Page 66 of Now Comes the Mist

Something we have no power over.

Mamma does not know that Idohave power over death. Idohave a choice, and if I am brave enough to make it, I can be with her and Arthur and Mina for as long as they live, watch over them for as long as they live. I could spend all the years of Mamma’s life nursing her back to full health as her devoted daughter, all the years of Mina’s life proudly watching her build a home and a family, and all the years of Arthur’s life being his wife and his true love. None of them would ever know the pain of losing me.

Two thoughts intrude upon my joyous fantasy.

The first:Would Mina, with her perception and her cleverness, sense a wrongness inme?

The second:How would I ever convince Vlad to finish the job?

I clench my jaw. If only he had met my request with compassion, rather than hatred.

To him, women are disposable. We are toys to be discarded when we have lost our shine. We arebelongings. That is what this little game of finding the “perfect woman” is all about. That is what he is ultimately after: to possess, to dominate, to own. He wants me to be his. He wants me to give everything, all that I have and all that I am, to him alone.

I think of that night at Diana Edgerton’s. The candlelit room, the urgent music of the harp, the feeling of plummeting down a hill as his hands learned the map of my body.

I have one card left to play. One part of myself I have not given to anyone.

I picture Arthur’s face, and guilt blooms in my chest at the thought of surrendering to another what I should save for him. But Ididoffer it to him, and he refused.And it is mine, and mine alone to decide whom to give it to, I think.Mine, and mine alone to decide whatIwant.

And what I want is an eternity of cheating death, of delaying the inevitable for good.

Many hundreds of years ago, Vlad made such a choice. And though he denies me the same right, I know that it is within my reach.

It is then that I notice my bedroom door standing slightly ajar. Mamma came in without locking it again, and indeed, the key is still dangling from a ribbon around her wrist.

I gaze from the open door to the key.

But I do not take it from Mamma.

I do not lock my bedroom door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The mist leads me to the churchyard like a wanderer returning home. The cool night air cleanses my lungs with the scent of late roses and fresh-turned earth as I pass the silent graves to my family’s mausoleum. Vlad sits on the bench across from it, gazing at the carved granite name of Westenra. When he turns, the rigid line of his mouth softens. The dark ocean of his eyes washes over me. “Lucy,” he says, very low, and I hear in his voice that I have not been the only one longing for this. “I wondered if you would come back to me.”

“I wondered as well.”

He holds out his hand, strong and white and cold, and I let him pull me close. He presses his face into me and breathes me in. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says, lifting his head. His blue-green gaze is tender and mesmerizing, but I know now how cold and empty it can also be, and how easily his gentleness can vanish into the fanged beast lurking underneath. Which is the truth? The man who cares for me, or the monster who sees me as prey? “Why are you so sad? Tell me your troubles, and I will destroy everything that hurts you.”

“Will you?” I whisper, smoothing a lock of soft dark hair from his forehead.

Vlad pulls me down beside him and wraps his arms around me. I shiver as the cold stone bench meets my thighs through my nightdress. But for the view of the mausoleum in place of the North Sea, we might have been on the Whitby cliffs again, late on a windswept August evening.

I look at the great death-house where generations of my family sleep. So many nights have I come here, seeking comfort. But there is no comfort for me tonight—only a road diverging, and a choice I must make.“Everything seems to be slipping away from me,” I say. “My mother. Mina. To live is to lose. That is what I could not make you understand, Vlad.”

“What do I not understand?” he asks gently.

“Why I wished to make the choice I did. I thought you had killed me. I thought I would die from your bite, and I despised myself for bringing such pain to my family. In my haste to avoid death, I had almost welcomed it early instead. But here I sit.”

“Here you sit.”

“To me, what you are is protection from death. If I became like you, I would be with my family forever and alsofree. It is an escape.” I look at him. “But I don’t think you will ever understand. You only see it as some vulgar, disgusting perversion of womanhood.”

“But Idounderstand. I should not have berated you,” he admits. “You see my existence as a way out of what you fear. I have been doing a great deal of thinking during our time apart, and my reaction to your request—for I see now that itwasa request—was regrettable.”

“But you haven’t changed your opinion of me,” I say quietly. “I heard you talking to Mina today. I know you still value her high above me … and you are right to do so.”

“I am impressed with Miss Murray, and I can see why you love her. But much of her appeal, I confess, is that she reminds me of my friend Lucy. She certainly interrogated me boldly enough to have learned it from that friend Lucy.” He chuckles. “She has surmised that her Jonathan helped me to purchase Carfax. He heard of its availability from a man who lives and works near it. A man he knows socially, who had at one time hoped to marry his Mina’s dearest friend.”