Such Wicked Intent

CHAPTER 18

When we came back to ourselves, we looked everywhere but at one another. From the corner of my eye I sensed Elizabeth’s anger just by the set of her mouth.

“Konrad’s in no danger right now,” I said, as much to comfort myself as the others. “The pit demon can’t be born without our energy.” I drew a weary breath. “I’ll think of something.”

“Perhaps your spirit friends can help you,” Elizabeth said coldly.

“There are none on me.” Leaving the spirit world, I was most careful to make sure of that.

Elizabeth looked at me. “You’re sure?”

“Will you check me?” I asked Henry.

Elizabeth turned to the wall, and I stripped and let Henry examine my body.

“He’s clear.”

“Even so,” said Elizabeth, “he has some in a flask in his drawer.”

“Just one,” I said. “And here, if you don’t trust me.” I took the key from its new hiding place and handed it to her. “You hold on to this.”

“Thank you, Victor,” she said, and took it.

After checking to be sure the hallway was clear of servants, she left for her own bedchamber. Henry and I were alone.

“Thank you,” I said, “for saying you saw how its face changed.”

Henry exhaled nervously, and I caught a welcome glimpse of my old friend. “I tell you honestly, I don’t know what to think.”

“Nor I,” I murmured.

“You haven’t made it easy for us, Victor,” he said. “Your behavior-”

I wanted to save him the chore of chastising me, and save myself the pain of hearing it. “I know. My behavior’s been odd.”

“I think sometimes you’re half-mad.”

“ Only half?”

He chuckled weakly, and it seemed impossible to imagine a time when one could live with a full and careless heart.

“Let’s sleep,” I said. “Things always seem clearer and more possible in the morning’s light.”

He stood and put a hand on my shoulder. I reached up and placed my good hand gratefully atop his.

“Good night, Henry.”

“Good night, Victor.”

I slept, but the pain in my hand inhabited my dreams, and when it finally woke me, I sat up, sweating, and lit a candle. I looked at the laudanum on my bedside table and wanted oblivion, if only for a few short hours. I opened the bottle and was about to drop some onto my tongue when I noticed that the locked drawer of my desk was open.

I leapt off the bed and rushed over.

The spirit clock and green flask of elixir were still there.

But the vial that held my one remaining spirit butterfly was gone.

I dressed quickly, ran to Henry’s bedchamber, and roughly shook him awake. He opened his eyes and sat up, chest swelling with surprise.

“Dress quickly,” I said.

He looked at my strained candlelit face. “What’s happened? What time is it?”

“We’re friends, are we not?” I asked.

With only a slight hesitation he nodded.

“I know lately we’ve butted heads, but you’ve been my dearest friend from childhood, and I need you to trust me now.”

“Victor, what’s going on?” he demanded.

“Elizabeth’s stolen the flask with the butterfly spirit.”

“How do you know she hasn’t just taken it away to stop you from using it?”

“She took the key to the cottage and Konrad’s brush from my bureau. There are probably more than a few hairs left in it.”

My friend licked his lips. “Surely she wouldn’t attempt such a thing.”

“She still doesn’t believe the first body was corrupted. We have to stop her.”

“I can’t believe it,” said Henry.

“If I’m right, we’ll find her bedchamber empty and she’ll already be at the cottage… at work.”

He swung himself out of bed, hurriedly pulled on trousers and shirt. We padded down the hallway to Elizabeth’s room. I opened the door, and we slipped inside. I parted the curtains at the foot of her bed and in the shadows saw her there, asleep.

I glanced sheepishly at Henry, but he grabbed my arm tightly.

“What?” I said.

He rushed to the side of her bed and shook her so violently that she came apart in an explosion of pillows and rolled linens.

Together we bolted downstairs, slipped on boots and cloaks, and launched ourselves headlong into the night.

Pain seared my missing fingers, and my limbs shook with fatigue. I felt like an invalid not properly recovered from a fierce ague. My body craved the rush of a spirit butterfly against my flesh, even though I knew it was precisely this that had enfeebled me. I slogged on through the pastures, Henry at my side.

The lock of the cottage was unclasped. I shuttered my lantern and cracked open the door to peer inside. A single lamp flickered on the crude table, mounded with damp mud. We were in time! She hadn’t created it yet. Behind the table Elizabeth sat on a stool, her back to us. She was very still, her head tilted down. She wore only her nightdress.

I whispered to Henry, “I think she’s sleepwalking. We must be calm but firm with her.”

“And do what?”

“You get hold of the flask that contains the butterfly spirit, and I’ll guide her back home.”

We opened the door and walked inside. Elizabeth did not even turn her head.

“What are you doing, Elizabeth?” I asked pleasantly, steeping slowly closer.

As I passed the table, I noticed Konrad’s hairbrush and a toppled flask, unsealed.

Empty.

“Look at him, Victor,” she said dreamily. “Just look at him.”

Still she kept her back to us, but now I could tell she cradled something in her arms.

“I made him anew,” she murmured.

“Ah,” I said, and took another cautious step closer.

She turned to face us then. In her arms she held a mud baby, but this one was much, much larger than the one we’d originally created. I didn’t know if she’d simply fashioned a bigger body this time, or if the particular butterfly spirit she’d used was more vital than the first. The baby’s body was still crude, its muddy limbs misshapen and scored with hasty finger strokes, but it was obviously, terrifyingly alive. Its crude legs and arms twitched, and its head shifted against Elizabeth’s nightdress.

Her gaze seemed directed at someone behind Henry and me, and I fought the urge to turn. It had always been her way, when sleepwalking, to look beyond what was right before her eyes.

“It was very clever of you,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “You must’ve found some more hairs on Konrad’s brush.”

She smiled secretively. “A few,” she said. “But I also had another bit.”

“What bit was that?” I asked, my step faltering.

“A bit of his bone. From the pit. I used that, too.”

I glanced anxiously at Henry, and saw my own horror reflected in his pale face. I remembered Elizabeth in the burial chamber, how she’d bent to pick up a tiny shard of bone. I’d never noticed her put it down.

“He’s waited such a long time,” Elizabeth said now.

“Has he?” I asked politely, taking another step, keeping an eye on the stirring creature in her arms. “How long has he waited?”

Barely audibly, she said, “Hundreds of thousands of years. I’m to be his mate.”

My flesh crawled, and at that moment I saw a furtive insectlike shadow dart from the neckline of her nightdress and take refuge behind her ear. Henry’s small gasp told me he’d seen it too.

I realized in that moment that Elizabeth wasn’t simply sleepwalking.

She was possessed.

“Shall we put the baby to bed now, Elizabeth?” I said, my voice shaking. I had no idea what to do. No plan effortlessly constructed itself in my head. I was just myself, unaided by supernatural forces, and all I knew was that this creature could not be allowed to exist.

“Not yet,” Elizabeth replied serenely. “I want to hold him.”

“I can tuck him up with his blanket,” said Henry, walking toward her with his arms outstretched. This was wise. She’d always trusted Henry with the child.

Elizabeth smiled. “You’ll have to destroy me first.”

And at that moment the creature turned its muddy head to look at Henry and gave a rattling shriek. Its mouth bristled with serrated teeth.

“Good God,” Henry breathed.

“Elizabeth,” I said, “you must let us take care of the baby properly.”

“So you can kill him?” she asked calmly.

“The baby must be tired,” said Henry soothingly. “His eyes are drooping, see? He needs his sleep if he’s to grow.”

Elizabeth’s own eyelids drooped, and she nodded. “All right.”

Henry stepped closer, and the creature sprang from Elizabeth’s body toward Henry, its jaws wide. It didn’t bite him, merely knocked him backward and sprang off him toward me, hissing like a feral cat. I struck out with my arm. I felt its teeth catch my cloak, trying to bite deeper, before I threw it off. It sailed across the cottage and landed somewhere in the darkness.

Panting in terror, Henry and I tried to track its quick scuttling movements across the floor. So many hiding places.

“Konrad!” Elizabeth cried. “Where are you?”

Against all instinct I had the sense to rush back and close the cottage door firmly. We couldn’t let this creature escape into the world. I grabbed a thick burlap sack, seized a lantern, and leapt up onto the table, hoping for a better view. But there was so much debris upon the floor, so many tools and shadows, that it was quite hopeless. To my left a scrabbling, then to my right. The little monster moved with supernatural speed. I saw Henry pick up a rake. Elizabeth was looking about, distraught, urging the creature to return to her arms.

Then the scuttling ceased. Elizabeth stopped calling out. A terrible silence lowered over the room like a night mist.

Upon the table I turned slowly in a circle, never letting my eyes settle on any one place, watching for a blur of movement in my peripheral vision. I was fervently hoping it had fallen asleep, and then our dreadful job would be much easier.

A ghastly pain pierced my toes, and I looked down to see the creature’s jaws biting through my boot as it climbed up from underneath the table. I tried to kick it off, but its grip held, and the thing’s compact weight was enough to throw me off balance. With a cry I toppled and hit the table hard. The monstrous thing was jarred loose and leapt on all fours for my face. I threw my sack at it, and the creature dropped, entangled, to my stomach, thrashing. But it quickly freed itself and jumped for me again. I rolled off the table altogether, and as I hit the floor, I heard the sound of breaking glass and a terrible screaming.

I scrambled up and stared. The creature had landed on the lantern, cracking the glass. Soaked in oil, it flailed about, burning.

Elizabeth grabbed the sack and threw it over the creature, trying to smother the fire. But the abundant oil saturated the burlap, and it too burst into flame. Within moments the mud creature became still and hard, like something blasted in a kiln. But from the center of its chest, I caught sight of a spiraling tendril of darkness trying to break free from the clay. The flames licked at it hungrily, devouring it as quickly as they would a strand of hair, and by the time the mud body had cracked into several pieces, the spirit had been reduced to ash.

With the rake Henry flung some soil onto the table to extinguish the last of the oily flames.

“You murderers!” Elizabeth wailed at me.

There was, suddenly, a hammer in her hand, and she swung.

A peal of pain and light exploded through my head, and I crumpled to the floor clutching my temple. When I could see again, Henry was wrestling the hammer from her grip, but then she came at me again like a lynx. She was preternaturally strong, empowered by the spirit upon her. It was all I could do to fend off her blows.

“Help me pin her down, Henry!” I shouted. “We need to get that spirit off her!”

Henry helped me force her to the floor, fighting hard the whole time.

“We’re too rough!” he cried in distress.

“Hold her, Henry!” I shouted, for I knew I didn’t have the strength to do this alone.

I clambered atop her kicking legs while Henry tried to keep her flailing arms away from me.

“How dare you!” she cried. “You brutes, both of you! Get off me!”

“The flask!” I yelled to Henry.

He reached back to the table and tossed it. I knew I had but one chance, for these things were quick and wily.

“He needs a new body!” she wailed.

I pulled her hair back from her ear and saw it, a darker bit of shadow. Swiftly I plunged the flask’s opening hard against her flesh.

The spirit was trying to squeeze beneath the rim, and with Elizabeth thrashing so hard, I feared I’d lose it.

“Light!” I cried. “Turn her toward the lamp!”

We wrenched her over onto her side, and the sudden flare was enough to startle the spirit deeper into the flask. At that moment I slid the seal securely over the rim and trapped it.

The instant the spirit left her body, Elizabeth stopped fighting and instead seemed to wake, as though from sleepwalking. Eyes wide with childlike confusion, she gazed all around, at me and then Henry, and then she pressed her face into Henry’s arm and wept. I envied him more than I could say as he held her and stroked her hair.

“There, there, now,” he said.

I knew she didn’t love Henry, but at that moment I wondered if she could ever love me.

“Tell me what happened,” she gasped after a few seconds.

Between us we told her what we knew. She sat, incredulous, staring at the dark spirit whirling frenzied against the glass.

“I was almost certain I saw it on you yesterday,” I said, “but now I wonder if you had one from the very beginning.”

“I can’t believe it,” she murmured.

“Maybe that’s why you were so devoted to the creature and kept making excuses for it,” I said, “even when it bit me and tried to ravish you. It must’ve urged you to take that piece of bone from the burial chamber.”

“And when I was sleepwalking,” she said with a shudder, “to come here and make a new body for whatever’s in that pit. And afterward…”

She sat up and felt the pocket of her nightgown. She brought out the key to the cottage and, with a frown, a small brown vial.

“What is that?” Henry asked.

“The spirit elixir,” I said. “Her own private store. You meant to make the baby tonight and take it into the spirit world for the pit god to inhabit-right away.”

She looked astounded, and then gave a small nod, as if remembering.

We were all silent for a moment, imagining Elizabeth rearing the pit god as it grew with freakish speed into its full giant form.

“You said you were meant to be its mate,” Henry said, looking ill.

“Dear God,” she murmured. “What have we done?”

The immensity of it was almost too much to grasp.

“That thing, that pit god-”

“Please don’t call it a god,” said Elizabeth fiercely. “It can only be a demon.”

“It stole from us to make itself strong,” I said. “Every time a butterfly spirit touched us, it stole our energy and used it to wake the demon. And whenever I brought a butterfly out from the spirit world and then returned, it was bloated with my life-I saw it-and carried that to the demon too.”

“Why weren’t you possessed like me, then?” Elizabeth asked.

I rubbed at my bruised head. “I was, just differently. Your spirit promised you Konrad. Mine promised me knowledge and power and release from pain. And it needed me to keep coming back for more so I could wake the demon from its slumber.”

I looked at Henry cautiously. “And no doubt you have one on you as well, my friend.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Me?”

“How else do you explain this new valor and confidence?”

He looked away shamefaced for a moment, but when he looked back, there was defiance in his eyes. Wearily I wondered if I would have another fight ahead of me.

“Check me, then,” he said.

We placed the remaining lanterns nearby, and Elizabeth turned away as he disrobed. I checked every inch of his body, with growing consternation.

“Incredible,” I said. There is nothing on you. Nothing.”

“Ah,” he said wryly.

“I don’t understand how…”

“Perhaps, Victor,” he said, pulling his shirt back on, “some people can just change all on their own.”

I sank down onto the dirt floor, exhausted, sickened by the noxious vapors still emanating from the charred remains of the mud creature.

“We have to go back and warn Konrad and Analiese,” I said. “We have to finally destroy that thing in the pit.”

“Can we truly destroy it, though?” Henry said.

“We have to try!” I said, standing. “And now!”

“Just wait, Victor,” Henry said, lifting his hand. “You yourself said it wasn’t fully born, that it needed our lives to waken it.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, then, if it gets no more life energy from us, it can’t be born. And maybe, if it’s starved, it’ll go back to what it was, an ancient block of stone.”

“You’re suggesting we never go back inside again?” Elizabeth said, her pain obvious in her voice.

“Can we risk it?” Henry asked us. “There are too many butterflies now, and they’re devious. If even one feeds on us, that might be all it takes to unleash the pit demon.”

His logic was true; it was also unbearable.

“But I promised I’d go back,” I said. “I said I’d think of something…”

“Henry’s right. There’s nothing you can do,” Elizabeth said quietly. “If only we hadn’t interfered from the start. At least this way Konrad will be gathered and will find his new home. Which is as it should be.”

“I won’t accept it,” I said. “There must-”

“Accept it, Victor,” Henry told me.

“No.”

In my dream I’d seen him. He’d been ahead of me on the ice, but I was going to catch up.

And suddenly I had my answer. It was such an obvious one.

I flung open the cottage door and ran, ignoring the urgent calls of Henry and Elizabeth. Where my strength and speed came from, I didn’t know, but I sprinted through the night. They could not keep up as I bolted back to Chateau Frankenstein, to bring my brother back to life.