Travel with Henriette was slow, as I would often have to clear away bramble and other obstacles for her, but I greatly enjoyed her companionship and quickly developed a deep affection for her. This affection was not of the type that I had felt toward Johanna, but more as if Henriette were a dear cousin or sister.
It was after a week of our travel together that we escaped the darkest part of the forest to lighter woods with glens and finally just a scattering of trees. This allowed us to make greater progress, although Henriette’s pace was still considerably slower than what I could have made on my own. As we walked more freely, Henriette was in a particularly cheerful mood, her eyes sparkling as she joked of how instead of my taking her to Venice, we should instead build a cabin in the woods and live together.
“Not as husband and wife,” she said, “but as brother and sister, for that is how I have grown to think of you, Friedrich.”
“A fine life that would be for you,” I said, but I had grown distracted for off in the distance were wolves. Five of them. They were keeping their distance, but they were tracking us, nonetheless. Henriette spotted them also, and edged closer to me so that our bodies touched.
“Why do you suppose they are following us like that but not moving closer?” she asked, her voice tight with fear. “It is almost as if they are wary of us.”
I wondered this also. Could these wolves somehow know how I had slaughtered their brethren when they had attacked me, and was this the reason for their cautiousness? As we walked, the wolves maintained their distance, but they also continued to track us, and I could sense Henriette’s growing nervousness over this. I picked up a stone and threw it with all my strength at them, hitting one of the wolves in its hindquarters. The wolf let out a surprised yelp, and they all ran off. I was surprised that the stone did not shatter its bones, but it was a long throw, and I was glad to see them gone, Henriette even more so. It was late afternoon and still several hours before dusk would be settling on us, and Henriette looked worriedly toward the sun.
“Do not be concerned,” I told her. “We have several hours more of sunlight. Those wolves are gone. They will not be back.”
She nodded, but apprehension tugged at her mouth as she was uncertain about that. It took over another hour of walking and without any sign of those wolves before she was back to her previous cheerful self.
“I had never seen wolves before,” she confided. “I think I was more afraid of their sight than even when my neighbors set fire to my cottage. And the way they looked at us!”
I kept thinking of those wolves also. The stone that I had thrown must have weighed over two pounds, and with the force that I used, the wolf that I hit with it should not have been able to run off with its pack. And the way they had stared at us with their eyes shining with a malignancy that was foreign in the other wolves that had attacked me. But they were gone now, and I tried to put them out of my mind and exhibit the same good spirits that Henriette was showing.
We walked until late into the night. Even though I did not need fire to see, I lit a torch that I fashioned with a tree branch and cloth from the rags that Henriette had previously worn so that she could see better. When we settled at last upon a grassy area, I made a fire, and then Henriette pleaded with me that I open one of our bottles of wine for us to celebrate. “It is not often that we get to stare down a pack of hungry wolves,” she said, her face lit up by both the fire and an infectious smile that made me smile also. “And to hit a wolf from over fifty ells with a stone is reason enough to celebrate!”
I relented and opened up one of the bottles, amazing Henriette with how I was able to do so without a corkscrew. While she drank several sips of wine, she confessed to me that even though she had been in the employ of a beer hall she had had very little alcohol in her lifetime, adding that this was the first time she had tasted wine. After what could have been no more than a glass, she started showing the signs of being tipsy and soon afterward fell asleep. I covered her with my cape, then took the bottle from her and finished off the wine.
I watched over her for several hours, but the weariness from the wine and not having slept since I rescued Henriette from that burning cottage finally caught up to me and I drifted asleep also. Before too long I was visited by the same dark, troubling dreams that I had had previously. In the background was that same ruined castle reeking with its evil, and as with my other dreams, it appeared to beckon me. Right before waking I heard Victor Frankenstein’s voice calling me his magnificent creature.
You have done well so far, my magnificent creature. Soon you will be with me.
I bolted upright expecting to see Victor Frankenstein whispering in my ear. But he wasn’t there. No one was. My cape had been thrown aside and Henriette was gone.
A panic overtook me as I jumped to my feet searching for her. All I could imagine was that those wolves had snuck into our camp and had dragged her away. Whatever it was that Frankenstein had put in my chest pounded as I ran wildly looking for any signs of Henriette.
I had to be calm. I told myself this. If I was going to find Henriette I had to be calm. I forced myself to stop my running, and instead concentrated on whatever night sounds I could hear. Straining and holding my breath, I listened until I heard faint, ungodly noises off in the distance, noises that didn’t seem possible to be coming from animals known of this earth.
I raced toward those noises. After I had run a mile I saw them. At first they were little more than shadows. As I moved closer I could see that they were of human form and they were naked. Four of them men, one of them a woman. Their bodies were thin and sinewy, and they crouched so that they faced away from me. The way their backs were hunched gave them a feral quality that sent a shiver up my spine. As they heard me approach, they turned toward me. From the deadness in their eyes, the starkness of their features and the wet blood shining on their lips, I knew these weren’t men and women, but vampyres. I saw also that they had been crouching next to a living being. Although her face was hidden by their forms, I recognized the clothing. Henriette.
“Away from her!” I yelled. “Leave her or I will kill you!”
One of them, a male vampyre, seemed particularly amused by this. Presumably he was their leader, and he turned to face me. I noticed a thick welt showed on his hip.
“You will not do so,” he said in a voice that dripped of ice and death. The other vampyres moved quickly to surround me.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I demanded.
“The same reason that we did not slay you while you slept. Because we both serve the same master.”
“That is not true!”
“Of course it is.” He smiled at me though his eyes remained lifeless. “Only Satan’s darkest arts could create a being like you, as he created us. I am curious, what type of being are you exactly?”
Henriette stirred on the ground. She was still alive. I raced over to her and was prepared to strike this vampyre down, but he stepped aside with a quickness that surpassed my own movement. I kneeled beside Henriette to soothe her. Their marks were upon her neck. As I tried to comfort her, she groaned softly.
“It is because of you that we took her,” the vampyre told me while I tended to Henriette. “We were content to feed on the wayward traveler and lost soldier, but your brazen stealing of those young girls sent angry hunting parties into the forest. We had to move deeper into the forest ourselves to avoid them, and have found far less to prey on here. I am curious. What have you done with all those young girls that you stole?”