Chapter Eight

Of Engagements and Enraged Exes

Rosalind was still screaming with joy after Dan broke the news to her and her husband about the now-official engagement. "OOOOHHHH, my baby's finally getting married!" He had her on speakerphone for this in the house that night - and Meg with him - just eight days after Lily started staying the nights with him and Herbert, avoiding any calls from her husband who somehow managed to find out where she was after being unable to find her all over town. He'd been calling the hospital and was being told she still went to work, but with his own hectic schedule at the animal shelter, Jake was unable to get time off to try and talk to her. It had also been the next day after the night of Dan asking Meg, properly, to marry him that Lily announced her marriage was at an end after only four months.

He wasn't the least bit surprised; the marriage would be at an end if one spouse caught the other cheating. And at this point, he was worried for his cousin. How would she be able to provide for herself and her baby now that she would soon be going through a divorce? Jake wouldn't want custody, so that part was easy enough, but when it came to splitting up money and the house, Lily would move in with Herbert since Dan decided to move in with Meg. But how would Herbert help take care of a baby with his lifestyle? That life was filled with grave danger and hopelessness.

And then he heard his father's voice: "Sweetheart, give the boy some room. He just got off work and probably doesn't need so much screaming." He was laughing that the couple themselves had to join in.

"Thanks, Dad," Dan said.

Then his mother was there again. "How's Lily? She told her dad, and Uncle Bruce got back to us."

He exchanged a look with Meg, who decided to speak up. "Yeah, she's fine. She's staying with Dan and his roommate, Dr. West. For the time being."

Rose sighed. "That bastard Jake." Then she burst into a fit of giggles. "Oops, my bad, sweetie. But you all know he is. I hope she leaves him soon. You know how we hate cheaters."

Dan nodded. "Which is what I'll never do to this wonderful woman right next to me." He looked down at her, into her vivid blue eyes, and smiled with her, leaning down to kiss her. "I hate to cut this short, but we got some work to do."

"Better not be that kind of work I'm thinking about," his father joked, making Meg shriek with laughter and lean into him to stifle more. "Sorry, kids, but I had to throw some humor in."

"Honey, let them go," his wife teased. "You better get back to us soon so we can get to the planning and fast. Two months isn't enough notice."

"We will, and I already have a few ideas planned out," Meg told her. "We'll come up there on Saturday."

~o~

The wedding was in October, so planning had to be made. Both Dan and his fiancée wanted their wedding intimate with a small amount of guests, but still have their space an experience of a lifetime. Meg always wanted to do an enchanted garden theme, so early on, they already selected a venue at the local gardens but had yet to officially buy it. Their families were most definitely going to be there, and so were some of their friends and colleagues at the medical school; Dean Richmond was also an included guest on the list. Had the late Dr. Alan Halsey lived, he would have walked his daughter down the aisle to the man who would be her husband and his son-in-law. Now Uncle John would do that job for him.

Lily had already picked out her dress; it was simple and mostly casual, but still elegant for an intimate wedding. It was coral pink with a slit to expose the left leg, touching the ground and baring her arms. The temperature tended to drop, but the ceremony was made to be short and sweet; afterwards, the reception would be held at a rustic old barn in the outskirts of town. She looked up from her computer to see Herbert pouring over his notes in an even more jovial mood than she'd ever seen him lately. He was smiling broadly as he sat at the table to review before he headed down into the basement with the latest subject taken from the hospital; the deed still freaked her out, because someone was going to someday catch them. Dan didn't like this any more than she did, but he followed through anyway. Herbert had made improvements so far with the re-agent, such as the subject being less violent, but they had to be offed since the last one threatened to go to the police, resulting in Herbert shooting him for the second time. Which made her decide to ask him the question.

"Herbert, once we've actually conquered death, how do we prevent the authorities from taking all three of us in?"

He looked up with a frown on his face. "Why do you ask me this?"

"Because so far, the violence has subsided," Lily explained, sitting down across from him. "But they'll go to the police to try and tell on us. How can we go on like this?"

He sighed and reached up to remove his glasses, rubbing his eyes. "Because they don't see that we only saved their lives. And if we give this in now, they'll just never understand us, steal our work when we've come so far in becoming the Eighth Wonder of the world."

"But what if we'll never be the ones? What if someone else will? This has gone on forever," Lily insisted, knowing deep down that they would have to do this until the day one of them died. Herbert looked so shocked that his face soon changed to anger, about to snap back that he wasn't giving up now before there was a rough bounding on the door. She jumped and whipped around upon hearing the voice on the other side of the door.

"Open up this door, Lily! I know you're here!"

"Jake," she whispered in horror. "He's found me."

Herbert glared viciously at the door as he slowly stood, reaching for his gun that he kept strapped on him at all times during the experiments. "Stay here." Lily shook her head and stopped him.

"No, I must do it. I can't have the police over here where everything is at an end." She didn't really mean what she'd said before; she'd only said it because of the stress she'd been feeling lately that she'd tried hard to shove down, but the damn hormones at random times! She hoped he knew and forgave her for that.

Herbert's gaze softened on her before he nodded and let her walk away, stopping her not long before she left the area with a hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him. There was something more, something warmer in the way he looked at her, that he began to gaze at her with since that night. "I'll stay behind you. If he does something to you and the child together, I'll never have a reason to continue without you, not even for my own work."

~o~

He was more than ready to kill Jake Stevens the sooner he walked into the house. He stayed around the corner with his gun in hand and watched the terrified woman he had grown very fond of over the last week with her unborn child at risk as much as she was. She stopped at the door just as the bounding got louder and her husband's voice got louder to the point of roaring; Herbert was reminded of his father.

Lily finally opened the door, and Herbert's sharp ears detected a drawl of her husband's voice. "Well, well, well, look who I finally found after she abandoned me for over a week."

"You screwed Gia Cole on our couch, in our home," Lily snarled. "I had a right to be away from you."

"Leaving me worried sick!" Herbert could tell he'd been drinking; his words were slurring despite his attempts to remain straight.

"Because I don't know you anymore! You've become something SICK!" Lily was about to close the door in on him when Herbert saw Jake stick his foot in the door to stop the closure.

"You don't close the door on me, bitch." Herbert's raging fury bubbled, the more he was ready to shoot him on the spot; how dare he call his own wife such a foul name?! "Not until I'm through with you and you come home with me, where we forget about what happened and move on. Not one of us will bring it up again. I spent the last week searching for you only to find you spending the day with your cousin's roommate."

"How dare you speak of Herbert that way?"

Her retort did the final trick because of the forceful shove that sent her backwards even though she remained on her feet. Jake looked mildly disheveled, his brown hair all over the place, charming blue eyes bloodshot and glazed, and he wore his work uniform. But from afar, Herbert could smell bottles of liquor on his breath. And those cold eyes landed on him before moving back to his visibly shaken wife. "So, I was right. Not only did you run out on me, but you're also cheating on me with the cousin's flatmate," he leered.

"No, we're not doing anything." Lily was lying because she didn't want to endanger Herbert any more than she herself was in, and Herbert admired her spirit for that. But something had to be done soon. "You better get out of here, or one of us will call the police," she threatened, but Jake laughed cruelly.

"And how long before I make the first move, Lils? We're husband and wife until death do we part, remember?"

"No more." She spat at him both in words and physically at the same time she reached to take off both her rings and throw them at him, the first step in freeing herself from the cage she had been trapped in. "You were the one to break it down all because of an unplanned pregnancy. Marriage is a journey between two people - one day at a time - but you're a coward, Jacob. You went elsewhere because you're too chicken shit about becoming a father."

Her husband exploded just like that, charging for her. She screamed and turned to run not long before he grabbed her by her hair and wheeled them both around, shoving her face into the wall and roaring at her, "How dare you call me a coward, you wicked little witch?! You're going to pay for running away and humiliating me, and for wrecking our marriage!"

"You did that last one all by yourself, Stevens!" Herbert growled, finally moving forward and shooting into the back of his leg; Jake screamed at the bullet striking into the back of his ankle, and he doubled over, clutching his leg. "That's for everything you've done!"

Jake growled then as he lashed out and grabbed the ankle of Herbert's pants, catching him off-guard and taking him down with him. As a result, Herbert lost hold on his gun in the wrestle with Lily's husband, rolling over on the floor and clawing at each other, drawing scratches of blood not long before - once Herbert found himself on the bottom and having the lower hand - a gunshot was heard, and blood splattered around them. Herbert saw Jake's face bear a frightened expression and choking as he fell limp against him. Making a disgusted sound, Herbert shoved the body off of him and glared at the man who tried to kill his own wife and him.

There was the sound of a gun being dropped, and he looked up to see Lily falling to her knees, shaking more than previously, as she stared with horror at what she'd done. "Oh, God, Herbert...I...killed..."

"You did the right thing," he tried to assure her as he rolled the monstrous veterinarian onto his back, checking to see that he had a weak pulse fading rapidly. "He deserved it."

"But now I'll go to jail for manslaughter and because I never reported!" she cried. "I don't know what we're going to do now, Herbert!"

Oh, he knew what they were going to do, alright. He smiled reassuringly. "We'll fix it. We can get him up and running again. Go ahead and call the police while I take care of this."

She stared at him, dumbfounded, before he raised his voice, not for fault but to get her moving. "Go before we lose our opportunity!" Lily was up and running to the kitchen while Herbert raced to grab what he had of his re-agent and a syringe as well as what else he'd made; he ran to the basement to stash it there until the police collected what they would come here for. After doing that, he locked the basement door and returned to Jake Stevens' corpse, injecting directly into the brain and waiting for some time before the eyes opened, and what followed should be obvious enough before the police arrived.

"You've become something SICK!" - a line from the movie Splice, in which after Adrien Brody has sex with Dren, the creature, walked in on by Sarah Polley and she calls him sick.