhaps in his fifties, with ruddy white skin, thinning ginger hair, and a few large scars on his face. I can tell from his speech and his ragged clothing that he is a vagrant, and I smell old liquor on his foul breath.

I do not know this man. I do not know if he is good or bad, if he has fallen on hard times, or if the shadows of lost dreams linger behind those bloodshot eyes. I do not know his name, where he comes from, or whether there is someone out there who loves him.

All I know is that he is full of blood and I am empty of it. So, so empty.

My fangs are in his neck before either of us are even aware of it. My body is on fire as my new teeth, long and bright as shards, tear into the tissues and muscles of his throat to find his veins. The man thrashes in my arms, his cries incoherent under the glugging sound of blood leaving his body and entering mine, filling me with delicious warmth and vitality. I do not waste a drop, locking my mouth against his skin as I drain him of absolutely everything.

I let him go and he crumples to the ground, white as chalk. His milky eyes are still open, and in them, I see my own reflection once more. My face is pink with health and my pointed fangs drip blood upon my lip. And I notice something strange: my eyes are the same, wide and dark and tilting—not voids ringed with crimson, like Vlad’s. Why have my eyes alone remained human? My old self looks out at me through them, lost and sad and tortured, racked with self-hatred at this violent, merciless deed I have performed tonight.

I have taken a life. I have killed someone.

This man may have had a family. He may have had a daughter my age. I imagine a vampire happening upon Mamma or Papa and I fall to my knees, heaving, sick to my stomach, but I bring nothing up. I have stolen a life to pay for my new existence, like some dark goddess or blood-splattered demon, and I know the weight of this death will forever be a chain around my ankle. The first human life I will ever take—the first of how many more? Oh, God, forgive me. I bend my forehead to the ground, trembling with silent tears as I hold the man’s hand to my heart.

Vlad had lied to me. He had made subsisting on animal blood sound so easy. But he had not told me how it would smell as thin and bland as water in comparison to the bright, coppery bouquet of human blood. He did not tell me my predatory instincts would make it impossible to resist. But he did tell me it was a curse, and perhaps that was the greatest truth he had ever shared.

An eternity of killing. An immortal life of endless death.

My scream of torment shakes the night like the toll of a church bell. In my terror of death, I have chosen an existence that has inexorably married me to it. My body is strong, my limbs are powerful, and my senses are heightened … but only ever through the blood and the life and the soul of another. The rushing tide of grief, fury, and remorse in me could drown all of London.

“I’ve done it, Vlad!” I shout. “You thought I could not, but I have!”

Movement in the shadows.

I hear flapping, rustling, scurrying. From every direction come rats, dark and sly, oily fat bodies slipping through the grass; maggots, slimy with the sheen of corpses, pushing up from the earth; snakes, coal-black and poisonous green, undulating over the cobblestones. The creatures of the night join me, their eyes watchful, but Vlad does not come. I do not know if he heard my cry, but I suppose it does not matter; he cares not what choice I make. As the creatures watch me, I scoop the dead man into my arms and stand. I am a small woman, but he weighs almost nothing as I lay him with newly prodigious strength in the shadow of the trees.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, gently closing his eyes with my fingers. “I am so sorry.”

Exhaustion overtakes me, so powerful that I am afraid I will fall asleep where I kneel. I turn my back on the man, knowing that the theft of his life has made its permanent mark on me. I wipe the heels of my hands over my wet face and clean what remains of his blood, and then I raise the mists and float home through the darkened streets.

I soar through my bedroom window and onto the bed beside Arthur, his long lanky body still stretched out in peaceful slumber. I tuck myself under his arm and press my face to his chest, committing every note of the music of his heartbeat to memory as I hold him close.

The mist wavers slightly.

Arthur stirs and looks down at me. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he says drowsily with a sheepish laugh. And then he blinks in shock. “Why, Lucy. You look … you look so well.”

I can see myself in the shine of his eyes, more radiant and full of life than ever. But it is only a dangerous illusion, one that will make it harder for us to let go of each other the way I fear we must. I caress his stunned face, my fingers moving over his nose and lips to his neck, where a vein throbs with longing. But it is safe from me, and so is the blood that rushes through him.

“You’re glowing,” he says, cupping a hand around my face. “There are roses in your cheeks. Perhaps Van Helsing was wrong … but you are so cold.” He pulls me more tightly against him and covers me with the blanket, rubbing my shoulders to warm me.

“Van Helsing was not wrong. I am dying, Arthur, but not in the way we know. Not in the way you think I am. Will you trust me? When I promise that I will come back to you?”

His face crumples. “But how? How can you come back to me if you die?”

I look into the soft hazel of his eyes. “I told you that I have made a choice, but there is a price I must pay first. This choice means that you would never lose me. I would never grow old. You would have me until the end of your life … if you still want me.”

“Of course I want you,” he says, his voice taut with distress and confusion. “But—”

“If you want me as I am now. As I am in the mirror.” He goes still at the memory of my reflection. I touch my upper lip, under which my fangs had emerged. “As you saw me earlier. I am the same Lucy who loves you, but there are changes in me. They are part of the price I must pay to be with you. To love you all your life and spare you pain.”

Arthur touches my lip, too. “Those long teeth … and your face in the glass,” he says hesitantly. “They are because that creature bit you?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“And you … you wanted to be bitten? That is what you mean by making a choice?”

“Yes.”

He is silent for a moment, his eyes locked on mine, trying so hard to understand. “But what bit you? How did it find you? Why—”

“I will explain everything in due time. I promise.”

He leans his forehead against mine, his face drawn and pleading. The imminent loss of his father has dimmed the light in his eyes, and I tighten my arms around him, every fiber of my being yearning to bring that joy, that smile back. “And you … you will come back, Lucy?”

I take his face in my hands. “I swear it to you,” I say fervently. “I will see you again, my love, and this is not goodbye.”

We lie there looking at each other, and my mind races with images of the future, even after the despair I had felt earlier, the certainty that I had no right to exist beside Arthur and Mina any longer. Arthur still wants me. He has seen a bit of what I am and he still wants me, and I would move heaven and earth to fight my limitations, to take no more lives, and to curb my hunger if it meant we could be together for his lifetime. It may be a dream. A fool’s dream, perhaps, but it gives me more strength than I have felt in a long time.

“Kiss me, Arthur, before we sleep. Please?”

His mouth meets mine, soft and lingering, and then I lift the mist again. His eyes close, and he goes limp in my arms. I burrow tightly against him, my tear-streaked face pressed against his strong and steady heart as sleep overcomes me.

It is not the wedding night either of us had hoped for.

But we are together, and for now, that is enough.