Yon distant Mountain’s craggy brow.
And shows the rocks so fair,—so bright—
’Tis thus sweet expectation’s ray,
In softer view shows distant hours,
And portrays each succeeding day,
As dressed in fairer, brighter flowers,—
The vermeil tinted flowers that blossom;
Are frozen but to bud anew,
Then sweet deceiver calm my bosom,
Although thy visions be not true,—
Yet true they are,—and I’ll believe,
Thy whisperings soft of love and peace,
God never made thee to deceive,
’Tis sin that bade thy empire cease.
Yet though despair my life should gloom,
Though horror should around me close,
With those I love, beyond the tomb,
Hope shows a balm for all my woes.”
A reverent silence followed, and in the stillness, my borrowed eyes wept tears that were truly mine. For one who had been born in horror, whose cradle was a tomb, and who had no God to call her Maker, the verse came as absolution—as a promise that even such a misbegotten creature as I might have hope for salvation.
And Ernst had believed it all along.
I sat up and looked at him. In the firelight, he resembled Lord Byron, the book held casually in his right hand, his loose-fitting nightshirt open at the neck to reveal the shadowed grace of his clavicle.
I sniffled and laughed. “A poet. And an angel.” I touched his dark, curly hair, his strong jaw, and high, noble brow. “What a fool I was to think I could build a man better than you.”
“Anna.” Ernst put aside the book and took my hand in his, pressed my palm against his cheek. It fluttered as if with the quickening of his heart, and he seemed in sudden agony. “Oh, how many times have I wished I could make myself into the man you wanted.”
“Ernst, you are. You always were. I see that now. But I was afraid I could never be with you.” An image of my blood-sodden wedding bed flashed through my mind, except it was Ernst’s headless corpse I saw there instead of Stefan’s. “I’m still afraid.”
“I’m not.” Ernst bent forward to brush his lips to mine in a kiss of sweet, delicate tenderness. As I responded, his ardor increased, and he grasped my face at the temples to prolong the contact, as if afraid I might vanish if he released me.
I pulled back, weeping. “You don’t know what I am. What I’ve done—”
He put his forefinger to my mouth. “I know all I need to know.”
He kissed me again, and this time I held onto him, wouldn’t let him stop. I continued to cry, and he kissed away each tear. When he lifted his hand to stroke my hair, I touched my lips to his palm and pressed it against my cheek. Its strength comforted me, its touch so tender that I had no fear of it. This was a hand that would never do me harm.
I took his hand from my face and placed it on my left breast, right above my heart.
The gentlest of gentlemen, Ernst flinched as I guided his fingers underneath the open collar of my chemise and held them against my bare skin. He no doubt feared he was taking advantage of me. I kept his hand in place with my left and slid my right hand under the lapel of his nightshirt. I brushed my fingertips along the thatch of hair that fringed his chest, then flattened my palm over his heart, kept it there until I could feel the soft percussion of our pulses beat in unison.
As one, we leaned closer, touched lips. A kiss as light as the brush of a feather . . . then another that lingered longer, pressed harder. Our mouths tugged at each other in delicate, delicious suction, and Ernst slowly traced the oval of my lips with his tongue. I knotted the fingers of my left hand into the thick black curls of his hair to hold him there, as my right hand slid around the swell of his chest to claw at the rippling expanse of his back.
The hand that Ernst held on my heart moved to caress my left breast. My breath quickened as he fingered the aureola, rubbing and lightly pinching the nipple until I shivered with delight. I wanted to cry out, but that would have meant taking my lips from his, and I could not do that for even an instant. Instead, I let him fill my mouth with his tongue, lapping and sucking at it with my own.
Ernst’s hand glided lower beneath my shift, down the smooth curve of my stomach, tickling the hair between my thighs as it sought the delicate button of flesh that nested there. He rubbed its tiny circumference in circles—slowly at first, then faster and faster—as if running his finger along the rim of a crystal goblet to make it ring. My body vibrated until I thought I would shatter.
Snarling now in animal desire, I ached to give him the same ecstasy. I reached down inside his nightshirt until I grasped his manhood. It was already firm and full, pulsing with life that I wanted to pull from it. I pulled and I pulled, and Ernst moaned more loudly each time.
The heat from the fire seemed to intensify until the thin nightclothes we wore felt stifling, intolerable. We scrambled to undress each other with clumsy impatience. I tried to pull his nightshirt up over his head at the same time he yanked my unbuttoned shift off my shoulders to drop at my waist, and we became a tangle of arms and cloth.
When at last we freed ourselves, Ernst seized me in a tempestuous embrace, kissing the arc of my neck from jaw to shoulder, massaging the muscle with his mouth. His hand again moved to my nether region, and I gasped as his finger curled down to probe and penetrate the salivating walls of my sex.
It wasn’t enough. I pushed Ernst back flat on the robe that overspread the floor and lowered myself onto his jutting spire. It sealed the void within me, became part of me, kissed the roof of my soul with each thrust. I collapsed on top of him, sucking his tongue into my mouth, wanting him in every part of me at once.
Ernst obliged better than I could have wished. He caressed my hindquarters as we made love, pushing himself more deeply inside me. Then, at the height of our passion, he gently inserted a finger between my buttocks to tap softly at the valley’s tender hole. Though the touch was slight, it rippled in rhythm with the surging waves of sensation from his shaft, cresting and crashing in my head.
“Anna,” Ernst panted, spilling his seed inside me. We wailed together at the consummation, kissing frantically to draw out the climax even as it settled into a blissful afterglow.
Afterward we lay on the rumpled robe in a happy lassitude, our nightclothes draped over us like bed sheets. The comfort of the fire, the feel of Ernst’s arm across my breasts, the light susurration of his breath on my neck—they lulled me into the best sleep I’d ever known in my short life, and I dreamed of no lover but him.
A creeping clamminess jarred me awake. The fire had burned to embers, and the library was now dark and cold. I shivered and sat up, apprehensive.
How much time has passed? It’s still night—surely the drug has kept Raphael asleep this long. But how much longer?
Ernst rolled onto his side, still asleep. I wanted nothing more than to nestle beside him again. Instead I stood and put on my shift, taking care not to wake him, and made haste to return to Raphael.
Before I went down to the cellar, however, I paused in my bedchamber upstairs and filled a washbasin with water from a pitcher that the servants had left there. I inhaled the delicious aroma of our lovemaking on my body, the mingled musk of our sexes. Then I scrubbed Ernst’s scent from my skin, sponged his seed from between my thighs so Raphael would not detect my infidelity.
I carried a single candle as I crept into the basement, shading the light with my hand so it would not shine on Raphael. The room was absolutely silent, and I stepped as lightly on the stone floor as if there were creaking boards beneath my feet.
Raphael lay on his cot with his massive back to me, without the slightest motion or sound. A nauseating dread filled me.
Is he dead? Did I feed him too much of the drug?
I couldn’t bar the cellar door from the inside, so I merely eased it shut. I inched forward but still could not see or hear Raphael breathe. The candlel
ight settled on the hill of his cheek and the valley beneath his jaw. Finally, I saw it: the worm of a vein pulsing beneath the tender skin of his throat. He was alive.
Although I should have been relieved, a new anxiety gripped me. I suddenly had the terrible certainty that he was lying there, wide awake, waiting for me.
From the angle where I stood, the hollows of his eyes remained black with shadow, and I could not tell if they were open or closed. If I took even one step closer, or held the candle out at arm’s length, I might see those luminous orbs staring into the cellar’s darkness, fixing their white gaze on me with all-consuming wrath . . .
I blew out the candle immediately and buried myself in my own cot, pulling the blanket over my head as if those baleful eyes might stare at me even in the basement’s coal-black night.
CHAPTER 22
ANGEL’S FALL
The image of those white eyes peering at me through the darkness possessed me so thoroughly that I could not tell whether I was seeing or dreaming them the rest of that night. I thought I might still be dreaming when I woke and relit the candle in the morning, for Raphael had rolled over in his bed to stare at me in my sleep.
I gasped, startled. “Are you all right?”
“Of course.” His luminous irises gleamed like polished coins. “Why shouldn’t I be?”
“Did you . . . sleep well?”
“Very.” He sat up in bed, stretched and yawned, languid as a caged lion. “I can hardly wait to start today’s lessons.”
True to his word, he proved an exemplary student that day, the complete opposite of his behavior the previous afternoon. Calm and attentive, he answered every question with a quickness and precision that revealed his uncanny intelligence. Yet the change in him disturbed rather than encouraged me. Although he obeyed my every direction without complaint, he regarded me with a brooding coolness, his white eyes half-lidded but unblinking.
Had he guessed what Ernst and I had done the previous night? If so, he said nothing of it.
Nevertheless, I slightly increased the dose of narcotic in Raphael’s dinner that evening. And when I was certain he was asleep, I went to spend the night with Ernst.
In this fashion, Ernst and I stole many wonderful hours together in the week that followed. Each time, I had to leave the sweet sanctuary of his embrace to return to the cellar before Raphael’s medication wore off.
Raphael said nothing. But he stayed at my side constantly throughout the day, watching so intently that I could feel his glare if I so much as passed Ernst in the hall. I took to looking at the floor whenever Ernst was around so I wouldn’t let Raphael see us exchange a glance.
“I don’t know how long I can go on like this,” I confessed, pillowed on Ernst’s bare chest in one of our midnight trysts. “How can we be together if he won’t ever leave us alone?”
Ernst teasingly stroked my arm with his fingertips. “You could turn him loose. Let him make his own way in the world. At least he can speak now.”
I groaned. “He’s not ready for the world. And the world is not ready for him. I’m not sure it ever will be.”
Ernst toyed with my hair for a few moments before speaking again. “There are other ways to be rid of him.”
Gooseflesh stippled my skin, and it was not from the pleasure of his touch. “You don’t mean that.”
“You gave life,” he replied. “You can take it away.”
The crack of musket fire reverberated in my memory, and I was once more running through the woods, rain pelting my face, branches tearing at the unraveling bandages I wore.
“No. That’s something Frankenstein would do.” I climbed out of Ernst’s bed, put on my shift, and used a spill to light a candle from the embers in the fireplace. “I owe Raphael more than that.”
“Anna, wait. I didn’t mean to—”
I swept out of the room without listening to his excuses. He’d shocked me with his cold-bloodedness. If I’d been the unwanted monster, would he have killed me, too? That was not the kind, tender, patient Ernst I knew . . . the one I loved.
He doesn’t understand, I told myself as I whisked down the stairs. He doesn’t believe I can civilize Raphael. I’ll simply have to work harder. When I succeed, I’ll fulfill my obligation to Raphael and earn my right to be with Ernst.
I reached the bottom of the stairwell and froze. The cellar door, which I had secured from the outside, had been thrown wide open. The thick iron bolt had wrenched its metal plate out of the wood, and the heavy oak bar I’d placed across the door had snapped in two. Beyond the doorway lay dead silence and darkness.
Wheezing with panic, I plunged into the cellar and held my candle aloft. I already knew Raphael was gone. But I needed to find out how.
My nose told me the answer even before my eyes could see it—an acid stench of bile so strong I had to cover my mouth to keep from gagging. Raphael had vomited his drugged dinner into his chamber pot.
Rushing back upstairs, I started my search for Raphael where I most feared I’d find him: in Ernst’s bedchamber, where I’d been not half an hour before.
Raphael was not there, and neither was Ernst.
The vacant room only sharpened my fright. What if Raphael had already found Ernst and taken him somewhere . . . done something to him? Or maybe Ernst had ambushed Raphael first, had “taken away” the life he’d helped create. With two jealous lovers bent on killing each other, any meeting between them could only end in disaster.
I darted from room to room in the house, hoping to find Raphael and Ernst unharmed. But I couldn’t risk calling out to either of them lest the other one hear.
Then I noticed a faint yellow light seeping into the hall from the library. The door stood ajar, as if in invitation.
I entered and found Raphael alone, sitting in the chair he occupied each day for our lessons. He wore only a loose dressing gown tied with a sash. An oil lamp rested on the small writing desk in front of him, and he pored over a large tome, so engrossed in his reading that he did not seem to notice me.
A cold apprehension made me stop halfway across the room. “Raphael?”
He did not look up.
“Couldn’t you sleep?”
“I wasn’t tired.” He turned a page.
“But your dinner—”
“Didn’t agree with me.”
My throat tightened. If he had figured out I was drugging his food, I would have no way to subdue him. I fought to keep my tone light, cheery. “What are you doing?”
“Learning. You know, this book is far more educational than all the others put together.”
He lifted the volume from his lap, and I recognized it as Victor Frankenstein’s notebook.
My skin prickled as if he’d walked over my grave. “That’s good, Raphael. I want you to know how you were created.”
He stood and sauntered toward me. “Ah! But that’s not what I wanted to know. I wanted to know why.”
As he left the halo of lamplight, only his incandescent white eyes shone through the shadow. He tapped the notebook’s cover. “You made me for yourself, Nana.”
I backed away from him. “I told you not to call me that. My name’s Anna.”
Raphael didn’t seem to hear. “You made me for yourself, and now you would throw me away for that twig of a man?” He flung aside the book. “I’ll snap him in two!”
I resisted the impulse to retreat any further. “If you dare—”
But I was secretly relieved. His threat meant he hadn’t harmed Ernst. Yet.
“If I dare what? This?” Raphael surged forward to try and snatch me around the waist. I dodged him, but he barricaded the door, then swung around to pin me against the wall with the iron girders of his arms.
“Am I not what you wanted, Nana? Is this not all you dreamed it would be?” He pulled open the front of his dressing gown, unveiling the beautiful body I’d tailored for him, his manhood hard and eager. Yet there was something inexpressibly sad in those silver-white eyes—the plaintive longing
of a neglected child.
I shook my head. “Raphael, we mustn’t—”
“We must.” He tore at my shift, rending the fabric down to my crotch. The frayed linen slid off my left shoulder, and Raphael peppered my breast with seething kisses.
I wanted to cry out but was afraid of what might happen to Ernst if he came to my rescue.
Raphael pressed me against the wall, forcing me to feel the hardness of his erection. “You know this is right. It’s what you wanted from the very beginning.”
He ground his mouth against mine. When I clamped my jaw shut, he clenched my throat until I gagged, then wormed his tongue between my parted lips. His breath still tasted sour from vomit. Though I thrashed with all my might, Raphael’s hands pinioned me as firmly as Frankenstein’s manacles.
My body slackened in resignation. Perhaps it was better this way. Raphael and I deserved each other; our life together would be a fitting punishment for our mutual vanity and selfishness. And Ernst would be free of both of us.
I ceased struggling and pretended to return Raphael’s kisses. At last, he let me pull my mouth away to speak.
“Yes! Yes, my dearest!” I gulped in fresh air, stroking Raphael’s tangled hair in mock affection. “Let’s go far away from here. Now! This instant!”
Eyes still watery with emotion, he smiled and stroked my cheek. “We shall, sweet Nana. As soon as I have you.”
Then he seized me under each thigh, spreading my legs wide and leaning back as he jammed his engorged shaft inside me. I couldn’t help but shriek at the pain of violation as he lifted me from the floor, ramming himself deeper with each thrust. Please let Ernst be free, I prayed as a raw ache filled me.
“Love,” he grunted, as if he’d just learned the word again. His shouts rose to a shriek. “Love, love, love, LOVE!”
Raphael reared back, let out a wail so loud I thought he had climaxed, and let go of me.
I fell off him, legs flailing as I thumped to the floor, and scampered away on hands and knees. When I glanced back, I saw that Raphael was groping behind his back, trying to grasp a metal rod Ernst had stabbed deep into the soft tissue below his ribcage. It was the catheter I’d used when creating Raphael, the pointed tube with which I’d injected blood into his empty veins.