This chapter is based on and named after part two of Lovecraft's original story, which I've had a blast doing; plus a key character from the first movie dies. I won't spoil until you see so yourself. ;D Things are getting hotter in Herbert and Megan's now-complicated relationship - not that things aren't hard enough between them.

Chapter Seven

The Plague-Demon

Opening her eyes, Meg found herself looking up at a plain white ceiling, frowning for a second as she didn't recognize where she was – before she tore her eyes away and saw that she was in her room when she recognized her surroundings. But that was not all, because looking down at the warm body spooned up beside her and recognizing that it was not Dan...Herbert.

He was not wearing his glasses, making him look younger and less menacing. His dark hair was all over the place, which she didn't normally see in him, and it was a nice change. And his face...so relaxed without a care in the world. He wasn't at all the intimidating Herbert West she knew by day; in fact, this was a side of him she never saw. So soft and innocent, like a child...and a great lover. She smiled and rested her head back against her pillow, staring up at the ceiling. He had been inexperienced, but he had known what he was doing, and she didn't miss how he hesitated at some points as though not knowing if he should do it or not. He was afraid of messing it all up. But he'd gotten it all right. The first time she lost it to Dan, it hurt, but then it got better. He'd been sweet and gentle with her, but Herbert had started that way before getting rougher with each thrust...crazy, rough, but better...

But then reality hit her with the blunt force of a sledgehammer.

Oh, God...what have I done?

She'd had sex with Herbert West, Re-Animator. The man whom she had blamed for the deaths of Daddy and Dan, and who had disturbed the peace of those who had finished their time on earth, put them in greater pain than before and received their vengeance-filled attention. Her world had been upside down since meeting him, since that night which mostly had been Hill's doing. She lost the man she was supposed to marry and start a family with, hadn't been with anyone else since then...until now. Last night had been far from romantic, but at the same time – "No!" The cry tore from her lips before she thought of it; Meg bolted upright in her bed, the golden covers falling to bare her chest to open air.

I've betrayed Dan.

Her horrified exclamation woke Herbert. "Meg?" he murmured, raising his head and blinking owlishly. She didn't look at him, numbly and unconsciously gathering the covers to hide her modesty purely out of habit. Herbert sat up and looked at her without his large glasses, still blinking. "What is it?"

She shook her head and quickly bolted out of the bed, hurrying for her closet to grab some clothes. "This is wrong. What we did was wrong. I slept with another man who wasn't Dan..."

"Another man, is it?" Meg turned around to see him getting out of the bed and going straight to pull his pants on. He did a marvelous job of hiding that part of him that had entered her and released a hidden wild side of her. "Is that all I am? Just another man?" His eyes were filled with scornful venom and hurt at the same time. He looked more human; at the same time, he was changing into something else since the massacre. Herbert West was slowly breaking out of his shell. Last night was another step toward that. "I'm terribly hurt."

She scoffed as she slipped on her bra and underwear. "You, hurt? I never thought I would ever hear you say that."

He glared at her as he fastened his belt. Now she felt guilty as she tugged on jeans. But Herbert's feelings were already hurt that it was too late to turn back now; or was he really affected? He did a good job masking it with blank anger. If that's the case, she decided, maybe last night meant nothing to him but experimentation with sex. He'll never understand human behavior no matter how hard he tries to.

"I don't label anything for myself," he returned. "But I'll admit, I feel like we've gone too far with...this." He gestured to the bed. "I never thought it would be like this, but I won't deny that..."

Her head snapped back up at him in the midst of finding her favorite green sweater. "Deny what?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. The small light of hope flickered in her. What if I'm wrong? Maybe he does feel something after all? "Did you enjoy...what we did...last night?" Meg felt uncomfortable now just discussing this. Sex was supposed to be between two people who actually had feelings for each other, but not for them! Herbert was analyzing and talking it over as though it was something else.

And here he was, back to ice-princess mode. "Megan, I would rather drop this topic. This can't happen again." He was in the middle of buttoning his shirt up when he said that comment which hurt Meg even more. She was supersensitive, so she felt like crying even though she agreed with him.

You can't stay celibate just because he's gone, the other crude side of her subconscious whispered. You got to try and move forward. Well, HOW then, when the apparent other one she'd just discovered was returning to the way she knew him. "But didn't you like it?"

Herbert's head snapped back upwards to her. "That doesn't matter if I liked it or not –" he started, and she lost it then.

"I DO!" she shouted. Silence filled the air; his face was stoned into pure shock, the first touch of visible emotion. What had gotten into her that she became so desperate now? "I enjoyed it all, and as a matter of fact, I want to do it again sometime." It was too late to take them back now because the sooner they were out, the truer they were. Her body felt like it was something that it wasn't before. "You didn't object last night, so tell me again: yes or no?"

He stared her down as she approached him with the question, stopping as soon as she was in front of him. They stuck their faces inches before each other, no words spoken for moments that felt like an eternity before Herbert's face eventually softened, and her victory was proclaimed when he answered softly.

"Yes."

She smiled then. "Yes," she repeated, tempted to lean her head up and kiss him then like last night but held herself together. "The great Herbert West finally becoming a sex addict?"

He allowed a twitching smirk to show then; the tension was lessening bit by bit. "I wouldn't be too sure of that, Miss Halsey." He turned to leave the room, but Meg wasn't finished with him.

"I think you'll find there's more than just work in life."

Herbert paused at the threshold, turning his head around all the way but keeping his body halfway, smile still in place now taking on a sinister turn. "Megan Halsey, you're an intuitive, willful, stubborn woman. I've been wanting to tell you that for a long time."

~o~

"Mr. West, you and Miss Halsey need to get to the hospital and fast."

"I'm well aware, Doctor, but what has happened?"

"Last night we got three cases of typhoid. I fear the scourge might be starting, but we shouldn't panic. We have to keep it contained if it hasn't spread already."

Arkham had been struck down with the plague. Dr. Harrod had called him and Megan in that morning after Halloween, and Herbert thought what perfect timing after Meg's favorite holiday this would be, getting news that patients were coming in with the symptoms of typhoid which was now beginning to haunt the streets. "And I thought October was the worst month of my life," she told him sarcastically as she helped him steer an ailing old man into the emergency room. He half-agreed with her, but on his mind was the growing pile of ailing people coming into the hospital every day of the month. The typhoid in a single human being would last up to four weeks, but with each day that turned into a week, the sickness progressed into life-threatening. Generally, it consisted of abdominal pain and the naturally high temperature, but the improvement was painfully slow, and life tended to be lost in the event of time.

Herbert and Meg – along with Dr. Harrod – were pressed into the service with great haste, and school was closed so the interns and staff could frantically save the ill and dying and quarantine the plague which was spreading quickly in spite of their best efforts. Herbert could see the pressure getting to Meg despite her growing dedication which he never thought he'd see in her; nevertheless, he admired her courage.

But the strain on his own mental state made him brood morbidly. There were so many bodies but none for his tests. He hadn't researched for a month and a half now, and his temper thread was snapping with each day and week passing by. He knew that he had to sneak a body somehow amidst the chaos which eclipsed the Miskatonic Massacre still under investigation. The morgue had been severely damaged that night and was undergoing repairs, so that was a bad suggestion. Never mind, he tried to tell himself. The time will come.

Meg knew what he was thinking and would scold him that these were people, not test subjects. He'd snap at her that they were better useful than dead, and she would remain silent and glare at him until one of them stalked off to help the other patient. Their relationship was getting heated both physically and conversationally; they hadn't been together in a physical manner since Halloween when the scourge broke, though Herbert's awakening was growing that he found himself thinking of her more and more that way, and while it didn't distract him from his work as he'd originally feared, it still irritated him as much as he equally enjoyed it. "The great Herbert West finally becoming a sex addict?" Wish I could say truer words have never been spoken.

While his sexual energy was on the rise, so was Megan's downward spiral which had begun with the death of Daniel. Losing more patients to the plague made her mental strain no better than before.

Dr. Harrod had been using all her energy to help with the disorganization and not bothering to open her mouth on him and Meg; she was a good doctor, but it would be wrong to say she was heartfelt as Daniel had been. She was among those to give up as soon as life left the patient who needed her the most. However, she failed to hide the fact – namely from Herbert and Megan – that she was on the verge of fainting from fatigue. She's giving in to the plague, Herbert thought, and at that moment, his body flared up with the fire of zeal. Now he saw a likely candidate for his researches which had been delayed for far too long. But that didn't stop Meg from noticing his glance at their superior and scolding him for it. One day she pulled him off to the side and hissed at him under her breath, "You are not going to experiment on her."

He wrenched himself from her hold. "You want to throw away the opportunity of saving a life?" She could only glare at him but say nothing. Let's face it, she's going to give in eventually. And so she did, when finally on the twentieth of December, Dr. Harrod succumbed to the illness in her warm, comfortable bed instead of in the hospital for all to see.

Each of the stages of typhoid lasted a week long, each one getting worse. The vaccinations were taking a long time to come due to incompetent sponsors, and it sickened Herbert. What if he or Meg caught it and were both dead before they wanted it? Dr. Harrod was the perfect example. Her body was taken without delay from her house and to the hospital right away. The morgue was still undergoing reconstruction, but the actual storage of the bodies had been finished, and they had limited time before anyone discovered what they were up to. More security guards were being placed outside the morgue besides Mace.

"It's time, Meg," he whispered to her as he began to steer the gurney that held Harrod's corpse, covered by a teal blue sheet. "The opportunity awaits."

She sucked in a breath as he knew she was dreading returning to the place that changed her life that night. "We'll get caught doing this, you know. Guards are outside, and we'll be in more serious trouble than –"

"Oh, yes, but we'll act fast," he promised. If she's violent, then we're prepared. He nodded to the guards, one of them opening the doors for them and then closing them behind them. All it took was that they would be here for a while; a half-truth, but it was a matter of time. "Get the doors, please."

She muttered something along the lines of "pushy, pushy", opening the steel door, and the chills and stench of death filled his nostrils. The smell didn't bother him, but it bothered Meg because she sucked in her breath and held it in as she closed and locked the door behind her. Herbert remembered Dan making that mistake when Dr. Halsey interfered with their intended first, and look where that got him. The steel door had been knocked down onto the kindly but intolerant old man but restored into place only two or three days afterward.

Meg had the prepared weapon of choice and held it in the pocket of her lab coat; it wasn't a gun, just to avoid the danger of attracting attention because gunshots were uncommon in a hospital. It was a syringe of hydrofluoric acid in case Harrod got aggressive; chances of that were possible. Herbert quickly pulled out the needle already filled with re-agent and eyed it just for the sake of it. "How much does that need?" Meg asked.

"It's twelve CCs," he answered. Just like your father, even if the subject isn't as fresh as he was. He reached and pulled the sheet from the body's face, exposing a peaceful face but holding the lingering shine of perspiration on the forehead, the skin slightly yellowing, but perhaps that was due to the darkness and faint light of the room coming from the crack under the door. Herbert lifted the head up for elevation. "Re-agent being administered. We must act fast each time, Meg, understand? The specimens don't get any fresher every moment of delay."

~o~

She rolled her eyes. He was talking to her like she was a small child learning something new. How Dan put up with him, she had no idea. And calling me stubborn, willful, and intuitive? What an ass. Meg watched as he inserted the needle into the back of the neck, at the top of the spinal cord. She figured it always had to be the brain, so she didn't ask. "How much time does it take?" she asked, readying her watch, shining the miniature flashlight she'd snatched from her pocket.

"Your father took seventeen seconds," he answered. He let Harrod's head drop onto the metal table with a loud bang, checking his watch as it happened. Staring at the face of the woman who had been a sort of motherly figure, Dr. Harrod was widowed and had a son who was married and living in Chicago. If there was any chance she would be nothing like Dan or Daddy... "Five seconds have passed," Herbert announced. It was then that she noticed how giddy with excitement he'd become. It made her sick to her core. Never mind their newly discovered, fabulous desires; if this was how he felt with her father brought back and his undead murderer – and with Hill – then it was too late to turn back now when she realized he was as demented as she'd always thought he was.

Meg began to keep track of time, too, looking down at hers. "Ten now."

Eleven...

Thirteen...

Fifteen...

Seventeen...

There was an anguish-filled howl in the darkness then and there, and once again Meg found herself jumping backward until her back hit the wall, but West remained where he was, though he staggered back as well, in the opposite direction. The figure bolted up on the gurney, resurfacing the memories of the massacre in the morgue. "Nineteen seconds at re-animation! Dr. Harrod, do you remember me?" West yelled, risking attraction from the guards outside.

At the sound of his voice, the being ceased its ghastly dance of flailing about the area, pausing stiffly and slowly turning around to show the face. Meg slapped a hand over her mouth. The woman once known as Dr. Harrod bore features that no living person should ever hold in existence – her face was a sickly yellow from the savage illness that still haunted the streets, but foam and blood fused in a combination that oozed out of her mouth and covered her chin, like Dan, Daddy, and the other dead souls with no rhyme or reason as they had in life.

And the blank but hungry look in her eyes was confirmation that the formula's effects were not at all different than before.

Harrod pounced Herbert, as Dan had done to Meg, snarling viciously and wrapping her hands around his throat. Meg heard herself cry out, feeling the same hopelessness that had run through her when she failed to save Dan, but no, she wouldn't let it overtake her again. She fumbled into her coat pocket for the syringe of the acid taken from a restricted area upstairs, yanking off the cap and rushing over, grabbing the zombie by the hair and yanking back hard, pulling her off Herbert, who lay there choking and gasping for air.

Harrod struggled in Meg's grasp, reaching upwards and trying to claw at her unseen living attacker but not standing a chance when Meg jabbed the needle into the side of her neck and pushed the bottom inward, injecting the yellow reactive substance into her system.

"Get away from her!" Herbert yelled when she rushed to his side and helped him up. They backed against the door to this room, watching as the walking corpse began to react violently to the chemicals in her system. She made horrible choking noises, clawing at herself to try to get the noxious liquids out of her but resulting only in bloody scratches on herself. The foaming blood at the mouth increased in falls, and the skin all over her neck and hands – and face – were beginning to form bubbles, threatening to pop open and splatter gore all over the room.

It didn't happen, so she collapsed to the floor, letting out one last gag before dying a second time.

"Come on, let's get her back on," Herbert said, hurrying over and grabbing the corpse under the arms, and dragging her back in the direction of the gurney she'd been on. Meg watched him do it without a word, her heart thundering so loud she thought it would burst into a million little bits. Herbert stopped what he was doing and growled in irritation. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

"How can you continue like this without any remorse?" she challenged, mustering up her courage to take the feet and help him lift the thing back onto the table. "This time is no different than last. For all I know, it will always be like this."

"Have a little faith, Meg," Herbert said, getting his bag back together for them to leave. "Dr. Hill was a success…technically, as I've told you. He actually spoke words and functioned more reasoningly than the others. He was the freshest body that I had acquired that night, so that was the problem with Harrod here. She'd been a little over just as long as Dean Halsey had been."

"Stop talking about Daddy like that!" she screamed, tugging on her hair in frustration. "Just stop it! He died because of that thing you brought back, and Dr. Harrod died risking her life for the people around her, and you made their suffering worse than it already –"

Abruptly, she stopped speaking. There was a pain in her head that had been faint but grew as her shouting had; her legs began to quiver beneath her. She staggered backward, feeling her breath come in short pants in desperation for oxygen. Herbert dropped his bag onto the floor and rushed to her side. "Megan! Meg, what is it – oh!" he exclaimed when he checked her forehead and felt the sweat that was forming there, that chilled her face to the bone.

He left her briefly to grab his bag and drape it on his shoulder before returning to her and scooping her into his arms. The pain in her head grew and began to spread throughout her body, followed by the weakness that made her feel like she was floating, unable to move or think, unable to acknowledge the strength of the slight frame of Herbert West carrying her like the hero of a literary tale rescuing the damsel in distress through the halls of the university hospital. After that, Meg remembered nothing at all.

~o~

Meg had been struck with the plague!

Herbert did not want her confined among these people in the cramped rooms; he knew he was risking his own life by exposing himself to her just like the woman they tried to bring back together, but Meg's life depended on him. He carried her – she was light in his arms, and he wasn't a muscle man – through the doors of the autopsy room and for the elevator, thanks to another dead body coming in. The intern coming in gaped in shock at the sight of Meg half-passed out in Herbert's arms. "She just fainted from shock," Herbert said coolly. "I'm getting her far away from here." The smell of dead bodies, promising enough.

He was more than thankful that she was allowed to leave upon their return upstairs; the truth would be out eventually, but nobody pressed. Meg came too as soon as they left the dean's office, her eyes blinking and looking around to see that she was being carried like a bride in his arms. "Where are you taking me?" she asked groggily.

"You're going home," he answered.

She squirmed in his arms in protest. "The patients...need us..."

Herbert shook his head. "You come first. They'll be all right in the nick of time. For now, your health comes first." They came to the girls' locker room, and no one else was there. "The patients don't need a dead doctor like they lost Harrod, so don't argue with me." You're too sick to fight me now.

He retrieved Meg's keys and purse himself from her locker room after getting the combination from her. They departed to her car, Meg still in his arms like she was his fair lady in need of rescuing – he hadn't heard or read any of those stories since he was a child, but that was one of them – and Herbert did the honors of fastening her into her seat before getting into the driver's seat. Earlier, the new dean informed him that the vaccines would finally be in by tomorrow morning, and he would receive one for himself to prevent himself from getting it. Then he would give Meg hers.

The smell of perspiration radiated off her skin; by this evening it would soak the whole of her body. She needed cleaning up before he got her into bed. He left the foyer at once, the modernized "crystal ball" chandelier lit over Peruvian mahogany floors and palette wall colors vanishing behind him as he carried the dead dean's daughter up the semi-glossed staircase lined up against the wall beside the doorway into the sitting area. He found himself in an immaculate white hallway with sectioned arched ceilings – and the second door to his right that happened to be opened, showing Meg's room, and brought her in.

He laid her down on the dramatic dark canopy draped with sheer white curtains, looking down at her for a moment. He wondered if he'd be intruding on her privacy, before realizing that she had nothing to hide from him and began to remove the figure-hugging, blue sweater dress so she was left in a simple white bra and low-rise briefs. Herbert had never been one to pay mind to a woman's body before, but Meg…she was leaving this feeling on him that he never cared to acknowledge. He shouldn't…not ever…but it was getting stronger and impossible to ignore…

Herbert finished undressing Meg until all of her beautiful body was there, lying atop the rich, soft glowing golden covers that nearly blended her hair and her form like a camouflage. Wait – beautiful? Yes…beautiful. He gave her one last glance before moving about the room, searching for something for her to sleep in.

Finding something comfortable wasn't a difficult task, but he had not much experience in women's sense of attire in any case, but in the middle drawer of the tall dresser beside the bed, he found assorted sleepwear. He selected a pajama set of white printed all over with blue flowers, and went through the doorway adjacent door on the opposite wall, next to another wardrobe that matched the dark wood of the bed and dresser, that opened to reveal a bathroom beholding vintage elegance touched with Old World influences. He walked over to the tub to get the water going; he had to ensure that it wasn't too hot to make her too dizzy but to make her sleepy enough for him to get her into bed. It was barely five in the evening, and her shift was almost over anyways. He had to return to the hospital soon after he got her settled in.

The tub rested beneath a chandelier overhead – the thing with chandeliers served as a touch of Hollywood glamor, and it surprised him that he was beginning to pay attention to his surroundings – and to his left and its right was a pair of etched-paned glass doors that looked like they were plucked from a classic Hollywood film. Herbert opened one only to find that behind was a closet. He found what looked like Meg's bath and shower products – shampoo and conditioner, body wash, lotion, and a mist for a final spritz. All colored glowing peach, giving away their scent without him actually reading the label.

Herbert brought Meg the same way he had brought her into the house. She had begun to rouse from her half-unconscious state and looked at him and around her with hazy blue eyes, alert and sleepy at the same time. He strode across the Persian-covered, Brazilian walnut wood floor and carefully set her in. She hissed – delight and slight pain at the same time – when her quivering flesh made contact with the welcoming liquid heat.

"Why…?" she asked, voice hoarse and barely audible, leaning her head against the back rim as she watched him ready a lather into his hands, the smell of peach blossoms and juicy mandarin flying upwards like the smoke of the chemicals during his works.

"I can't let you collapse without me by your side. You're no good to me or anyone else dead," Herbert answered as he began to run his fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp in the process. Her lips uttered a quivering moan, and the mere sound of it threatened to bring forth one that was forming in his own throat. The noise itself was melodic, an ear orgasm on its own…

Herbert blinked in surprise at the unexpected turn of phrase. He resumed tending to Meg as he was, helping her lower her head into the water for a rinse and an application of conditioner that moisturized her soft golden locks to an irresistibly silky feel. He could feel the area between his thighs tightening as he drank in the look on Meg's face: her eyes closed and lips parted to release a succession of moans at the amazing feel of someone else washing her hair for her. It made him wonder if Daniel ever did this for her, what he, Herbert, was doing now.

And then she spoke, as though reading his mind. "Dan wanted to do this for me, I wanted it, but I couldn't stay long enough for Daddy to find out."

Ah, lo and behold: a long-lasted romance but under the low radar from Daddy's ruling eyes. He chuckled as he finished rinsing the remnants of conditioner from her hair before retrieving the gel wash, dabbing a small amount of it onto a blue cloth, looking up at her with a silent ask of permission; his hand moved of its own volition over her chest, starting from there. She nodded.

To touch and wash Meg's body at the same time, though his hand was still covered, was thrilling him to his core. He skillfully and tenderly massaged her breasts, cleaning and indulging at the same time, drawing more exquisite moans from her lips while her eyes closed. Moving from the right to the left, hardening the peaks into little pebbles and sending delicious shockwaves throughout her body. She was mewling like a little kitten, like the one he had as a child before – NO!

Herbert felt his face split into a devious smile as all of this was too much for him to resist. Human beings depended too solely on each other for companionship; this was working to his advantage, and there would be no way she would leave him alone after this. She'd threatened to leave just shortly before Dr. Harrod died because the born scientist that he was returned upon spotting the perfect subject. Now she won't. She means too much to just turn back just like that.

She didn't want him to stop; she wanted more. He wanted more because the tight heat in his loins was consuming his body over his mind. Herbert switched his attention from her breasts and trailed lower, over her stomach, but stopped above the water line. He wanted to go straight to that part of her, but he wasn't sure if she wanted him to. Then Megan took that hand he was using to clean her and guided it down so he was touching that. "It's okay," she whispered. "You can do it."

Eventually, the second his nimble fingers found the parting folds and slipped inside, stroking and washing at the same time. She gasped softly and arched her back involuntarily at the jolts of pleasure as he no longer cleansed but teased her. He abandoned the cloth beneath the water, his flesh making contact with hers, wet heat besides the bathwater surrounding his fingers. Herbert picked up his pace, stimulating the sensitive nub of her clitoris under the water, his sleeve rolled up to avoid getting wet. He handled this tender spot of her like he would his precious serum, making her moan louder than before, giving her relief in her state of ailment, and then finally it was over when a higher temperature flooded this part at the same time as her cries reached a higher peak. He grinned when he drew his hand away from her, making her let out a noise of disappointment.

She was getting tired now; if she fell asleep here now, she would end up drowning. That statistic, wherever it came from, Herbert had no idea who came up with it or how it was brought up, but he didn't believe it. A smart man would imagine they would snap out of their reverie when the water clogged their mouth and nose. He helped her out as soon as he finished and dried her off, handing her the bottle of mist when she requested. He smelled an orchard in bloom when she sprayed herself over and allowed him to dress her in the pajamas he got out. She didn't say anything to him, not even thank him, but she did surprise him as soon as he helped her into the bed.

"My mother died of cancer when I was seventeen."

He jerked his head up at her in the middle of pulling the covers up to her chest. "What?" She – she lost her mother? Just as I lost mine?

She blinked slowly, tiredly, and frustrated that she had to repeat herself. "I said my mother died of cancer. I was seventeen years old." She swallowed then. "I wasn't always the...perfect little princess you thought I was."

"I figured," he stated. "Nobody is perfect, and I know that full well." He considered telling her about his now that he knew fully that they weren't much different on a personal level, no more analyzing needed. No, because if she learns of this, she'll continue to pry where she shouldn't. Or push at me until I give in. "Do you want to talk about it?" He could tell she was hesitant, and it was neither yes nor no. She was conflicted. If she didn't want to, he could sympathize.

"She died of lung cancer. She couldn't quit smoking. Daddy never liked it when she did it, but you know how drugs are addictive. She collapsed one day and we took her to the hospital, but it was too late, the doctors said. I remember crying harder than I ever had in my life and couldn't stop even when Daddy took me home and left me alone in my room – this room." She nodded to all corners of the room. "After she died, it was me taking care of Daddy, doing the cooking and cleaning and such, but I was only seventeen years old even though I could handle it. I felt like I was a replacement for Mama, and not only that, I looked like her, since it adds to it."

She'd opened up to him, him being her doctor and she the patient. Well, it suited her given her current predicament. Was she telling him because she was sick and just needed to tell him for the sake of it? Or was it because she might die as her mother did? If that was the case, then he wasn't going to let her because the vaccinations were coming in soon, and she wasn't that far into her illness.

Another thought struck him: or maybe she's telling me because she thinks I understand her more than she thinks. Herbert couldn't disagree, but that didn't mean he would let her in on his secrets now. "Did you ever want her brought back to life?" he asked.

She shuddered and turned her head away from him. "I did," she said after a brief moment of silence. "But I was barely a legal adult. I asked Daddy why couldn't she be saved; he said that he missed her, too, but God saw fit to take a person as he wished. It's out of our hands." Herbert sneered; damn Puritans, Catholics, and others for their ideal beliefs about an unseen next life which no human man or woman was allowed to know until their time came. "I keep losing everyone I love." She hiccupped following a stifled sob.

He couldn't believe how her words were so near enough to match his own. She lost a mother later than when he'd lost his; they were on the same path to conquer death, but she sought to preserve life as opposed to his study of death. "Meg," he started slowly, placing a hand on hers which had slipped out from under the covers to rest over her abdomen. "We won't have to lose anyone anymore if we continued the work."

"The work." She snorted and turned her glassy-eyed gaze back to him. "Do I have a choice? Did you give Dan a choice?"

"I've said this before and I'll say it again: this is something I can't do solo. I want you by my side as my assistant, finish what Dan died for. And you can't go to the police either because you'll be arrested as an accomplice and withhold information, even be put away in an insane asylum for the rest of your life. You lost people you love as I have; I lost Dr. Gruber and failed to save his life, but I continued because I could not let his legacy be in vain. I came this far, and if I stopped, all the sacrifices Dan had made would have been useless, and he'd have died for nothing. You'd still be alone if you'd turned me in long ago."

"Herbert, no one has been able to stop death in a lifetime. We can't just throw away everything we worked for; Arkham is the only place we're lucky to live normally –" She paused to cough and slapped her hand over her mouth. Herbert shook his head and left her side for the bathroom sink, retrieving the clear glass on the sink and filling it with cold water, returning to her side and handing it to her.

"Normal is false. We can always leave here and go somewhere else, someplace where I can continue in secrecy without anyone finding out. But that would mean leaving the states. What good is this country when it is called the land of opportunity and lacks deeper perspective?" Dean Halsey and Carl Hill are the perfect examples: the strict and narrow-minded one and the false genius.

Meg still clung to the resistant fire he saw since day one; it pleased him but also annoyed him. She wouldn't always agree with him, but at least she was more useful than he originally thought, and proving to be excellent company. Better than no one at all. He took in the sight of the dark circles under her eyes, her soft golden hair getting longer that it nearly touched her shoulders, but her skin was getting paler enough to match his. She was changing not only mentally but physically. From her father to Hill, to Daniel, and to the plague – but overall beginning with her mother – Megan Halsey was slowly becoming something she had never thought she would.

"I promise, I believe we'll make progress somewhere better than here. I will look after you if only you will do the same for me."

NOW we're getting into the plot of "Bride"! I should go ahead and inform you that a year has gone by since the massacre instead of eight months, and we all know Meg gets no better than she is now. And Herbert's feelings for her delve much deeper into that time period. We all know the "road to recovery" is never an easy ride when you have Herbert West in your life.