Now Comes the Mist

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I n the mausoleum, I cannot rest, though I know I ought to try. Instead, I pace all day, surrounded by dust and shadows as the world goes on outside the tomb. I burn to see Arthur again … but I am also gripped by terror and anxiety. I am haunted by Vlad’s certainty that Arthur will reject me, and that he—that all of them, from Mina and Jack to Quincey and Dr. Van Helsing—will fear and hate what I have become.

I sink down beside my parents’ coffin, overwhelmed with despair, clinging to what Arthur had said on that final night: “Of course I want you. You will come back, Lucy?”

The sunlight is interminable. I will the sky to darken, but it refuses to, and a beam of yellow light slips through the mausoleum doors, just to the left of me. Tentatively, I reach out a hand, remembering how Vlad had disappeared when the sun had emerged in Whitby, for fear of being burned. Indeed, he imprisoned himself in a box of earth every day to avoid the light. But when I touch the beam, I feel nothing on my fingers except a gentle warmth. I lean forward and let it fall upon my face, tense with anticipation. But there is still no pain.

“How is this possible?” I whisper.

I get up and peer through the doors of the tomb. The churchyard looks so different in the daylight, the sky bright blue above the gravestones. There is no one in sight, so I call up the mist and let it take me slowly, slowly , out into the sun. I shade my eyes, squinting, my heart delighting in the fresh air and the smell of leaves and the sound of carriages and people on the street. I hold up my hands and study them. I touch my face. But my skin is cool and smooth and unhurt.

Vlad lied to me again. Or did he?

Perhaps he had assumed, as I did, that his limitations would also become my own.

The sun endangers him, but here I stand in its glow. He has no reflection in a mirror, and I do, albeit changed. His eyes become ringed with red when he feeds, but mine remain the same. And when Dr. Van Helsing had held up garlic, it had not pained me in the way it should have.

This condition is different in me than it is in Vlad. Why? And can he truly not know?

Voices reach my ears. The caretaker approaches, talking to visitors, and I hastily retreat. It would not do to have them see a woman in an expensive wedding dress, standing in front of a tomb when she ought to be lying dead inside it. And I have much thinking to do before the sun sets, for if vampirism has such strange and inexplicable exceptions for me, then surely I can think of a way to break free of Vlad’s control.

The day passes more quickly now, and at moonrise, I slip back into the dark and empty churchyard. Tonight, I will find my friends and tell them all—but not before I have fed first, to ensure their safety. Fear twists my gut, but I cling to the hope that Arthur will not turn me away. We will marry, and we will be happy, and we will remain together for the rest of his life—many years for him, and a short time for me. And when Mina returns from Budapest, I will continue to be the doting friend I have always been to her, only young and beautiful forevermore.

These pleasant fantasies occupy my mind as I perform the unsavory task of seeking out small creatures in the dark: rats, squirrels, and even an unlucky fox. Their blood is bland or sour, but it does abate my hunger. I bury the bodies and take care to clean my face, hands, and teeth, fretting at the inconvenience of wearing a white dress as a vampire. The thought amuses me, for it is proof that somewhere inside me still resides the human Lucy, who had once worried about subjects as insipid as gowns and flirting and parties.

I am about to summon the mist to bring me to Arthur when I hear a small voice ask, “Where is my mamma? Please, can you help me find my mamma?”

“Not again!” I growl. “I have not the time for this!”

The child goes still, frightened. She is perhaps nine, with pale skin, golden curls, and blue eyes, the type of girl that other women would covet and call a pretty little thing . But to me, her eyes are too big, her hands are too small, and her quavering voice sets my teeth on edge. She wears a costly, beribboned nightgown, ridiculous on a child. Somehow, she has left the safety of her home to find me in the mist, either because she sleeps lightly or walks in her slumber as I do.

I hear myself hum a lullaby, low and sweet, as I kneel with a reassuring smile. No! I want to shout at the hunger that rears its head. The girl’s blood smells of pear drops and sherbet lemons, and my mouth fills with saliva, longing to taste her after eating such unsatisfying meals.

But never, never shall I harm a child.

“Hello, darling,” I say gently as the tips of my fangs poke down from my gums. “I am going to send you home to your mamma. Where do you live?”

“Sheridan Lane,” she says. “In the yellow house on the corner.”

“That is not too far. Let me walk you back.”

She fixes her large eyes upon my face. “Will you come inside and play dolls with me?” she asks, and hunger and nausea battle within me at this eager invitation from my prey. She slips her hand into mine, warm and sticky and confiding, and I flinch at her touch. “Please? Mamma and Papa never have time to play with me, and Lily and Edith are too grown-up now for dolls.”

“I … I’m not sure I can,” I say weakly.

“Please,” she wheedles, wrapping her arms around my neck. The sugary smell of her blood intensifies a hundredfold, and I am forced to close my eyes, struggling to regain control. “I think you are a very nice and very pretty lady. And I want you to be my friend.”

“Thank you. But I do not—”

The little girl gives me a sticky kiss on the cheek. Her throat is an inch from my mouth, fragile and perfect and full of blood. “No, I will not!” I cry, as my fangs snap down from my gums. Frantically, I call up the mist to put her to sleep as I had done with the orphan children.

But my exclamation has startled her. She pulls away and sees my teeth, and her shrill scream stabs the darkness. Now, I am the one clutching her, desperate to quiet her and keep her from running away to awaken everyone on the surrounding streets.

And then Dr. Van Helsing is there. He must have been hiding behind a large gravestone, for he is only twenty feet away, his face blanched with horror as he holds up an enormous bunch of garlic. Once more, the cloying scent fills me with memories of my parents: Papa reading to me in a room soft with lamplight; Mamma cuddling a smaller me upon her lap; the three of us at Christmas, laughing as Mamma tries one of Papa’s dishes and makes a face at the strong smell.

Other shapes appear from the shadows of the churchyard.

Quincey Morris’s long open coat flutters as he brandishes two silver pistols, both barrels pointed at me. Jack Seward holds up a wooden cross, grim and determined. Arthur’s eyes are wild with horror, and Mina, still wrapped in her blue traveling cloak, covers her mouth either to suppress a scream or keep from being sick. She collapses, white as death, onto the stone bench where I had surrendered my virtue to Vlad.

They look at me in a way they never have before: as though I am a rotten and revolting corpse. And I realize that the suggestive tableau of me gripping a frightened, shrieking child, my fangs gleaming in the darkness, is exactly why Vlad knew they would reject me. To them, in this moment, I am the image of a demon from hell, evil and irredeemable, my arms imprisoning an innocent child in some twisted perversion of motherhood.

“No,” I gasp. “No, please! This is not what it looks like!”

“Let the girl go,” Dr. Van Helsing says evenly, advancing a step.

“I was going to put her to sleep. I was going to send her home!” I babble.

“Why do you think we would ever believe you?” Quincey Morris demands, and his cold voice chills me to the bone. It hurts me as much as if he had already shot me. “You soulless she-devil, trying to murder a little girl right before our eyes. We all saw you!”

“No! No, I would never!” I sob. “She lives on Sheridan Lane. I was going to walk her—”

Quincey turns off the safety on his guns with a deafening click. His hands tremble only slightly. “Let her go or so help me God, I will put ten bullets straight into your head.” Days ago, he had given me a bullet for protection. Now, he will give me another … for the opposite reason.

I release the child, who runs to Mina. Mina wraps her cloak around her as Arthur, my Arthur, steps in front of them protectively, his gaze on me horror-struck. I try to move toward them, my heart aching, but Quincey speaks again.

“Stay where you are or I will blow your head clean off, as sure as I live,” he says.

I choke back a sob and go still, frozen on my knees before them like a penitent.

“So you see, Jack,” Dr. Van Helsing says calmly, as though continuing a conversation, “I was right. The creature in Lucy’s room infected her with a dreadful malady that can only be sated by the drinking of blood. We have now seen her crimes firsthand and—”

“Respectfully, now isn’t a good time for a lecture.” Quincey advances with his guns drawn. I see a tremor in his jaw, but there is also an utterly detached coolness in his posture, that of the seasoned hunter. And for the first time, I know what it is to be his enemy … or his prey.

Silence follows his words. And then Quincey shoots.

“No!” Arthur and Mina scream as two bullets blast through the air, directed at my heart.

But I am too quick for him. I heard his heart pick up, smelled his blood accelerate, and felt the air move before his fingers even squeezed the triggers. In an instant, I am floating high above them in the mist, missing the bullets by mere fractions of a second.

Mina screams at the sight of me hanging aloft in the air, my wedding dress shredded and my black hair billowing, as Quincey shoots me again. One of the bullets catches my gown just inches to the right of my leg as I command the mist to carry me to safety.

“Quincey, stop!” Arthur shouts.

“Please,” I beg, now floating behind them. They whirl in shock and terror. “Please, Quincey, for the love you once bore me, do not shoot anymore. Let me speak.”

“Love!” Quincey bellows, veins bulging in his neck. “You dare to think that I ever loved you ! That love was for an innocent young woman with a pure and spotless soul. You are nothing like her!” His words strike at the very core of my being, and my grief must show upon my face, for Jack lowers his wooden cross slightly, looking uncertain.

“Lower your guns, Mr. Morris,” Dr. Van Helsing says. “You are wasting your bullets.”

Arthur moves to stand between Quincey and me. His fists are clenched at his sides. “Stop shooting at her,” he chokes out. “Let us hear what she has to say.”

“Don’t let her trick you, Arthur,” the cowboy warns him. “That is not your Lucy, but a demon fooling you into trusting her with that voice. She would have killed that little girl if we hadn’t been here. Oh, God, God, that face,” he adds with a frightened gasp as I slowly lower myself to stand before them. “She is more beautiful than ever. The devilry.”

“I am not trying to trick anyone,” I plead, holding my hands before me.

Mina buries her face in the child’s hair, weeping, and Arthur’s body convulses with silent sobs at the sight of me. I smell his desire and longing, tinged with his familiar scent of pine, and it is almost my undoing. I want to be in his arms as much as he yearns to be in mine.

But I remain motionless because Quincey’s pistols are still pointed at me and I do not wish to discover whether or not a bullet can destroy me. For a long moment, no one speaks, and so I say into the silence, “Please. What is today’s date?”

Dr. Van Helsing and Jack exchange glances.

“What could a creature like you want to know of days and months?” Quincey asks, trying hard to keep the steel and the anger in his voice. But the guns quiver in his hands, and his dark brown eyes on me are wet. “What can they matter to you?”

“Don’t speak to her like that!” Arthur snaps. He turns to look at me, his face pale in the dim light. “It is the twenty-seventh of September, the eve of your birthday. And … and our …”

I feel a pang in my cold, unbeating heart. “Our wedding day.”

“You told me you would come back,” he whispers, shaking his head. “But I didn’t believe you. I thought you were just trying to comfort me, and I woke to find you not breathing. I watched them nail your coffin shut. How … how can you still be alive, Lucy?”

“I am not alive,” I say, and Mina utters a muffled half gasp, half sob. “Not anymore. Dr. Van Helsing is right. I was infected, and my blood has been poisoned by a—” A sudden excruciating pain racks my entire body. I close my eyes, dizzy and weak, but I recover in an instant to see them all watching me apprehensively. I try again. “When I was in Whitby, I met—”

“What is happening to her?” Mina demands, her voice shrill as I am cut off by another terrible wave of burning pain that sears through my muscles. I lean against a gravestone, shaking. This is how I had imagined the sun would feel on my skin now, hot and fierce and sharp.

“You will never expose me. You will never speak of me to anyone,” Vlad had said, like an incantation sinking into my bones. Like a spell.

Again, the sensation passes quickly, as though rewarding my silence. I swallow hard and look at Dr. Van Helsing. “You came to see me because of this,” I say, choosing my words with the utmost care as I touch my throat, now perfect and unblemished beneath the high neck of my gown. “It happened to me multiple times.”

“You were bitten,” Dr. Van Helsing says. “Attacked. It happened first in Whitby.”

I nod. “Not by a dog, but by …” I trail off, already frightened of the pain that will come should I attempt to tell the truth again. “After the third time, I began to die. And I would have truly died had I not arisen before sunrise to drink blood myself. I found a man nearby, and I was so hungry, I couldn’t stop myself. I—” My voice breaks, and I am unable to continue.

“Oh, Lucy,” Mina whispers, tears streaming down her face.

“You were attacked by a blood-drinking beast,” Dr. Van Helsing says. “I saw him in the guise of a man, though not very clearly in the shadows. He flew away in the form of a bat.”

Arthur whirls on Quincey. “Do you see? I hope you feel proud of yourself, shooting at a helpless, innocent woman! It wasn’t her fault!”

A tear slips down the cowboy’s face. “But she isn’t helpless or innocent anymore,” he says, his voice cracking with emotion and uncertainty. “We all saw it just now. That child in Mrs. Harker’s lap almost became her next victim. Any of us might. Especially you!”

“Hush,” Dr. Van Helsing says sharply. His eyes are on me, shrewd and penetrating. “How did the creature find you, Lucy? He came to you first at Whitby.”

I hesitate, struggling to find the right words.

Jack and Quincey begin to fidget, tense and impatient, and Dr. Van Helsing holds up his hand. “Let her take the time she needs,” he warns them. “There is some sort of restriction, some coercion, that forbids her from revealing her attacker. Did you not see how it pained her?”

I feel a rush of gratitude for him. “Mina knows how much I love the cliffs at Whitby. And how I have sleepwalked all my life. I did it often this summer, and many nights, I found myself sitting there above the sea.” I am too afraid to go on, but I see the comprehension in both Dr. Van Helsing’s and Mina’s eyes. Mina lets out a low moan of grief. “It was not your fault, Mina, darling. You could not have prevented me. I wanted to go.”

“She was lured,” the doctor says softly to Jack. “She was seduced.”

“It is not that simple,” I say shakily. “We spoke about immortality at dinner once, Doctor. Do you remember? I have always longed for freedom. The ability to roam, to experience, and to live as men do. But I felt that there was nothing more in life for me but to belong to Arthur.”

Arthur’s voice is as frail as taut thread. “I thought that was what you wanted.”

“I do want it,” I cry. “I want to marry you and love you and be happy with you. But I also want freedom afterward. After living life with you.”

“And this was what he promised you?” Dr. Van Helsing asks.

I do not answer. I do not even nod. I only meet Mina’s eyes, which are even bluer through the sheen of tears. “Mina, I could not help it. You know how death has stalked me, haunted me.”

“Oh, Lucy,” she whispers, her face unbearably sad.

I press my hands over my heart, which aches as much as it ever did, though it is still and lifeless. “Know that I made this choice. I did not understand it completely. But know that I chose it, however great a mistake I have found it to be.” I bow my head, ashamed by my foolishness. I did not think it through. Any of it. For in this form, I must always mourn others; I must hide and not be close to anyone; and I must live on with the hateful, vindictive Vlad, not the kind and tender one I had first met on the cliffs. “I chose this for myself. Please, please try to understand.”

“What do you mean by choosing ?” Dr. Van Helsing asks slowly. “One does not choose to be attacked. Unless …” He trails off. “Unless you were never attacked, and had asked …”

“Asked?” Jack whispers. The arm holding the cross drops to his side.

“Asked?” Arthur utters.

They look at me and I look back. I had not thought the churchyard could get any quieter, but it does. No crickets chirp, and not a blade of grass rustles. It is the all-encompassing silence of death, of the tomb, hanging over us like some unseen shroud.

And then Mina falls to the ground, screaming with grief. Quickly, Dr. Van Helsing takes the terrified child and hugs her close as Mina beats the grass with her fists, ignoring Arthur’s and Jack’s attempts to help her up. “How could you, Lucy?” she asks, her words barely intelligible. “How could you do this to yourself? How could you subject yourself to such an existence?”

Everything in me wants to run to her and hold her. But I am afraid that Quincey will shoot me, so I settle for crumpling to the grass as well, several agonizing feet away from her. “I love you, Mina,” I say, but my words are drowned out by her shouts.

“You have robbed us of yourself! Do you understand the cruelty of what you have done?” she shrieks. “You have stained and destroyed yourself beyond redemption. Your soul, Lucy! You feed on the blood of the living! I … I cannot—” Her weeping trebles the ache in my heart.

“But I am still here,” I say desperately. “Here in the flesh, with you and Arthur. And I can be with you for years and years! I will never leave you. Arthur and I will marry, and we will see you and Jonathan, and we can all be together. Your children—”

“Her children?” Quincey gasps. “Mrs. Harker’s children would never be safe from you!”

Arthur goes white and sinks onto the bench Mina has vacated.

“Arthur, please,” I say, stretching my hands out to him. “You said, that final night, that you would love me as I am. You said—”

“You almost killed a little girl, Lucy,” he whispers, rocking himself. “Quincey is right. We all saw it. I laughed in Dr. Van Helsing’s face when he told me what he suspected. What he and Jack planned to do tonight. I came with them to show them how wrong they were to slight your name, to even suggest what they did. But that child was so frightened, and you had her, and you—” He buckles over, putting his head between his knees as though about to be ill.

“How could you think I would ever hurt her?” I plead, cut to the quick. “Do you not know me? Any of you? I would never harm that little girl!”

“Not the old Lucy Westenra, but you, you —” Quincey cries.

“Let her speak—” Jack begins.

“Can you control your hunger?” Dr. Van Helsing asks. “Your fangs? Can you be sure?”

They are all talking at once, Quincey and Jack arguing, the doctor asking questions, Arthur crying on the bench. But even so, Mina’s words come through the commotion clearly.

“The old Lucy never liked children.”

Everyone falls silent again.

“What was that, Madam Mina?” the doctor asks politely as though they are having tea and he had simply misheard a conversation. “What did you say?”

“The old Lucy,” Mina says, her quivering voice rising as she looks at me, “never liked children. You thought you could hide it, but I knew you too well. And now that you have forsaken us to be a monster …” She breaks down sobbing once more, prostrate with grief.

Arthur sinks down and wraps his arms around Mina, cradling her like a child as they weep. It is the way he might have held me, with tenderness, with protection.

He will never hold me like that again.

The sudden realization, and the certainty of it, is like a dagger ripping me open from chin to belly, spilling my heart into the night air.

Vlad was right. Arthur and Mina will not accept me. The two people I love most in all the world would rather give me up than open their eyes to my new existence. Monster . My own dear and beloved Mina, for whom I would give the last drop of my blood, now thinks I am a monster, and even Arthur—who had loved me with every fiber of his being—would choose Mina over what I am now. They have rejected me, body and soul.

Quincey lifts his guns higher, Dr. Van Helsing raises the bundle of garlic, and Jack pulls out his own gun and points it at me, his hand trembling.

They have seen the wrath upon my face. Perhaps blue veins skittered around my eyes or my fangs in my wet red mouth caught the moonlight. I will never know, for I cannot get close enough to see my reflection in their eyes without one of them destroying me. But then my rage subsides, and hurt takes its place. The pain of Arthur’s and Mina’s rejection washes over me like the ocean, drowning me in the undertow. I have never felt more alone. I give in to my own silent tears, knowing that if Quincey shoots me again, I will not move this time. I will let him kill me.

But he does not shoot.

It does not matter, for I know that this is goodbye.

“I have been lonely all my life,” I say, my voice breaking. I avert my eyes from the fear and hatred I know must be in their faces. “Not even those who loved me could understand what I wanted: a full and rich life on my own terms. To be loved, but also to be free. And now I have that freedom, but I have lost you all forever.”

The silence stretches on.

When I look up, I do not see loathing, not even in Quincey. I see an impossible sadness.

“Thank you for trying to protect me, Dr. Van Helsing,” I say softly. “And thank you, Jack. And you, Quincey. You are the bravest men I know.” A lump moves in Quincey’s throat. I turn to Arthur and Mina. “I love you more than I can ever say. I will love you for all my existence. You will never have to see me again. I will make certain of that. I am going away for good.”

“I don’t think we can let you do that, Lucy,” Dr. Van Helsing says quietly. “If we let you go and endanger more lives, we would be aiding and abetting the beast that infected you.”

“Then what, Doctor?” I ask tiredly. “Will you kill me yourself? Or will Quincey do it?”

“No!” Arthur shouts. “Don’t touch her, either of you! Let her be.”

“Arthur, you heard the doctor,” the cowboy says. His voice, so cold and full of hatred before, is as thin and fragile as thread now. “We have to destroy her, or she will kill again.”

“Don’t, Quincey!” Mina begs. “Don’t!”

My heart lifts for a fleeting moment. Arthur and Mina still love me, no matter what they say. They cannot stand to see me killed. I look Mina straight in the eyes and then Arthur. “I love you,” I say once more, with all the feeling left in my cold body. “Goodbye.”

“Lucy, wait,” Arthur says with sudden desperation. “Don’t go yet. Lucy, wait!”

But I am gone. I sweep the mist around myself and slip back into the mausoleum, where I sink against my own tomb and cry and cry until I am empty of tears, empty of emotion.

There is a movement in the air.

I look up to see Vlad watching me from the shadows. His face wears no expression, though I know he has seen and heard everything.

“Well? Go on,” I snap. “Insult me. Berate me. Mock me. Tell me that you were right and that you always knew better than me. Rejoice in their rejection of me.”

But he says nothing.

I take a few deep, shuddering breaths. My voice is as dead as my heart as I say flatly, “I will honor the terms of the deal we made. I will leave for your castle in the mountains as you commanded, and I will never return.”

“Lucy,” he says, and my name is a sigh upon his lips.

“Do not send me by ship, the way you came here,” I go on in that dull, lifeless voice. “It is too slow a route for me. I understand the precautions, but I want to be gone as quickly as I can. I vowed not to expose you, and be assured I shall keep that vow by carriage and by train.”

I wait, but he says nothing.

“I hoped to have you once,” I say with a short, humorless laugh. “To be what I was to you on the cliffs. I thought I would spend all eternity learning from you, seeing the world with you, being with you. But I know now that I have lost you, too, as surely as I have lost Arthur and Mina. Whatever part of you I treasured is gone. There is nothing left for me here.”

And then, as Vlad watches in silence, I crawl back into my granite tomb and slide the lid over myself, obscuring what little light is left.