Chapter 9: Bloodbound Confessions
The mercury veil closed behind them with a sound like a sigh, and the world snapped back into the suffocating, beautiful silence of the library stacks. Frankenstein didn’t let go of her elbow. His grip was a vise, steering her away from the study nook, deeper into the canyon of books.
He walked fast. Kali had to take two steps for every one of his, her boots clicking a frantic rhythm against the marble.
“Hey, Frankenstein. Ease up. You’re leaving bruises on my good arm.”
He didn’t slow. His profile was sharp, carved from pale stone. “We need distance. Now.”
“From him? He’s literally everywhere down here. You said it yourself.” She tried to pull back, but his strength was absolute. It sparked a flicker of real annoyance. “Stop. Just stop for a second.”
He finally halted, turning to face her. The flickering gaslight caught the rims of his glasses, turning them into twin circles of cold fire. His blue eyes were dilated, the pupils swallowing the irises. Not with fear. With something far more volatile.
“You don’t understand what you just did,” he said, his voice low and rough. “You don’t understand what he just did.”
“He made us a science project. I got that. What was I supposed to do? Lie? He would’ve known.”
“Yes. He would have.” Frankenstein released her arm, staring at his own hand as if it belonged to someone else. Red marks were already blooming on Kali’s tan skin. A muscle jumped in his jaw. “You should not have come here.”
The words landed like a slap. Kali crossed her arms, the chill of the underground seeping through her sweater. “You invited me. You said it was safe.”
“It is safe. From external threats. It was never safe from him.” He pushed a hand through his silver hair, a rare gesture of agitation. “He doesn’t get curious about people, Kali. He collects data. He isolates variables. And now you are the primary variable in a live trial. With me as the control subject.”
She leaned against a shelf, the old wood solid against her back. The musty scent of parchment was suddenly cloying. “So we give him data. We already were. My heartbeat, remember? He’s just… formalizing the process.”
Frankenstein let out a short, harsh breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You think this is about your heartbeat? It’s about the deviation. The error in me. He felt it through our bond. The hesitation. The… focus.” He looked away, his gaze tracking the endless rows. “I have served him for a thousand years. My responses are predictable. Efficient. You walk into a room, and the entire system degrades.”
There it was. The raw admission, stripped of the metaphor. Kali’s anger cooled, replaced by a slow, twisting ache in her chest. “Degrades,” she repeated softly.
“Yes.”
“Into what?”
His eyes swung back to her, blazing. “Into something that worries about coffee preferences and handrails. Into something that stands between a Hound and its target instead of eliminating the threat with optimal efficiency. Into something that wants.” The last word was ripped from him, barely audible.
The silence between them grew thick, humming with the library’s latent energy. Somewhere far above, a gear in the great, hidden clockwork ground through a turn.
“He called it hunger,” Kali said.
Frankenstein went rigid. “When?”
“As we were leaving. His voice… it came through the dark. ‘Your hunger echoes in our bond, old friend.’”
He closed his eyes. A long, slow exhalation. When he opened them, a shocking transformation had begun. His usually immaculate composure cracked. The nails on his right hand, resting on a carved oak shelf, darkened, lengthening into sharp, black points. They dug into the wood with a sound like tearing skin. Splinters rained down onto the floor.
“He’s pushing,” Frankenstein whispered, staring at his own distorted hand with a kind of disgusted fascination. “Making me feel it. Making it visible. So he can measure the extent.”
“Feel what?” Kali asked, though she knew. She took a step toward him, her caution gone, replaced by a need to understand the shape of the thing between them.
“You rewired it,” he said, his voice cracking with the effort to stay quiet. “This ancient, calcified heart. You didn’t even try. You just… existed. With your absurd questions and your terrifying calm and the way you looked at a monster and saw a puzzle you wanted to solve.” He lifted his clawed hand, turning it over. “I was built for service. For protection. For war. Not for this… this static. This noise in the signal. It’s all I can hear now when you’re near.”
Kali reached out. She didn’t grab his wrist, just placed her fingertips lightly on the back of his distorted hand. The skin was fever-hot, the texture like polished onyx. He flinched but didn’t pull away.
“It’s not noise,” she said, her voice steady. “It’s a new frequency. You just don’t have the dial for it yet.”
He made a raw, pained sound. His other hand came up, the nails there elongating too, digging into his own palm. Black, viscous blood welled up and dripped, sizzling slightly as it hit the cold floor. The physical manifestation of his conflict was horrifying and intimate.
“He wants me to confess it,” Frankenstein gritted out. “To give it parameters. To define the variable so he can calculate its impact. Its risk.”
“So don’t confess. Show him the data is inconclusive.” She moved her fingers, tracing the unyielding curve of one claw. “You’re his interpreter, right? Interpret me wrong. Misdirect.”
He stared at her, his breathing ragged. “You’re asking me to lie to my master. For you.”
“I’m asking you to survive his experiment. With me.” She held his gaze, her green eyes wide and unflinching in the gloom. “You said you’d keep me alive. This is part of that. Keeping me alive means keeping this—” she gestured between them, “—unquantified. Unpredictable. Let him watch the heartbeat. Don’t let him see the blueprint.”
Slowly, agonizingly, the black claws began to recede. The skin knit itself back to pale, unmarked perfection. The only evidence was the ruined wood of the shelf and the dark spots on the floor. His breathing evened out.
“A glitch,” he murmured, echoing her word from the study.
“A beautiful, dangerous glitch,” she corrected, a faint smile touching her lips.
A ghost of his own smile, brittle and worn, appeared on his. “You have no idea what you’re playing with.”
“I never do. That’s the point.” She finally withdrew her touch, the warmth of his skin lingering on her fingers. “So. Custodian. What’s the first order of business? Shelving? Deworming the scary books?”
Before he could answer, the air three feet from them shimmered. It wasn’t the mercury veil. It was a localized distortion, like heat rising from asphalt. From within it, Raizel’s voice emanated, cool and clear, everywhere and nowhere.
“The first order, Frankenstein, is rest. The subject requires it for baseline continuity. You will take her to the eastern annex. The room with the green glass dome. She will sleep there.” A pause, the distortion pulsating gently. “And Frankenstein? The claw marks are a fascinating data point. Thank you for being so… expressive.”
The shimmer vanished.
Kali let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Well. He’s a hands-on principal investigator.”
Frankenstein’s face had shut down again, the mask firmly back in place. But his eyes, when they met hers, held a new, grim agreement. A conspiracy of two.
“This way,” he said, his voice all professional courtesy again. He gestured down a side aisle. “The eastern annex. It’s quiet.”
“Quieter than this?” Kali asked, falling into step beside him.
“A different kind of quiet,” he said. And for the first time, he didn’t sound like he was describing a prison. He sounded like he was describing a possibility.