As I tumble down, my muscles go weak, the wind tearing through the long tendrils of my hair. Somewhere above me, he’s watching me fall, a glint in his eye, a thorn in his heart. He already knows this won’t kill me. It’ll just leave me battered and broken and cold as hell. But that’s more than enough to satisfy him. Besides, this is probably his idea of a joke. They always say vampires can’t cross flowing water. Now he won’t give me a choice.

I close my eyes, as my body breaks the surface of the bay like a knife. I sink fast, my skin numbing in the chill, the brackish water filling up my lungs, choking me in darkness. I don’t need to breathe, but it hurts anyhow, the pressure building inside me, the tides tossing me like garbage.

I should fight this, I should try to swim, but my body goes limp, and the ravishing current carries me away.

I slip deeper into the bay, and I’m not sure how far I make it. If it’s five yards or five miles. All I know is I want to float forever, I want to dissolve into salt and sea-foam, but I won’t get the chance. A small flash in the corner of my eye, and it takes a long moment for me to realize it.

There’s something in the water with me.

Dread coils through my body. Nothing else should be able to survive this deep. Even sharks don’t live in these parts.

But whatever it is, it’s moving fast, and it’s moving right toward me.

An arm hooks hastily around my waist, the figure hulking and obscure. A man, but not Dracula. This is someone else, a face I can’t quite see. He fishes me out of the ocean and carries me to shore, my body thrashing against him, my thin dress soaked through.

We fall together onto the sand, and it’s not until the moonlight peeks out between the heavy clouds that I see him clearly.

Renfield. His arcane silhouette leaking salt water and heartache.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Miss Lucy,” he whispers.

“Waiting?” I wheeze, as I cough up a mouthful of dark water, seaweed in my hair. “You knew I was coming?”

He nods, half turned away, his figure a jumble of impossible shadows.

“I knew what he was planning,” he says. “That’s why I was on the bridge earlier.”

It wasn’t spur of the moment, Dracula tossing me over that railing. He must have been thinking about it all night, thinking about doing it with those three kids in the back seat as unwitting witnesses. Then he must have changed his mind and decided to wait, decided to give me a chance to stay with him. He should have known I’d never say yes.