I wanted to write an AU of what happened a thousand plus years ago, but since we don't have canon on the details of how Frankenstein ended up desperate enough to experiment on himself, I realized I needed to write not just about the Nail but the Horseshoe That Wanted It in order to do my For Want Of A Nail AU.

So this chapter is my current general idea of what happened. It could be far more historically accurate, but it's not like Noblesse does period costuming either. Although fanart with the Noblesse cast in period gear would be awesome, true. I know some things about that general time and place, but I'm probably massively anachronistic with a lot. A lot actually was going down in the area Franken's probably from during the range of centuries he could be from, so forgive me for tossing up my hands and creating something a little generic instead of getting Chelsea Quinn Yarbro-level detailed historical setting integrating current events (with bibliography) here.

There's so much stuff someone could go into with the history of medicine in Europe, and what it means that Frankenstein was way, way pre-Renaissance. He's more impressive the more you think about him. (I want Crombel fanboying, heh.)

The Nail happens next chapter, and the results of that divergence show up in the chapter after that. I also have a variety of scenes in the modern day of this AU in my head, but again I found that I was writing scenes that needed to refer to other scenes in order to make sense and therefore I needed to scrap what I had and write those scenes first.

There were rumors of vampires about, but there had been vampires about somewhere for centuries.

Isolated incidents. Rampaging beasts that grew claws and hunted by night. Although they were far stronger than any human, the people of the Holy Roman Empire had adapted. There were specialized hunters, who used traps and chains to hold them down while they kept the vampire incapacitated by damaging their organs long enough to remove the head. Even with their uncanny healing, they couldn't regrow the head, and once that was off the heart would remain destroyed and the vampire couldn't rise again, although many took additional precautions. Such as burning the bodies.

Dr. Frankenstein would have to ask the townsfolk what other remedies they knew.

A normal vampire attack was a tragedy, but one was far less deadly than a normal plague. People took precautions. They would hang garlic in their homes so the pungent aroma overpowered the human scent. Wearing perfumes to conceal one's natural oder could also make it easier to escape from them, or even confuse them and make them think you were not prey.

He would need to make more bottles to hold preparations. Think about what he could find in the forest that would be easy to distill into a strong scent.

He tried to think of what he could do because the alternative was panicking.

The crashes in the distance had made him spring awake. Not just wood, but he clearly heard stone grinding against stone: had a house collapsed? Screams, shouting, the clash of blades.

He'd immediately started to throw his clothes on to go find out was going on and try to make sure the wounded weren't injured worse in the process of extraction from the wreckage.

Everything was too quiet after the noise stopped. It made him hurry faster.

It wasn't a house.

The town wall. A section had fallen, only two layers of stones still atop the other. Easy to step over. As though someone had battered a path for them to walk through?

He'd frozen but Heinrich grabbed him, shouting with relief, and pulling him over to two bodies lying on the ground.

"What happen-" Frankenstein started to ask.

"Vampires! Three of them! They came up to the gate, one of them ordered the captain to open it when he called down to them to order them to go away! We had to grab the captain, but then the vampire ordered the other two with it to make a hole in the wall! Walter tried to attack them, but the vampire ordered him to just stand there and drank his blood! He called the Captain to him too – I tried to move, but I couldn't!"

Despite the clear panic, Frankenstein told him, "I believe you." It was almost automatic: he was used to reassuring patients by now, so they'd calm down and follow instructions. Panic was clearly not beneficial to the humors: patients did seem to heal much better when they were confident in the treatment. Although he was sure the main concern of many doctors was that the patient and family feel that the doctor was doing something, so they would keep paying regardless of whether or not there was a cure…

He couldn't do anything about a vampire attack… No. He had duties in this situation. "Has someone fetched the priest?"

"I think someone ran towards the church…" From his nervous glance towards the wall, Heinrich would follow them, but the man seemed caught between what seemed practical and his duty to guard the town. Even if they was nothing he could do but die uselessly if they returned.

"Help me with the bodies: we'll have to bring them to the church," Frankenstein ordered.

Heinrich snapped to attention with relief, glad to have something to do, a clear order to follow.

Before Frankenstein revealed his vocation as a doctor, his family had him serve as a page and train with a sword and the baron's soldiers. As the third son of a minor family without much in the way of property, distinguishing himself in military service would have been his best chance of earning a title. Knowing how to give orders was endlessly useful to a doctor.

"Have your sword ready to stab it down into his gut," Frankenstein told the young man before he approached the first body. Kneeling down beside it, he didn't need to fish the scrap of mirror out of his bag to know that, "He's still breathing," he said aloud, having learned the habit of making his observations aloud to reassure patients. When it was good news, at least. "No wounds, other than that bite out of the shoulder…" He had to restrain a curse, because what he'd just figured out was not good news.

"One of them grabbed Walter." Heinrich hovered nervously, torchlight reflecting gold off his brown hair. "I heard bone break before the leader ordered them to let him go."

Even with the broken arm, it was possible they might survive, if they were kept warm and the proper fluids were poured into them quickly. Blood was one of the four humors: it corresponded to air and the mind and soul. Since the process of turning someone into a vampire involved draining it away, that was why the majority of them became mindless beasts.

If the wounds were certainly fatal, then the bodies would be destroyed right away to keep them from rising. Vampires were ravening beasts: their master wouldn't have ordered the other two to restrain themselves without a reason.

The night watch captain and his second-in-command were two of the strongest men in the town, bar the blacksmith. If the leader of the vampires wanted to increase their number, they were the best candidates.

If Frankenstein was his oldest brother, or if he had become an officer, he would have taken Heinrich's sword and destroyed their hearts here and now. There was money for his second brother to become a priest: he would have dragged them to the church for last rites, before sending them on to save them from the violation of their souls.

Yet he was a doctor, and there was a chance they might live. He could see the trap, but his vocation meant he had to take the risk. "We'll have to bring them to my treatment room; I'll send one of my staff for the priest and the day watch officer."

"I'm here," he heard, and turned around to see the man, along with the blacksmith and a few of the sturdier farmers.

"Good," he said, relieved. "It may still be possible to save their lives: I'll need help transporting them."

"You three: help the doctor. Heinrich, stay here. I'll need your report."

"Yes, sir!"

"Build up the fire in the treatment room," Dr. Frankenstein ordered his cook and head maid Justine when he saw that she was up. "And set water to boil."

"I've already warmed some up," she told him as they moved aside to get out of the way of the stretchers.

"Good." He nodded. "Bring me the sugar." There was salt among his medicines, of course.

Blood was warm and wet: the bodies were already chilled, so raising their temperature was an obvious first step to restore their proper balance even to a layman.

After putting strengthening herbs in to steep, he made a cup with salt and sugar, adding some cold water to get it to more than skin heat. Most of the time he wanted the windows open, in defiance of common wisdom, but it was cold out there.

He hesitated. "I'll need your heavy gloves," he told the blacksmith. They should have until the following night until there was any chance they might rise, but if the leader who changed them could speak and had other rare powers? He couldn't risk them biting him while he tried to get them to drink. "Someone fetch rope – we need to tie them down in case they rise."

Father Andrew arrived shortly after the rope, and gave them last rites. That was a relief to everyone: the holy oils certainly couldn't hurt the watchmen's chances of resisting the attacks upon their souls. To have your free will stripped from you, to become unable to resist the compulsion to kill? And vampires didn't have enough mind left to repent! To violate the commandment against murder and not have a chance to repent was certain damnation.

Ordinary diseases only afflicted the body. They had no power to touch the soul. A vampire could take someone's mind, their very self from them.

A doctor was powerless against that.

Frankenstein was not fond of being powerless to help his patients.

They moved them out into the sunlight once it rose. Shortly before dusk, they began to thrash weakly in their bonds. He was the doctor, so he was the one to open an eyelid and find the iris and scalera red, as though stained by the blood they'd lost.

He was the doctor, and he had taken responsibility for letting them live long enough for the curse to affect them instead of granting them mercy. "I'll do it," he told the watchmen standing with him curtly.

Normally, cleaning was calming. Washing the blood off a sword… if only there was more of a relief when it was gone.

"Three of them, and maybe more by the time vampire hunters arrive," the mayor said. "We'll have to offer a reward for them to take that risk instead of going after easier prey."

Frankenstein could see nodding heads around the room. No one was going to blame them: if a hunter died uselessly, overwhelmed by a vampire with more intelligence than just animal cunning, then they wouldn't be able to save other towns while those other towns only had a single vampire. Before they could become nests of the beasts.

He put the pouch of coin on the table before anyone could ask. The village paid most of its taxes in goods, but those were heavy for a messenger to carry. Whoever they sent would have to travel light, to get a good distance away before the vampires could pursue them. "I'll cover the hunters and their expenses, just let me know what you need. I've already lost two patients. I'd rather not lose more." He smiled. "I saved up that money to come here and study the herbs and find why people are so much longer-lived in the country than in the cities. I was expecting to spend it on imported medicines instead of hired swords, but as long as it serves its purpose."

"Thank you, Dr. Frankenstein," the mayor was the first to say. The relieved thanks echoed from elsewhere in the room: they hadn't wanted to ask, not when he was from out of town and had always accepted barter instead of coin from them, and goods equal to far less value than a doctor could charge in a city, or one of the courts.

"Helping the living is my vocation. Speaking of which –" he turned to the blacksmith. "-I'd like to commission chains and some means of securing the victims, for the workroom. Unless they start taking their victims with them, there may be others with a chance to survive those attacks, and I could learn a great deal by attempting to save them. However, I can't risk them escaping and becoming a danger to the town and their families."

"Wouldn't they prefer to…"

"Despair is a sin," Father Andrew reminded them. "If a remedy is possible, it would help a great many people. Including you." After giving the speaker a meaningful look, he looked around to be certain that no one was going to argue with him, then turned to Dr. Frankenstein. "I'm not sure that you should use your home for this. All of your medicines are stored there, and it's one of the sturdiest buildings in town. The hardest to set alight, if the vampires grow bold enough to want a lair."

Frankenstein nodded. Like the church, it was of stone with slate shingles. There certainly was wood involved in the construction, but it was one of the most fire-proof buildings in town. "I've picked up patients from the jail." When they were sick enough for him to be called out to see if it was safe to move them. "There's no means of getting sunlight in there, and I'd prefer as much sunlight as possible." He saw them nod. "If windows need to be added to an existing room, I can make the glass. I'll attempt to make as much window glass as possible, although I'm afraid it won't be of very high quality." And a great many buildings wouldn't let windows be added after they were built, but if it could help even a few, it was worth spending some time on it. "I'm planning to distill scents as well – if there is anyone who can be spared who wishes to learn how, I would prefer it if I could instruct them and they could instruct anyone else who wishes to make their own. "

"Scents?" At a time like this? The man who interjected looked surprised – they hadn't thought he was any kind of a fop, despite coming from the city. He obeyed sumptuary laws, of course, but he disliked imperfections in his dress, and who would trust a doctor who dressed poorly?

"So the bestial ones don't go berserk smelling human prey, and it will be harder to track us in the woods," said one of the game hunters, nodding to Frankenstein. "Since their leader's smart, smelling garlic in the woods would be a dead giveaway that someone's hiding or there's a trap nearby. I'm sure the vampire hunters will appreciate it."

"Can't we lay a trap of our own? Put straw or something outside the wall, wait with fire arrows. If we don't look into their eyes-"

"And set fire to half the town?" the mayor demanded. "We need to fix that wall and lay in more firewood, if more people are going to be awake at night." Candles were in short supply.

"Fix the wall? They'll just smash it down again!"

Frankenstein eyed the wall and found space to lean against it, settling in for the long night. He might need to comment on the plans they made, even though his own military training was decades ago.

Unsurprisingly few people left with the messenger at first light. Frankenstein had a profession, but most of the townsfolk had never been to another town in their lives. Where could they go, where they would end up more than beggars or serfs?

There were hundreds of people in the town, and the vampires' master had kept them from killing the prey indiscriminately. Their odds of survival were far better if they remained, provided the hunters came quickly.

The vampires didn't come the next night, or the one after it. Some were relieved, but Frankenstein was among those who knew better. It meant they were hunting among the farms, building up their numbers. Giving time for a resistance to organize only made sense if they intended to crush that resistance. Get all the potential troublemakers out in the open, where the beasts could learn their scents.

Scent.

The entire house smelled of pine. Justine had redoubled her efforts to keep it clean, which he very much appreciated. She knew how seeing a mess bothered him, and he had more than enough bothering him now. The combination of worry and the stimulant mixes he was experimenting with for the sake of those who needed to be up all night were a little too likely to result in an episode if he saw something that bothered him. He needed to be able to think, not take refuge in obsessively cleaning or working on different preparations to try.

When the attack did come, and patients with it, enough he was forced to put some of them in the jail even though it hadn't been cleaned since the last batch of drunks was put there? Thankfully, when there was a patient in need, he was always too focused on them to care about other imperfections.

This need for everything to be exactly right could be an advantage when it came to caring for the living. A wound was far more wrong than a handful of crumbs.

Still they died.

There were more wounds than just the broken arm this time. He treated everything he could, although he focused on the ones who had the most chance of survival. A few of them didn't last till dawn. Father Andrew and their families gave him permission to cut apart the victims and even take parts, especially samples of their humors. Normally that was forbidden, but when the bodies had to be cut apart regardless? There clearly were physical transformations involved, so if they could be cured or prevented…

After that, they trickled in by ones and twos, and he dreaded when it would be threes as the number of vampires increased…

"Dr. Frankenstein!" Justine called through the lab door. She always did knock first: he must have been too focused on the samples to hear it.

"Yes?"

"The hunters want to speak with you."

"The hunters? Already?" How many days had it been? It took him a moment to remember, even though of course he'd been noting the days he took samples and made observations in his journals. That was just 'look at the previous entry and add one,' however.

The hunters were grateful for the scent essences, especially since there was a variety so they could avoid the beasts learning the scent of the preparation. They were willing to let him interview them and take notes when he couched in asking what else they thought might be useful – vampire hunting was a prosperous trade, so he had to be careful about enquiring into trade secrets.

It did make sense, of course: if everyone knew all of the tricks, then they would be useless against vampires like the leader of the ones attacking the town. A known tactic could be guarded against, and given the strength of vampires, the hunters needed the advantages of surprise and intelligence.

Casualties were expected.

Vampires were dangerous. Their strength, speed? The rate at which they healed meant that even if they were wounded, it might not keep them down long enough for the hunters to make sure of them. The blacksmith had time to make up more heavy iron chains for the trap – he, like Frankenstein, was sleeping during the day to be awake at night in case they needed to escape. The mayor had stopped sleeping in his own manor to make it harder for them to find him, although as of yet there had been no attempt to behead the town leadership.

A town this size needed a blacksmith to function, and so far they clearly wanted the town intact. The vampires seemed to prefer the young and strong. If the sickly possessed less potent blood, that would be a reason to spare the doctor as well.

It irked Frankentein that he was safe when others were not. He could leave, and they couldn't… Except no. He couldn't leave them.

His sword, once something he kept only because it was a mark of a gentleman and he needed patients of his own class and higher (much higher) to listen to him, was getting a hateful amount of use.

He should probably relearn it, at this rate.

Of course, it wouldn't matter unless he could match their speed and strength. Keep them from taking control of his mind.

…Weren't there legends of dhampires? The thought came to him as he sewed up a wound. Thankfully this was 'just' a slipped ax, during the rush to get in firewood.

Humans with physical abilities almost as strong as those of vampires, who were able to fight them effectively, even one-on-one? That was impossible for a normal person, of course. The stuff of legends.

If it was possible to become a vampire, perhaps it was possible to become a dhampire?

No, he couldn't risk it. Testing the stimulants and other preparations on himself was dangerous enough. The town needed his skills. He'd hidden the money in case the vampires raided his house, but the location would go to the mayor upon his death, but the tired made mistakes. The exhausted made mistakes, and with so many of the young and able-bodied prey to the vampires? There was so much work to be done.

They kept dying.

It was important for a doctor to accept that they would lose patients, but old age was one thing. This?

It was a general's duty to win the war, and keep his soldiers alive if it served that mission, but a doctor's duty was to save lives. He was making progress – he had improved remedies for blood loss, means of washing out the wounds, and still they died.

More hunters would arrive. He'd have better preparations, different scents and mixes of scents. Better treatments. The blacksmith kept making more of the specialized trap designs one of the hunters ordered from him.

Yet eventually the hunters stopped coming.

Stopped getting this far. The other towns were also being hunted, and most of them didn't have a vampire master, just stray beasts. There were others who needed saving. Other towns far easier to save.

He couldn't… he couldn't do nothing.

Madness to try to distill a serum from a vampire's body and transform himself just enough to become a dhampire and fight the vampires without becoming one of them, but when one of the vampires that attacked the town had retained their ability to think, and been able to overwhelm the minds of humans? Then becoming partially vampiric would have made him no more vulnerable.

The risk wasn't really any greater than the risk posed by continuing to live in this town at all, and he couldn't abandon his patients.

He could sense them now.

That ability alone would be a tremendous help to a hunter. He'd have to note it in the journal he was planning to send out to anyone who could use it.

Thank goodness he'd decided to use his herb-gathering expeditions as practice moving quietly. Not because he was trying to hunt, of course, but more because excess noise born of incompetence? No reason to disrupt the forest and scare away everyone else's game unnecessarily.

Obviously moving quietly through the woods while carrying a boar spear wasn't going to happen, but despite how far he could drive his sword into a block of wood now, he wasn't going to abandon all good sense and tactics. If he could use the methods of the vampire hunters, that would be preferable.

Strike from ambush, pin them in place so they could be taken apart. Everything else (other than tracking them) would only matter if he failed.

He was nowhere near strong enough to batter through a stone wall. Not yet. He'd reached the point where his capabilities could be a back-up plan, if he failed to manage the kill due to inexperience.

The town had reached the point where… Sometimes a patient kept fighting off a disease, until their reserves were exhausted. That point was coming.

The outlying farming villages were clearly almost drained of prey. Summer would be the lean season for vampires, as winter was for humans. So people stored food for the winter, and in winter that larder was emptied.

He needed to decrease their numbers. Their leader might be picky, might drive the ones too misshapen to serve out of the region, but without the hunters to cull them the amount of food, of people they consumed per week would only grow.

A pity that his earlier scouting missions proved that the hunters had forced them to vary how they approached the village. There weren't any normal routes for him to booby-trap. He might be forced to…

No. He had to wait until conditions were optimal for the first test, or he'd just die uselessly. If testing his own medications had forced him to learn anything, it was that failing to be careful, to take every precaution would be fatal. It was only because he was so obsessed with details that he could risk it at all.

…And yes, he did have a reckless streak, true, he acknowledged as he watched the ground carefully for branches. Challenging what everyone knew was always dangerous, especially when it earned you wealth, clients and jealousy…

Why was it so quiet?

He stood still. Damnation. The vampire was scaring all the game away. With less noise in the forest, it would be harder for him to conceal his movements in the background.

If he could back away, circle around forward, hope the vampire would pass near one of the placed he'd stashed a boar spear during the day… And if he didn't get lucky, then he was going home and recording his observations on how accurately he'd sensed his location, he promised himself.

He hadn't climbed trees like this even when he was a boy, he thought as he swarmed up one of the ones he'd picked out. The pocket valley should confine the sound of his climb, so provided the vampire kept traveling in the same direction… Yes.

Twenty feet, not even counting down. Could he jump that far? Twenty-one. The grey-skinned beast, this one with hints of red and green veins, was moving away.

If it escaped, someone was going to die. It had been let loose to hunt. Someone was going to die.

Afterwards, he took stock.

Dirt and leaves all over his clothing – he'd avoided landing on the vampire, then rolled away from it. Blood. Sticky.

Broken shaft on the boarspear – that could be replaced. He hadn't so much removed it from the body as removed the body from around it.

The body of one vampire, torn up. None of the organs were anywhere near intact, not when he had to keep slashing at the stomach every time it twitched, while he tried to take off the head.

His pants were mainly intact, but the hard leather hadn't protected him or his chest at all.

Several wounds on his face and chest where it had swiped at him. They'd leave very impressive scars; he'd need to… get out of here there's the smell of blood in the air.

Frankenstein ran. Not towards the town. He'd return when it reached daylight, and he wouldn't draw blood-starved vampires towards them.

Diving into a stream was the best way to get rid of the blood- it was also a trick foxes used to avoid hunting hounds. His clothes were already ruined, but with all the fires everywhere it wouldn't be much trouble to dry them, he thought, pausing for a moment by the edge of the stream to wring the water out of his hair.

Well, at least other doctors wouldn't be jealous of his looks any… more…

He stared down into the water, reaching up to touch his face, feeling the unbroken skin.

The clawmarks on his face were gone. He didn't even have a black eye.

He knew his wounds hadn't closed immediately, not like a vampire would have recovered almost instantly from wounds that were trivial for one of the undead. But!

To close so easily!

What if some bit of dirt was in there, and the wounds closed around it! He couldn't even tell where they had been! He would have to wash immediately the next time he fought.

Trying to remain calm, to think of some downside, only barely succeeded in keeping him from exclaiming, from laughing out loud. If humans could heal like this?

…If it was possible to gain this ability without eventually losing one's humanity.

But… that this was even possible… He couldn't even conceive of how many people would live who otherwise would have died. Even minor wounds could become infected and require the removal of an entire limb!

It hadn't really sunk in until now. Sensing the vampires was useful, the same with night vision. His speed and strength were still inferior to that of the vampires. Fighting was something he'd only begun to learn, back when he was much smaller and weaker. Now he was a man grown, so he'd known that it would be different.

Wounds and healing, he knew intimately. He knew how unnatural this was. Unnatural, yet wonderful! Even if he failed to keep his mind, even if he was killed by the vampires, if he could pass on this research the type of person who kept trying to make gold would pursue it. The all-healing panacea!

Was it sacrilege to call this miraculous, when he'd gained this ability through the study of vampires.

He had to get home now. He had to make note of this, be sure that all the details were recorded before a vampire could find him and take this knowledge from the world!

Medicine is 'the war against death,' and then goddamn vampires killing his patients.

In this time and place, having a doctor's treatment didn't improve your odds of survival much. If it didn't lower them. And cleanliness wasn't next to godliness, it was often taboo. If Frankenstein's patients were actually surviving, that might not have been as good for his own life expectancy as you might think.

Medieval European cites were 'death sinks,' with more people dying in them than were born. They only continued to function because of people moving in from outside for better lives, which, well, often true. Escaped serfs, etc. City inhabitants were far more likely to be free people instead of property, or as free as anyone got.

Frankenstein grew up in a chivalric culture, and I think he certainly absorbed those ideals, but there was this huge disconnect between the ideals that people were taught to live up to and actual practice. 'I'm superior therefore I'm allowed to abuse all those inferior/unpersons' is something that pisses him off to this day.

A pity the Union is 'why we can't have nice things' in Noblesse.