Page 59 of Her Creation

“Stop saying my name!” she shouted. She pushed her hands against his stomach and felt the hardness of his muscles. “Put your shackles back on and do not leave them again.”

“But why? I won’t—”

“Do it! I command it!” she yelled. “You mustn’t speak. You mustn’t be seen or heard. Do you understand me?” She had no choice but to pray that he did as she asked.

With great effort, she stepped into the darkness of the tunnel, crossing through it quickly and then out into the fresh air. This was it. This was how everything unraveled. Like an apparition, Victoria moved to the closed gate.

The sight of the carriage caused her stomach to clench and her head to lighten—it was the baron’s.

“I’m sorry, but the doctor isn’t—” she began but was cut off when a middle-aged woman got out of the carriage holding a small boy, no older than six or seven, in her arms. It was Wilhelm’s youngest brother, the baron’s youngest child.

“Please, Franz must see the doctor!” the woman shouted. “He cannot breathe!”

Victoria hesitated, unsure of what to do. But the pain in the woman’s face confirmed that, no matter what would happen to her, Victoria could not send them away.

“Please! We need to see Dr. Frankenstein!” she cried.

She hesitated for only a second. “Give the boy to me; I’ll take him to my father. You may wait outside. Do not enter the second door, no matter what,” Victoria said, as she took hold of the small boy and ran back toward the lab.

The child was awake but barely.

“Look at me, sweetheart. Don’t look away, everything will be okay,” she said. As she brought him in, she worried about having to explain the startling sight of Innominatus locked in the corner, but the chains were once again empty. She didn’t have time to worry about where he had gone. She needed to save the child.

She inspected his tiny chest and found nothing out of the ordinary, so she quickly moved to grab forceps. “Open your mouth real wide, okay? Just like that. As wide as you can.” Victoria quickly grabbed a nearby lamp and held it close to the boy’s little face. His pale blond hair glittered gold in the light, reminding her of a cherub. When she spotted something out of the ordinary, she nearly screamed with excitement. “Hold really still for me, this might hurt a little,” she said, doing her best to be gentle as she pulled the round, purple sugarplum from the boy’s throat. He began coughing and gasping for air immediately.

Victoria had never heard a more pleasant sound. Her shoulders slumped, and she could have fallen over with relief. The boy immediately began to cry. She left him on the table to grab a chamomile tincture to soothe his throat. His cries increased, sending alarm bells off in her tired system. She turned—the creature was moving toward the child with an odd look in his eye.

“Stop! Stay away from him,” she called out, which only seemed to make the child cry louder. She couldn’t imagine what his poor mother thought if she heard him outside of the doors.

But the creature didn’t stop until he was in front of the child. Victoria ran to embrace the boy and move him away from the creature, but she stopped when the child fell silent as he looked upon Innominatus.

He had grabbed a button out of a small jar on one of her shelves and was rolling it across the tops of his fingers. He flipped his hand over to hand it to the child, and when he held out his empty palm, the child’s eyes widened as a smile pulled at his mouth. Innominatus closed his palm and repeated the action, rolling the little brown button smoothly across his knuckles. Victoria found herself mesmerized. The man gave a half grin and held the button out for the boy, who grabbed it and inspected it once more.

“Impressive,” Victoria muttered, catching Innominatus’s eye.

“I was going to say the same thing to you,” he said.

Victoria cleared her throat and held up a small cup of murky yellow liquid for the boy. After he swallowed it, she lifted the boy into her arms and left the laboratory, returning the child to an anxious mother.

When she returned to the tunnel, she caught sight of a reflective flash of yellow eyes in front of her. She pressed her body against the outside door, blocking his escape. No matter what happened, he could never leave the castle.

“I told you to stay in the lab.”

She felt the creature’s presence grow near, but in the dark could see nothing. She had the sense that he could see in the dark, so she stepped to the left a few feet, away from where she felt him.

“I came to check on you,” he said.

There was something beneath the words, a weight carried in his voice that brushed against Victoria’s already frayed nerves and set them burning.

“Do not leave the laboratory. Ever,” she said.

She moved quickly across the length of the tunnel, her hand skimming the stone until it found the handle to the laboratory door. As it swung inward, candlelight spilled into the corridor, and her breath caught.

He was far closer than she had expected.

Too close.

She froze with the door half open, her pulse roaring in her ears as he stepped past her, so near she felt the disturbance of air against her skin, locking eyes with her as he went. There was intent in the movement, deliberate and unhurried, as if to make certain she understood that he could have left. That he had chosen not to.