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The words caught me short.

“But you could.”

Oh, yes: For this was to be the next step, the next temptation.

“Help me,” Grendel pleaded. “Help me, Mikela.”

And now it was my turn to look down at Rebecca, primarily to avoid the wet weight of his sorrowful gaze. Hearing, even as I did so, that traitor voice at the back of my brain begin its damnable litany yet once more: telling me how she was still fresh, still young enough to be malleable, still resilient enough to withstand the physical strain of re-Birth . . .

But at that moment, from behind us—shattering this reverie—came the slow sound of mocking applause.

* * *

It was Ivan, of course—his flies still unbuttoned, brandy bottle in one hand, duelling pistol in the other. The weapon which he now aimed—with surprising accuracy—at your brow.

“My cousin,” he said, “I find—just as I long suspected—that you have been deceiving me.”

You fixed him with a silver glare—but your usual power over him seemed, for the moment, to have been suspended.

“You’re drunk,” you said.

Ivan smiled—a mirthless twist of the lips.

“Indisputably,” he replied. “While you, lovely Mikela, are without doubt the coldest male bitch who ever slid between two sheets for money. Still, let all that by, my genius kinsman. Do introduce me to your new—acquaintance.”

“You can’t seriously think Grendel—and I—”

Ivan laughed, a wet half-snarl—and I realized he was weeping, silent and slow, eyes all but unfocussed with angry tears.

“Surely, I can think nothing else.” Then, to me: “And I will thank you, sir, to stand away from my wife.”

I lowered Rebecca to the ground, stroking her eyes respectfully closed, and rose to meet his hateful stare.

Quickly, you said: “Grendel is my creation, Ivan—the artificial man I once told you of, dead flesh raised from the dead once more imbrued with life, do you remember?” A thin smile, to match his own grimace. “He is what you invested in.”

“Some paramour of yours,” Ivan replied, tonelessly. “A whore for a whore—and a precious ugly one, at that.”

But the pistol—now less sure of its immediate target—had begun to shift, restlessly, between us. And in his indecision, you saw our chance.

“Better a whore than a fool,” you said.

Ivan convulsed, as if slapped, and put the pistol’s muzzle to your temple.

“Cousin,” he whispered, “I have played the fool for you too long.”

But even as his finger tightened, I slipped behind him, and twisted his head from his shoulders with a single, cartilaginous crack.

* * *

One thing I have always prided myself on, and not immodestly, is the knowledge that no living man can make me tremble. But violent death can still instantly reduce me to that half-Irish child who once tried to vomit his own mortality out upon the grass of some old Celtic tomb. And the sight of Grendel, his hands gloved with Ivan’s blood, offering me that dripping thing which had once housed Ivan‘s (grantedly, rather limited) intelligence, was certainly traumatic enough to produce this same effect.

I fell back, mouth full of bile, and raised my crossed arms like a beaten beggar. “Please,” I begged. “Please, take it away.”

Grendel considered me, and I thought I saw a hint of pity in those patchwork eyes.

“The great doctor Mikela Kosowan,” he said. “Brilliant surgeon, pioneer of a new, deathless age. Count Ivan’s homme fatal. One question for you—only one: Why did you make me?”

And for a humiliatingly long moment, pinned under the gaze of my greatest achievement, I could think of no good answer.