Chapter 11 #3
“I’m afraid Dr. Frankenstein is unavailable at the moment!” she called from where her feet had stopped a safe distance behind the open iron gate. When no one answered and the coachman didn’t bother to turn his head, Victoria tried again. “Apologies, but Dr. Franken—”
Wilhelm von Lichtenmarstein’s head appeared in the carriage’s window. A hat and gloves in his hand as if he were going to some type of event.
“…isn’t availa…” Half words fell from her tongue. An hour ago she had felt like a god, and now she felt as foolish as a mouse run under a cat’s paw. “Wilhelm.”
A wicked smile settled across his face. “Just as I hoped. I see you’ve climbed the ranks quite quickly, now taking in your own patients. Is the old man still here even? He could be gone and no one would know, they’ve seen so little of him lately.” His dark gaze lifted in open challenge.
Victoria wondered how a man could be so thoroughly evil while wrapped in the guise of propriety and high standing.
“Get in.” The smirk vanished from his lips, his eyes hardening.
Victoria closed her eyes. For a brief, desperate moment, she wished everything would remain that way—that the darkness might consume her entirely, keep her hidden, untouched, unreachable.
She wanted to return to the laboratory with the safety of the cadaver.
When she opened them again, facing the night, she believed for a single foolish second that her wish had been granted.
But it had not. The elegant carriage came back into focus.
The cadaver couldn’t save her, no matter how much she willed it to happen.
She could run. She could reach the tunnel before Wilhelm caught her—she knew it, even burdened by the weight of her skirts. Instead, she stepped forward, mourning the brief mercy of his absence while the weather had kept him away. Resistance would only invite disaster.
Her fingers clenched hard in the black fabric of her skirt, her boot slipping against rock and dirt, her footing faltering. It felt as though the castle itself resisted her departure, something deep within its walls tugging at her spine, urging her back.
She tightened the cloak around her shoulders and stepped forward.
A cold breeze passed by with a low whistle.
The howling calls of the nearby wolf pack were a symphony in the night’s silence.
The horses shifted at the sound, their harnesses jingling as the coachman tried to steady them.
With a click, the carriage door opened, and Wilhelm scooted along the bench to the opposite side, not bothering to reach out a hand to help Victoria in.
Inside, the plush velvet coach smelled like tobacco smoke and musty cloves.
“I cannot leave. I will be missed. I—I was working with someone before I stepped out. They will come looking for me.” She thought of Innominatus lying inside.
She wished he were alive to come and save her.
“I cannot go to your home tonight,” she lied.
Then, with sudden urgency, she added, “I’ve left important things out that need…
to be put away.” Innominatus. She had left without returning him to the chamber.
He would be fine for a few hours in the laboratory’s cold, but the thought of the dead man sitting all alone in the laboratory unfinished and waiting for her return felt uncomfortable.
Wilhelm brushed a brown curl that had fallen onto his forehead back into place. “Then I suppose you should be quick and efficient.” He stuck his arm out of the open window and banged his hand against the side of the cage twice. The horses began moving immediately.
Victoria panicked. What if her father woke up and went looking for her? What if he fell or needed her? What if something happened while she was gone? Her heart fluttered like a thousand wings trapped in a jar behind her ribs.
“I told you I cannot leave.” She grabbed the handle of the carriage door farthest from Wilhelm and opened it. She could still leave; she might stumble, as the horses had already picked up their pace, but she would be fine. She had to stay.
“Enough. I heard you,” he growled.
At some point, he had gotten closer. Victoria pulled her shoulders in and moved closer against the door. She realized he had grabbed her wrist and was pulling her back toward him only when she felt the bruising pain of his grip.
Keeping his grip on her wrist, he stuck his head out the window and called to the coachman. Victoria couldn’t hear over the pounding of her heart.
“Wilhelm.” She tried to soften her voice, hoping to appeal to him in a different manner. “My father needs me. He’s getting worse. Please. I cannot leave in the middle of the night.”
He said nothing, but the carriage came to a stop, rocking back and forth softly.
Nervously, she looked out the window to find they were at the edge of the forest, just outside of town.
The old church was in the distance. The moonlight spilled onto the light-colored headstones that crumbled behind it.
“Thank you,” she said and waited for the carriage to turn around. Her eyes darted around the interior of the carriage nervously.
Suddenly, Wilhelm’s hands were around her waist, lifting her up easily and pulling her into his lap.
No. No. No. She wanted to shout. She wanted to claw his eyeballs out.
For some reason, her mind went to the lifeless man in the laboratory waiting for her.
She wished more than anything he were alive and could help her.
He would have. Somehow she just knew it.
“You’ve lost more weight,” he said, disgust sharpening his voice. “You look horrible.” His hands were everywhere—pulling, bruising, squeezing without care. “No doubt you’re doing it on purpose,” he continued coldly, “trying to force me to find you unappealing. Repellent.”
His mouth pressed into the crook of Victoria’s neck.
He never kissed her. He only pressed his mouth and nose against her skin, as though marking territory rather than seeking closeness. The urge to scrape herself raw with a scalpel rose sharp and immediate.
“It will not work,” he panted. “I already find you unappealing and grotesque.”
“Then why do you do this to me?” she demanded weakly.
“Leave me be. You have a beautiful fiancée who loves you. Forget about me—please.” She was pleading now, despite herself.
Too much was happening at once. She could not retreat into her notes, could not numb her mind and send it elsewhere.
It would not go. It refused to leave her.
“Wife,” he corrected. “I have a beautiful wife.”
His hands moved to beneath her skirt, but she slapped them away and crawled off him.
For a brief, dark moment, she wondered why she felt nothing at all—until she realized he had not even removed his gloves to touch her cold, shivering skin.
She wondered randomly if Innominatus would hate the idea that she wore gloves when working on him.
One day she would find out. One day. And when that day came, she would never be in carriages alone with monsters ever again.
“You got married?” she asked.
“Yes, now you are going to be mine as well, however I want.” He lunged toward her, but she slid to the other side of the bench.
“You cannot do this to Sophia. You cannot! Please!” Victoria cried.
Her heart broke for Sophia. She had always believed Wilhelm would grow tired of her.
She realized, in that instant, she had invested far too much weight in a belief she ought never to have held.
Wilhelm was a man who cared for no one—neither Victoria nor Sophia.
He cared only for himself. She doubted he even desired her in any sense beyond possession.
Yet he acted as he pleased because that was how he felt big and powerful: by hurting someone who could not fight back.
A hot tingle of rage surged through Victoria, sudden and consuming. Her hand shot forward with all the force she could muster, nails aimed to tear at his face.
Just before her nails could reach him, his grip snapped tight around her palm, halting her strike.
A menacing laugh rolled from his lips. “This is precisely why I cannot forget about you,” he said. “Despite your unappealing—nearly repulsive—appearance, I enjoy your resistance.”
Hot tears of rage flooded her eyes. The fury inside her flared.
Her gaze darted wildly to the corner of the carriage, where a satin curtain was pinned back, the window left open.
The metal rod that held it in place caught her attention.
She could take it—she knew she could—and drive it through his neck.
She knew exactly where there would be the least resistance.
He would bleed slowly, painfully, and the only person in town capable of helping him would refuse, for his daughter would have caused the wound.
The realization settled deep in her bones—not only that she could do it, but that she had thought it.
She leaned back, eyes wide, the fight draining from her.
One more surge of anger would be enough.
She knew it. The knowledge sent her nerves reeling, as if her entire being had been turned inside out.
Was this what Innominatus had felt while killing? How had he managed it?
“What is it?” Wilhelm asked lightly, already trying to pull her back onto his lap.
Her mouth opened, but no words came. All the while, her mind—and her dark, chocolate-brown eyes—remained fixed on the metal rod at the window.