It felt strange, knowing Christopher was in the room opposite her own. Angelika had locked her door before she got into bed. She could not say she liked his presence, because she still thought of it as Will’s room. Now Christopher was using that tub, sleeping in that bed, and erasing the last traces of his rival’s presence. Male cats rubbed against things to mark them as property. She could picture it now.
She’d slept soundly for around two hours, but was now awake, tossing and turning. It felt like a waste of time to be asleep when the house and grounds were so full of interesting guests and Mary was out there somewhere. Thunder cracked in the distance. Would she be kept dry? Did the big man have enough sense to keep her warm, and somewhat comfortable?
Angelika could not see Will’s cottage from her window, but she was absolutely sure that he would be awake. She could feel a pull from him. He must be so hungry after not touching his meal. She pulled on a robe in the dark and put on her boots. In the kitchen, she found some leftover cheese and bread, and lit a lantern. She needed to see Will’s face one more time, to ask for a hug, and to decide if the name Arlo suited him.
It was only a quick shortcut through the orchard.
During the day, she could agree to the men’s terms, and they seemed reasonable. Stay close to someone, and be guarded by them. But what were the chances that in the next three minutes she would intersect with the huge man’s path? She hardly flattered herself that he was so taken with her that he was waiting right now. She preferred the more likely outcome: she would soon be lying in Will’s arms on his narrow bed, in his monastery-white room, listening to the storm rolling in.
Taking a calculated risk was typical Angelika.
The air outside was perfumed by approaching rain clouds, and something else strange that turned her stomach and made her hungry. She swung her lantern and walked through the first rows of apples, past the Conqueror variety, picking one out of habit. Biting it, she found it to be the same flavor as always: sour and sweet, the taste of childhood. It made her think of her brother and that day with the spade, and how Will had asked if she had planted her own tree. “I should have,” she said out loud to herself to cover her nerves. All this talk of monsters and kidnapping couldn’t help but affect her. “I am going to start creating things on my own, without Victor, no matter what he says.”
She could hear a crackle. Was it rain?
“I’m going to get married in the Notre-Dame in Paris,” she said, breaking into a jog.
In the far distance, up on the hill, there was a light glowing in Will’s cottage. Perhaps it was a candle on the sill, burning for her like the star of Bethlehem. “I’m going to wear a dress that will employ ten seamstresses for a year, and I am going to have to increase my fitness to walk down that long aisle—”
She burst through a row of trees, and what she saw and smelled had her heart sinking into the earth.
It wasn’t Victor’s big man. But it was men. Men from the village, four, five, huddled around a campfire, and they were not the regular gardeners. They had sacks of apples around them. It was theft, but no matter. She saw liquor bottles, and a rabbit cooking on a spit. In the heartbeat that they all stared, she saw them look at her nightgown, her loose hair, and the fact that no protector stepped out behind her.
“Hello, luvvie,” one said, and his smile and tone were all the warning she needed.
Mary had drummed the following into her during her adolescent years:
No hesitation, no politeness, run.
Angelika swung her arm in a full circle, throwing the lantern into the middle of the group, and she began to run through the rows, faster than their rabbit. Behind her, she heard the roar of confused outrage. Her head start would last only as long as it took drunk men to get to their feet.
“Will!” Her scream pierced the air. “Will, open the door for me!” If he was asleep, or the cottage was further than she thought, it would be too late for her.
Never had she had such a profound empathy for hunted animals as she did now; she could feel every footstep behind her, could hear every branch snap, grunt, curse, and oath. At times it felt like she was miles ahead; other times she felt the pluck of fingers on her clothes. Her ankle turned and she lost a boot, just as her brother had on that fateful night when they created their masterpieces.
“Angelika!” Will’s faraway shout was coming from the wrong direction. She had somehow gotten turned around, and she was in the green apples when she should be surrounded by russet red.
Her hesitation cost her.
Hands grabbed her upper arms and lifted her clean off the ground. She smelled liquor and sweat. In her ear, a stranger sneered, “Where’re you off to?”
Everything hung suspended in an odd moment, then time spun faster, and she began kicking her feet. The guttural sounds she heard behind her were horrible. Snarling like a wolf, growling like a bear. The hard grip was wrenched away from her body, and she fell down to her hands and knees. She could hear Christopher shouting, even fainter than Will. Rolling onto her back, she looked up to see her attacker having his neck broken very efficiently by Victor’s huge man. The next one who blundered into the fray met the same fate.
Her rescuer tipped back his head, and let out a howl that echoed off the mountain.
He grabbed at a third man, who uttered his final foul word before joining the growing pile. “No! That’s enough,” Angelika panted, and they let the others flee into the night. Now they were alone.
Gasping for air, she asked, “How did you find me?”
“I think I always will,” he replied.
Her nightgown was up around her thighs. She pushed at it, but her hands were covered in dirt. He knelt over her, brushing at her ineffectually with his unusable hands, uttering a tsk. He radiated nothing but protective, brotherly concern. Her breaths were sobs of sheer relief.
It was this tableau that Will and Christopher both crashed in upon, from opposite rows of apples.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dirt, thighs, tangled hair, and tears.
Angelika Frankenstein lying beneath a monstrously huge man.
That was all Will and Christopher registered in this scene. They stepped over the dead men without even noticing them. All she heard was them saying her name, over and over.
Her savior roared to silence them, and Will put his hands up in a placating way.
“I’m all right,” she told them. Then she saw the gun in Christopher’s hand. “No, don’t!”
He fired a shot. Whether it was designed to miss was unclear. Now he had no second shot prepared, and the man was getting to his feet. “Fuck,” Christopher said in his cultured voice. He looked up and up, until the man was at full height. “Cover your eyes,” he told Angelika, and then threw a handful of sand up at the man. It did not blind him, only landing mid-torso. Christopher scanned around on the ground for a weapon.
“He just saved me,” Angelika said, scrambling up. She put herself in front of her rescuer. “He just stopped those—those—” She gestured, and they finally noticed the dead men. “They were going to—I think they were going to—” Her teeth were chattering.
“They were going to take off her nightgown,” the huge man said, his voice rumbling in his rib cage. “I smelled what they wanted to do. Filthy creatures, chasing Angelika, making her all dirty.” She felt his icy hands curl around her shoulders. “Now I find two more chasing her?”
“You know Will, and Christopher is my friend,” she assured him. “They were trying to save me, too.”
“What are you doing out here?” Christopher’s fear was converting into anger. “Why didn’t you turn around? The house was closer than Will.” He put a hand into his hair. “I was closer than Will, goddamn it, Angelika!”
“She was coming to visit me, because she was lonely,” Will replied, but he was explaining to the man holding Angelika. “And she still wants to come to me, don’t you, my love?” He said it slow and easy. She nodded. “We’ve talked about this, brother. She loves me, and she is mine.”
“Brother?” Christopher echoed, opening the chamber of his pistol to see what he might do. “Let her go at once.”
“Who is this?” the voice above her head asked. “Is this the man you said wanted to kill me? Drop it,” he added, and Christopher had no choice but to cast the pistol away. “You have been searching for me in the forest, with my father.”
Christopher sneered. “Father? Brother? You are mad. Let her go.”
“How’s Granny Mary?” Angelika tilted her face around. “She’s all right, isn’t she? What did she name you?”