Dusk: A Re-Imagining of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (The Frankenstein Saga Book 2)

by Merrie Destefano

  I leaned my face into his shoulder, glad to close my eyes. I forced myself to think about something else, anything else—Claire downstairs, giving birth to a baby; the horse that I needed to tend; the dinner I planned to eat. The longer I kept myself there, the more Percy’s enchantment began to fade.

  “Tell me what you see,” I murmured, my face in his shirt, the smell of his skin a new distraction. Even before he spoke, I could hear it and I knew. The ax blade was striking wood, one strong blow after another, much faster than normal. It was rapid and fierce, like the chewing of a lion on a small animal.

  John took in a deep breath, his chest swelling beneath me, heat rising, his arm pulling me closer. It was as if he was trying to protect me from something and I suddenly longed to look. His hand rose, instinctively, holding my head in place.

  “He’s not—they’re no longer trying to open the door. Percy’s swinging the ax against the stable wall, his strokes bold, faster than I’ve ever seen—” His voice cracked.

  The horses were in a frenzy now, their screams so loud I could no longer hear the blows of the ax. The sangsue began to imitate the cries of the horses, just like Percy had imitated John’s voice. The monsters were driving the horses into a wild desperation—it was their way. I knew it now. They drove away all hope and then they stole your life.

  A shudder passed through John.

  “The wall is breached, isn’t it?” I gazed up at his face, at the lantern light reflecting in his eyes. He blinked, once, twice, then turned from the horror below. He pulled me away from the window, drawing the curtains closed. His voice was hoarse when he spoke.

  “You must go downstairs, Mary. Find Claire and Hannah and stay with them in the parlor, with the door locked. I’ll check the last few rooms and find us some food. But you must not leave that room and you must not look out the windows, no matter what you hear tonight. Promise me that you will do this.”

  I didn’t want to agree. I wanted to fight. Already the cries of the horses were growing louder. It was more than I could bear and I longed to scream along with them, long, lusty bellows of defeat. I longed to hold an ax and to walk through that horde of demons, slicing undead flesh, separating heads from shoulders, sending them back to the mountains or to hell or to whatever dark place would take them.

  I wanted to fight and I wanted to win and I wanted to save the horses and more than anything I wanted to stop the horrid screaming.

  But I couldn’t. There were too many of them.

  And there were too few of us.

  We had to survive. So I didn’t follow my heart. Instead, I did as I was told.

  For now.

  Seven

  I stood in front of the parlor door for several minutes, one hand on the doorknob, one hand on my necklace and the cross that slid from side to side with each move of my fingers. Tortured cries of pain surrounded me: the dying horses and the sangsue imitating them, my stepsister in the throes of childbirth on the other side of the door. One of the sangsue was chasing a horse around the house, laughing—the shrill sound nothing like human laughter. They walked like us and looked like us, but their souls were something else entirely. Occasionally I heard Percy’s voice rise above the others, laughing, cheering, reveling, his voice thick for it must have been gorged with blood.

  Blood on his chin, dripping and fresh, running down to his chest where it stained his freshly laundered linen shirt.

  He was feasting on live animals, this man who had refused to touch red meat.

  I slid to the floor.

  Head in my hands, I rocked back and forth, wishing I could block all of this out and that I was back in London. My father had warned me. Everyone had warned me. Percy was too dangerous, too headstrong. Too selfish.

  A dark thought caught me, made me throw my head back until it knocked against the door.

  I’d wanted Percy to prove what he was. I’d wanted to know, for once, if he could be the man I needed him to be.

  In the midst of the screaming and the chaos and the long night of death, a sudden lightness filled me—I’d gotten what I wanted. Percy had shown me that he would never have been the husband I longed for. He’d never hidden it from me, but it had taken this for me to see him for what he truly was.

  Even as a monster, he was beautiful and manipulative, using words to twist me into something I didn’t want to be.

  This was why I had come here.

  I stood, expecting my legs to tremble, surprised to discover I still contained a hidden strength. I should have been exhausted and defeated—it was what the sangsue were expecting. Instead, they were helping me find a strange, unexpected peace. I took the doorknob in my hand, turning it with purpose.

  I was here for a reason. And the monsters would not prevent me from fulfilling it.

  Eight

  “What’s happening and where have you been?” Claire latched onto the collar of my shirt and pulled me closer until I was kneeling beside the settee. We were face to face, her eyes glistening in the firelight and her cheeks flushed. She whimpered when seized by another contraction, but she fought it, droplets of sweat beading on her forehead.

  “Don’t worry yourself,” Hannah told her, leaning down between us to wipe Claire’s face with a cool cloth. Claire pushed her away.

  “Who is this old woman?” Claire demanded, her gaze focused on me. “And what’s going on outside? It sounds like someone’s butchering all our horses!”

  The parlor was too warm and all I could think about was Percy, single-handedly breaking down the barn wall with an ax—a feat that would have taken five men to do. My heart raced, for we were trapped here. What would stop the sangsue from chopping down our front door next? We needed a plan of escape, but I knew it was too soon. My stepsister and her unborn child needed to survive her labor.

  They had to live.

  Their lives were more important to me than my own.

  I saw her again, my infant daughter. She was lying across my knees, her eyes open, and she glanced first at me, then at Claire and back at me again, almost as if she somehow understood. Her fist flew to her mouth and she wrestled with it, pink mouth opening to suck on pink knuckles. She moved and she blinked, but she never pulled a single mouthful of air into her dead lungs—for this sweet child would never breathe again.

  “Mary, answer me!” Claire demanded. “I’m so frightened, I feel like I could faint.”

  But another contraction proved otherwise, pulling her into a fetal position, a low moan escaping her lips.

  My dead daughter faded away and I longed for her. A chill braced my knees, where a moment ago there had been the warmth of an imaginary child on my lap.

  “The wolves have returned,” I lied to my stepsister. “They’ve broken into the barn and are attacking the horses.”

  “Then you must go outside and kill them,” she answered, each word coming with great effort. “We can’t lose our horses. How will we ever leave this horrid place?” She reached out and grabbed my hand as her contraction lessened. “When is Byron coming back? And where’s Percy? You said he was locked in a room upstairs, but I thought I heard him outside awhile ago—”

  Hannah gave me a stern look and motioned for me to move away. “Enough talking, girl,” she said to Claire. “You need to rest. It’s too soon for your babe to be born. Here, drink this.” She held a cup to Claire’s lips, tilting it so the contents would flow into her mouth and she’d be forced to swallow. The liquid looked and smelled like whiskey, but I could tell she’d added something else to the liquor. Claire took several long swallows before her eyes began to blink drowsily. “Rest, now.”

  John came in the room then, a plate of cold, sliced venison and cheese in one hand, a jug of wine in the other. I got Claire to take a few bites of food before she drifted off to a fitful sleep. The rest of us huddled in front of the fire, dragging our chairs close to one another so we could talk without disturbing my stepsister. We took turns eating and discussing our situation.

  “I rounded
up all the guns I could find in the house,” John told us between bites of venison. “They’re just outside, in the hall. I think we should look for anything else we can find that we could use to defend ourselves, as soon as we’re done eating.”

  “The axes are in the shed,” I replied.

  Hannah grabbed a fire poker, just like the one I had carried with me on my travels last night. “This would work. It’s made of iron and the handle is bone, like your cross.”

  I frowned, touching the necklace my mother had bequeathed to me in her will. “No, this is ivory.”

  “I know bone when I see it.”

  “What does bone do?” John asked.

  “It burns their skin,” she answered. “But it can’t be just any bone.” She paused, as she glanced down at the ivory-colored ring on her finger. “It must be human bone from someone killed by a sangsue. This ring was made from my uncle’s leg. And the necklace I gave you was made from his teeth. Some of my aunt’s fingers are embedded in the iron crucifix I put on the barn door.”

  I shuddered as I realized that the tokens we had been using were more gruesome than I had imagined. John told her how the bone and iron crucifix had reduced several sangsue to ash before Percy found an ax and chopped a hole in the barn.

  “I’ll put a relic on each of the outside doors in the morning. Those creatures can’t come in, though, even if the doors are open. They have to be invited inside.” She was gnawing on a long chunk of venison, drops of blood dripping on her plate. “And you need to burn your clothes,” she said to me. “You have blood stains on them. Could be why they followed you from the road. The smell probably woke them from their slumber.”

  I glanced down at my britches, the same trousers I’d worn to hunt the deer, splatters of blood and mud streaked across my thighs. I drew in a long unsteady breath, remembering how I’d bitten my cheek on the journey to Geneva, and how I kept spitting out mouthfuls of blood into snow banks along the way.

  I’d left a trail for them to follow me here.

  “How many sangsue are there?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I’ve never seen hordes like this, not since I was a little girl. They usually hunt in the mountains in the spring, feeding on ibex and wolves and lynx, and occasionally feeding on villagers who wander around after dark. Once summer comes, the blood drinkers disappear. Most people think that’s when the sangsue go back to their underground world to sleep.” Hannah finished eating and leaned back in her chair, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a pipe. “But sixty years ago we had a summer almost like this, with snow that lasted too long, followed by months of rain. All the mountain animals came down into the valleys, searching for food, and the sangsue came with them. Entire villages were killed off, from Chamonix to Grimentz, but that time the blood drinkers didn’t come as far south as Geneva. Hundreds of people died. And scores of others joined the sangsue. Those monsters can live on the blood of animals, but they prefer human blood, once they’ve had a taste of it.”

  Using her thumb, she packed her pipe with tobacco and took a long draft after John lit it for her. Soon smoke swirled around her head and she blew several smoke rings that floated away, perfect in shape. “There’s a rumor going ‘round,” she said at last, as if she wasn’t sure whether she should share this last bit of information. “That this winter was too fierce, even for the cold-blooded, mountain-dwelling sangsue and that they made a pact with the inhabitants of Champex, a village in the Alps.” She pointed toward the foothills that began in the forests behind our villa. “The villagers agreed to give thirty of their own children to the sangsue as food, hoping it would appease the monsters and cause them to move past their town. While heartless and brutal, it seemed a good idea—the villagers thought at least some of their townspeople would survive. They were wrong. The sangsue ate ten of the sacrificial children, then turned the rest into little bloodsucking demons. These tiny sangsue led the way back to their own homes, where they lured their parents to their deaths. No one in the village survived, though the numbers of the sangsue increased. Stories say they have been using this tactic with every village in their path and, as a result, there are three times as many monsters as before.” She rested her pipe on her plate, for her fire had gone out.

  “They say that in every village that’s been attacked, they’re leaving several of their kind behind,” she continued. “So no place they’ve been is safe.”

  John glanced at me and I remembered how he had seemed angry on the day Byron left for the mountains. “Byron went up there looking for folktales and inspiration, but you tried to stop him, didn’t you?” I asked.

  He nodded, a solemn expression on his face. “We’d both heard the rumors, and although I didn’t believe them, I wondered if maybe something bad had happened up there. Maybe an avalanche had closed one of the passes and the people trapped in the villages were turning into cannibals. There’s usually an element of truth in every rumor.” He set his plate on a nearby table and I noticed he had only eaten a small amount. There were dark circles under his eyes and his skin had a sallow cast.

  “We only have one horse left,” I said in a low voice, “but we could hitch it to one of the buggies. Claire could ride inside and we could walk along with her. If we left in the morning, we could be in Geneva by noon. We might be able to get some supplies there, and then move on to Lancy. Hopefully we could get that far by dusk—”

  Hannah shook her head. “There were sangsue as far west as Port Noir when we were coming here and they’re getting bolder, stronger. They tried to attack you when it was still daylight. I’ve never seen that before.”

  “We can’t stay here,” I said. “It won’t be long before they figure out a way to get inside the villa.”

  “I agree with Mary,” John said as he stared at our dwindling fire. “But we can’t leave until Claire’s had her baby. She’s too weak. We may not even be able to leave until several days after the child is born, since it’s premature. I’ve never seen a woman as spent as she is. I worry she may not survive.”

  I glanced behind us at the still form of my stepsister, blanket covering her.

  “She will live,” I said without question. “Both her and the baby. They have to.”

  A hesitant silence fell upon us, as if we each had our own quiet opinions of how this might end. But I was glad they did not share their misgivings, for I had plenty of my own.

  The main one being none other than my betrothed. Percy.

  I feared he would be more than happy to encounter Claire in her weakened state, a newborn babe in her arms.

  Nine

  It was a long night and more horrible than any nightmare. We gathered together in the parlor, while a fierce battle raged outside our walls. The screaming of the horses and the sangsue seemed as if it would never end, and there were times when I thought I could bear it no longer. I grabbed my pillow and pressed it to my ears, hoping I could block out the terrible unending slaughter, but it didn’t work. Several of the flesh-eating monsters had dragged a horse right in front of our window—I think they did it on purpose to unnerve us—for we heard the poor animal’s pain-wracked whinnies as the sangsue devoured it alive. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore, so when both Hannah and John had fallen asleep, I grabbed one of our rifles and slipped out of the room.

  Like a soldier sneaking from one battlefront to the next, I crept through the house and up the stairs, until I stood in the upstairs sitting room. There I quietly opened the window, just a crack, slid the barrel of the rifle outside, and I watched the small pack of sangsue that dined on one of our horses. I waited until the four of them took a short break, leaning back to suck in long drafts of air, blood tunneling down their throats and chests. Then, when I had a clean shot, I pulled the trigger.

  One puff of gunpowder and a small boom.

  The sangsue below me weren’t even sure what had happened. The air was still filled with screams, so many I could scarcely hear my own heart thundering. The monsters merely gaped at the horse
they had been feeding upon as it fell suddenly slack.

  The poor animal was free. A tiny black hole with a drizzle of blood in its temple.

  I sighed, proud of my aim and glad to have taken something away from the monsters below.

  I didn’t anticipate their reaction, however, when they realized what I’d done. Their reflexes were much quicker than mine and their powers greater, as well. One of them glanced up at me, perhaps smelling the gunpowder or maybe even smelling me—warm flesh and blood. Glowing eyes met mine for an instant. I quickly glanced away, trying to stay focused on his mouth or his hands, but his eyes had already locked with mine. Even though it was brief, it was long enough to disorient me.

  It was as though the room filled with fog and all of my movements slowed down. I pulled the rifle back inside the room and moved my hand to pull the window closed.

  In that small amount of time, two of the sangsue had climbed up the side of the villa, clinging to the wall like insects. They scampered toward me, their hands and feet beating against plaster, a hollow thumping almost like a drum. I needed to close the window, but if I thrust my hand outside the window frame, they might be near enough to grab me. Gun in hand, I aimed through the narrow crevice of the window, hoping one of them would get within my line of sight. Whatever happened, I couldn’t leave this window unguarded and open.

  “Come outside,” the nearest one said. It was a female, silhouetted against a patchwork of stars and moon, her long red hair blowing in the wind. Except for the color of her hair, she looked like she could have been one of Arjeta’s sisters, big boned and fair skinned. I didn’t look in her eyes, but tried to find other distinguishing characteristics about her. I wanted to be able to tell these creatures apart. “Come dine with us,” she called, her voice soft. “The flesh is warm and succulent, and the blood like the finest Parisian wine. One sip and you’ll be drunk, little sister.”