London. It was as if he had never been away. The last year but a moment, which in this city steeped in history and time, is all it is. The stench, the corruption the utter disillusionment of the fetid lives that circle each other scrapping and fighting every day for survival. A city of the unkind and the unwashed and yet here he had been more at home than anywhere else in his cursed life. Here was home because she was here. It was a certainty. He could only envision her here even though it was on the moors in the tiny, rude cottage when she seemed the most real he'd ever seen her, vibrant, solid, carefree even. She is not there now his lady of the demi-monde. She was here in this city existing in the veil between reality and fantasy. That time past was no truth as she was not – she was the ultimate lie her goddess face hiding the soul of a demon – as does his. It was an illusion as fleeting as that stormy night when he'd pressed her rain cold body to his, felt her mouth move with his for a perfect moment before true reality crashed in on them beginning the series of events that led to him ascertaining that a path away from her was his only option. How wrong he'd been and how he'd suffered.

For a long while he'd revelled in the suffering, he felt vindicated paying for his crimes in the heart-wrenching pain he experienced being removed from the balm of her presence. He took that pain deep inside himself – assimilating it soul deep to fester like an ever open sore constantly tearing at it with remembrances of her. The eternal blue of her eyes holding him captive from the first moment she'd turned them towards him, her fingers firm on his skin, her voice husky, deep timbered with such a formal measure tone almost like it wasn't her first or preferred language. Her infrequent smiles that appeared as sudden and unexpected as summer lightning. She shadowed his thoughts and haunted his dreams and he welcomed it - a type of masochistic pleasure. The raven of her hair was the metaphorical whip which he chastised the flesh of his mind flaying himself raw, a martyr to the memory of her and what she'd offered him.

But he found that that memories fade, they became less sharp under the ministrations and excesses of the whiskey and narcotics he indulged in just to get through the night hours. That the sharp sting was fading. He needed physical barbs to keep the scabs of his pain wide open. He began to search out women that looked like her to further his hurt. Small, delicate with hair as dark as night and sapphire eyes but they were phantoms only, shadows of her reality and bandaged the pain rather than exacerbated it. And it was then her realised that the pure white pain that he craved would only come from the actuality of her presence and hearing her reject him. His last memory of her had been of acceptance an offering of love. For him to survive in his self-inflicted cocoon of exquisite suffering he needed to supersede that to see and experience the rage of her hatred. Because hate him she must. For all her utterances of forgiveness that night she was not a creature to pardon. Her passions were too primordial, too dark. He knew the hatred would rot within her. He would open himself to that – exult in it - absorb it into his soul and then fight her tooth and claw to claim her, to win her back so that he could torture himself further. To live every moment next to her secretly flagellating his soul for ever leaving her. That earning her love would be a constant reminder of the pain of losing her. He knew it was perverse but so was he, he needed to suffer to be at peace.

And so he'd returned. Returned to this city of a thousand horrors adding with his presence, one more to its number. For days now he'd circled Grandage Place. Always streets away but close enough to feel her to know she was only within minutes, yards of his scrutiny – enjoying the exquisite torture of prolonging the agony that would be their meeting. But as days crept into a week he could sense a foreboding a wrongness that he was not expecting and which he could not face without some knowledge of the situation and so he moved across the river to those dingy rooms in Shad Thames that he'd visited only once before but again in a time of suffering.

"He left mate, about 9 month ago. He was sick – I hadn't realised how. He was never much one for company. Kept strange hours and then about a year since he just locked himself away. Then he left. Well I say left was rather taken but bloody hell I wouldn't have minded." Victor Frankenstein's landlord a verbose man assaulted his senses with the stink of many weeks of stale sweat and the excess of the previous night's intake of cheap whiskey and beer.

"What do you mean, taken? Taken where? By who?"

"Christ I don't know her name, it's not for the likes of me or you, no offense mate, to ask. I can tell you she was a lady. A right proper one and beautiful to boot. Hair black as coal and eyes like a winter sky. I thought lucky bloke that doctor to be acquainted with the likes of her. If she'd asked me I'd have travelled up the devil's arse, just for a smile, no word of a lie. The doc, well he looked like he was at death's door. She had me carry him down stairs – he weighed less than a kid I reckon. Looked like he'd been taking something." He laid his finger against his nose conspiritively.

Ethan wasn't surprised by the doctor's decline. He'd seen evidence of his addiction but had chosen to ignore it wrapped as he had been in her safety, fighting for her soul and losing his in the process.

"So is he still with her now? Has he ever been back? Has she?" He pressed another coin into the man's greasy palm.

"I'm not sure – I mean he'd be a bloody idiot if he did leave her – a woman like that."

For a moment he was back in her room before those curtains listening to her reassurances offering him her acceptances, but was brought back by the man's next words.

"Thinking on it, she did come back a few times ya' know just to collect a few things, check up on his stuff she said and pay the rent but she hasn't been for ages more the pity. I'd have liked to take another cop at her if you know what I mean. Then about a week or two back he dropped in unexpected like. Looked in the pink of health he did and happy. He went in for about an hour. Came out with a bag and paid me to keep the place for him. Gave me a year's rent and more in advance like. Happy to do it mate. Easy money."

Ethan thanked the man slipping him a few more coins and walked away slowly his mind chewing over the information trying to make sense of what it meant to him and to Vanessa. So the doctor was still living at Grandage Place with Vanessa who'd obviously nursed him back to health from his addiction. But what of Sir Malcolm? Had he returned from Africa? What would his reception be now he did not just have to deal with her? However he was still at a loss to explain why the sensations around the house felt so strange and unfamiliar if it was only Victor there with her or Sir Malcolm too. There was something more, something had changed to make that place so wrong or someone else was there – a threat to all of them. He was so deeply lost in these thoughts that it took him several moments to realise that someone was calling his name. He looked up, his eyes squinting in ray of sunlight that had penetrated the greyness of the Spring sky and looked directly into the face of Victor Frankenstein leaning out of a cab.

At first, as he exited the carriage he barely recognised the man before him as the same man from a year ago. He was still pale but not with the deathly pallor he'd always worn before. His pale blue eyes were bright, naturally so, not enhanced by opiates and he had gained a little weight which suited his fine frame making his body look lithe and healthy.

"Ethan. Is it really you? Oh my God you are a sight for sore eyes. Where have you been? How long have you been back? Christ man we've been so worried." The pleasure in the younger man's eyes was a surprise as they had never been particularly close even at the end, but he took heart in it and gripped the doctor's hand warmly in his own.

"Doc, what you doing here? I've just been to your rooms but they told me you'd left with Miss Ives months ago and that you were sick. Are you still at Grandage Place, is she still there and safe?" and then unspoken "and does she still hate me?"

"Yes, yes she's there and well. We both are. And Sir Malcolm is also returned from Africa but is not in the best of health. He suffered a mild stroke on the day of his return about three months past. He's better but his recovery is slower than I'd like. Vanessa and I have been busy looking after him, amongst other things…." His voice trailed off and he looked slightly embarrassed.

In the dark of that night Ethan would recall those words, the colour that rose in the young doctor's cheeks and the brightness in his eyes and his unusual use of her first name and curse his lack of insight. But for now it did not register as unusual.

"Tell me about it doc, yep we've all be busy. I'm sorry about Sir Malcolm do you know what caused it. Is he well enough for visitors?" He tried to keep his voice casual not to sound desperate to get to the house, to see her, to feel the pain of being in her presence again.

"Yes of course, he'd love to see you and Vanessa too. We often talk of you. She tried to find you, you know, after you'd disappeared but it was like you'd fallen off the earth. Where did you go?" Victor ushered him into the cab he'd climbed down from and settled down in the seat opposite.

"To hell and back Doc. To hell and back."

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Grandage Place was the same even to the metal door that they'd installed the day after the evening Hecate and her minions had infiltrated the house in search of Vanessa's hair to finish the fetish that had housed for a time the soul of the devil that she'd overthrown. It loomed tall, and proud over the street and yet that in itself was reassuring. In this house he'd seen the best and the worst of her. Here she'd suffered mortal peril and returned stronger. Here she'd offered him every reason to stay. Here he'd walked away from her love and acceptance and here he would win her back to suffer for an eternity as he deserved and wished for.

"Any sign of them? Have they been back?" He couldn't bear to think of her in danger without him even though some part of him still felt it was him that represented the greatest danger to her body and her soul.

"The witches. No. We've seen no sign thank God. At times I think she does sense something – danger maybe but she saying nothing – brushes it off– this past week she's seemed a little preoccupied, but I know better than to push her. She'll confide when she's ready." He smiled and led him to the front door tapping lightly on the door to be admitted by a uniformed stranger.

"Bennet, this is Mr Chandler. He'll be staying for dinner."

"Very good sir." The large and capable man took their coats and his hat and headed for the kitchen in the back. Ethan felt his heart twist. It should have been Sembene there welcoming him back in his stoic way, no visible emotion but maybe just the warming of his eyes. But Sembene slain at his hand, lay in the dark red earth of his home and he could still taste the coppery tang of his blood in his memory.

Victor looked very much at ease but Ethan barely noticed. His thoughts were in turmoil. He was so close. He could almost smell the wild stormy scent of her. In moments he'd see her beautiful face, see those eyes fill with hatred and hear his name spat like some foul taste. Maybe she'd fly at him. Scratch and claw at his face. Rake her nails across his flesh and he'd let her just to feel the pain of having her near him the agony of those hands once again on his skin.

"Vanessa." Victor called in the direction of the room he'd always associated with her although he'd only ever entered it once.

"Victor, you're home at last." Her voice was as he remembered although it sounded lighter as it had when they'd escaped to the cottage on the moors and the very sound of it pierced his soul blood deep, suffering radiated through him in waves. He stepped back into the shadow of the hall. He wanted to see her as she was, to enjoy her for one selfish moment before he faced her wrath.

And then she was there in front of him. Her hair piled artfully on top of her head, dark tendrils escaping to frame her face softening the sharpness of her cheekbones. She was dressed simply and he observed in those seconds not in her accustomed black. A high necked lace blouse that clung, moulding closely to her delicate figure decorated with a dark blue ribbon that matched the silk skirt she wore. She looked fresh, youthful and akin to hope. She was as beautiful as he remembered but there was something different and it was only when the blue of her eyes turned to Victor and she walked towards him, taking his hand in hers and laying a warm kiss on his cheek did he see what it was. She was happy. She was happy because of Victor.

And then the realisation hit him. The doctor's words, gestures, the comfortable way he was in the house, the way he'd spoken about her it all added up and with a growing horror he looked at her hand. The hand that he'd thought only moment ago would raise to his face to rake and tear to cause him physical pain but that in fact the mere sight of in that second exposed his heart and ripped it out of his chest. On the fourth finger of her hand gleamed a simple golden band and its twin graced the same finger of the doctor's left hand.

He could not help the gasp of breath that tore from his lungs and she turned the joy in her eyes as she laid them on him for the first time in a year turning not as he'd hoped to hatred and venom but a mirror of his own pain.

Victor was oblivious and pulled her towards him.

"Ethan, I know it sounds foolish since you already know each other but much has changed as I am sure you realise. A week past Vanessa Ives made me the happiest man alive. Therefore may I now introduce you to Mrs. Vanessa Frankenstein, my wife."