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“Please. No one I know. Not again.”
He sighed. “She knows about us, though. We will have to relocate. It will complicate things.”
“We could go back to Lake Como. I could paint while you…work. I would look away. Wait for you to finish. We have time.”
Victor’s shoulders relaxed. The true smile that only I could ever coax from him lit his face like sunshine breaking free from the clouds. “I sold the villa and emptied most of your accounts.” He gestured to a large leather trunk in the corner. “We can buy a new laboratory. Somewhere secluded. Somewhere I will not be interrupted again. Together.” He opened his arms.
“I only ever wanted to be with you,” I whispered. I stepped toward him, but I slipped, falling to the floor amidst the glass and the water. Victor rushed to me. He crouched down, reaching to help me up.
My fingers curled around a shard of glass. I jammed it into his side.
“Damnable bitch!” he shouted, staggering back out of my reach. The glass was still embedded in his side, sticking out of his torso.
I stood, another piece of g
lass cutting into my hand where I grasped it with all the strength I had left. I bared my teeth at him, a falser smile than the ones I had taught him to show. “I would have aimed for your heart, but there is only an empty space there.”
He staggered toward the table to retrieve his pistol. I rushed to beat him there, but we both stopped short. The monster loomed over us.
“I am ready to kill you now, I think,” the monster said.
Victor spun, grabbing me around the waist and grasping my hand so that the glass cut into it. He pushed my hand against my throat, holding the razor shard to the vein that supplied lifeblood to my whole body.
“If you move toward me, I will kill her!” I could feel Victor trembling, could sense that soon he would lose control. “I only need her body.”
The monster threw back its head and let loose that same cry that I had heard before. The one my own soul answered. The cry of the lost, of the damned, of the soul that found no refuge on this earth.
I wanted to make the same sound.
But I had already decided I would be stronger. I did not need Victor’s venomous resurrection for that.
“You cannot run with me,” I said. “I will slow you at every turn. And if you kill me now, what is to stop the monster from killing you? He will have no reason not to. If you kill me and still manage to escape, my body will be too large a burden. By the time you have access to another laboratory, I will be so far decayed I will not be of use. You lose me, Victor. Any choice means you lose me.”
His hand twitched, the glass cutting into my skin. A warm rivulet of blood stained my collar, bleeding down to dye my perfect white dress.
“You are mine,” he hissed in my ear. “I will never stop. I will follow you to the ends of the earth. And then you will know my power, and you will worship me as your creator, and we will be happy together.”
He shoved me forward. I stumbled into the table, where the remaining charge shook through my body, and, at last, blessed darkness claimed me.
“SHE IS WAKING UP,” a woman’s voice said.
I clawed my way back from the darkness, letting the agony of my body lure me toward consciousness. When I opened my eyes, Mary was sitting next to me, grinning.
“Did you get enough beauty sleep?”
I sat up, my head spinning. “Your arm!” I lifted my hand to her shoulder. It had been bandaged again; only a little blood had seeped through.
“I will survive. And so will Victor, unfortunately. You could not have stabbed him in the neck? Or in the eye? Or in the chest? Or in—”
I put my hand over her mouth. “Mary. I have not trained with glass shards. You will have to excuse my amateur aim.”
She pushed my hand away and waited for me to stand. Once I steadied myself, I helped her get up.
And then I had to look at the monster.
Henry.
As though sensing my thoughts, he spoke from where he lurked in the darkest corner of the room, shoulders stooped and face turned away from us. “I caught you as you fell and absorbed some of the shock so it did not kill you. Victor got away. I could not get him in time and lost him in the storm. He took a boat, and I do not swim or trust your boat to hold me. I am sorry.”
