Thanks to The Smiling Shadow for the help at any time, once again. :)

Chapter Two

The Subject of Women

A month went by, and life was normal as ever. But how could Herbert West classify "normal"? It was a label others used to explain what they didn't understand about people...not like them.

Megan had said he was not "normal", but she didn't understand him. She never would. There was nothing he could do to change her mind about him.

He had never been with a woman, but if that chance ever had come to him - which would be AFTER he spent however many years of his life trying to eradicate death once and for all - he would have the perfect one, one who did not fuss or complain, who respected him for who he was and not what she wanted him to be...he had more high expectations than anyone would ever realize, even Dan and his woman. Both of whom he saw from the end of the hallway as he stuck his head out from the basement; the hallway showed clearly the sight of the happy pair in the living room. She looked soft and playful in the white t-shirt and moonlight blue skirt. Herbert even noted that she was wearing the jewelry set Dan had showed him days before even though Herbert hadn't been the least bit interested: a jaw-dropping, sophisticated set of halo earrings - Dan's explanation from the jewelers a month before - and a three-stone pendant, the sapphires stunning and deep blue, surrounded by luminous diamonds.

If there was ever one thing about women that fascinated Herbert, it was the fact they were made to give life and bring it into the world. When he was in college, there were a few chances he had with Dr. Gruber to deliver a baby from its mother's womb. The old man always told him that life was special, that it should never be taken for granted, but the sad fact was that there were numerous people to abuse it with unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancies. Nature deemed it given to them.

Why? The question always rang through his mind, and he never had the solid answer.

But look at them, his mind also whispered to him. They're...blissful.

Somehow, it made him jealous. Not because they were content and at peace - but how could a woman not understand that death was the enemy and not HE?

A part of him wanted to ask about the topic, to attempt to understand, but it would make him feel ashamed in the end. Behind him, his duty awaited, being more important to dwell on than the future. Closing the door and locking it, Herbert descended back down into the basement, the smell of blood reaching his nostrils as a nice contrast to the Febreeze-scented first floor.

~o~

Arkham, Massachusetts was a place which harbored many urban myths. Among was the story of a device known as the Resonator, which could stimulate the pineal gland and access other dimensions; however, three men had died, and the lone survivor was confined to the Sefton ward and never released to tell the tale. And her parents - mostly her mother, if she were still around - would have called her insane in coming here to begin with, but Lily Cain-Stevens' reasons were for her and Jake to be closer to Dan and Meg.

Being married the first few weeks had been blissful, but there hadn't been much money left for a backup honeymoon, and she had yet to graduate from medical school because of that; she couldn't miss any number of days. She was just like her cousin Dan in that way: the perfect student who wanted to excel and, at the same time, love what she did. Which was exactly the case. However, dead bodies' stench got to her senses bad. It had been drilled into her early on that you had to get used to decaying flesh if you wanted to be a pathologist or medical examiner - coroner in her case.

Her husband, the other Dr. Stevens, was a respected veterinarian in Boston, but a week or so after the wedding, Lily began to feel ill, and it turned out to be more than just corpses' rot. She couldn't tell him, so she'd asked Meg to get her a pregnancy test she had to do herself, and the results were positive. She'd had a mix of emotions: excited because she always wanted a baby and be a better mother than her own ever was, and fearful because of Jake's reaction. He'd said he'd wanted to wait, so he hadn't been exactly happy when she told him. He'd flown into a rage and left her alone in the house. When that happened, Lily went to her father, Aunt Rose and Uncle John for comfort until her husband who had been drinking his ass off at the bar came home, and she'd shunned him. Marital bliss hadn't been perfect, after all.

They still moved to Arkham after she graduated gladly in the beginning of June eventually, and by then, she was barely a month along. Dan and Meg were more than happy for her about the baby, but Jake hadn't changed much. While he was being around her more often and helping her make plans for the baby, them getting settled into their new home near the Miskatonic University Hospital for herself and to work closer with Dan who was still short of two years, Jake didn't seem so keen on being a father so soon.

Marriage was hard. Full of rocky roads and smoother, easier ones, never knowing what lay ahead, but there were plenty of ways to make things interesting. She hoped with the baby's birth that the Jake she loved since the day they met would come back around.

The latest case came in around ten fifteen that day in August, and by that time, Lily was three months pregnant exactly; her bump was now showing if not the out-there bulge. She wore a mauve silk blouse and ivory trousers under her white lab coat, her auburn hair in a secured bun with a couple stray curls on either side of her face; around her neck were the pearls given to her by her father as a wedding gift, snug against her throat but not strangling her. She watched as Dr. Wilbur Graves' idiotic student-assistant came in with the latest gurney and body bag; she sighed and shook her head. Thank God the equally idiotic Graves didn't order it incinerated, unless they'd already checked and found no abnormalities and the decision to burn the body after no relatives came, or certain stages of dismemberment.

She pulled down the sheet covering the head, exposing an elderly woman's face in good condition if not for the various bruises of her balding skull, and a couple stitches and abrasions. Lily hissed. "Ernest, give me the already known details."

He nodded, munching whatever was in his mouth as he handed the clipboard made by Dr. Graves. This much was known, obviously, shown apparent in the dumbass's smooth but otherwise sloppy handwriting: Multiple yellow-purple discolorations and bruises across the skull, two stitched wounds - one towards the front of the left, the other farther back. Victim of apparent fall down the stairs as reported by the husband, Arkham Police Lt. Leslie Chapham.

A loud, sarcastic snort was heard right behind her, and she jumped, spinning around to see Dan's colleague and roommate, Dr. Herbert West. "Fell down the stairs, did she?"

"West," Lily scolded, trying to hold in a laugh. "You should alert your presence once in a while."

He raised an eyebrow, not once cracking a smile even though one corner threatened to give way. "I'd have thought you'd hear me come in, Stevens."

She watched him go around the other side of the gurney to lean over and examine the poor old woman's face, his hands - pale and spidery, but delicate and intentional - not even covered with gloves, so she wondered how the hell he always managed to not get himself or anyone sick without them. He always snapped them on during surgery, but not here. Herbert West was a strange man; Jake met him a few times and already called him a weirdo. Hell, he almost said the same thing Meg had when she first told Lily about him, though she'd said that he simply spooked her and wasn't someone she ought to hang around with.

Dan, on the other hand, was a balance. He talked about how he was one of the typical average "geniuses", just asocial and keeping to himself, which explained how West never seemed to smile at anyone or get any from them, not even from Lily no matter how often she tried being nice to him. It had been that way when she first came to Arkham; he only cracked a half-smile once which didn't last long. She wondered why he was like that, but why did she care? She was married, except it wasn't like she was trying to get into West's pants if she loved Jake.

Except lately, it seemed like she and Jake were on the rocks since the discovery of her pregnancy. They'd been distant more and more as hard as she tried making it work for them.

Lily tried to break her head free from these thoughts by engaging in conversation about Elizabeth Chapham's body. "Multiple bruises to the head..."

"Not the product of a fall down a flight of stairs." West snorted and shook his head, letting the corpse's head lay back on the metal surface. "No, if anyone bothered looking closer, they would see that ruptured blood vessels and damage to the cerebral hemisphere would be more than just a fracture of that part of the skull." He looked her square in the eyes, and it dawned on her.

"Are you saying her husband killed her?"

"Precisely. This wasn't a staircase; this was done by a blunt instrument. Multiple times to the head. A single final blow did the work permanently."

She stared at the peaceful face of the woman old enough to be her grandmother with fire in her heart and shooting to her face. She remembered cases of battered wives, the numbers killed in few and most of them under their thirty-something years, but to know an elderly wife was murdered by her husband like this? She must not have had the money or the will to leave him and start over, or at least testify against him.

Or maybe if she did testify, then she would have lost and still gotten in more trouble than before.

Or...maybe she did testify and lost her case at one point or two, given her age.

Lily clenched her fists and turned away from Dr. West to mull her thoughts over.

~o~

Herbert's thoughts were on the dead woman on the table and only her, but with Daniel's cousin, Dr. Lily Stevens, in the coroner's room with him, he was getting irritated by her presence. He was always this way with every woman around him, not just Megan, but with Stevens, she didn't wholly have that effect on him the way those other women did. Like his creation - locked safely at the house for the last three months - did. She was a splendid masterpiece from various women who undeservingly lost their lives but were put to good use, and Daniel had been amazed by her upon completion. Megan, however, knew nothing about her as of now. Not that Herbert wanted her to see anyway.

However, this one right here...Herbert tightened his lips as he regarded the yellow-outlined, hideous purple marks on the old lady's scalp. How dare she get this treatment from her husband, whom he remembered from the investigation of the massacre in the morgue and meeting only one time but already knew he was a shady fellow who regarded him distastefully and knew there was more than what he and Dan were letting on.

Elizabeth Chapham did not deserve this, so perhaps he could test his serum on her and bring her back. The re-agent enhanced by the iguana fluids worked less violently on his "girl" in the basement of his and Dan's house, but she wasn't an intelligent thing. At least she wasn't fussy and loud-mouthed like Meg. "If you want to, Lily," he offered to the red-haired woman whose back still faced him, "why don't you go grab something while I take care of this for you?"

She turned her attention back to him, frowning slightly. "I haven't even begun my full report..."

"And you will after relieving yourself," Herbert interjected. "This knowledge is getting onto you, so please."

Lily scoffed and walked around the table, going past him. When she did, he caught a whiff of some unknown flowers mingled with amber and musk. He almost retched; bodily aromas turned him off indefinitely, but this one...he refused to go there and instead watched as she exited the room, the door slamming shut. He suspected her shifts from sunny and happy to gloomy were not simply from the dead she was around and issuing their certificates and investigating their circumstances, causes of death and maintaining the records; it had to be the trouble with the husband. Dan would always break it to him and Megan how Lily would be in her moods and complaining of how she and Jake weren't speaking or being close like they used to be. They were high school sweethearts, but now they were drifting apart.

Herbert also believed this had to do with her pregnancy; she was three months along, one of the things that he had intended to make possible of the female in the basement. Her husband had been less than pleased, and it angered Herbert. He reminded him of his own father, but at least he didn't beat his wife up that he knew of. Jake Stevens ignored her despite agreeing to be more supportive, and this was against what Herbert must believe in between a man and a woman.

He was getting too distracted. Mrs. Chapham wasn't getting any fresher, and she'd been dead for hours now. Who knew when Lily would be returning; he didn't have much time, so he hastily lifted the woman's head up and stuck the needle at the tender space where the top of the neck met the end of the skull.

Herbert waited, keeping track of the time as he debated internally. He couldn't publish his findings months ago because they would never understand his methods. Besides that, they would steal the work.

He counted to two minutes exactly, and Lily still hadn't come back, thank God. He sighed in relief; at the same time, the old lady's eyes snapped open to the ceiling, and an inhuman shriek tore from her mouth, exposing rotten teeth, and her arms threw up into the air with a sudden bolt; she sat right up, spinning back around, given that she'd seen him upon her return to life.

However, instead of the calm he'd witnessed in his girl yet to be named, Elizabeth Chapham got off the table and made way for him. Panicking in spite of himself, Herbert turned and made way for the medical instruments yet to be cleaned on the counter, hastily trying to search for a weapon to defend himself...

...at the same time as the doors opened, and Lily walked in with her coffee cup in hand. She stopped right there and screamed upon seeing him and the re-animated corpse that had been dead on the table moments ago. And Mrs. Chapham, upon hearing the scream, whipped her head around and laid her animalistic eyes on three-month-pregnant Lily, unprotected and in danger because of him. She cackled wildly and began to charge for her.

"What the hell is going on in here?!"

Oh, saved by the bells! There stood the security guard Mace, and upon seeing him, Chapham shrank back and cowered from him like Dean Halsey had, only it had been his own daughter then. "Dr. West, Dr. Stevens, what's going on here? Who's that?"

"M-Mace," Lily stammered, getting herself together and moving to stand beside Herbert, "I d-d-don't know what happened. She just..." She trailed off, unsure of what to say, turning and grabbing hold of Herbert's shirt and burying herself into his neck. Her coffee had spilled onto the floor in midst of her panic.

"That was one of our patients I was caring for, and she just burst on in and attacked us. I really don't know what happened, sir, but..." Herbert allowed his mask to be as innocent as possible. If Daniel found out - which he would eventually - he would release his anger on Herbert for getting his pregnant and married cousin into all of this. He would also break it to Meg, who was so damn good at voicing her sides.

The guard looked at the battered but otherwise clearly crazy old hag before announcing he was calling more security and taking her to the Sefton ward. Herbert held his breath for a moment as he watched the black man leave to call for backup. While he did, Lily loosened her hold on him and looked up at him with wide, red and glassy eyes full of bewilderment, horror, and fury.

"What did you do to her, West?"

~o~

Dan was beyond furious; how could Herbert do something so stupid as bring a dead woman back to life so recklessly when Lily was around?! "What the hell were you thinking, West? I happened to walk in on Mace calling for more security backup to take in Elizabeth Chapham to the Sefton Psychiatric Ward, and there happened to be one thing I could piece together!"

"It was never my intention to bring your cousin into this!" Herbert yelled, standing before him in the middle of the living room, his hands balled into fists at his sides. "She just walked in at the wrong time!"

"The wrong time which you picked to bring back a battered wife from the dead which happened to be what my cousin was in charge of filing the autopsy report for! We were in the middle of an investigation overseen by none other than Elizabeth Chapham's husband! Seriously, Herbert, now he'll see that something is on us now!"

Herbert growled and stalked up to him, sticking his face up into Dan's so their equally blazing eyes met match. "The case is closed to them, Daniel. They have no proof that we had anything to do with it, remember? It was all pointed to Dr. Hill as you know it really was."

Dan groaned and threw his hands into the air in frustration. "You know, Meg was right about you. If you hadn't come here, both her father and Rufus would still be here. We'd still have our old life."

Herbert felt his jaw drop, but he eventually pulled it closed. That wasn't fair, but what could he say? It wasn't like Halsey was his fault, and that infernal beast Rufus was a nuisance.

"She was also right that this is vile and abnormal." That construction of various women's body parts - most of them women he failed to save in the hospital, including one who looked so much like Meg, being a pancreatic cancer patient named Gloria, whose head was used - was actually an amazing result, nothing like the whole bodies who reacted violently, but she hardly had the intelligence of a real human being, and she was kept hidden from the world because both he and Herbert knew society would never understand. It would be a matter of time before she got out and got into trouble.

And if Meg knew what they'd done, she'd never forgive him for real this time.

And as for Lily, she was going to find out sooner or later, and he'd lose both important women in his life. He needed to get away from this, like he should have done a long time ago.

"I'm getting out of here," he announced, not bothering on waiting for Herbert's answer and knowing there would not be one. "I'm going to be with Meg for awhile. You'll be fine without me tonight."

Reference to "From Beyond" and "Bride" in this one. :) Read and review.