“Do any of them know what you are?” I asked.
He turned to glance briefly at me with his dead eyes before fixing his gaze on one of the young girls being used as a drink table. Even in his fine clothing and his immaculate grooming, he held a feral quality. He did not bother answering me.
“I know what you are because I have seen your kind before,” I said. “I saw them when they ran naked and wild in the forest like animals. That was where they hunted their prey, not in a club for the wealthy and bored.”
He turned again to look at me. “Why are you bothering me?” he asked.
“I am simply surprised, that’s all. I did not expect to see a vampyre here, or in London, for that matter, especially one dressed as you are. I am curious. Are there other vampyres like you hiding among men as if they were one of them?”
“Why, are you jealous that you will never be able to do so?”
I did not answer him, but neither did I move away from him. I could tell that my presence bothered him.
“Must you stand by me?” he asked at last, the civility in his voice strained.
“I am still curious,” I said. “Can you transform into a wolf as your forest cousins did?” A bat swooped close enough nearby that I had to move my head to avoid a collision, and that caused a harsh smile to wrinkle my face. “Was that one of your brethren, or is that only a superstition?”
When he turned again to me his eyes were dark coals that held burning embers glowing hotly within them. “You have grown very irritating,” he said, his voice the same hiss a snake might make.
“That may be so,” I said. “But you will not be feasting tonight on that young girl whom you have been salivating over.”
“And what matter is that of yours?”
“None, but she will not be your victim. At least not tonight.”
He laughed at that, the sound emanating from him was something icy, something terrible. “You wish her for yourself? Is that what a creature like you feasts on, the flesh of young girls?”
“Hardly. I prefer berries and mushrooms from the forest.”
He regarded me coldly, his lips pulling into a tight, bloodless smile. “Then why are you making this an issue?” he asked.
I did not attempt to answer him, for I wasn’t sure myself why I was doing this.
“How would you intend to stop me? With force? My strength and speed could surprise you.”
“Doubtful. I have already witnessed your kind’s speed, and I am sure your strength is equally impressive. But I see no reason to do battle with you, not when I can expose you for what you are to this club. So leave now before I do that.”
“And you think that would matter to them?”
“I would think so, yes.”
A fury exploded in his eyes, but then just as quickly it seemed to burn out, and his eyes were back to the icy, dead, pale things I had seen earlier. He gave me a short nod.
“Very well,” he said. “I will leave here, for all the good it will do. You don’t think that there are hundreds of young girls out there that I can pick to feed on instead?”
“That may be, but you will not be feasting on this one.”
He shook his head at me as if I were something pathetic, but did not argue any further, and I watched as he glided across the room, moving like smoke, and then disappeared through the red curtains. I wondered why I had bothered chasing him away. What I did was futile, and it amounted to little more than flailing away in a ridiculous attempt to prove that I was different from Frankenstein. The more I thought of it the more disgusted I became with myself. It was then that I spotted where the whiskey was being kept, and I moved over there so that I could pour myself enough of it to dull the thoughts that were bombarding my mind. All I wanted then was that, and to blind myself to the scenes that were playing out around me.
Frankenstein was in a sour mood when we later took a coach back to his flat. He was a bit drunk, and I was much more so. For several minutes he brooded silently, and then he spat out his distaste for the club. “Disgusting,” he pronounced. “That those girls are there of their own free will and are paid handsomely for every welt they take on their backside and every cock that enters them! It makes the proceedings there nothing but a mockery, defeating the very purpose of what we are trying to accomplish!” His voice lowered as he stewed in his anger. “A disgrace, Friedrich, an absolute disgrace. That club was filled with nothing but imposters. Children playing their games.”
“You prefer it then when innocents are taken against their will and cruelly tortured and defiled. Is that when you are happy?”
He turned angrily toward me as if he were going to strike me, but his emotions fizzled. “You don’t understand yet, Friedrich. What we will be doing with our performance is striking a blow against the hypocrisy of this so-called enlightened world of ours that murders with impunity in the name of God and state, but refuses to acknowledge that we are the same as any other beast in nature.” His voice trailed off into a whisper as he shook his head and added, “When you see our performance you will understand this, also.” He brooded silently after that before turning to me with an inquisitive smile.
“The gentleman that you chased out of the club. Why?”
“He was a vampyre there to feed on one of the young girls. I did not care to have him do that, so I ordered him to leave.”
He stared at me blandly, then shook his head. “You seemed to have found a hole in the spell, Friedrich. It appears that it is allowing you to lie to me. It is not supposed to. Fine. Keep your secret then.”
With that he went back to his brooding over all of the moral deficiencies he found with the club. How they weren’t sufficiently evil for his tastes.
When we arrived at the flat, and the coach driver had let us out and had driven away, Frankenstein informed me that we would be leaving early the next morning for Scotland. That he had gathered all the knowledge that he needed for the operation that he would be performing.
CHAPTER
26
When we left London, we did so by hackney coach, with Frankenstein having little care whether the driver was alarmed by my size. I was hidden within my cape, and while the driver of the coach glanced back nervously at me numerous times, he did not have the courage to say anything. When he left us at a pier where Frankenstein had chartered a boat, the driver only seemed relieved to be free of us and more than happy to drive away hastily and without making any sort of fuss.
The boat took us up the eastern coast to Edinburgh. During this trip both of us were too preoccupied to pay the other any attention; Frankenstein presumably deep in thought about the operation that he would be performing while I couldn’t stop thinking of Johanna soon being brought back to me and how she would react to my new appearance. A nervousness twisted my insides as I thought of this, and my stomach seized up every time I imagined how she might scream or simply show a look of horror upon her face on seeing the hideous form that I had been made into. As much as I longed to see Johanna again, I equally dreaded the thought of her seeing me as I now was.
The boat arrived in Edinburgh late in the evening, and we spent the night at a house that Frankenstein had waiting for us. Again, we were too absorbed in our own thoughts to bother acknowledging each other, let alone speaking any words to each other.
The next morning Frankenstein had a coach take us further north to the coast. This driver also paid me quite a bit of attention, but unlike the other drivers that we had so far encountered, this one was not shy in speaking to me.