Chapter Four

Dim of the Reality Lights

Oh, to hold Meg close to him was all he needed at the moment. To have a whiff of her - and her smelling his cologne on his skin; lively bergamot blended with fresh aromatic tones - and kiss her fervently until it all became too much was just what he needed to pick her up and carry her like a bride to her bedroom...now it made him think of the one thing he'd saved up for and had yet to pick up soon, then pop it as much as it scared him. When her father was still alive, it would have been very dangerous to sneak into her house and make love in her bed out of fear of him hearing the noises with his super-sensitive ears despite his age.

But now they could do this anytime they wanted now that she was the house's sole owner.

Dan set her down so she stood and that they were before each other. She wore the sexiest piece he had ever seen: a blue chemise to match her eyes, popping with green lace down the neckline and over both fronts of the breast cups. It made the heat in his pants rise and cause his member to twitch. God damn, he wanted her now. Dan hurriedly tore off his favorite denim jacket while watching as she pulled off the slip to show her beautiful body that he remembered complementing, in return getting a teasing remark: "Says someone who spends his time with cadavers." Oh, how true was that, thanks to a certain spectacled little man at his own house.

Meg had made it loud and clear that she preferred it slow and gentle, and it hurt to slow down the haste, but it made it even better. She grabbed his shirt collar and pulled him down, kissing him hungrily, her tongue snaking out to taste his lips and then stick into his mouth, clashing with his tongue, moaning so sweetly that he joined in with her and pulled her close, both hands reaching down to cup both sides of her plump little ass, bringing her higher up. "Mmmm, Dan..." she purred against his mouth. "Bed...now..."

He grinned down at her and let her tear open his shirt without popping any buttons off and exposing his chest to the AC's conditioning. "What do you want me to do?" he asked huskily, making her laugh.

"Make love to me."

He hauled her up into his arms, her legs wrapping around his waist, and they tumbled onto the bed together, him fishing himself out from his jeans and pushing them down to show his obvious erection to her. Meg giggled happily; he rolled his eyes. Sometimes, he wished she didn't laugh every time she saw the little guy; it was mildly insulting to his masculinity. "But he's just so cute!" she would say and reach down to scrape her forefingernail over the moist head, sending a wave of shuddering pleasure over his body before he couldn't take it anymore and reached to pull her panties down, showing her bushy blonde mound hiding the obvious wet heat ready to receive him. She reached up and grabbed both sides of his face, pulling him down to kiss him again and then cry out in sheer pleasure when he finally entered her and started to do the in and out rhythm slowly and gently to build it up, then picked up pace for them both, making her scream his name so loudly he thought she'd break the windows.

Dan threw his head back by the end and groaned like a dying man under the sun when his coil unraveled, and his release filled her up to flow and mate with the eggs. She followed not long after, her cream covering him that he didn't want to leave her sweet body so soon. Never had it been that way, just them lying in bed together and kissing passionately, her finally asking him to stay since they no longer had anyone to tell them what to do.

And besides, West wouldn't need him for awhile anyways. Not after what Dan said to him earlier, which he now regretted but didn't want to think about right now.

~o~

For someone so focused on his work and nothing else, West knew better about male and female partners than she thought he would. But had he ever actually been with a woman? She didn't think so, but it never hurt to ask. "Have you ever dated?" she asked, moving to sit down in the chair to his opposite side.

His soft green gaze had followed her the whole time; he never seemed to want to take his eyes off of her, and it partly made her uneasy. However, the way he looked at her was so...intense. She tore her eyes away and chewed her lower lip. No, she wouldn't go there. Jake may have cheated on her, but they were still married, and there was a part of her that still loved him despite it.

But he still hurt her, her other half reminded her. He wasn't happy with the announcement of her pregnancy which they thought they would wait on, and they hadn't exactly been...honest with each other since then. What had she been thinking then, rushing into marriage so soon, shortly before leaving school?

And Herbert West, who had creeped her out before with his mysterious aura and cold demeanor - and the thing with the body in the autopsy room just today - he seemed to understand her despite -

"There was never a...partner for me."

Lily wasn't surprised with the reply, but at the same time, she was. "No...woman?"

"Not once. Love and all things related distract from the important matter at hand, even breaks you in the end. It's always taken for granted. Like your husband did to you," he stated manifestly, getting up then and leaving her to head down the first hallway, not the one that led to the bedrooms lining the corridor. Lily watched him go but said nothing.

She felt like she was crippled from the spine down. Suddenly, the room was getting hot, and she reached down to unbutton her cardigan. The sooner she was at the bottom did she find herself staring at her ring duo. The first when Jake proposed to her last winter in front of the whole family, and the second on that day in April, just four months after. They'd known each other since high school, but now it was like they were strangers. Was it too late to fix it?

Lily pondered removing them both to release herself from the bondage of pain, but she would end up regretting it so soon, so she left them on and stood to head in the direction Herbert went. She found him in the kitchen, making himself a sandwich. Her stomach growled. Jake would still be at home waiting for dinner; if she didn't show, he'd pop himself a sandwich once he gave up.

She was about to head for the counter and cupboards when Herbert spoke to her. "Here, have mine." She turned around to see him offering his plate to her. She blinked again. Was he really offering her his? She took it and nodded thanks, watching as he went on to make another.

Taking advantage of their alone time before Dan came home who knew when, she asked before taking a bite, "So, what did you do to the body earlier?"

His posture went rigid, and that stoic shell was back. "I don't know if I should tell you, Dr. Stevens," he said coolly, back to the professionalism, "or if I should trust you with it. But I do know for a fact that you must tell no one."

Lily scoffed and put her sandwich back on the plate. "You honestly think I would snitch on you just like that?" Unless there was more trouble than let on; the chills were back again, and the baby stirred in her abdomen again.

"What you'll see might prompt you to change your mind," he stated, eyes hard like concrete, drilling into her like that same tool used to screw into the solid ground structure itself. Lily returned the look.

"Try me," she challenged.

He huffed once, then turned and stalked out of the kitchen; she followed him right into his room, which she noticed didn't have much besides a refrigerator at the foot of the twin-sized bed, anatomical posters on the wall, and minimal personal items, not once seeing family photos or frames. Did he have any family? He opened the fridge and showed her the most shocking thing she'd ever seen in her life:

There was a dead ferret on the top shelf, and beneath it was a vial and three syringes filled with some glowing green substance she didn't recognize. "Oh, God, West, what is this?"

He smiled down at her, a sinister expression that prompted her to turn and run out of the house; fear glued her to her place. "What I've been doing all this time. Something that no doctor has been able to succeed at."

Lily managed to pull herself together and plop her rear onto the foot of the bed, her legs wobbling. There was only one thing her terrified brain could think of that doctors tried to do forever. "You want to...cure death."

"Precisely." He pulled out the dead animal by the back of the neck and one of the needles. "And your cousin is my assistant. He wants so badly to stop our patients from dying. Can you imagine what poor Mrs. Chapham endured, and other women like her? Accidents? Murder? Or simply sickness?" His lip curled in disgust. "Do you want to go through life anymore fearing death to come?"

Lily could feel the sweat pouring from her forehead. Everything was spinning so fast that she thought she was going to faint. Conquering death...it was a wonderful dream, the image of a beautiful world without people losing their loved ones - but it was also so wrong. And so illegal. His performance today was enough to say so, and this dead thing in his hand within his room in Dan's house, and the fact that Dan, her own cousin, was in on it...God, what had she gotten herself into?

She should have listened to what her friends and coworkers at the hospital were telling her, about what had happened barely a year ago. On the night of October eleventh, the morgue down below was overrun with panic and death, the whole place covered with blood and bodies mutilated and twitching unnaturally. The papers called it the "Miskatonic Massacre". Among the dead were Dean Alan Halsey - Megan's father - and Dr. Carl Hill, the school's eminent brain surgeon and grant giver. The dean had been torn to pieces, but Hill's head had been bashed to smithereens to the point of being nearly unrecognizable while the rest of his body was such a part of the mess that it wasn't even easy to recover.

Above all: Daniel, Megan, and Herbert West were the only proved survivors.

And now she was beginning to piece it together that this man in front of her had something to do with that night, and Daniel was still rooming with him. No wonder Meg was spooked by him so much. Why had Lily thought for a second that she liked him by a small part? She tried talking herself out of it. "West, I can't do this."

He raised an eyebrow. "Why not? Because you find it beyond reason? Daniel tried backing out on me before I succeeded in bringing his poor feline Rufus back. Unfortunately, Rufus' will to live wasn't strong enough."

Lily said no more as she watched him inject the needle into the back of the ferret's neck - at the base of the brain stem - wondering where he got that thing from. "Where did you get this animal?"

"The shelter your husband works at," he answered simply. "It was losing the will to live, and it had been nearly mauled by a bull dog. Perfect candidate for a test."

Ugh, how disgusting could he get, acquiring an ailing creature from the animal shelter where Jake treated small beasts and housepets, speaking of them as if they weren't even important? He had to have some sick interest in death rather than life. Dan's interests were solely on preserving life from as long as she'd known him. Lily said no more as she waited some seconds before the animal began to twitch and spasm in Herbert's hands, making horrible noises unlike it had when it was alive in another time. "God, West, why is it like that? Why isn't it normal?"

In her heart, she knew this was wrong. This was like how she'd been raised growing up, that God had the power to take the soul upon the right time, and that man did not have the willpower to do that. Medical science would never truly conquer death. The look on the man's face was pure insanity.

"Daniel asked me the same thing once. Birth is always painful."

Lily couldn't believe it; that thing was dead! And then it sprung out of Herbert's hands when he could no longer keep a grip on it, flying right for Lily. She shrieked and rolled off the bed; it vanished on the other side. She scrambled away to stand beside Herbert, who had suddenly abandoned his warrior armor and turned to scramble through some things for some weapon to defend them. "Hold on and don't react too fast," he warned. "We have to kill it."

Lily had never thought to take the life of anyone or anything, but it seemed now she had no choice in the matter. She saw in his hands a silver letter opener, and its sharp point made her sick. She was so distracted by it that she almost missed the sudden brown buzz that flew at her, but it never reached her. Lily closed her eyes as she heard the horrible squishing sounds and painful cries from the beast. Opening one eye, West's hands were splattered with blood as he pinned the ferret, dead for a second time, to the floor with one hand and jabbed the letter opener deep into its stomach. Lily felt like she was going to be sick and dashed out of the room...

...and ran straight into Dan.

"Jesus, Lil, what's going on?" he exclaimed as he held her into his arms.

She couldn't answer him, just tore out and ran for the washroom and emptied her stomach's contents, a horrid taste left in her mouth afterwards. She remained there for a few moments, letting her head clear, but there were voices heard. Shouts. She quickly left the washroom and hurried out to see Dan and Herbert, the bloodied ferret cadaver in both hands, in a contest. Both men turned to her upon sensing her presence. Herbert's face wasn't even hard; well, actually, it was, and mixed with great concern for her. But Dan, however, had murder written all over his face. Uh-oh.

"We're sitting down and talking now."

~o~

"I'm not surprised that you hid this from me, but you would tell Meg because she's your girlfriend," Lily stated flatly as she sat across her cousin from the kitchen table, her green eyes venomous on him. Herbert watched the conversation between them as he leaned back against the kitchen counter.

"But she wants nothing to do with this, and you ought to know why," Dan returned. "It's all wrong. I want to stop death, believe me, but there's things that I've seen I can't let you in on -"

"You can't let me in on," she repeated with a sarcastic laugh. "Believe me, too, but I'm already in on it."

"Because of him," Dan seethed, turning and glaring at Herbert, who returned it without a waste. "He sees nothing past his obsession."

Herbert exploded. "After all this time, Daniel, I thought you believed in our work!"

"Until you pushed past the boundaries we'd set up for it!"

"There is always more to discover and expand!"

"ENOUGH!" Lily screamed at the top of her lungs, getting their attentions. "Would both you assholes just shut the hell up for ONE MINUTE?!" Both Herbert and Dan were surprised by her sudden outburst and focused their attention on her. Herbert never thought he'd say this to himself, but this bickering was getting to her, and he hated seeing her like this. "Goddamn, Daniel, I've had enough for one day as it is. I witnessed a dead woman brought back to life, and we all know she didn't deserve to die at her husband's hands. Plus, I came here because I found Jake humping his secretary on our couch."

Dan's jaw dropped. "He cheated on you?! Why, that son of a bitch, I ought to -" He started to rise not long before Lily jumped up from hers and stalked around to put both her hands on his shoulders.

"Don't kill him, please."

"He broke his vows of faithfulness to you all because you're pregnant with a baby he never planned for!" Daniel shouted. "I should teach him a lesson."

All of this was amusing for Herbert, and a change from his loathing of his work being disregarded and called unworldly. He remembered Dan being in awe at their girl in the basement after she was finished, but then it changed when he took a closer look at her, at how she didn't function like an intelligent human being. He'd called it Herbert's "doodling with body parts" the first time. "Is this what all our great work has led to, tinkering with parts?!" he'd yelled. Over time, he began to lessen his attempts to talk Herbert out of it despite helping him get bodies from the morgue, but now enough was enough for him, settling on going back to the real deal. Whole people, not parts.

"If you kill him or assault him, the police will be on you, and you'll be arrested," Lily pleaded. "Just...let me stay here for the night. Please? I can't stand being there without thinking about that bitch in our house."

Dan hissed and shook off her hold. "Yeah, but this isn't over. Neither of this," he added with a look to Herbert. "I won't let her in on our work, not when she's three months pregnant."

Lily gaped at him. "Excuse me, Daniel, but I'm not a child! I can handle myself! I won't have to be the way you are, but at least let me in since Megan already knows this."

"Not when there's a baby in there. You're my cousin, and I love you. And that means I won't have my family involved as far as I have sunken myself."

~o~

"I'm sorry if you don't like having a woman at the house you share with my cousin..." Lily started to say to Herbert only to be cut off by him.

"I got used to Meg being around. I wouldn't be surprised, however, if he actually left me alone." The way he said it was devoid of any emotion.

It was just the two of them in her car, him in the passenger seat beside her. They hadn't spoken much, and this lack of conversation between them made her unnerved more than today's events and before when they barely made much vocal contact at the hospital. "West, it never hurts to engage in conversation about something else, you know."

He chuckled and shook his head. "Are we going to waste time talking or are you going in first to face your unfaithful spouse?"

And that attitude needed management. Lily said no more as she unbuckled and got out of the car. "Leave the windows rolled down in case you hear anything suspicious. Like me screaming." In case Jake got violent if he was drinking again, like he almost did on her twice before.

"Oh, I believe I won't miss out. I always come prepared." He shifted his hips up to show the revolver strapped to his belt. Lily shook her head with a laugh and scoff combo, then went into the house she shared with Jake.

As expected, he was passed out on the couch, but that wasn't all. The bottle of Scotch lay on the floor, all empty - well, she was lucky he was out for once, but she still had to hurry - and Jake was snoring. Add in the fact his pants were still down, and she did not want to know why. She didn't love him that way anymore; their lovemaking times were suddenly too painful now, and it added to the sense of betrayal. She left him there the way he was and hurried to their bedroom down the hall and gathered as much of her clothes and bathroom products as she could. Once she was finished, she left the house with speed, tossed her bag into the back seat and climbed into the driver's beside Herbert. "He was drunk and passed out."

He smirked at her. "Figured, since I heard no screaming, Lily."

"Lucky for me because I didn't want to deal with him. He's drunk before and almost attacked me twice since I got pregnant." She looked down at her abdomen for emphasis, rubbing the bulge gently to quietly assure the baby that she hoped everything was going to be all right. Sadly, she had no idea.

"Sometimes, I wonder what it is like to give life to a child," he spoke quietly. "Instead of the physical interest you, your cousin and Megan carry, it's the fact the female can conceive life." His face twisted as though he'd tasted something acidic on his tongue. "It sickens me how half of them go to the hospital to abort the life she was made to give."

Lily sucked in a breath and leaned back against her seat. Jake had almost forced her to get an abortion, since that was what Herbert was talking about, but it was against her wishes and those of her family's beliefs. But it was her baby; it wasn't a thing. It was a part of her. For Jake, a doctor if not like her practice, to suggest something horrible as killing THEIR child...

"And for your husband to not accept the child disgusts me even more," he continued. "Reminds me of my own father."

The mention of his father suddenly piqued her interest as she started the engine and got them into the street. "How?"

"I'd rather not discuss it in full detail. But I'll have you know he didn't want me before I was born, and he didn't want me up to the time I became a man, either."

Something inside her cracked that she felt like crying, but she held it in.

"On the Subject of Love" as well as "The Scavenger Bride" by BlueMilagro were perfect on Herbert's fascination with conception and his words - which inspired me as there is no better way to explain what attracts him if not a physical relationship the way he sees it from others.