Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
“His shell?” I can’t imagine Valtu ever being introverted.
“He had a few years of…troubles.” He squints at me. “Guess he never told you many details about that either.”
I shake my head.
He sighs wearily. “Well, I won’t overstep my boundaries here. Despite being known as Dracula, he can be very private.”
“He did tell me about the women he loved and lost.”
“You mean Mina?”
“Sure. And Lucy.”
Funny. Now that I think about it, he never told me either of their names. It’s like I just knew.
He frowns, eying me warily. “But you know that Lucy and Mina were the same person, right?”
“No?” I blink. “How?”
“She was reincarnated.”
I stare at him for a moment, trying to let that info sink in. “She was reincarnated?”
“Saw it with my own eyes. When Lucy was dying, she made it clear she knew Valtu from the past. She used to be Mina. Valtu, of course, knew it right away. He knew it the moment he laid eyes on her. When he told me, I thought he was just seeing what he wanted to see, but he was right all along.”
“And she died too? That’s awful,” I tell him, feeling all sorts of horrible for him. “I thought the reincarnation thing was just from the movie, I didn’t know that actually happened.”
“Wish that were the case,” he says. He gives me a small smile and nods at my hair. “But now that he’s with you, I see he definitely has a type.”
“What do you mean?”
“She had red hair too. Exact same shade. In fact, I’d say you look exactly like her but…” he takes off his glasses and peers at me closer. “Very strange.”
I swallow uneasily. “What?”
“I’m having a hard time seeing you. Like seeing you for who you really are.”
“You probably need your glasses on,” I tell him, that unease building.
“These aren’t real corrective lenses, my dear, I’m a vampire,” he says, raising his chin and putting his glasses back on. He squints at me again and wiggles his brows. “Most peculiar. It’s almost as if the more I stare at you, the more you seem to become…”
Oh god. Please don’t tell me my glamor is losing its grip. If he finishes his sentence by saying “a witch” I’m toast.
“How did she die?” I interrupt him.
“Which one?”
“Either one.”
“Well, Lucy died in childbirth. Stillborn. Very sad. I did all I could but…”
It just keeps getting worse.
“And the other?”
“Mina? She had been pregnant too. It’s no wonder that Valtu got his vasectomy, you can’t blame the poor guy after all those tragedies.”
“She also died in pregnancy?”
“Oh.” He shakes his head. “No. She was pregnant, but that’s not what killed her. She was beheaded. By her father. A Russian general. In fact, at that moment Valtu discovered he was a vampire, he fought the soldiers to try and save her but it was too late.”
The doctor keeps talking but I no longer hear him.
Instead I see my dreams.
I see me lying on the ground in the dirt. My father above me in his military garb, calling me a whore in Russian. I see him put his boot on my stomach, aiming to kill what was inside.
My baby.
And then I feel it.
I know it.
I know it’s Valtu that the soldiers are holding back, I recognize his screams, the terror, and he’s trying to save me but he can’t.
He can’t stop my father from swinging that sword against my neck.
My world from going black.
Then turning bright.
These aren’t dreams.
They were never dreams.
I fucking died.
I remember dying.
And just like that a whole life comes sliding into me, like negatives into a developing plate. I remember being Mina, growing up in Moscow, living a lavish but controlled and empty life, my mother dying early, other people considering me strange, spending so many of my days alone, with only servants for company, before my father got his position in the war and we left Russia. I remember meeting Valtu in the field and knowing it was forbidden, I remember falling in love with him, having sex with him, how he opened me up to a whole new world with our bodies. I remember the dreams and the hopes that I had for us, then I remember discovering I was pregnant. That my handmaiden ratted me out, that we were caught one sunny morning and I was killed and Valtu…Valtu…
Then another life comes slamming into me, like waking up and realizing the dream you had or a book you read was real all along.
I remember being Lucy. I remember being raised in England somewhere, I had a sweet mother who was very weak, I had a dear sister who died in childbirth, I went to school, I had friends, I had money, and I met Valtu at the British Museum.
Suddenly I look at Van Helsing and I know.
“You were there,” I whisper, the images flooding my brain now. “You were there.”