He says something else in a foreign language I’ve never before heard to the nurses; they’re waiting beside me with a large contraption in their hands. All of them move, except the one holding my forehead against the seat. She doesn’t so much as budge as I strain and gasp and fight with everything in me.
The contraption is a cage, one for my head. The nurse holding me shifts out of the way as soon as they pull it over me, attaching it to the back of my seat with three clasps that clank shut. Wires and poles fit too tightly around my neck, crude points digging into my windpipe like a backward collar.
“Didn’t you?” It’s the last thing on my mind, but it’s what I cling to. Anything to avoid thinking of my own fate, or never seeing Annie again. “Look at me—any of you! Her parents wanted closure, and all you gave them were her teeth.” I buck, straining against the metal, nicking myself. Warm rivulets run down my collarbone. “I am a private investigator here on official business!”
“First and foremost, you are a patient in need.” Unmoved, Beecham picks through his coat pocket and pulls on a mask. “Might you mean, her?” He points at the nurse on my far right. She’s tall, but not as tall as the others. “Pull off your mask, dear. He’s contained.”
The nurse at my elbow does as she’stold, pulling her mask down over her chin. A girl of about ten smiles back at me, and I gasp, choking on bile.
Fangs—two glinting, metal pairs flanking her top middle teeth. The rest of her mouth is crusted in burgundy.
“You see, Jacques,Icome from a noble house as well—though, not one as prominent as your grandfather’s. Petite noblesse. Not as secure. Your legacy carries on, even without your father’s blessing.” Beecham spits onto the floor. “But I trained in medicine, and wanted to find a way to preserve the legacy of our name, too. There was a gentleman Gaspard and I met in a pub during our time as riflemen, who spoke of eternal life. Sold us a vial of what he called ‘Immortality in a Bottle.’ It was to be ingested, and eventually repurposed through patients.”
I’d fall out of my chair laughing had I not been tied up.
“The blood of the Undamned—half human, half undead. A bridge between species.”
I start shaking my head, cutting myself deeper. This is preposterous.
“The arcane sort are cursed, according to him. Averse to sunlight, eyes ruby red after feeding. Butthisblood is superior. A brand of vampirism not found outside a single bloodline. None of that applies. And I am trying to recreate them.”
“You’remad.”
“There were many experiments—I, being the first,” Beecham says, as if that clears everything up. “My body does not age, but I can die like any other man. A carriage accident, or a winter chill, just as with our dear Gaspard. So, I tried to surround myself with protectors. Most did not last. The failures are burned alive; our furnace is never idle. The closest I’ve come are subjects who are imbued with strength, but lack the teeth. In that case, I give it to them.” He smiles,knowingly. “Butyou, the son of my only escaped patient, in which the Blood of the Undamned remained dormant? That’s no modern illness you’ve come to be treated for, Jacques. I’m particularly interested in what the cards say aboutyou.”
Vampire. I try to speak, but I can barely breathe.
“You’ve heard the tales. Read the stories.”
I haven’t—my parents were always folktale-averse, but I know enough from my schooling. I don’t even want to entertain the notion, don’t want to remember my impulses with Annie, the sick curl in my gut that forms when I think of her… my wishes to act upon them with no regard to consequence.
At this point, I’m past all reason. I begin to berate him. Threaten his life. His mother, probably long gone. His family, if he’d ever had one. His freakish experiments.
Alma jumps, startled at my outcry, and starts to sob.
“Now, now, darling,” Beecham reassures her. “You’re beautiful. Don’t let the bad man tell you otherwise.”
“My mum won’t think so,” Alma wails.
Beecham glances at the nurses; one of them sticks a hand through the cage. A door unlatches at my mouth, and I scream and snarl as she fits a metal contraption past my upper jaw. Then, she does the same for the bottom, securing it in place. Cranking my mouth open so wide, the skin at the sides of my lips split.
“Hush, now. We’re paying her a visit soon, remember?” Beecham begins to hum a familiar tune as he enters the forceps through the wrist-sized hole.
My screams rip my throat raw. I want to fight, want to ask him what it all means, but every ounce of strength has left me. I begin to fade in and out, my entire body cranking back to life just to feel him yank the first incisor out of me.
By the time he’s pulling the secondtooth, my mouth is filled with blood. I gag, letting it run down my chin so it doesn’t choke me through my sobs.
Then, he tears a canine out.
The room goes cold. Spots dance at the corners of my vision, and I feel my eyes roll back into my head.
“Hurry,” Beecham mutters. “Crushed Valerian root, powdered bone, and silver flakes. Then, the Vitae. Double the laudanum first.”
A splash of astringent liquid coats the back of my throat, and I don’t have time to choke on it, because a rough sludge is forced down my throat immediately after. The moment I sputter, my chair is tilted back so that I choke it down. It burns—it all burns, the searing pain from the raw sockets and the alcohol melding into two rods of pain, one on each side of my upper jaw.
My skull is splitting open.
I pray for the end that never seems to come quickly enough.
