The Mina Murray Series Bundle, A Dracula Retelling: Books 1-3

by L. D. Goffigan

  “I have been in your mind, Wilhelmina Ghyslaine. I know what you fear. It is why you foolishly came to me on your own. You want to spare the lives of your friends. When I have made you vampire, a part of your old self will still be alive, lurking beneath the surface…but you will be unable to stop yourself as you kill them for me.”

  Tendrils of horror coiled through me at his words. I recalled the brief flash of humanity I’d seen in the eyes of the feral vampire who attacked me back in England; the combination of anguish and regret, realization and sorrow. Death would be a blessing compared to such a fate.

  “That will be later. We have much time,” he continued, his tone turning pleasant, as if he were discussing something mundane, like the weather or a train schedule. “You are responsible for the deaths of my ally, Vlad, and my love, Ilona. For that, you must suffer great agony. I rather enjoyed dancing,” he added. I blinked, wondering with dread what dancing had to do with my agony. “There is a special one I do with my enemies. Would you like to know what it is called?”

  I didn't answer, trying to keep my wits about me. I needed to get into his mind, the way I had with Rosalind. It was the only chance I had for survival. I tried to focus, to set my panic aside as I looked into his eyes.

  But he grabbed me by the throat, cutting off my air, and as I struggled to breathe, I lost my tenuous focus to a wild panic.

  “The dance of pain,” he whispered.

  And there was pain.

  He moved lightning fast, lurching forward to sink his fangs into my throat, draining me of my blood. The edges of my vision began to blur, I was helpless to stop him.

  He abruptly tore his fangs from my throat, blinking with surprise, my blood staining the corners of his mouth.

  “You do not taste like most humans,” he murmured with intrigue, his eyes raking over my face. “Perhaps it is because of your treacherous bloodline.”

  He reached into his jacket, taking out my kukri. I cried out as he grabbed me by my hair, yanking me violently forward, granting him access to my bare back.

  He pressed the blade firmly into my skin, dragging it across my back in a crisscross pattern, as if he were making a macabre drawing. I wanted to keep silent, to maintain some semblance of defiance, but the searing agony from my splitting flesh was more than I could bear, and I screamed.

  Skala was relentless in his pursuit of my torment. He would alternate between sinking his fangs into the delicate flesh of my throat, dragging the blade of my kukri along my already torn and bleeding flesh, or strangling me to the brink of unconsciousness. He would not let me slip into the comforting grip of blackness, slamming my head against the wall any time my eyes closed. Each time I tried to enter his mind, the excruciating pain that coursed through my body made it impossible for me to concentrate. I soon stopped trying; I no longer had the will nor fortitude.

  Torture was oddly intimate; Skala’s presence consumed every part of me. I was acutely aware of everything about him; the coppery odor of my blood on his skin, the ice of his hands on my bruised and splintered flesh, the melodic timbre of his voice in my eardrums.

  I tried to think of Abe, the feel of him, the essence of him, something that would anchor me to any place but here. Yet with every moment that passed, the memory of Abe grew further and further away. Unable to escape into my mind, I soon felt separate from myself, like a shadow; my life before this cellar had just been a dream. Or perhaps I’d died after all, and this cellar was my hell.

  Now I sat alone in the cellar. I didn’t recall when Skala left; time had become an abstract series of moments, haphazardly strung together.

  Footsteps entered the room, and I didn’t need to look up to know it was Skala. From somewhere deep inside me, the place where I still existed, I let out a silent wail of despair. I could not bear any more torture.

  “Look at me!” Skala demanded.

  I forced myself to oblige. Defiance was a part of the old Mina, the Mina who was now shadow.

  Skala was shirtless, his mouth and torso splattered with blood. My blood, I thought absently. His eyes were wild with excitement; he looked pleased at the sight of my broken body. His torture was not just about revenge; he was enjoying this.

  He is vicious, Anara had said. He takes great pleasure in causing others pain—human or vampire.

  “We will destroy all light. The world will be ours. This will never end, my child. Your agony will be eternal. I will never release you from your torment, even after you serve me. How fitting that a Ghyslaine will be slave to a vampire.”

  I stared at him, numb, though there was a trace of sorrow in my heart. The Mina who I’d been was rapidly fading away, and I could no longer hold onto her. I no longer wanted to. That Mina was surrounded by death and pain. Now there was…nothing. A blissful nothing.

  I smiled.

  Skala scowled. It was not the horrified reaction he’d been seeking. I continued to smile, and darkness began to blur the edges of my vision, until the cellar faded away.

  I was seated in my mother’s lap on the floor of my childhood bedroom. Her arms were wrapped tightly around me. She rocked me back and forth, tears streaming down her face.

  “I am so sorry, poppet,” she whispered, stroking my hair. “I tried to hide you away from the monsters. I tried to keep you safe.”

  “It was my choice, Mama,” I said calmly. “I chose to chase after them.”

  “Why, my darling?” she wept, pressing her tear streaked face into my hair. “Why? When your father and I tried so desperately to keep you safe?”

  “The monsters were going to make the whole world their own,” I said. “I had to stop it.”

  My mother continued to weep. I reached up to touch her face, which was crumpled with anguish, wanting to comfort her, wanting her to share my calm acceptance.

  “I will die soon,” I said. “It is all right. I…I am sorry.”

  “No,” she said. She gripped my face, a sudden determination in her expression. “No. You will not die. Do you remember all of those bedtime stories I told you? All of those stories about monsters?”

  “Yes,” I replied. A blackness was starting to fill in the edges of the room. Soon everything would be black, and I would be gone from this place. “Your stories were really about vampires. I know that now.”

  “They were more than that,” she said urgently. Her brown eyes were bloodshot with tears, but there was a new sense of fortitude now, a fierceness that had burrowed up from the grief. “They were lessons. Lessons, my darling. How to fight if they ever caught you. And if it came to it…how to escape. I need you to remember those stories, my love. Every single one. It is the only way to save your life! Do you understand? It is the only—“

  “WAKE UP!”

  A sharp crack brought me back to consciousness, and I was once again in the cellar. Skala had my left hand in his. I dimly realized that he was breaking each of my fingers, one by one. My bones were making the cracking sounds.

  “I will not allow you to retreat into your mind!” Skala snarled. “You will feel every moment of this…for the rest of your existence.”

  He dropped my hand, and it fell uselessly to my side, throbbing with pain. I wanted to return to the comfort of my mother’s arms, to the warmth of my memory. She’d been trying to tell me something. I needed to go back.

  A blow fell across my face, tearing me from my thoughts, and Skala yanked my hair back, again sinking his fangs into my throat. I closed my eyes, willing the dark to claim me once more, so that I could return to my mother.

  Skala suddenly released me, stumbling to his feet, his hand flying to his bleeding mouth.

  “No…” he whispered. “Your blood…now I understand…”

  I blinked at him, dazed. He was looking at me with terror, as if I were the one torturing him.

  “Lil shi’l necre,” he breathed, uttering words from the strange vampiric language I'd only heard a few times before. “You are already of the Blood. How?”

  He looked infuriated;
I braced myself for more torment. I didn’t know what he meant, and I was too weak to speak. I just wanted to return to my dream. What had my mother been trying to tell me?

  “LOOK AT ME!” Skala bellowed. He kneeled before me, jerking my hair back to force me to look at him, and I could feel strands of hair tear from my scalp. “How does a Ghyslaine—a family that once tried to destroy vampires—have vampire blood? How?”

  For a moment, my physical agony receded as his words began to penetrate.

  “I can taste it in your blood. It is why you taste different,” he said, looking at me with pure disgust. “Vampire blood runs through your veins. A member of your treacherous line was vampire.”

  11

  Bloodlines

  The cellar seemed to blur around me; my heart slammed against my ribcage in a thunderous rhythm. Emotions I'd suppressed during my torture crawled back to the surface of my consciousness, and my dulled senses slowly came back to life. A multitude of recent events flickered through my mind.

  Weeks ago, our train had derailed during our journey to Transylvania to rescue Jonathan. I'd been surrounded by vampires in a forest clearing after the crash, and I was certain they would kill me. But they had left me alive, after uttering the same strange words Skala had spoken—Lil shi’l necre. They must have known that I had vampire ancestry from my blood.

  I thought of my brief time in Debrecen after we’d rescued Jonathan from Vlad’s fortress, when I'd intentionally allowed one of Vlad’s ferals to drain and transform me in order to lure him to us. I'd begun the vampiric transformation more rapidly than everyone anticipated. Even Szabina had been amazed. I have never seen the transformation take hold so swiftly, she’d said.

  It all made sense now. My mother’s ability to bear a child that was half vampire. My ability to remove myself from the vampiric thrall and enter the minds of vampires, something that no human was able to do. The reason my ancestors had stopped hunting vampires and worked to protect them instead. One of them mated with a vampire, which meant…I had vampire ancestry.

  Skala’s hand around my throat jolted me back to the present. I met his enraged gaze as he began to squeeze.

  “This changes nothing,” he growled.

  My old defiance coupled with determination stirred beneath the haze I'd been under. Though the revelation horrified me, it served its purpose. I had come alive again. I would not give in to this monster.

  I recalled my mother’s words in my dream. The stories she told me as a child were more than just bedtime stories, she’d said. They were lessons.

  Lessons for what? I mentally picked my way through snippets of memories, fighting to remember any detail about her stories.

  “If I can no longer drain you myself…I shall do it the human way,” Skala said, shaking with fury as he reached for my kukri, which now dripped with my blood. “These are your last few moments when your mind is still your own.”

  I tried not to panic, struggling to recall anything I could, until I seized upon a distant memory. I'd once asked her how to defeat the monsters she told me about in her stories. Weaknesses, she had replied. Every monster has a weakness.

  I was in no position to physically overpower Skala, and my own pain had prevented me from entering his mind. If I couldn’t go after a physical weakness, I would have to go after a mental one. Even monsters like Skala had a heart, something or someone they cared about. Rosalind had unknowingly given me a gift when she told us Skala loved Ilona. It was the only weapon I had at my disposal.

  Skala again gripped my hair, lazily dragging my kukri along the base of my throat, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.

  I would have to move quickly. Soon I would lose consciousness, and Skala would force me to drink his blood.

  I twisted my head away, spotting something on the ground. My potential salvation. A wooden splinter, the size of my hand. It was small… but it could work.

  Skala jerked my face back towards him, positioning the blade at the center of my throat. Before he could press it into my skin, I gave him a twisted smile.

  Skala faltered, blinking in surprise.

  “Ilona never loved you,” I said, my words coming out in a thin rasp. “Never you. You never even existed for her.”

  Skala went very still. Though he tried to keep his face impassive, I saw a flicker of something in his expression. A flicker of something human. All monsters have weaknesses.

  “Silence,” Skala spat. He held my kukri still, though his powerful body vibrated with rage and tension. I could only pray that I would survive his pending onslaught of fury.

  “You—you were nothing to her,” I rasped. “You always knew that, did you not? She would not care about you avenging her. You meant nothing—“

  Skala let out a ferocious growl, dropping the kukri. He reached down to grip my bruised arms, yanking me towards him so violently that the chains that bound me to the wall disintegrated. He threw me onto the ground, and a bone in my shoulder cracked upon impact. Skala straddled me, his fangs bared and his eyes, which had gone completely black, focused on my throat. He was no longer concerned with deriving pleasure through torture. He craved my death. He was going to tear out my throat.

  I moved as quickly as I was able. With my free hand I reached for the wooden splinter that I’d subtly slid behind my back while taunting Skala. It still rested against the wall, and I grabbed it.

  He was still focused on my throat. I lifted up the splinter with my bruised arm, sinking it into his left eye. Skala howled with surprise. Temporarily blinded as blood gushed from his eye socket, he scrambled off of me.

  I sat up, trying to get to my feet, but I had lost too much blood, and I was too faint to stand. The cellar began to dim around me. It would only be moments before the darkness claimed me, and Skala would have his vengeance with my death.

  Skala leapt onto me, his once handsome face now monstrous, his left eye missing, the eye socket empty and dripping with blood.

  If I had the strength to scream I would have, as his fangs were soon on my throat. I could feel my flesh peel away; my blood gushing from the open wound.

  I tried, Mama, I heard the little girl version of me whisper to my mother in my mind. I know, my darling, her voice was distant and sad. I know.

  From somewhere far away, I heard a shot ring out, and the cries of vaguely familiar voices, but the world was already fading around me to nothing.

  I could not tell if I was awake, dreaming, or dead.

  I was aware of moments, instances suspended in time.

  I sat cradled in Abe’s arms in the back of a carriage. He wept as he held me in his arms, his face crumpled with grief.

  I lay on a bed while Abe wiped blood from my skin with a cool cloth, his eyes shadowed and his face stubbled with unshaven growth.

  I lay beneath the thin covers of a bed, a dull ache radiating throughout my body. I could hear voices. An argument? My blood can heal her faster, we should try—I do not want to risk trying anything, let us see how the transfusion takes—When will she get her strength back?—It does not matter!

  And there were nightmares. I was once again in the cellar with Skala as he tore into my flesh with his teeth and my knife. Or I was in Transylvania, standing in a forest clearing between the dead bodies of my parents, too numb to weep or feel any grief. Or I was a mindless feral, feasting upon and killing innocent humans, while my true self cried out in protest.

  I shifted between these states in an endless circle, until I gradually became aware of my true surroundings, like a submerged swimmer making her way to the surface from the depths of a murky ocean.

  I opened my eyes. I was on a bed, in a room I recognized. It was the guest bedroom of the professor's home. I was still in Berlin.

  Outside, I could hear the bustle of a city street—muffled voices, the clatter of multiple horse hooves, the distant bell tolls of a church. From the room below my bedroom, I heard a familiar murmur of voices—Abe, Seward, Anara, Gabriel—and others I didn’t recognize.
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  Remnant pain throbbed throughout my limbs as I looked down at my body. Bandages were secured around much of my skin, including a large one wrapped around my throat. On the exposed skin that was not bandaged, I could see the various wounds Skala had made. I again saw him in my mind’s eye, grinning with pleasure as I screamed.

  “Mina.”

  I jumped. Abe stood at the doorway of the bedroom. His eyes were bloodshot with fatigue. He’d grown a small beard, his hair wild and untamed. The last time I’d seen him so unkempt was in the days after my father’s death.

  Yet the sight of him filled me with love. My face crumpled and I sat up, ignoring the sharp stabs of pain that pierced my body, holding out my arms.

  He was at my side at once, holding me close and stroking my hair as I wept into his chest, the horrible memories of my torture filtering into my mind. Someone else must have appeared at the door as I wept, because he whispered, “Leave us.”

  I wept until I had no more tears, and even then Abe did not press me to talk; he simply held me in his arms.

  “Skala is dead. He cannot harm you—or anyone—ever again,” he finally whispered.

  Relief flowed through me at his words. We held each other for a few more moments before I spoke.

  “There—there is something I need to tell you,” I began, my voice raw from disuse. I needed to tell him about the revelation of my vampire ancestry.

  “No. You need to heal first. That is all you must focus on.”

  “I will,” I promised. I didn’t know how long it would take for my mind and body to fully heal from the trauma I'd undergone with Skala, but I would not force it.

  I pulled back from Abe, looking down at the bandages on my body. Though I was still sore, I seemed to be more healed than I should be, given what Skala had done to me.

  “A week has passed since we rescued you. I had to give you a transfusion. If you are wondering why you're more healed than you should be…it is because Gabriel insisted on giving you his blood. It appears he was right…it has accelerated your healing process,” he said, looking guilty at the admission. “I know that having vampire blood in your system may be upsetting, but we were afraid that you—“