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)
Unfortunately even when logic was gone, there was good old fashioned guilt over being a lady and what society and God would think and all of that baggage that was thrust upon women the moment they were born.
Tonight, though, I was going to show her the stars. I was going to show her who the God was in her life, not some unseen creator, but me, an immortal being with far more mercy. When she came so hard that she yelled my name, that’s when she’d discover the real religion, the religion of sex.
Van Helsing thought I was nuts, though. He had met Lucy often after that first time in the British Museum; the three of us would often go to the opera together. He liked Lucy a lot but the whole idea of her being my past love reincarnated didn’t sit right with him. Despite being a vampire, the doctor was another person who was awfully fond of science and logic. To him, it didn’t make sense and so it couldn’t be true. Reincarnation just wasn’t believable.
But none of that really mattered to me. Van Helsing may have looked at Lucy and saw a beautiful young girl and assumed I was just projecting the trauma of losing Mina onto her. “After all,” he had said once, “there is no photographic evidence from those days. You never had a painting of Mina. I am sure you just think they are the same person when they aren’t. If you could pull up Mina from the grave right now, I am sure you’d see that they merely look the same. She reminds you of her, that’s all, and you want it to be her so badly that you’ll believe anything.”
I humored the doctor. I let him believe that if it made him feel better.
But I knew. I knew this was Mina, my long-lost love, and I was going to do whatever it took to make her remember who I am and what we were to each other. I knew I was no slouch in the looks department, I knew I had status as a count, lots of money at my disposal, a gorgeous house in the city, rare artifacts and art I’d collected over the years. I knew there were many reasons why Lucy would be interested in me anyway, but I chose to believe that the main reason was because she felt something for me that she couldn’t explain.
She felt something for me that would make her trust me because deep down in her subconscious she knew who I was. She knew what we had lost.
But that night, I was yearning to take the next step. I needed her trust in order to do the things I had been dying to do with her, to bring my body together with hers in an unholy union.
To make her finally see.
At the time, Lucy lived with her parents at an estate on the outskirts of the city. Though her family was wealthy and they had drivers themselves, I always had my driver bring her home and at a reasonable hour. Tonight’s play, however, had been cancelled just as we got to the theatre, so I thought it was the perfect time to bring her back to my place and, well, deflower her, for lack of a better word. I guess, fuck her like a dog in heat would also get the point across.
“What makes you think that stepping inside my house would lead to your defilement?” I asked her.
She giggled coyly, playing the game. “My intuition, I suppose,” she said. “I am a woman after all, Count Aminoff.”
“I can always take you home if you’d like,” I say, gesturing to the carriage that was out of view. “I am at your disposal. The choice is yours.”
I could see a real war waging behind those pretty green eyes of hers.
“I think I’d like to come inside,” she eventually said.
God, those words made me hard immediately. She would be coming all right.
“Good choice,” I told her. I unlocked the door and we stepped inside. It was barely lit, a few paraffin lamps in the grand hall and the sitting room that my servants had kept going while I was out, while the gas lights on the ceiling had been turned off.
Lucy looked around, impressed. It wasn’t as large as her parents’ house in the country, but my wealth was displayed in different ways. I took her by the hand and led her to the velvet sofa in the sitting room, then quickly went into the back of the house where the servants’ quarters were. One of them was a German named Han who was a vampire who was down on his luck and dealing with depression. At the time I just saw him as a poor soul who needed help. In those days vampires didn’t even think they could get depressed as they believed they were immune to physical impairments, aging and disease, and though that’s the case, the mind doesn’t work that way.