Camilla would have just as soon left to return to Schloss Frankenstein at once, but she was outvoted by Muveil and Sara both, who insisted that she needed at least some measure of sleep, however small, if she was to function with any effectiveness as scientist or as investigator. Sara even offered her own bed for her guest's comfort, but Camilla had no desire to put her to the trouble. Instead, she curled up on the same parlor sofa as Muveil had earlier and the next thing she knew she was blinking her eyes awake, roused by the scent of frying sausages and of apples and cinnamon in porridge.
A glance at her watch told her it was just about an hour later, nearly nine, and while she couldn't say she felt refreshed, exactly, she did feel a bit better. The way she'd fallen asleep almost the moment she'd closed her eyes despite the strong tea told her that the others had been right, no matter how much she detested delay when she had her teeth into something.
No one else was in the room, probably because they didn't want to disturb her, so she put on her monocle, got up, and followed the smell of food to the kitchen. There she found Muveil helping Sister Sara set the small dining-table for breakfast.
"I see my timing is perfect. Early enough that the food is hot and late enough that I don't get drafted into helping to cook it."
"Actually, if you could get the coffee, there, that would be a big help," Sara said, nodding to the pot. Submitting to her fate, Camilla filled the cups while Muveil cut slices from a hearty loaf of coarse-grained black bread and Sara dished up the hot foods. It was, therefore, a much more human-feeling Dr. Camilla who at just after ten walked through the crumbling gatehouse onto the front walk of Schloss Frankenstein.
The sky above the mansion's spires was a deep, dark gray, almost black in color. There was enough breeze that the masses of cloud seemed to ripple, flowing together only to separate again, but at ground level the air was thick and heavy, almost wet. Camilla was no meteorologist, but she didn't have to be one to recognize that a storm was in the offing; the only question was if it would be the kind to spend its fury in half an hour or so and be swept onward, or if it would be one of those lingering tempests that lashed a region for hours before retreating at the last.
Muveil's knock was answered again by the mustachioed servant; Andrews's gloomy look brightened at the sight of them.
"Dr. Alucard and Agent Folin Lou, do come in. I presume that you wish to speak with Dr. Davenant?"
"Eventually, yes, but in point of fact I was hoping that I could talk with Miss Laura. Is she able to see me?" Camilla asked.
"I will have to ask. Come in, and I'll make inquiries. May I offer you any refreshment?"
"No, thank you. We just had breakfast," Muveil said, but Camilla amended that.
"Actually, if you could bring Muveil a cup of chocolate if she has to wait for me while I speak with Miss Laura, I think she'd appreciate it."
Muveil's face didn't quite light up like a child's when given a favorite treat, but it was close enough for doctor and servant alike to share a grin.
Andrews brought them to the same parlor where they'd met the Davenants the day before. It was only a couple of minutes after he left them that the door opened to reveal a sturdily built woman of about fifty, with a round, apple-cheeked face, wearing a white mobcap and a plain gray dress.
"Dr. Alucard?" she asked.
"I am," Camilla said. "You're Marjorie, then?"
"Indeed I am. Miss Laura's maid and nurse. She's feeling poorly this morning, but she says that she wants to speak with you all the same, if you'll forgive her for receiving you in her bedroom. But then I suppose that's not going to put you off, you being a proper doctor and all."
"Not in the slightest," Camilla said, even though as a researcher she wasn't in the habit of making house calls on sick patients.
"Very well, then, follow me."
Marjorie took up a candle-lamp and led Camilla through the winding halls of the schloss, through the antique central section and into the western, newest part of the building. They went up a broad staircase to a long hall lined with paneled doors, the second one on the left of which Marjorie opened.
"Here's Dr. Alucard, dearie," she said, then stepped over to a large bay window and opened the curtains to let in more light. To Camilla she said, "Just ring if you need anything, Doctor, and mind you don't tire her out, now."
"Thank you, Marjorie," Laura said, her voice sounding weaker than it had on the previous day and somehow hollow. The maid left, closing the door behind her.
"You have a devoted defender, Miss Davenant."
"Marjorie was my nurse when I was a little girl. I don't know what I would do without her; she didn't hesitate a moment when Victor said we were to travel all the way here, even though I doubt she'd ever traveled further from London than Surrey in her life. And do please just call me Laura, Doctor."
"Thank you; I'd probably have accidentally called you that anyway just out of habit—I just did downstairs—so I'm glad to have permission."
She went over to the vanity table on the far side of the room and brought the chair over next to the bed, where Laura was half-sitting up, her back and head supported by a pile of pillows. Her complexion was more pallid than ever, though that was not helped any by the steel-quality of the light.
"I'll get right to the point," Camilla said. "How much has your brother told you about last night?"
"Nearly everything, I hope. He said that you caught him and Andrews while they were harvesting Blue Blood, and that you and Agent Folin Lou assisted them—in truth, saved them—in defeating a particularly strong fiend. Being exposed, he decided to 'come clean,' as it were, and make a clean breast of it. He showed you his laboratory, told you of our family history, and explained that we had come here in the hope of using our great-grandfather's research to possibly find a cure for me. He also told me that he'd given you both his own research records to review as well as much of the documentation he'd found here, in an attempt to prove his case."
"That's everything that I could think of," Camilla agreed. She folded her hands across her knee. "I take it, then, that you're fully in his confidence and have been since the start of all this?"
"Oh yes, certainly. If you mean, did Victor bring me here to Vaseria without letting me know what he intended, then I can assure you that it was nothing of the sort. He showed me our great-grandfather's diary and we decided together to try to see what might be done here."
"That helps make things easier."
"Did you think he was keeping things from me?"
Camilla shrugged.
"I couldn't be sure one way or the other. He'd certainly been keeping information from the villagers—not without good reason, I admit—and he wasn't particularly forthcoming with us until after we'd caught him at his experiments and he decided he was better served to tell us the truth. He might, after all, have held back information from you because he was afraid you'd think him a lunatic, or just to avoid giving you false hope. There are any number of people, too, who'd keep things back from a loved one 'for their own good.'"
"Well, so far as Victor and I are concerned, it was nothing of the sort. This was entirely a joint venture between us. In mind, at least," she amended, holding up her arms. They were thin and frail, wasted away by her disease. "I can't be of much help to him in any tangible fashion."
"A joint venture that involved lying to the Curia about your true intentions."
"We didn't know you," Laura pointed out with cool pragmatism. "It was safer to keep our own counsel until we knew if the two of you were ready to crush out any hint of the 'mad doctor' of legend, no matter how well-intentioned."
Camilla decided that she could hardly deny the point.
"I see. Well, that's reasonable enough. If Dr. Victor was cobbling together human remains to bring a monster to life the way your great-grandfather did I suspect that my opinion of the whole matter might be a bit different."
"And it's precisely that which everyone assumes is happening, just from the fact that Victor is setting up a scientific laboratory here in Dr. Frankenstein's former home. God knows what the people would do if they knew of our family connection. Did you know that the police have been here on four separate occasions?"
She sounded as if she was mortally offended at the entire concept.
"You're forgetting the grave robberies," Camilla pointed out.
"Which are none of Victor's doing!"
"I believe you. As I told Muveil and Sister Sara earlier this morning, his experimental records give every indication of his innocence. They're too complete, and the story told in them too true—full of false paths and variable progress instead of a steady, ordered march from one hypothesis to success—to be an artifice. And there's no mention of the use of human tissue in his experiments, nor any place where such a mention might have been deliberately omitted, nor any reason to incorporate such tests in the experiments that he actually is performing. Despite everything, I believe him to be innocent of the crimes we were sent to investigate."
Laura's eyes seemed to light up with a feverish energy.
"You do believe him? You really think that he is innocent?"
"I do."
"Then what do you plan on doing?"
"Keep looking. Just because the obvious suspect is cleared doesn't mean the investigation ends. It may not have been by Victor, but those bodies were still taken. Muveil's not going to give up until she finds the one responsible."
Laura heard the operative word in Camilla's sentence and struck at the heart of it at once.
"You said 'Muveil,' as if you'd be doing something different than Agent Folin Lou."
"That's because I am, or at least I hope to."
"You hope?"
Camilla leaned forward in her chair, intently focused on the younger woman.
"I'm wondering if you truly appreciate what your brother is doing."
"He's trying to adapt Dr. Frankenstein's research to find a cure for me."
Camilla shook her head.
"That's not what I mean. I'm asking if you understand what that entails."
She looked a little confused at that, so Camilla pressed the point.
"Dr. Frankenstein used the Blue Blood of the Nightlord, extracted from slain fiends, as the agent to bring his Creature to life. Dr. Victor is hoping that by adapting his techniques, he can constrain and control the way in which the Blood affects a living human body, to take advantage of its ability to promote regeneration of whatever substance it merges with. To take that Blue Blood and inject into your living body.
"Under normal circumstances, the Blue Blood will affect a human in only two ways. In extraordinarily rare cases, based on factors that we do not fully understand, the human soul will not be completely subsumed by the Blood. These people become what we call a half-demon, possessed of the Night's power while retaining a human soul—but constantly tormented by the urges of the darkness. Sooner or later, almost all of them fall, just as if the transition had taken place at once.
"They become a demon. A creature no longer human at all, body and soul twisted into a creation of the Night. If they are compatible, physically and spiritually, with the Blue Blood, then they can live on like this—not truly immortal like a pureblood demon, but unaging, beyond time. If, more commonly, they are not compatible, they die a horrifically painful death, their body degenerating to nothing as their human origin can neither merge with nor be consumed by the Nightlord's essence."
She held Laura's gaze throughout the recounting, not yielding a single point. The girl didn't flinch away, though, from the description Camilla laid out. Instead, she met the doctor's gaze squarely and though her voice was not strong, neither did it waver as she answered.
"And how is that any different than what this disease is doing to me now?" She held out her arms again, the sleeves of her night-rail slipping up past her elbows from how thin they were. "They call it 'consumption' because that's what it does! Eats the body from the inside out, withering me away to nothing. I pick up novels by authors—usually men," she added with withering contempt, "in which their perfect and pure heroines delicately fade away in their pristine innocence, a gentle drifting into the next world like going to sleep, and I want to wrap my hands around their throats and squeeze, for all their ignorance, so cruel as to be a mockery, only to know that I wouldn't even have the strength to chastise them in these."
Her hands shook, and at close range Camilla could see how the silver lacework band of her cameo ring slipped around a finger that it no longer fit.
"I want to live, Dr. Alucard, can't you understand? Even if it's painful, even if it means succumbing to the Night, if it means another year, another month of life, let alone a chance to be cured, to live on and grow old and only pass away in good time, it would be worth trying. I'm already condemned, Doctor. Who wouldn't want to put off the time their sentence is executed by even a single day?"
Camilla reached out and clasped her left hand around Laura's fingers.
"That's what I was hoping to hear."
The girl's eyebrows rose.
"I don't understand."
"The research that your brother is doing, to say nothing of the Frankenstein source material that he's drawing upon, could be very valuable to the Curia. For the sake of that knowledge and all the good it could do, I want to offer Victor my help—but not against your will."
Her lips parted slightly as she realized what Camilla was saying.
"You…you're willing to…"
"If it was just that he couldn't let go, couldn't come to terms with the chance of losing you, then no, I wouldn't. You could easily have been doing this for his sake, going along with it to keep him from going mad with grief and a sense of helplessness, without any real expectation that would work or even be possible to try. But now, knowing that you're submitting to this of your own will, it becomes an entirely different matter."
"Thank you, Dr. Alucard! Victor's been telling me so much about who you are and your expertise in matters concerning fiends, demons, and the Blue Blood. You can't imagine what this will mean to us!"
"I suppose it's true, that I can't. Understand, though, that the only promise I can make is that I'll try as hard as I can." She smiled at the young woman, a bit wryly. "I may not have your brother's motive of love and care for you, but at least I have the dedicated selfishness of the research specialist given an once-in-a-blue-moon chance to try something utterly new and incredible on a willing human subject, and I think you'll find me almost as driven as he is to find a cure, if not for his reasons."
Laura smiled at that, and a giggle even escaped her lips, which made Camilla happy since she'd been trying to lighten the mood. And in honestly, her heart went out to the young woman. Her own work had been focused on preventing lives from being cut short by fiends, as if the emissaries of the Night were themselves a plague or pestilence, but there was still a great deal of human suffering that had nothing to do with supernatural sources, and Laura's case was a bitter reminder of it.
Camilla rose from her chair.
"In any case, I had better let you rest. Besides, I need to let Muveil and Dr. Victor know the good news. Do you need me to send Marjorie to you, or have her fetch you anything?"
Laura shook her head.
"No, I'm fine." She smiled again. "Honestly, I can say that I'm better, truly, than I have been in weeks."
"Well, then, let's hope that this is a good omen for my future work as your doctor. Goodbye for now, Miss Laura."
"Good day, Dr. Alucard."
Camilla stepped out into the hall, then paused a moment before shutting the door as she considered whether she ought to go back in and ring for Marjorie to show her the way through the maze-like halls of the schloss. She decided not to bother her, though; the two servants doubtless had their hands full keeping the old pile even vaguely livable when they ought to have at least a couple of dozen helpers to fully open the place up, and that with Marjorie having to take care of Laura and Andrews assisting Victor in his laboratory besides.
Not to mention the less generous reason. Dr. Camilla Alucard didn't want to have to ask someone the way out of a house!
Fortunately, she was able to remember the way well enough, though the central section of the building gave her some trouble not because she'd gotten turned around but because the place was so dark. Windows were relatively few on the lower levels anyway, since it had originally been built as a defensible keep, and later wings and additions had ended up blocking what had once been a clear flow of light, leaving some halls and passageways nearly black.
Luckily—or not so much owing to luck as good planning—Camilla had taken to carrying her field equipment with her in her coat's various pockets and loops, and that included a small electric pocket-lamp, which allowed her to navigate a couple of passages that Marjorie had needed her candle for on the way in. It seemed, too, that even less light was coming in from outside. The clouds must have been growing darker, with the promised storm drawing ever nearer. She almost thought that she could hear thunder filtering from outside, a faint and distant rumble. Was the storm starting already?
Then, clarity came as her mind began to recognize patterns. The sound was higher-pitched than thunder, its beats sharper and more staccato. There was a familiarity about it that echoed against her brain, but only a few seconds later all confusion was wiped away, for the sound was steadily getting louder and she recognized it as raised human voices, shouts punctuated by sharp cries.
Camilla hurried the rest of the way, meeting up with Muveil and Victor as they came out from the front parlor. Andrews appeared a moment later, coming up the passage from what she assumed were the kitchens and other servants' quarters.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"We saw them through the front windows. There's a crowd of people, three dozen or so, heading this way. Uniformed gendarmes are out front, but most of the group looks like townspeople."
Camilla let out her breath with a hiss.
"It looks like that staple of the Gothic romance has finally happened," Victor said bitterly. "The mob of villagers come to burn out the mad lord of the manor for his heretical crimes."
"Since the ones responsible for determining what is and isn't heresy are currently in the manor, I think someone's missing a few parts of the cliché," Camilla snapped.
"Oh my stars, what's happening?" Marjorie exclaimed, arriving late from another direction.
"Go up and keep Miss Laura from getting too upset or agitated," Camilla told her. "We'll deal with this."
"Yes, Doctor," she said at once, relieved, Camilla thought, just to have someone speak with confidence. She scuttled off right away.
"Andrews, can you give me your gun?"
"My gun? But why?"
"Because all I have is custom anti-fiend ammunition for mine, and it's both in limited supply and expensive to make." Which was true, but left unsaid the secondary point that Camilla wanted the firearms in the hands of the Curia and not a devoted servant who might be inclined to be…precipitate…when protecting his master on foreign soil.
She accepted the heavy, triple-barreled pistol, then glanced at Muveil.
"Inside or outside?"
"Outside," Muveil said at once. "Putting things on a siege-like basis will affect their thinking and ours both."
"All right, outside it is."
It was Victor, though, who grasped the handle of the door and hauled it open, then marched outside; it was his home and he, they had no doubt, that the mob was there to face. Muveil and Camilla followed, fanning out to his right and left respectively—and by no coincidence, each putting their dominant hand away from his body, providing the freest possible range of movement.
The voices were clearly audible now. Angry cries of "Monster!" and "Come out and face us!" rang out. The gendarmes were in front of the group like a fence, Nadia Liebnitz in the center in full uniform with high, peaked helmet-like cap. The polished brass buttons and gold braid that had shone with light in her office seemed dull and dark beneath the cloud-choked sky. The drawn saber in her hand was equally dull and lifeless, nothing of the silvery mystique of the sword that recalled fantastic and magical legends, only a weapon reduced to its most basic essence alone without symbolism, a tool for killing and no more.
The other gendarmes were armed also, two with sabers drawn, three bearing heavy pistols, and the last, a dark-mustached fellow with hard, cruel lips, carrying a hunting rifle. Behind them, the men and women of the village all had some kind of weapon, ranging from knives and cudgels to farming tools whose points and edges looked none the less intimidating just because they'd been meant to cut and pierce the earth and its crops instead of flesh.
No torches, Camilla thought with black humor, but I see a pitchfork or three.
"There he is!" someone shouted from the mob, catching sight of Victor.
"What have you done with them?" a woman shouted.
"Where are the bodies?"
"Chief Liebnitz, what is the meaning of this?" Victor called as the barely-restrained mob drew within a dozen yards or so.
"Dr. Victor Davenant, you are to be ta—" she started to answer, but was cut off as the mob could no longer be held in check by the forms of law.
"He's coming for us, now!"
"Make him tell what he's done with them!"
"He's carved them up, is what!"
"The Creature all over again!"
"Take him!"
"Hang the grave-robbing bastard!"
The screams hit a fever pitch as the tide of villagers rushed forward, pushing between the gendarmes and rushing ahead with hate-clouded eyes, faces twisted masks of rage and terror. Their makeshift weapons swung upwards as if they themselves were living things, hungry for blood. The uniformed police disappeared into the throng, swallowed up by the mob.
Victor shrank back, as if the emotion surged ahead of the mob like a tangible force.
Then like a peal of thunder, a shot rang out.