Page 99 of Her Creation

Her breath came in short, uneven bursts as she returned to the body, closing its chest as best she could with trembling hands. Her heart hammered in her ribs, a frantic drum of fear and awe. She did not know what to do, but one truth pressed itself into her consciousness: Innominatus was far more dangerous than she had ever imagined. And far more obsessed than she had thought possible.

Her chest ached with a longing she could scarcely name. Every ounce of loneliness he carried, she had felt as well. The sting of a love forbidden had rooted itself in her long before it had bitten into him. They could not be together. No matter the pain, separation was the only possibility.

The next day, a man arrived at the castle to summon Dr. Frankenstein into town. Another man hung at death’s edge, and the riders doubted he would survive the journey. Victoria refused on her father’s behalf. A few hours later, the man who had delivered the summons was dead.

The chief magistrate and members of the town council arrived, carrying the body. They asked her father to examine it and give counsel on the cause of death. The man had been in the crowd after church and had simply fallen. No scream, no struggle, no sign of violence.

Victoria found a small scroll tucked neatly into the man’s eye socket. This one had taken her longer to discover.

I see the trials yet to come, yet cannot prevent them. Foresight itself becomes my punishment.

It was from Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, the tale of Prometheus chained to a rock, subject to daily torment as an eagle consumed his regenerating liver for gifting fire to humanity. The message pressed on Victoria’s chest like cold stone.

Next to die was a young woman Victoria had treated for a broken arm, a woman Innominatus had assisted her in treating. She arrived later, carrying a similar small scroll tied with a red ribbon, hidden within her nostril:

I have so much, and yet without her I have nothing.

Victoria’s hands shook as she traced the words. She searched Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther and finally found it, though it had not been underlined. The weight of the words pressed upon her like a physical presence. Every act, every death, every message, was part of a design she could not comprehend. She felt the cold certainty of her own helplessness settle into her chest.

For two days no bodies arrived. Victoria was left to wonder whether Innominatus had ceased his killings, or if he had abandoned the practice of sending her messages when she had failed to respond. She knew she could end the horror, stop the torment, if she only accepted him and his love. Yet the thought chilled her with a deeper terror. Would it ever truly stop? To love him was to defy her deceased father, to embrace a forbidden devotion that seared the soul. She had already suffered for her transgressions, and she shivered imagining the infinite horrors that would unleash if she didn’t surrender.

Victoria remained in the castle for the remainder of the week, her plans to bury her father stalled by caution. The stable master, the only member of the staff she trusted to tend the horses and drive the carriage, had returned from town with frantic news. He spoke of more victims, warning her not to venture into town unless necessary for fear the Nachzehrer would claim her.

The surrounding towns were nearly deserted. Shops had shuttered, windows bolted, streets silent except for the occasional terrified passerby. Panic and pandemonium settled over the lands like a thick, suffocating fog. Every heart waited, trembling, for the next death.

By the end of the following week, silence weighed heavily. Victoria found herself running down the castle steps, drawn to the night like a moth to a flickering flame, eager for another message from Inno despite the horror with which he delivered them. It was then that a carriage came into view, glinting dimly through the rain. Her boots slipped in the mud as she hurried to the iron gate, flinging one side open and holding it wide. She ran toward a dark figure waiting beneath a black umbrella.

John, Helena’s valet, stood before her with red-rimmed eyes, his jaw set in a stoic mask he could not sustain.

“No,” Victoria whispered, voice trembling, her knees nearly giving way. John lowered the umbrella, cradling Helena with utmost care.

“The Nachzehrer…it got her.” He struggled to speak.

“How?” Victoria’s voice pitched dangerously close to hysteria. “She does not even go to town.”

“Not in town,” he said. “I heard voices in the great hall. No one called out. I would have answered. I went in—she—I…” His voice faltered, swallowed by grief as he glanced down at Helena’s limp form. “She was slumped in the chair, struggling for breath. She asked me to bring her here, to you. She demanded that she see you.”

Tears mingled with rain upon Victoria’s face as she stepped forward. She lifted Helena, draping her partially over her shoulder, grateful when she felt her labored breath and began the treacherous path through the mud, carrying her into the laboratory.

“It is all right. I’ve got you,” she whispered to her best friend, each word shaking with despair. Helena’s body jostled in her arms as she pushed open the second door and stepped into the cold, stone-walled laboratory.

At the table, Victoria hesitated. Her hands shook violently as she carefully laid Helena down, pressing her cheek gently against her friend’s frozen face, tucking it close. Sobs racked her body.

Helena attempted to lift her head, but her eyes—once vivid green flecked with amber—were now hazy, partly gone, as if the light of life had already begun to slip away.

“No,” Victoria whispered breathlessly, her voice barely a thread, as if even speaking too loudly might shatter what little remained of her friend’s life. “Lay still.”

She could not pull her gaze from Helena for fear that a single blink would mean the last one. Her hands trembled as she checked over the woman’s body, moving with desperate precision yet remaining rooted in place, unwilling to step away for even a heartbeat. The same horrifying pattern was there as with the others. No sign of struggle. No visible cause. Nothing.

Victoria’s stomach twisted. She knew, with a sickening certainty, that Helena had been sent to her with a message from Innominatus.

“It’s all right,” Victoria murmured, her hands cupping her friend’s face with a tenderness she barely felt capable of. “Are you in pain?” She tipped a small measure of laudanum into Helena’s mouth, hoping, praying it might ease her suffering. She knew, deep in the pit of her stomach, that it was far too late, but she could at least grant her friend some mercy.

Helena shook her head weakly. Her lips parted to speak, but the sound that emerged was a fragile, choked whisper, broken into coughing gasps. The life that had once sparkled in Helena’s green and amber-speckled eyes now flickered like a dying candle, fragile and wavering. Victoria felt it ebb from her hands, a cruel and inexorable tide that left a hollow ache in her chest. Because of Victoria, Helena’s brother and other loved ones would have to suffer. The weight of helplessness pressed down on her as she realized, with agonizing clarity, the horror her father must have endured when he could not save her mother.

“I’m so sorry,” Victoria sobbed, clinging to Helena as though holding her closer might defy the inevitable. “This is all my fault.”

“He…he told me to tell you that he was sorry,” Helena rasped, a trembling, fragile smile brushing her lips, her fingers barely brushing Victoria’s shoulder.