by J. R. Rain
“How the devil do I do that?”
“Just think about his voice, his words, nothing else.”
“Do I have to?”
“If you want my help.”
“Okay, fine.”
I closed my eyes, and replayed the sound coming from his lips, as best as I could recall.
“Okay, got it,” said Allison. “He’s saying ‘I know what you are. I know what you are.’”
“Okay, okay.” She mimicked the voice a little too well. I got chills just hearing it. Truth was, I couldn’t for the life of me discern what he was saying. If that’s what Allison thought, so be it.
I asked, “Did English seem his first language?”
“I’m not sure he had a first language. The noise coming from him was very primal, almost ancient.”
“Speech impairment?”
“Something like that. Or...”
“He was never taught to speak,” I said.
She nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“What do you make of his scars?” I asked.
“I’m not sure what to make of them. Do you?”
I gave her a glimpse of another memory: this time, of Kingsley’s butler, Franklin, and his strange scar that circumnavigated his neck. I also gave her a snapshot of his mismatched ears, and strange, loping walk. I also replayed his speech for her, to compare. I usually kept the very strange Franklin out of mind, rarely asking Kingsley about his manservant, mostly because I didn’t want to know the answer... whatever it might be. And these days, I had a very sneaky suspicion of what the answer might be.
Allison, who had been following my trail of thoughts, said, “Are we really suggesting that he might be...”
“I don’t know what you’re suggesting,” I said. “Your mind’s closed off to me.”
“Well, I can see what you’re suggesting.”
“And are you suggesting the same thing?” I asked, not bothering to hide the mild irritation in my voice.
We both stared at each other. Finally, Allison asked the inevitable: “Is Franklin... Frankenstein?”
***
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” I said. “And Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster. Get it straight.”
Allison ran her fingers through her hair, then grabbed a thick handful of it and pulled. “What have our lives come to, Sam?”
“To the place where butlers are Frankenstein monsters, defense attorneys are werewolves, psychic phone operators are witches, and private eyes are sexy vampires.”
“You did not just say that.”
“I did. And I meant most of it.”
Allison finally giggled. “But Franklin... he seemed so well-spoken.”
We had refilled our glasses and retired to the east wing. Or, as some people called it, the living room. I nodded, and said, “Better than I. Or me. Whatever.”
“Better than most,” agreed Allison. “But this thing that attacked you the night before last... it could barely speak. And was a veritable roadmap of scars.”
“Evocative,” I said. “Maybe Franklin is similarly road-mapped.”
“You could always check.”
“Strip him with my mind?”
“Well, you can see through things.”
“I don’t really see through things. I see beyond things. There are no barriers.”
“Seems the same to me.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Forget it.” I drummed my pointed nails on the glass, careful not to shatter yet another one. “The thing last night was closer to Frankenstein’s monster than Frankenstein’s butler.”
Allison shrugged. “There’s one person who would know.”
I didn’t have to be a mind reader to know who she was talking about. “Kingsley,” I said.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Kingsley, my hotshot attorney boyfriend, wasn’t such a hotshot these days.
These days, fewer and fewer scumbags passed through his office, and that was all right by me. Early on, I had been having a real hard time respecting him. Kingsley, to his credit, got the picture and cleaned up his business. By doing so, he took fewer high-profile cases, and, as such, found himself less and less in the spotlight. Again, that was all right by me, especially since I had an aversion to spotlights, and tended to not show up in pictures.
I waited outside his office while he consulted with a client. Kingsley charged $1,000 an hour consulting fees. I did the math. That would be $8,000 a day. I did some more fuzzy math. Over a $175,000 a month. Or $2.2 million a year. Not a bad living.
I’m in the wrong racket, I thought.
So, while I digested the fact that my boyfriend earned more in one hour than I would all week, I found myself in his lobby, flipping through a People magazine, occasionally tearing pictures of one Kardashian after another. Funny how the tears were only on the Kardashians. Silly, sharp nails.
I tossed the magazine aside and smiled at Kingsley’s latest secretary. A man this time. A gay man. He glanced at me occasionally from behind his desk, working the phones and tapping into his computer and letting people know, in no uncertain terms, that Kingsley Fulcrum was a very busy man and they would be extremely lucky if he eventually called them back.
Kingsley’s office was, in fact, fully staffed with interns and assistants and clerks. Most were youngish. Some seemed like career assistants. Many seemed bright, and most seemed stressed out. I wondered if Kingsley was a good boss. Did he give them a hard time when they needed days off? Did he pressure them into working late nights, weekends, forsaking kids and family and friends? Was he jovial? Was he in good spirits? Did he joke with them, or laugh at their jokes? Did he take the time to get to know them? Or was he an asshole boss?
Kingsley could be very serious. He had to be. He fought to keep his clients out of jail. He fought to make their stories known. As such, he was an investigator himself, and so were some of his staff, digging deep into police reports, interviewing witnesses, anything they needed to do to punch holes in a prosecutor’s case. Yes, serious stuff. Lives were on the line. Truth had to be discerned. Laws followed, laws bent. Loopholes discovered. Meetings after meetings.
Kingsley, I knew, loved the courtroom. He had a flair for it. I had sat in on a number of his cases. No one, but no one, could take their eyes off him. His own amber irises were hypnotic, and he knew it, and he used them to his advantage. Was he controlling the jury? I didn’t know. Could he read their minds and know what they were thinking? Maybe, although he never admitted to it.
One thing I had learned was that immortal powers were not constant or consistent, even from one vampire to another vampire. And that was probably because we reflected the entity within us. The more powerful the entity, the more powerful we were. I’d also since learned that my attacking vampire—that is, the person who had transformed me—had transferred some of his own power to me. Who he was, exactly, I never did find out. At least, not yet. Additionally, one’s own bloodline could affect one’s supernatural powers. Apparently, I came from a long line of alchemists. Those who fought on the side of good, those who resisted—and subsequently banished—the dark masters. That I had been reborn throughout time as a witch, along with Allison and Millicent, was a whole other story. My current bloodline reached all the way back to a very powerful and famous alchemist, the first alchemist, Hermes Trismegistus. As such, my own family shared the bloodline, which potentially put them in danger. Why danger? Because only someone from Hermes bloodline could open the gates of hell, so to speak, and allow the dark masters back into this world.
I thought of all of this as I flipped through the next magazine, which featured, surprise, a whole new brood of Kardashians. Apparently, they were attacking us in waves.
At the far end of the hall, Kingsley’s office door opened and out stepped a lovely woman in her late fifties, dressed immaculately. She seemed upset. I could poke around her mind to see what was bothering her, but I had enough on my plate. Then again, it might be because she had just
forked over a grand to sit across from Kingsley for an hour.
When the big lug saw me, he smiled wolfishly, flashing white teeth and amber eyes all the way down the hall. He waved me in. He shut the door behind me and caught my hand and pulled me into him. All in one perfectly rehearsed motion. This might not have been the first time he’d done this, with or without me. I nearly resisted, nearly pushed him away, until I felt his warmth through his custom-made long-sleeved shirt, and the raw power in his arms and chest, the love in his big, dopey eyes. Oh, and some pretzels in his shaggy beard.
I picked out the crumbs for him. “I can’t take you anywhere.”
“Food and beards go hand in hand.”
My laugh was muffled by about three or four feet of muscle and bone and hair, as I did my best to wrap my arms around him. No such luck. If there was ever a place in this world that I felt safe, it was right here, inside these arms, and covered in all that hair.
When we were done, he pulled away and offered me a drink and I considered, then shrugged. Why not? Kingsley always enjoyed his high end booze, especially here in his office. I secretly suspected the booze kept his clients talking, and kept them on the clock.
“To what do I owe this surprise?” he asked, his hands sliding suggestively down to my waist after handing me a glass of something caramel-colored. Whiskey, if I had to guess. I gripped him by his oversized gorilla thumb and pulled his hand away. I spun out of his grasp and hopped up on the corner of his leather-tooled executive desk.
“I need to know about Franklin.”
“Franklin. My Franklin?”
Interesting way of putting it, I thought. “Yes, your Franklin. Who is he? What is he? How long as he been employed by you?”
He looked at me, then rocked back on his heels, his wing tips gleaming brightly under the florescent lighting. His glass hung loosely in one hand, ice clinking. “Any reason for the sudden interest?”
“I’ve always been interested. It was just never the right time and place.”
“And now is the right time and place?”
“What can I say?” I said. “I’m unpredictable.”
He raised his eyebrows that, I thought, were even bushier since the last time I’d noticed them. The man was a walking, talking hair-producing factory.
“Can I ask what led to you wanting to know?”
Which was fair enough, and so I told him about my attack the night before last, and since Kingsley couldn’t read my mind, I left out much of the gruesome details. I didn’t need to relive that again, thank God. Or get him too worked up. Yet.
As more of the details of my story emerged, Kingsley paced faster and faster in the spacious area before his desk, even shoving some of the client chairs out of his way. One toppled over. He didn’t seem to care. Okay, so much for him not getting worked up. He paced the length of his conference table. I knew he sported an even bigger conference table in another room. I was pretty certain it was attorneys who kept conference table makers in business.
When I finally got around to describing my attacker, Kingsley stopped pacing and stood before me, his shaggy hair hanging forward. A row of untouched law books lined a couple of shelves behind him. Ditch the fancy suit, strap on a broadsword and loincloth, and he could have been Conan the Librarian.
“And you’re okay now?” he asked.
“All healed,” I said. “It’s a miracle!”
“And this thing that attacked you looked like Franklin?”
“Kinda sorta. Built like him, if you know what I mean. Walked like him, too.”
He nodded, although one hairy eyebrow now seemed permanently arched at this point. That was his pissed-off face. It was also his sex face. Trust me, I’ve gotten them confused.
Kingsley nodded and drained his glass, ice cubes and all. Kingsley, I knew, didn’t take kindly to anyone—or anything—beating his girl to smithereens—and I hadn’t even give him the half of it. Little did he know how truly beaten I’d been. Anyway, judging by his arched eyebrow, and the way his hands opened and closed, there was going to be blood. Or sex. But probably blood.
He went over to his desk phone, pressed the red intercom button and told whoever was listening on the other end to hold all calls and to cancel his 2:30. He didn’t wait for an answer. At the bar, he poured himself another whiskey, this time, neat. He knocked it back, poured another, then sat across from me in one of his client chairs, which he filled to capacity and then some. He crossed one leg, absently adjusted the drape of the seam, wiggled his oversized foot once or twice, and finally began his tale:
“I’ve known Franklin for a long, long time...”
Chapter Thirty-eight
Kingsley’s tale:
As you know, Sam, I’m no spring chicken. And neither is Franklin. And neither is, I suspect, the thing that attacked you out at Lake Elsinore. Of course, Franklin would take exception to one of his brothers being called a thing, and, by extension, him as well.
What they are, Sam, has all the makings of a great horror novel, which Mary Shelley captured so eloquently and at such a young age, too. Did you know she wrote Frankenstein at age nineteen?
Right, sorry, a tangent. Truth is, I’m organizing my thoughts here. I haven’t told this story... ever, actually. This will be my first telling of my meeting with Franklin—and others of his ilk.
Yes, Sam, ilk is a word. And yes, old fogeys like me still use it today.
Anyway, Dr. Frankenstein was a real person. He was an instructor at a boarding school in Ramsgate, where Mary Shelley spent about six months of her time. This was as close to a formal education as Mary would ever receive. She benefited from being raised by a writer of high standing, surrounded with books and interesting people who took an active interest in her. Of course, at the age of eighteen, she would marry Percy Shelley, the great Romantic poet; indeed, he encouraged her writing and often edited it. It was while vacationing with friends on Lake Geneva one summer, Lord Byron—yes, another great Romantic poet and good friend of Percy’s—proposed that they all amuse themselves by creating ghost stories.
While the others concocted elaborate and, quite frankly, terrifying stories, Mary found herself unable to play along. In fact, she seemed distressed and disappointed in herself. What kind of young writer was she, if she couldn’t think up a simple ghost story? Percy and Byron came up with tale after tale, regaling their friends around fires, often telling their fictions late into the night. And after each night, Percy would ask his young bride if she finally had a story of her own, and, each night, with some shame, she would admit to not having one.
That is, until the fourth night.
It was then that Mary decided to not tell a ghost story; after all, no such stories were coming immediately to mind, and certainly not clever enough to compete with those of Percy and Byron, wordsmiths revered even to this day. No, she had a different tale in mind.
And it wasn’t so much a tale, as a secret. A secret she was finally ready to share.
You see, young Mary had been given a glimpse into a world of horrors—real experiments by a mad scientist she renamed Victor Frankenstein. The man was real, the name wasn’t. Indeed, she’d had the good decency to protect his privacy, even as she exposed his work.
After all, she was desperate; that is, desperate to tell a good tale. Perhaps, in hindsight, she shouldn’t have let the cat out of the bag. Or the Frankenstein monster off the operating table.
But in her need to save face, her very strong desire to be accepted by these great, great poets, she’d created for these masters a horrific tale. Except it wasn’t so much of a tale, as it was real life. It was, in fact, a nearly exact retelling of the real-world scientist she had come to know at a young age, and to love.
He was thirty, and she only sixteen. Even back then, the age difference was just too great. Mary considered eloping, until the good doctor revealed his true self... and revealed his experiments.
***
Kingsley paused and stood and refilled his glass, t
his time, adding a couple of perfectly cubed, perfectly clear ice cubes from a brass ice bucket. He eased next to me on edge of the desk, leaning a meaty hip against it. His aftershave smelled perfect. He stared down into his glass and continued his tale:
***
His name was, in fact, Edward Lichtenstein.
Edward was many years Mary’s senior. He was from a prestigious Swiss family; indeed, he used his family’s vast resources to build his secret laboratory... and to bribe the local constables and gravediggers and anyone else who might stand in his way.
Yes, I said gravediggers. As you can imagine, reviving the dead required corpses. Hundreds and hundreds of corpses before Lichtenstein finally saw some semblance of success.
It was during those first initial successes that the mad scientist, who was so obsessed with immortality, met young Mary Wollstonecraft. By day, Edward was a highly likable, although distant and eccentric, professor of the sciences. By night, he would hole himself up in his underground laboratory, beneath the streets of Geneva and far from prying eyes, and spend most, if not all, of his nights with the recent dead of Switzerland. Oh, his laboratory was a filthy place, from what I am to understand. Corpses stacked upon each other, rotting and bloating and stinking. But Edward loved them all. After all, each held the promise of eternal life. What was there not to love?
How do I know such things, you ask? A fair question, since I was born nearly a century after Edward and Mary’s fleeting affair. For starters, I have spoken at length with Franklin. After all, my good friend had been one of Edward Lichtenstein’s, aka Frankenstein’s, greatest successes. Additionally, I had met the man. Yes, Dr. Lichtenstein himself. Not surprisingly, he walks among us today, albeit in a very, very different physical apparatus.
Yes, yes, I’m getting ahead of myself. Thank you for pointing that out, Sam. What would I ever do without you? Yes, I suppose I would be shedding on the furniture. No, I wouldn’t be licking myself. May I continue?
