The Unholy Night

Epilogue

Mina thinks that's a horrible way to end a book (or a dramatic memoir, I guess), and she's probably right. She's a much better writer than I am. 

But she's also distracted, because she's watching Dracula's Daughter with Lucy. Cheesy, black-and-white retelling of our story are popular in this particular household. To the extent that we have two cats, Gloria and Bela, named after our favorite actors for bringing us into the cinema. We've lived through a lot of cats since the 1930s, so we also have had Geraldine, Cornelia, Dorothy, Helen, and Frances.

Quincy got cut from the old adaptation, so he's never had a cat named after his actor. 

"Okay, hypothetically," Lucy says, "would you leave me for Marya?"

"No, but I'd leave you for Janet."

"Good enough."

It's seven in the morning, and the three of us have been awake like this for hours. I've been busy finishing up, so I'm sorry if this final installment seems like a sleep-deprived fever dream. Mina's an early riser and gets up at five on the dot whether she's allowed to sleep in or not. Lucy has insomnia. 

Addy's also up, sitting next to me at the kitchen counter, nursing a cup of coffee. She's currently studying library science via computer, and she's got that face like she's got a paper due in a couple of days that she'd like to bang out now.

All of us are in our pajamas, but clearly that's not true of everything. Bess emerges from the hallway, dressed in a rainbow crop top and leggings. She's followed by Quincy, in his usual attire of jeans and a shirt with something to do with Marvel on it. 

"Alright, people, we're going to the beach," she says, slinging her sketch bag across her shoulder. 

"Why?" Addy asks. 

"It's like forty degrees out, and you're wearing that?" Lucy exclaims, gawking a bit. 

"You always say vampires don't get cold."

"Touche."

This is absolute bullshit, but Lucy knows that vampires can't get hypothermia or freeze to death, so she spends a lot of her time choosing style over comfort. The temperature, we've learned, is not something that she's gonna let interfere with a cute outfit. 

"And everyone's going, non-negotiable, people!" Bess says, clapping her hands at us all. "Fifteen minutes! I'm driving!"

So fifteen minutes later, we're all piled into the beat-up minivan. It looks like it's driven by a soccer mom, but you try finding a car that comfortably sits six people. 

I'm not a big fan of cars, either, but I take my motion sickness medicine, because I'm not going to miss out on anything because I don't want to deal with getting there. 

We don't live in Romania right now. We've still got the castle. We joke that it's our summer home, because where else would a stereotypical vampire go for the summer? A spooky old castle fits the reputation. 

And no, I'm not telling you where we are. 

We get out of the car, and scatter across the beach. This is how we go somewhere - Bess wakes up in the middle of night, decides she needs to draw something or paint something very specific, and we leave. We also have to act as her models on occasion. Today Quincy examining a tide pool is the scene she wants, but there has also been Mina's sneakers when she was going uphill on a hiking trail and me and Addy joke-waltzing on a cliffside.  

Lucy immediately tears down the beach, ready to consume anything and everything it has to offer her. Mina trails after, laughing all the while. Bess immediately sits down on the sand, and Quincy takes his place as her model of the day. Addy sits down on a bench and opens a book, and I stand, watching.

I've spent a lot of my life watching, but I've realized I don't mind it so much.

So here's the deal: 

To become a vampire, you must be dead first, for at least a little while. Mina's immune system is powerful, and she was dead for exactly ten minutes. 

Quincy recovered quickly, but it took him a long time before he started completely trusting Bess again. They're back to normal now.

Well. As normal as it gets, anyway.

All of the injuries sustained in our battle against Dracula healed themselves, but from then on, Addy insisted on keeping a copious amount of rose petals on hand, and now grows roses. We have another first aid kit for injuries that don't need cauterization. 

Addy has been to college three times now, I think. She's always trying to become more educated than she already is. There's been botany, women's studies, and now we've got library science. She doesn't find anatomy all that interesting, but she pretends she does, because she's really into Frankenstein. In her defense, it's kind of hard not to be really into Frankenstein.

Mina does what she can when she can. She likes charts and logic and things fitting into boxes. She also writes, but more than I do. More philosophic. She writes books that will change the world, I try to do my best to write ones that will make it worth living in.

Lucy's big things are combat, fitness, and shitty vampires. There's a lot of yoga, which is weird, because yoga requires calm energy, and Lucy's got none of that. She's teaching a self-defense class right now. During the sixties, she religiously watched that show Dark Shadows (not the biggest fan of the movie version, however), and she was ecstatic when she discovered the existence of Twilight. 

Quincy likes adventures, and he likes dragging the rest of us on them as well. And a midnight trip to Starbucks isn't an adventure. A midnight trip to Starbucks is a quest. With him around, there are a lot of adventures (which isn't to say there aren't quests, as well). He starts the event, and Bess makes art of it. 

Bess has spent a lot of time painting me lately, because while writing this, I was apparently an excellent model, since I didn't move that much and spent most of my time hunched over the computer. People like her paintings. They've been described as "realistic, but whimsical" before. She liked that. 

There has been more than that. There have been bad breakups, a lot of therapy, jobs, no jobs, attempted arrests, a lot of tears, a lot of laughter, and a lot more bloodsucking than I would care to admit, but I don't have the time to tell you all that. 

Goodbye, dear readers. I hope you've enjoyed my story, and I assure you that this isn't the last you'll heard from me.