the ground on both sides. It looked as though someone had buried an incredibly long tin can in the ground. Electric light shone through narrow windows cut into the walls, bathing the surrounding trees in pale white. The vampire turned a handle on a door at the front of the building, held it open, and the two visitors entered the lab.
It was much louder than Jamie had been expecting. The laboratories he was used to were quiet places, with oddly shaped glass beakers bubbling above Bunsen burners.
This room was more like a small factory.
Large extractor fans ran the length of the building on both sides, humming loudly. The Chemist passed pairs of plastic goggles to Jamie and Frankenstein, and led them to the end of the room.
Next to a large, vibrating extraction unit stood a bench covered in rectangular blocks of yellow-white powder.
“What’s that?” Jamie asked, inquisitiveness getting the better of him.
The Chemist appeared at his shoulder. “That’s recrystallized heroin base,” the vampire replied. “It’s what my shipments arrive as. I treat them with-”
“He doesn’t need to know the details,” said Frankenstein from behind them, his voice tinged with warning.
Jamie shot him a look full of wounded independence. “I want to know,” he said.
Frankenstein shrugged, turned away, and examined the wall of the lab, where a map of the UK had been hung. It was covered in yellow circles, some of them overlapping each other, that covered almost every inch of the country.
The Chemist smiled at Jamie. “It’s heartening to see a boy who wants to learn about the world,” he said, then guided Jamie to a second bench on which sat six shallow plastic bowls. Two were half full of a clear liquid; the other four contained a thick white solution.
“This is sulfuric acid,” he continued, motioning at the clear liquid. “The heroin is dissolved into it, then we add methyl alcohol, then ether, and that leaves us with this.” He gestured to the tanks with the white liquid in them. “The mixture stands until it begins to crystallize, then I add more ether, as well as… the final ingredient… and then leave it until it becomes solid. What you’re left with is Bliss, about seventy-five percent pure.”
“The final ingredient?” asked Jamie.
The vampire smiled and guided Jamie to a third bench, which held seven large plastic containers filled with a dark red liquid. “This is what makes Bliss into Bliss,” said the Chemist, with obvious pride.
“Blood?” said Jamie.
“Of course,” smiled the Chemist. “Human blood, mixed into the heroin before it solidifies. Seven different types, for seven different drugs. A, AB, B, and O: the basics, the cheap stuff. O negative, A1 negative, and OB positive for my premium customers.”
“What’s so special about them?” asked Jamie.
“They’re rare,” said Frankenstein, his voice booming in the enclosed space. “They’re not so easy to acquire.”
“Easier than you might imagine,” said the vampire, smiling oddly at the monster, before returning his gaze to Jamie. “The last batch of the day needs to go into the acid,” he said. “Would you care to do the honors?”
Jamie could feel the disapproving heat of Frankenstein’s gaze on the back of his neck and knew the monster was watching him, waiting to see what he would do next.
“Cool,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
The vampire supervised as Jamie lit the burners under the two bowls of acid, then carefully spooned the yellow-white powder into them, being careful not to drop it from a height that might cause the liquid to splash, putting each spoonful into a new bowl so none was overfilled. Once the bowls were bubbling away gently, the question that had been nagging at Jamie for several minutes burst to the surface.
“Where do you get all this stuff? If it’s just you out here on your own, where does it all come from?”
The Chemist smiled at him. “An excellent question, young man,” he replied. “The heroin base comes from Myanmar, and the blood comes from the National Health Service of this fine country of ours. As to how it all arrives here, unmolested, so to speak, I suggest you ask you partner.”
Jamie turned to Frankenstein, who flinched, ever so slightly. “Not now,” he said, sharply. “There are more important things to discuss.”
The Chemist raised his hands, deferentially. “By all means,” he said. “I so enjoyed seeing someone take an interest in my work that I forgot to even ask you why you were here. I presume you are looking for information of some kind?”
Frankenstein nodded. “Alexandru,” he replied. “We need to know where he is. I thought you might have heard something, from one of your dealers, or your customers.” He almost spit the final word, his face drawn into a grimace of distaste, and the Chemist’s mouth narrowed.
“I’m afraid I haven’t heard anything,” the Chemist replied, and it felt to Jamie as though the temperature in the lab had lowered by several degrees.
On the bench next to Jamie, one of the bowls of sulfuric acid began to bubble violently. The Chemist moved toward it, and Frankenstein’s hand slipped to the handle of the T-Bone on his belt. The vampire stopped and stared at him.
“I don’t believe you,” said the monster, evenly. “I wonder why that is?”
“Perhaps it’s because of your suspicious nature,” replied the Chemist. “Or perhaps it’s because you’re not stupid, and you know full well that anyone who knows anything about the three brothers is going to lie to you.”
He took another step toward Jamie, and Frankenstein pulled the T-Bone from its holster, letting the weapon hang by his side. “I’d appreciate it if you stayed still,” he said, his voice rumbling.
Jamie looked back and forth between the monster and the vampire. Then the bowl of sulfuric acid convulsed in a huge bubble, spraying boiling liquid into the air of the lab, and sizzling onto the exposed skin of Jamie’s neck and jaw.
He screamed in pain, and both Frankenstein and the Chemist ran to him. Jamie clamped his gloved hand over the wounds, and the fabric began to smoke. The pain was beyond anything he had ever felt before; it was as though a million tiny knives were cutting into his flesh. He screamed again, as his skin began to melt.
The Chemist flew to the corner of the lab, opened a small metal fridge, and returned to Jamie’s side with a bottle of purified water. Frankenstein had picked him up and carried him out of reach of the bowls and was holding him still with one hand while trying to pry Jamie’s hand away from his wounds so he could inspect the damage. The Chemist’s pale hand shot between them, gripping Jamie’s wrist and pulling his hand clear of the burns. Jamie’s head was thrown back, the cords in his neck standing out like ropes, his teeth clenched together in a grimace of agony.
The vampire flicked the top off the bottle and tipped water over the burns, irrigating the wounds. They gushed smoke as the liquid flushed them clean, and Jamie bellowed. Then the wounds, a bright red patch of at least ten individual burns, stretching from the collar of his uniform to just below his right ear, began to bleed.
The Chemist’s eyes turned red.
Frankenstein saw it happen and fumbled for the T-Bone, which had fallen to the laboratory floor. But before he could reach it, the vampire threw himself backward into the air, away from the fallen teenager and the crouching monster, and hovered by the door that led back to the garden.
“Bring him into the house once the bleeding has stopped,” he said, his voice guttural and full of lust. “There is a first-aid kit above the fridge.”
And with that he was gone, opening the door and swooping through it and into the night.
Frankenstein left Jamie, who was staring at the ceiling, his face white, his eyes wide, and pulled a green box down from a shelf above the fridge. He made his way back across the lab, turning off the gas rings beneath the bowls of acid as he did so, and crouched down next to the teenager, who looked at him with eyes that were starting to regain their focus.
“Are you all right?” asked Frankenstein.
Jamie was shocked to hear the monster’s voice so full of worry. “Fine,” he croaked in reply. “I’ve… I’ve never felt anything like it. I couldn’t breathe, it hurt so much.”
“Does it still hurt?”
Jamie nodded. “But not like it did,” he said. “It feels like a normal burn now.”
