Chapter 18 – Valtu #2
“Yes. I have to drink blood to survive. But if I were to bite you, drain you of your blood and fill you with my own, you would become a vampire but you wouldn’t be like me. You would be damaged.”
“Would I live forever?”
I mulled that over before I answered. “Yes. But you would live forever as a monster. It takes years, decades, probably even centuries for the monster to be buried, for the madness to stop and for the humanity to take over. It might not even happen at all. You wouldn’t know who you are or who I am.
You would be this dangerous beast who would kill for the sake of killing.
No one wants to live like that. And as much as I hate this world sometimes, the people of this world don’t deserve to have monsters like that roaming all over it.
They are better kept in the other world. ”
“Other world?” Her blood-shot eyes widened.
“The Red World,” I told her. “Where vampires originally came from. A place way up north, accessed through a veil, to where the king of vampires resides.”
She sighed heavily—it was obviously a lot to take and all too much for her at that moment—and I immediately put my hand on hers on top of her belly. “Now is not the time for me to be telling you this,” I added. “You need to rest. The doctor says he’s going to induce labor soon.”
“And if that doesn’t work?” she said in a bone-weary voice.
“Then he will perform surgery to take the child out,” I told her.
“Take the corpse out,” she said, giving me a dull look. “That’s what you mean.”
“Oh Lucy,” I cried out suddenly in a rush of emotion. I leaned in and I held her as tight as I could without hurting her, my heart breaking into a million pieces.
She fell asleep shortly after that and the nurse and midwife came back in to take over.
I went back downstairs and talked to the doctor for a bit.
I told him that she remembered she was Mina and Van Helsing was impressed that I had been right all along.
It would have felt good to have that win over him, if the rest of my world wasn’t falling apart.
The next two days were precarious and Van Helsing was growing impatient.
All the natural methods to induce labor, such as special herbs, weren’t working.
There was a moment when I thought the doctor was going to call over a witch to see her through, but he had the good sense not to.
Even witches that were said to be helpful to vampires could never be trusted, which was a shame because their herbs and spells and potions worked.
“We need to get the fetus out,” the doctor said. “Today.”
He brought out a de Ribes bag which he inserted inside of Lucy with a pair of forceps, pumping it full of water to induce labor.
I am sure a lot of men wouldn’t have been in the same room with their wife for this, but being a vampire there was a lot I could handle.
The ways vampires viewed the human body were a lot different from everyone else, and I wasn’t about to let my wife go through all of this torture alone.
Except when the doctor brought out the formidably pronged cervical dilator, a nightmarish steel tool. When that didn’t do anything except make my poor Lucy scream, I was starting to feel sick to my stomach.
Which then got worse when he brought out something called a decapitating hook, and I don’t have to tell you how that thing worked.
“Stop,” I told him, pushing the serrated hook away from her. “No. You’re not using that.”
The doctor gave me a steady look. “It is dead, Val,” he said in a harsh whisper so that Lucy wouldn’t hear, but she was pretty much passed out from the pain as it was. I had given her some morphine to make the process easier.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “Get it out another way, not in pieces.”
I remember the panicked look that came across my friend’s face. I hated that look. He knew somehow she wouldn’t survive an operation, and I think Lucy and I knew it too. But if I was going to have to bury my child with her, at least I wanted it whole.
“All right. You’re the father,” he conceded. Then he took in a deep breath. “Are you sure you want to be here for this? There will be a lot more blood. When was the last time you fed?”
“I’ll be fine. Focus on her. And do whatever you fucking can to make sure she lives.”
To Van Helsing’s credit, he did everything he could to save Lucy.
But the blood didn’t stop and her body had already gone through too much.
My wife lay there in a sea of crimson, thankfully so drugged out of her mind that she didn’t feel much pain. But there was nothing anyone could do to stop the bleeding. It came and it came, and it didn’t stop.
Van Helsing carefully took the baby’s body away, and gave me my last minutes alone with Lucy, the love of my life who I had already lost and was losing once again.
“Lucy,” I whispered to her, staring down at the bed.
She was so pale, like snow, all the blood drained from her, and even though I had seen so many people like that in my life, because of what I had done to them, it had never looked beautiful until now.
Because she really was that beautiful. It transcended death.
“Val,” she managed to say, her eyes fluttering open for a moment.
I got into bed with her, lying in her blood, holding her gently. “My dove,” I told her, kissing the top of her head. “I’m so sorry, my dove. I have failed you again.”
“No,” she croaked. “You didn’t…I loved you, Val.
I lost you…” she trailed off and I heard her heartbeat slow, death approaching.
“I lost you and I found you again.” She let out a shuddering breath, a single tear rolling down her cheek.
“I will find you again. I will find you in another lifetime. My heart will always find yours.”
And then she died.
Her heart stopped and my entire world went still.
My Mina, my Lucy, was gone, and I was left with nothing but an empty hole where my heart should have been.
Lucy and the baby were buried the next day in the same grave.
I still haven’t been back to see it.
After I lost Mina the first time, when I first learned what I was, I gave myself over to violence too easily.
I became a monster who killed without morals or thought.
I spent a century as a walking plague, bringing death to all I encountered.
I was darkness personified until eventually I found a way to live through my rage.
Until I was able to find my humanity again.
But my foothold wasn’t very strong.
Losing Lucy knocked me right off and into that darkness again, letting it consume me, until the only thing I knew was death, the death that I brought.
I may have believed in God, but people were wrong about Hell.
Hell isn’t a place. It’s inside you.