A/N: As should quickly become apparent, the version of the Frankenstein legend that I use for the background of this story ranges about one part from the original Shelley novel, one part from the Universal series (as the first name of Frankenstein and his having achieved his medical degree will tell), and one part original adaptation for this series and the Nights of Azure setting overall.

Chapters of this story will be posted twice each week, on Tuesday and Saturday, with the finale and the epilogue scheduled to go up, perhaps appropriately, on Halloween.

~X X X~

The great stone watchtower had borne witness to much over the years since its construction. Wars that swept back and forth across the mountains, pushing the border to one side or the other of the great, black forest that filled the valleys and dells close 'round the village of Vaseria like an embracing lover. Bloody crusades in the witch-burning years, when maddened people turned on one another in a panic that they harbored the Nightlord's kin. The brutal predations of the fiends that owned the dark hours, leaving humanity huddled behind walls until dawn, condemning the great bulk of the populace to a World Without Night.

But now, beneath the roiling storm-clouds that filled the sky with their chaotic dance, the tower would not merely stand as a silent witness to horrors. Tonight it would host them.

"The eye should pass us by in another five minutes, Dr. Frankenstein. Then the peak of the storm will be upon us."

Heinrich Frankenstein—Baron Frankenstein now, he thought, since his father's death—licked his lips. There was so much that could go wrong, even now. So many mistakes already made, at such a terrible price. And so much more that remained.

"Why do you hesitate, Frankenstein? You know what will happen if you fail."

This voice was rougher, deeper than his assistant's. It had the clear diction of an educated mind, but through the tones of a beast.

Even now Frankenstein could scarcely bear to look at it. At his Creature. The thing that was supposed to be his Adam, his forebear of a new race that transcended the cruelties of death.

The twisting features, the burning azure eyes that were too bright, shining in the shadows, the towering, misshapen body, hunched and knotted and ill-proportioned, the huge hands that could crush and twist and strangle.

His work. Frankenstein's own creation.

His damnation.

"Raise the sails, Fritz."

"Yes, Doctor."

The rough-coated assistant scrambled to the wall-mounted crank and began to turn it. With loud creaks, the gears turned and began to raise the tall copper poles through their slots in the watchtower ceiling. The man was little more than a bandit—literally, a robber and a thief—but for work like this, who else could he trust?

"I still do not understand the purpose of this electrical apparatus," the Creature growled. "When you made me you needed none of this."

Frankenstein's heart skipped a beat. Does it know? Does it suspect? But he put on a bold face, even twisted his lip into a sneer, his excuse giving him the chance to vent some of his pent-up bile.

"Yes, and we know what happened then, don't we? Electrical agitation of the Blue Blood is paramount! You want her to be perfect, don't you?"

The Creature growled like an animal, a rumbling deep in its throat.

"I have made it plain what will happen to your precious Elizabeth if she is not, Frankenstein. Your lover's fate rests with mine. Betray me and what your brother, your friend, your father suffered will be nothing compared to what she will endure."

"Then be quiet and let me work." A shudder ran through him. So many dead. William, Justine, Clerval, Father… Oh, he believed his Creature, his demon. He would not be here now if he did not.

The lightning-rods reached their full extension when their bases clunked into place. Fritz latched the crank, then pulled the first of a row of knife-switches next to it, releasing the six-branched sails to fold out. He then pulled the second switch, to unlock the pole-tops from their posts. Frankenstein could imagine it, the sails catching the raging storm-wind, being carried up into the sky like Franklin's kite, the cable spooling out from within the poles.

"The kites are aloft, Dr. Frankenstein," Fritz cried, peering out one of the narrow windows and craning his head to look up.

Now it was his turn.

The silver needles had already been pushed into the recumbent figure's blood-vessels. Swiftly, Frankenstein turned the stop-catches on the silver vessels, releasing the azure fluid within to flow down, down, into the female form. He turned to the pumping device, turning the handle to release its spring to set the bellows going, setting the Blue Blood to circulate by force through his creation.

It was such a delicate process. The Blood could not be stored through normal means, not like ordinary chemical reagents. It could infect and consume inanimate objects as well as living tissue, after all, and he did not mean to create a mere fiend. He'd had to carefully construct the body, then prepare it with the proper material combinations, so that it was ready to accept the Blood, then finish the process with the electrical activation.

She was so delicate, this female form that he'd built, so perfect-seeming. His Creature had gone so wrong in multiple ways, but Frankenstein believed he had conquered them. Looking upon her, hearing the pulse of the machines, the crash of the thunder outside, his circumstances fell away. His terror for Elizabeth, his fear for his personal safety, even the looming presence of the Creature faded into the recesses of his mind, leaving nothing but his joy at creation, of exercising his mind and unlocking the world's secrets.

This. This would be the proof of everything he'd done, everything he'd dreamed those months ago in Ingolstadt, when he'd been as good as a different man entirely.

"Now!" he barked, pointing to Fritz. The man grabbed for the third knife-switch and pulled it down, causing connections to lock into place. A glass globe mounted at the end of a copper rod descended, wires snaking towards it.

Lightning flashed brilliantly; even through the watchtower's narrow windows, built thin to restrict an enemy's field of fire, it painted the laboratory in stark, brilliant white, drowning utterly all the lamps. The Creature shrank away, instinctively fearing the light like the demon it was. The thunder followed even before the light could die from Frankenstein's eyes, and the glass globe burst alight, blue-white energy crackling over its surface, then arcing to the body below, to the metal points mounted on the back of each fluid connection. The tower seemed to shake with the fury of the storm, and Frankenstein's heart beat like a triphammer.

Did it work?

Nothing.

Seconds dragged by like hours. The storm beat upon the tower's stone face, as if mocking the man who would be God.

But then—!

Fingers twitched.

Feet flexed at the ankles.

Lips parted to draw breath.

Eyelids fluttered.

"Alive!" he exulted. "She's alive!"

Even as he caroled his triumph to the heavens above, he gestured sharply to Fritz, who pushed the third switch back up to cut the connections and raise the glass sphere on its arm lest a second charge put things wrong.

Frankenstein extended a hand, open, palm up, towards the table. She raised her head, looked him full in the face with eyes wide and confused, threads of azure pulsing in her irises. The Blue Blood, but shaped to his will, his purpose, making not a fiend or demon but something else. Her hand fluttered like a bird's wing as she extended it to him, placed it in his. He drew her upright, her movements smooth and graceful as first she sat, then swung her legs over the edge of the table, then finally came to her feet on the stone-flagged floor.

The Creature burst forward then, shouldering Frankenstein aside, and more than for any of the atrocities it had committed it was for shattering that one perfect moment of triumph that he wished it forever to the Pit.

"Mine!" it crowed. "My mate! My wife! Mine!"

Her eyes fixed on the Creature's face. Perhaps it was the twisted, scarred flesh, but Frankenstein thought not, that if the cruel possessiveness, the harsh avidity in its voice were at all reflected in its visage then it was that that made only one response make sense.

She shrieked, the first sound from her new-made throat a wail of pure terror. The lightning roared again, and Frankenstein could see on the Creature's profile, frozen forever into his memory, that moment of realization when it discovered that even she, made like it, made for it, looked at it and saw nothing but a monster to hurl away. The whole world and even beyond had rejected it, denied it a place in the day or even the Night. He knew then that his creation had a soul, for that anguish could have come only from being pierced to the very depths of it.

Then, one consuming emotion birthed another, and as it so often was, what possessed the Creature was rage.

"You would reject me, too!" it roared, and backhanded her across the chest with one long, supernaturally powerful arm. She was flung off her feet, crashing over a workbench and shattering flasks and beakers while needles tore free from her flesh. Frankenstein had no time to wonder how badly she had been hurt, or if she was as resistant to damage as his first creation, for the Creature at once turned on him.

"And you!" it raged. "You are the one who has done this! Made me hated and reviled even by my own flesh. Oh, yes, Frankenstein!" One massive hand fisted in the stained white cloth of the doctor's surgical jacket. "Do you think I cannot see? You have made her flawless, perfect, a woman in Eve's image, and in so doing have proven yourself guilty of the wrongs you inflicted upon me!"

One-handed, it lifted him, then thrust him forward, hurling him with a massive shove into one of the tables. Pain burst across Frankenstein's back as he struck the edge; the furniture gave way under his weight and the force of the throw. Metal crashed and shrieked as the bellows-pump was destroyed by the fall.

"For all your sins," the Creature growled, "you finished your work. You made her as I commanded, if even in doing so you served only to redouble my pain. For that, I will grant you mercy."

It stood over the stunned man, backlit by a flare of lightning, painted all in shadow but for the hate-filled azure eyes.

He should have screamed, fought, moved, but he was dazed by the impact. Helpless as it reached down to him and fastened his hands around his neck.

"I will kill you here and now, so that you need never see what I will do to your Elizabeth!"

There was no triumph in its voice, no glory in the culmination of the monster's revenge. The Creature knew there was nothing for it, no gains to be made. It would kill, then kill again, wring what it could from sharing its pain with its master and his beloved, and then there would be no more in a world that would have none of it.

Perhaps that was why its hands tightened slowly, so slowly, because it knew tat when this would be done there would only be the endless, empty gray. Its fingers were like a coil of iron bars tightening like a vise, crushing the muscles of Frankenstein's neck implacably against his windpipe, squeezing it shut so only a thread of air could pass through.

At that moment, he pitied the thing as much as he despised it. It was he, Frankenstein, who had shaped the Creature by his mistakes into a thing of evil that could beckon only hate. Perhaps in the end its bride would only have been the same. And who was to blame, truly? The flawed creation? Or the man who would be God and had proven himself to be very much not.

Then Fritz hurled the spear into its back.

It was the head of an old whaling harpoon without the wooden shaft, four feet of solid steel. Of course, such a weapon could never cause permanent harm to a creature born of the Blue Blood, but like how in its original use the harpoon had been fixed to a line to catch its quarry, this one was mounted to a cable of braided copper wire, and its flukes kept it firmly anchored in the Creature's flesh.

Roaring in pain and fury, the Creature dropped Frankenstein, then flailed around behind it for the source of the injury, even as its gaze ripped through the room in search of its assailant. Its hand closed on the shaft, began to pull, then paused when it felt the tug of the flukes in its flesh. Its mind recognized the situation, then the nature of the wound and its own body, and its muscles bunched, ready to ignore the pain and tear the weapon free.

But it was too late, for that moment gave Fritz the chance to throw the fourth switch.

The Creature had been right. There had been no need for the full power of the storm to animate its bride. The excess power had been diverted to batteries—and now exploded through the monster. Its back arched, its limbs were outthrust, and its face was frozen into a rictus of pain as the lightning crackled along and through its body, sparking in turn to ground.

Then, the current died, exhausted, and the Creature toppled, its body dropping like a felled oak. It hit the stone floor with a dull, echoing thud, like the tissues of its body were made differently than those of other men.

Groaning, Frankenstein tried to rise. His legs didn't want to work right; he clawed at the edge of the table where the bride had lain for support. Fritz came to his side and helped to pull him upright.

"Come on, Dr. Frankenstein. Let's get you out of here so you can find your Elizabeth."

Fritz tugged at Frankenstein's arm, but the doctor shook his head.

"No. We have to finish this."

He stared at his fallen creation. He'd failed it as a scientist, failed to treat his work with responsibility and unleashed a fiend on the world. He would fix that now. There would be no more running.

Fritz stared at him, wide-eyed, then nodded.

"All right. You're the one paying."

Simple logic. And no doubt the even simpler logic that he would be more than happy to see all this wiped way. Frankenstein staggered towards one side of the room while Fritz went to the other. Each grabbed a wall-mounted lever and turned it to the right.

That was all.

Frankenstein lurched towards the exit. The hot pain in his back told him he was hurt, right enough, and forcing more exertions could be aggravating the injury with every step. In the worst case, it meant damage to the spine.

The notion did not appall him as much as it once would have. It was at least justice, that punishment should fall on his head this time and not on those around him.

Then Fritz was there again, putting Frankenstein's arm over his shoulders, supporting the doctor with his own arm around Frankenstein's waist. Out the door, then, and down the curving stairs through the watchtower's interior.

Lying on the floor of the laboratory, the Creature twitched.

The lightning had hurt it badly and left it stunned for a time. But it was not enough to kill the monster. And it knew, too, that Frankenstein had to have planned it, set up the equipment so as to strike him down. But not a fatal blow, no. It was too well-made for that! And it found, as it pushed itself upright, that this fresh act of betrayal from its creator had sparked fresh rage, a redoubled need for vengeance. It would chase down its maker and end this, even damaged as it was. Whatever puny defenses Frankenstein might have left could never stop it.

The Creature was just closing its hand around the harpoon shaft to pull it free when the timing device the two men had set in motion reached its allotted span. A hammer fell, flints scraped steel, throwing off showers of sparks, and the twelve kegs of powder beneath the laboratory floor detonated in a raging blast that blew the top clean off the watchtower.

~X X X~

Eighty-Five Years Later

The dawnlight was pale and brought no warmth. Curls of vapor rose from the sexton's lips, painted steel-gray by the light. Cold comfort indeed, but enough to signal the passing of night. The only ghosts haunting the cemetery beyond the lych-gate and yew hedge were those of memory; any fiends had slunk away to await the inevitable sundown, and memory couldn't hurt a man. Hans Toller knew it well; he'd been sexton twenty years now, after his father and grandfather before him. The dead didn't walk.

Not any more, at least.

Toller pushed open the lych-gate, unconsciously shifting the position of his shovel across his shoulders. He had work to do. The Grünfeld girl had passed on the night before last, and the funeral was this afternoon. Everyone would be happier when the ritual was past and the Sister had pronounced the rites to keep the child's mortal clay safe from any fiend that might try to possess it. Important work.

He went into the churchyard, shut the gate behind him, and headed towards the spot they had marked out the afternoon before. Early begun, early done, like the old saw went.

Then he stopped.

At first, Toller couldn't quite process what he was looking at. Had Sister Sara had someone do his work for him yesterday? The grave yawned open, a deep pit with heaped dirt surrounding it.

Then, of course, he noticed the details. The open grave wasn't in the place Toller had intended to dig. No, the grave had its own marker already, one set a month ago. He'd placed the headstone himself, before proceeding to fill in the earth over the coffin. A coffin that was no longer closed, but rested at the bottom of the pit, open and empty.