Maybe it would be for the best. Victor’s creation could fail, he could adjust the technique, and hers would succeed. Everyone would be happy, and these months of late nights would be over. She dropped herself heavily into a nearby armchair to wait.
Victor was now in his creative state of flow and could not be interrupted. It struck her that Lizzie should see what he looked like right now, energized by the storm’s crackle. Victor was spoken of by the village girls as terribly handsome and rich, but oh so strange, and always eating an apple, and slightly bad-smelling. It was all truth. He was up to his elbows in other men, all day and night.
Besides, the Frankenstein coloring was difficult to get used to. Red hair, pearl skin, and green eyes. On Angelika, these colors read as beauty, or sorcery. On a tall man such as Victor, it was . . . confronting. He was regularly given blunt assessments by strangers out of tavern doors and carriage windows. Several artists had asked him to sit, balming those stings. Seeing both siblings together? They could charge an admission price.
“You’re doing well,” Angelika encouraged her brother, but he was too focused to acknowledge her. She fell into a doze and had a short dream that she was lying on her back in a grassy field, beside a warm body she knew was a man’s. His voice told her that he would be here soon. He’d fight to be with her. In her dream, she was reaching up to the night sky, trailing her fingers through the dark and stars, like a man’s soft hair.
She was jolted awake by a crack of lightning.
Victor then howled, “It’s alive!”
There was movement in the chamber—and it wasn’t convulsions.
Angelika was now disappointed that they hadn’t done hers first but covered it well. “How marvelous. Can he hear you?”
“Not sure. No, don’t come closer.” Victor was leaning over the chamber, trying to help his creation sit up out of the slurry. “I may need to scoop out his mouth.” Not necessary: the man began coughing in earnest. “He’s tall, isn’t he, Jelly? Even seated. How did I make him so big?”
“You said, and I quote, ‘No, Jelly, I want the long legs.’ Let me help.”
“Stay back.” Victor spent a minute grooming his gigantic baby, wiping away the viscous gel while he blinked slowly, his slack mouth gaping and closing. “Welcome, my friend. I am Victor Frankenstein, and I have brought you back to life. You shall make me famous. Wait until Lizzie meets you.”
A mournful groan was the only reply.
Angelika went to visit her beau with butterflies in her stomach. “Not long, my sweet.”
He was indeed superior quality. She’d justified it thus: if she was being reassembled, she would hope her maker would select improvements wherever possible. And though she had felt a pinch of guilt as she passed off sections of his perfectly satisfactory body to Victor, she was deeply happy with what she saw now.
This was an unparalleled masculine specimen.
She really should be assisting Victor, but she could not stop her eyes from trailing down this body. The blacksmith’s chest was padded out with muscle and corded sinew. His hard work was not wasted. Angelika continued her review of her own creation. She had decided to use the second-largest penis in their inventory. It had made her brother roar with mirth, and he teased her about her newfound economy, but the one she had selected would likely stiffen out to a good size, if he ever felt that way about her. She may never know. This late at night, with her dark under-eye circles, it felt like a very large if.
In the places where the afterbirth had splattered, his stitches appeared to be healing. “I need to transfer him into the full chamber,” she told Victor. “Hurry up.”
“All right then, come and help me,” Victor barked. By the time she made her way around, Victor’s achievement had both feet on the floor. As he began to straighten, slipping like a newborn foal, she could see the errors they had made.
“Those legs and that torso do not belong together.” This man was straightening up to seven feet tall.
“None of it does,” Victor retorted, in no mood for critical feedback. “Stand still, man. It’s all right.” The man howled; a terrible hurt sound that was probably heard in the village. “Jelly, come and see if you can calm him.” Victor ducked when his creation swung out an arm.
“Shhh,” she soothed, amplifying her feminine presence. “It’s all right. Angelika is here. You’re safe.” For a heart-stopping moment, the beast was silent, regarding her form with glassy eyes, lingering on her breasts and hips.
“Good. I shall begin my examination and interview—” Victor was cut off by screams so loud that the candles above dripped wax. This big man had apparently never beheld anything as horrific as Miss A. Frankenstein, and he began to struggle away to the door, evading his master’s clutches.
“How rude,” Angelika managed to say.
“He’s gone wild,” Victor shouted, exasperated. “And I’m abruptly sick of him.”
“Do you need my pistol?” Angelika called, unsure if killing a dead man would be murder, but her brother waved her away irritably. The mismatched pair of nude creation and dandy creator struggled off together out of the barn doors. She could hear wet scrabbling, grunts of effort, and fading distressed cries.
“Right. Your turn,” she said to her project, refusing to be daunted. “In you go, my love. The storm is overhead.”
She slipped straps underneath his shoulders and around his waist and, with difficulty and a lot of dripping goo, used the wheel and pulleys to transfer him into the deeper tub. “This is an awkward way for us to meet. Just as I am your last hope, I think you are my last hope, too.” She closed her eyes, and the truth of that statement sank in. “I refuse to be an old maid at twenty-four. Victor will marry Lizzie soon, then a baby will arrive, and I’ll be their unofficial nanny, then governess. Then, a withered old aunt.”
She’d be happy for her brother, but it would be hard to smile through the jealousy. In her dreams, for years, she’d heard the call of true love; a yearning inherited from her madly devoted parents.
“Hmmm. I’m not sure what comes next.” Maybe she should have stayed awake more while Victor did this next bit. His notes were strewn around the benchtops, all in his particular shorthand, and were therefore useless to her. Now was her chance to prove she was a full contributor. “I will do my best.”
Even though prayer of any kind was forbidden in their household, her next words sounded very close to one. Eyes closed, hands folded, she said:
“Dear sir, I will do anything for you. To have you, I will change what I must about myself. I will sacrifice and make you proud—” Here, her eyes welled up, and as she bent down over him, her tears dropped into the vat. “I will cut myself up into as many pieces as you are.”
There was only silence in reply, but she felt like he understood.
Angelika took a few fortifying breaths. “I think I connect this here.” She pulled a springy cord down from above and slipped a metal ring around his forehead. “And then I tighten it just so, and lightning hits the rod on the barn roof, and I wish myself luck, and—”
An almighty rumble of thunder drowned out her next words. There was a crack, everything went white, and then the world filled with sparkles and star-fire.
There was the smell of burning hair.
“Damn it all,” Angelika cried out in anguish. “He was so perfect. I will never again have another so perfect.” Those beautiful brown eyes would never gaze upon this world again. Loss nearly turned her inside out. Outside, her brother was roughhousing with his creation, but her own darling was burned. “Well, I’m alone forever,” she said to herself as her tear-filled eyes began to readjust to the gloom.
Her heart stopped.
Wrenching himself upright in the chamber of gel was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. He was spluttering out mouthfuls of liquid, before inhaling some rough, crackling breaths.
“My love?” Angelika came closer, and all she could see was how well she’d done. Unlike Victor’s man, her keen eye for sewing and pattern making had resulted in a truly excellent outcome. He was perfectly formed, with ideal proportions.
This was a body to live for, and a face to die for.
She came closer still, smoothing down the front of her blouse and plumping her bosom up. “My love?”
After an almighty coughing fit, the naked man managed to get out: “Where am I?”
Chapter Three
Angelika had rehearsed a welcome-back-to-life spiel three times before this, but everything was now forgotten. “Oh, goodness. Sir, you are gorgeous.”
“My arms feel strange.” He tried to rub his face on his shoulder. “Oh, the pain. What has happened to me?”
Angelika took a handkerchief from her trouser pocket. “Let me help.” She wiped his eyes clean, and when they opened and looked into hers, she could have sworn she felt another lightning strike. Star-fire was in her blood and bones. “You’re alive. I cannot believe it.”