Chapter Two

Chapter Two

The Frankenstein siblings worked most of the night, and the following day.

Angelika, skilled from years of needlepoint lessons, was able to make the tiny sutures that Victor insisted on. She remembered his joke in the morgue: Other women order lace and hat trimmings. Arteries were like the fine satin cord on a hat brim; muscle fascia was a textile suited to a cheap petticoat. Everything was silky with blood, but she was used to it. All night, all day, she sat in a seamstress pose, while the tailor watched over her shoulder, intolerant of one incorrect stitch.

Now her midday mutton stew was long digested, and the sunlight was fading from the room. She could not feel her thumbs. “I need to rest my hands.”

“With your project fully stitched and complete, and my own in a hundred pieces.” Victor gave her a mean look as he jumped up to grab the iron bar spanning the top of the door. Pulling his chin up to the bar with muscle-shuddering effort, he grunted: “Typical—Angelika.”

She wasn’t in the mood. “Look at all I’ve done, you ungrateful lout.”

Another chin-up. “You—sad—little—spinster.”

The locals said similar things to her turned back. Unmarried. Unwanted, unusual, ungodly. Her hurt must have showed, because Victor dangled and added on a heavy sigh, “Sorry. I’m tired, too.” He continued his chin-ups. Angelika knew he was expecting her to count his repetitions, but she never did.

“Nothing is stopping you from learning to sew, Vic.”

“I’ve—already—tried.” Many years ago, a handkerchief was ruined by his attempt, and his dots of blood. Victor had no tolerance for tasks that he wasn’t immediately excellent at. Dangling and huffing, he added, “Anyway, I don’t need to learn. I’ve got you. How many’s that?”

“Just ten more,” Angelika said cruelly, and picked at her cuticles as he performed many, many more of his groaning, trembling chin-ups. When he looked half-dead, she said, “Done.”

Victor dropped to the floor, and through gasps he said, “I can’t wait for Lizzie to see all my hard work.”

“I do hope you’re not referring to yourself.” Angelika grimaced.

“I’ve noticed that ladies like muscles. He could have posed for Michelangelo.” He gestured to Angelika’s project.

The siblings sat on windowsills near each other. Fresh air was vital. “How long will you rest?” The strain was evident in Victor’s voice as he leaned out to check the weather. “I can smell the storm. And they’re starting to smell worse, too.”

“I’ll just take five minutes,” she said, and her brother nodded, drinking from a flask of liquor. She put her hand out for it, sipped, and winced at the taste.

“You did such a good line of stitches there,” he admitted in grudging admiration, getting to his feet again to study the neckline of Angelika’s project. It was roughly as long as he ever sat still. “If he always wears his cravat, no one would know.”

“Thank you, he turned out nicely.” She looked at Victor’s workspace. His scientific hopes and dreams were currently facedown in a metal bowl. She took another sip from the flask and handed it back. “I’ll do yours as neat.”

“Mine only needs to be functional.” He produced an apple from his pocket, taking a huge bite. “Did you see your elegant stranger had a gold ring on? How Helsaw missed that, I have no idea. I took the hands for my project.” Angelika put out her flat palm. Victor flicked it.

“The fingers have swelled; it’s stuck. Remind me to get the tin cutters from the garden to get it off,” Victor said, sitting back down, eating ravenously. “I think it is a type of betrothal ring. We’ll look at it later.”

Is anybody unwed?Voice rich with despair, she said, “How marvelous.”

Victor cackled and got to his feet again, stretching. “You never had this jealous green look when working on your earlier three husbands.” He nodded at the worktable and continued to rile her. “He might compare you to his beloved when he wakes.”

“None of Schneider’s men woke with memories.”

“I am better than him.” Victor was instantly crackling with annoyance. “I mean, I will be if these don’t burn to a crisp. You are always asking me about what will happen when they wake up. I cannot answer you.” He threw his apple core out the window with force. “It’s an experiment. A single heartbeat will be a success.”

“Where will they sleep? What will they wear? Do we keep them forever, or do they go home again?” She shrank under her brother’s poisonous glare. “One of us has to think of the future.”

“You live your life almost exclusively in daydreams about the future. We are doing this right now, in wild new territory. There are no rules that I can explain to you, because I do not know.” Victor’s composure faltered, revealing a rare glimpse of self-doubt. “You are probably worrying for nothing. I haven’t succeeded before.” He crossed to the completed man and looked down at him. “I’ve never tried harder than this, knowing how much you want him, Jelly. You deserve somebody to love you.”

Her throat felt tight, and she returned with equal vulnerability, “Thanks, Vic. But I don’t expect him to love me. He probably won’t even like me. But if he stays, and convalesces here, maybe he will . . . get to know me.”

Victor was uncomfortably earnest now, with his hand on the man’s shoulder. “He will learn that you’re stubborn, and ridiculously extravagant, and that you spend more money than humanly possible.”

“Now say something nice.”

Victor patted her creation. “He will see your world-famous beauty—”

“Stop,” Angelika protested, smiling. “Keep going.”

“And after he knows you, he will see your heart of gold. You surely have an expensive heart, just as he now has the strongest heart I’ve ever handled. Nothing spared,” Victor said to the man. “Everything is of the best quality. She made sure of it.”

Angelika felt her brother deserved some encouragement in return. “When you succeed, and the news travels the world, Lizzie’s father will be boasting about his son-in-law. And yes, it pains me to admit it, but she will love your muscles.”

“Oh, I know she will,” Victor replied, before becoming so invigorated by joyful energy that he completed another set of chin-ups. He now lived like he’d learned a secret, and Angelika yearned to know it, too. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be in love?

She covered her sudden melancholy with a tease. “If she won’t have you, Belladonna waits patiently in the wings.”

“Belladonna is the one female I should never have encouraged.” Victor snorted with laughter, dropping back to the floor and wiping his hands on his trousers. “When Lizzie arrives, there may be a murder at Blackthorne Manor. Rested enough?”

It was very late at night when Angelika laid down her needle and thread.

“It’s time,” Victor said, and he was right.

It was time.

* * *

Angelika’s work was done, and she was not overly interested in the reanimation process. Victor directed. She sewed. He dealt with obtaining the afterbirth, the weather forecast, and the wire cabling attached to the spire on the roof. She took off her soiled apron while her brother dashed about, aligning the bodies in their individual chambers.

Rinsing her arms and hands, she said to Victor, “Something about tonight feels different. I should go and put on a nice dress.” And a little cheek rouge, perfume, and a hairpin. Whilst she could not find anything overly objectionable in her reflection, and she had indeed been described many times as a beauty, there was something about her personality that was untenable. Unnatural. Unlovable.

“What if he convulses and burns like the last one? That’s what you should focus on, not your appearance. Besides, you always wear trousers at home. He’ll have to get used to it.”

Victor poured the barrel of afterbirth into the first chamber, submerging his creation. Their sheep-herding neighbors no longer asked what they used it for, and laughingly referred to it as liquid gold. With a grunt of exertion, Victor diverted the barrel to Angelika’s creation, and she watched as the translucent, smelly substance began to coat him. Then the flow weakened to drips. Victor banged the side. This triggered a new splattering, but not much.

“I thought there was more,” he began defensively, but Angelika was beside the chamber in a blink.

“It barely reaches an inch up his side, and yours is completely covered.” Her tone was plain: It’s unfair. “How is mine to have an even chance?”

Victor pondered this. “We’ll animate mine first, then put yours in. Don’t fret, it will work out.” Above, a rumble of thunder caught his attention. “The storm’s almost here. We must hurry.”

Maybe it would be for the best. Victor’s creation could fail, he could adjust the technique, and hers would succeed. Everyone would be happy, and these months of late nights would be over. She dropped herself heavily into a nearby armchair to wait.

Victor was now in his creative state of flow and could not be interrupted. It struck her that Lizzie should see what he looked like right now, energized by the storm’s crackle. Victor was spoken of by the village girls as terribly handsome and rich, but oh so strange, and always eating an apple, and slightly bad-smelling. It was all truth. He was up to his elbows in other men, all day and night.

Besides, the Frankenstein coloring was difficult to get used to. Red hair, pearl skin, and green eyes. On Angelika, these colors read as beauty, or sorcery. On a tall man such as Victor, it was . . . confronting. He was regularly given blunt assessments by strangers out of tavern doors and carriage windows. Several artists had asked him to sit, balming those stings. Seeing both siblings together? They could charge an admission price.

“You’re doing well,” Angelika encouraged her brother, but he was too focused to acknowledge her. She fell into a doze and had a short dream that she was lying on her back in a grassy field, beside a warm body she knew was a man’s. His voice told her that he would be here soon. He’d fight to be with her. In her dream, she was reaching up to the night sky, trailing her fingers through the dark and stars, like a man’s soft hair.

She was jolted awake by a crack of lightning.

Victor then howled, “It’s alive!”

There was movement in the chamber—and it wasn’t convulsions.

Angelika was now disappointed that they hadn’t done hers first but covered it well. “How marvelous. Can he hear you?”

“Not sure. No, don’t come closer.” Victor was leaning over the chamber, trying to help his creation sit up out of the slurry. “I may need to scoop out his mouth.” Not necessary: the man began coughing in earnest. “He’s tall, isn’t he, Jelly? Even seated. How did I make him so big?”

“You said, and I quote, ‘No, Jelly, I want the long legs.’ Let me help.”

“Stay back.” Victor spent a minute grooming his gigantic baby, wiping away the viscous gel while he blinked slowly, his slack mouth gaping and closing. “Welcome, my friend. I am Victor Frankenstein, and I have brought you back to life. You shall make me famous. Wait until Lizzie meets you.”

A mournful groan was the only reply.

Angelika went to visit her beau with butterflies in her stomach. “Not long, my sweet.”

He was indeed superior quality. She’d justified it thus: if she was being reassembled, she would hope her maker would select improvements wherever possible. And though she had felt a pinch of guilt as she passed off sections of his perfectly satisfactory body to Victor, she was deeply happy with what she saw now.

This was an unparalleled masculine specimen.

She really should be assisting Victor, but she could not stop her eyes from trailing down this body. The blacksmith’s chest was padded out with muscle and corded sinew. His hard work was not wasted. Angelika continued her review of her own creation. She had decided to use the second-largest penis in their inventory. It had made her brother roar with mirth, and he teased her about her newfound economy, but the one she had selected would likely stiffen out to a good size, if he ever felt that way about her. She may never know. This late at night, with her dark under-eye circles, it felt like a very large if.

In the places where the afterbirth had splattered, his stitches appeared to be healing. “I need to transfer him into the full chamber,” she told Victor. “Hurry up.”

“All right then, come and help me,” Victor barked. By the time she made her way around, Victor’s achievement had both feet on the floor. As he began to straighten, slipping like a newborn foal, she could see the errors they had made.

“Those legs and that torso do not belong together.” This man was straightening up to seven feet tall.

“None of it does,” Victor retorted, in no mood for critical feedback. “Stand still, man. It’s all right.” The man howled; a terrible hurt sound that was probably heard in the village. “Jelly, come and see if you can calm him.” Victor ducked when his creation swung out an arm.

“Shhh,” she soothed, amplifying her feminine presence. “It’s all right. Angelika is here. You’re safe.” For a heart-stopping moment, the beast was silent, regarding her form with glassy eyes, lingering on her breasts and hips.

“Good. I shall begin my examination and interview—” Victor was cut off by screams so loud that the candles above dripped wax. This big man had apparently never beheld anything as horrific as Miss A. Frankenstein, and he began to struggle away to the door, evading his master’s clutches.

“How rude,” Angelika managed to say.

“He’s gone wild,” Victor shouted, exasperated. “And I’m abruptly sick of him.”

“Do you need my pistol?” Angelika called, unsure if killing a dead man would be murder, but her brother waved her away irritably. The mismatched pair of nude creation and dandy creator struggled off together out of the barn doors. She could hear wet scrabbling, grunts of effort, and fading distressed cries.

“Right. Your turn,” she said to her project, refusing to be daunted. “In you go, my love. The storm is overhead.”

She slipped straps underneath his shoulders and around his waist and, with difficulty and a lot of dripping goo, used the wheel and pulleys to transfer him into the deeper tub. “This is an awkward way for us to meet. Just as I am your last hope, I think you are my last hope, too.” She closed her eyes, and the truth of that statement sank in. “I refuse to be an old maid at twenty-four. Victor will marry Lizzie soon, then a baby will arrive, and I’ll be their unofficial nanny, then governess. Then, a withered old aunt.”

She’d be happy for her brother, but it would be hard to smile through the jealousy. In her dreams, for years, she’d heard the call of true love; a yearning inherited from her madly devoted parents.

“Hmmm. I’m not sure what comes next.” Maybe she should have stayed awake more while Victor did this next bit. His notes were strewn around the benchtops, all in his particular shorthand, and were therefore useless to her. Now was her chance to prove she was a full contributor. “I will do my best.”

Even though prayer of any kind was forbidden in their household, her next words sounded very close to one. Eyes closed, hands folded, she said:

“Dear sir, I will do anything for you. To have you, I will change what I must about myself. I will sacrifice and make you proud—” Here, her eyes welled up, and as she bent down over him, her tears dropped into the vat. “I will cut myself up into as many pieces as you are.”

There was only silence in reply, but she felt like he understood.

Angelika took a few fortifying breaths. “I think I connect this here.” She pulled a springy cord down from above and slipped a metal ring around his forehead. “And then I tighten it just so, and lightning hits the rod on the barn roof, and I wish myself luck, and—”

An almighty rumble of thunder drowned out her next words. There was a crack, everything went white, and then the world filled with sparkles and star-fire.

There was the smell of burning hair.

“Damn it all,” Angelika cried out in anguish. “He was so perfect. I will never again have another so perfect.” Those beautiful brown eyes would never gaze upon this world again. Loss nearly turned her inside out. Outside, her brother was roughhousing with his creation, but her own darling was burned. “Well, I’m alone forever,” she said to herself as her tear-filled eyes began to readjust to the gloom.

Her heart stopped.

Wrenching himself upright in the chamber of gel was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. He was spluttering out mouthfuls of liquid, before inhaling some rough, crackling breaths.

“My love?” Angelika came closer, and all she could see was how well she’d done. Unlike Victor’s man, her keen eye for sewing and pattern making had resulted in a truly excellent outcome. He was perfectly formed, with ideal proportions.

This was a body to live for, and a face to die for.

She came closer still, smoothing down the front of her blouse and plumping her bosom up. “My love?”

After an almighty coughing fit, the naked man managed to get out: “Where am I?”