Frankenstein wiped the blood from the boy’s skin, then pulled a gauze pad from the first-aid kit and gently placed it over the burns. Jamie winced but did not protest. The monster unrolled a strip of white bandage, laid it over the gauze, and fixed it in place with surgical tape. Jamie pushed himself up into a sitting position as Frankenstein closed the kit, took it back across the lab, and replaced it on the shelf it had come from. When he turned back, Jamie was looking at him.
“He was going to turn the gas off,” the teenager said, slowly. “He knew what was going to happen.”
“I couldn’t have known that,” replied Frankenstein, walking back to the boy.
“I’m not blaming you,” said Jamie, his face full of pain. “I was just saying.”
“All right,” said Frankenstein.
“Help me up?” asked the teenager, and the huge man reached down a misshapen hand. Jamie gripped it and pulled himself to his feet, wincing as he did so.
He hesitantly touched the bandage on his neck, then looked up at Frankenstein. “I want you to let me do the talking,” he said. “In the house. OK?”
The monster looked down at him. “Fine,” he said, after a pause. “Do whatever you think is best.”
The back door was open when they reached it, and they stepped through into a warm, ramshackle kitchen. A kettle was boiling on a huge Aga, and the Chemist was sitting at a wooden table in the middle of the room, looking uneasily at the two men.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I haven’t tasted human blood in more than a decade, but I can’t control my reaction to it.”
“It’s all right,” said Jamie. He looked down at an empty chair opposite the vampire’s, and the Chemist quickly invited him to sit down, then told Frankenstein to do the same.
“I’ll stand,” rumbled the monster.
“As you wish,” replied the Chemist.
Jamie carefully took his seat and looked at the Chemist, who was eyeing the teenager nervously. “I know you were going to turn the gas off,” said Jamie, and the vampire breathed out a long sigh of relief.
“I was,” he said, eagerly. “I could see it was going to boil over, but then your partner told me to stay still, and I didn’t want to provoke the situation, and…” He trailed off.
Frankenstein rolled his eyes but said nothing.
“I know,” said Jamie. The Chemist seemed to him to be genuinely shaken up by what had happened in the lab, and he pressed forward. “How did you end up here, doing this work?” he asked.
The vampire looked at him and then laughed. “You want to hear how I was reduced to this, is that it?” he replied. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Carpenter, but it really isn’t much of a story. I was a biochemist for a pharmaceutical firm, I was turned, and I carried on with my job. I just make a different product now.”
Jamie’s face fell. He had thought that taking an interest in the Chemist might open him up a little and make him more willing to talk about Alexandru.
“However,” continued the Chemist, casting a pointed look in Frankenstein’s direction. “It is refreshing to be asked a polite question. Especially when said question isn’t posed behind the point of stake. You have manners, young man. Your mother must be proud.”
Jamie saw his opening, and leapt for it. “I think she is, yes,” he replied. “I can’t ask her though, because Alexandru has her. That’s why we’re looking for him.”
The Chemist looked at the teenager with naked sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear that,” said the vampire. “Truly I am. You must be going through hell.”
Jamie nodded.
“But I don’t know where he is,” said the Chemist. “You can choose to believe me, or not to. I can’t make that decision for you. But I will tell you one thing that I do know, which is less than prudent on my part.”
“Anything,” said Jamie. “Anything that might help.”
“He is still in the country. How I know that, I will not tell you. But he is still here. Which makes it extremely likely your mother is, too.”
Frankenstein snorted. “That’s it?” the monster asked. “He’s still in the country? So that means we only have to search about 160,000 square miles to find him.”
The Chemist stared at Frankenstein, his face twisted with open loathing. “You leave my house knowing more than you did when you arrived,” he said. “I doubt that will be the case anywhere else you choose to conduct your search. The brothers have eyes and ears everywhere, and no one else will be willing to tell you anything.”
Jamie stood up from the table, clenching his teeth so he wouldn’t cry out as the muscles below his burns moved. He shot Frankenstein a look of pure anger, warning him to say nothing more. “Thank you for your help,” he said to the Chemist, who nodded politely. “We’ll leave you to your work.”
They followed the path back to the road in silence. Private Hollis was leaning against the door of the van.
“Where to next?” he asked, as they stopped beside the vehicle.
Jamie kicked the metal side of the van as hard as he could, the clang echoing through the silent night air. He kicked it again, and again, then rounded on Frankenstein, his face red with rage.
“You’re so stupid!” he yelled, spittle flying from his lips. “He obviously knew more than he told us, much more! And he would have told me if you hadn’t been such a dick to him! Why did you do that? Don’t you want to find my mom? What the hell are you doing here?”
Frankenstein was too shocked to reply. The boy’s anger was steaming off him in waves.
“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” Jamie bellowed, punctuating each word with a thunderous kick to the van’s side. Then as quickly as it had come, the anger was gone, and he slumped to his knees on the bumpy road.
There was silence.
Tentatively, the driver reached toward him, but Jamie shoved his hand away.
“Don’t touch me!” he yelled, rising back to his feet. “Just leave me alone!”
He ran, stumbling into the forest, leaving the two men by the van.
Jamie sat at the base of a wide oak tree. He could see the van’s headlights through the black maze of the forest and could hear the driver’s and the monster’s low voices.
Let them look for me. They won’t find me in here. Let them think they’ve lost me.
His head rushed with frustration, anger, and guilt. The chemist would have told him more about Alexandru, he was sure of it, if the stupid monster hadn’t opened his big, stupid mouth. They could be on their way to rescue her right now, could be hot on her heels, but instead they were no further along the path that led to her than they had been before they arrived. It had never even occurred to him that Alexandru would have taken his mother out of the country, not after the message that had been carved into the man’s chest and left for him to find, so that information was useless-Frankenstein had been right about that. But it was what was going to come next, what he was sure the Chemist was going to go on to say that might have helped them. Because Jamie was convinced one thing the vampire had said was true: No one else would be willing to risk Alexandru’s wrath to help them.
Then he realized that was wrong. There was one person.
He pushed himself up from the ground, ignoring the howl of pain from his injured neck and crashed blindly back through the trees toward the headlights. He emerged to find the driver and Frankenstein leaning against the van. The look on the monster’s face suggested he had not been overly concerned.
“Got that out of your system, did you?” asked Frankenstein, his voice containing a hint of laughter, and Jamie scowled at him.
“Take me back to the Loop,” he said. “I want to talk to her again.”
Frankenstein’s mouth narrowed.
“Talk to whom?” he asked.
“You know who,” said Jamie, and smiled.
22
