Spring, 1914
Sir Hannibal regarded the gold seals that swirled over the surface of the door, leaning heavily on a cane. He really should not have been out of bed, but Green had made the mistake of leaving him unattended, and if the fool couldn't anticipate his complete inability to follow doctors' orders, well, then that was on him. Hannibal eyed the door, and the pair of Wardens eyed him, neither wanting to be the one to order him back to the infirmary. Ordering Sir Hannibal to do anything had never ended well in the past.
'How long has he been quiet?' he asked at last.
Garner answered. 'Three days, now.'
'After a ruckus that lasted for two, I understand. A delayed reaction, perhaps?'
Garner and Martin exchanged a look, but neither responded.
Hannibal did not seem to notice. 'Well, he was quiet enough before the experiment, too. How does he seem? Who's been in to see him?'
'Ah, er,' Martin said. 'Nobody's been in there.'
Hannibal blinked and turned. His legs nearly buckled, and he caught himself against the wall. 'Nobody at all?'
'Not on your life!'
The look on Hannibal's face told them they probably would have been better off manhandling him back to the infirmary.
'I was given to understand he had been trying to batter the door down with his body. No one has seen to his injuries?'
'Oh, ah,' Martin and Garner said in unison.
'Has he asked for any help?'
'Hasn't said a word.' Garner was beginning to understand that everybody involved was in deep trouble.
'Likely unconscious, then?'
'Hard to say...'
Hannibal grunted a small Anglo-Saxon word and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. 'Is any food gone when you remove the tray?'
Martin took a step backward. 'Oh,' he said. 'Ah.'
'And what does that mean?' Hannibal's eyebrows went up, and a volcanic rumble shook its way out of him. 'You didn't. You're not telling me that my patient hasn't been fed in five days!'
'Oh,' said Garner. 'Ah...'
Sir Hannibal bellowed a number of unkind words at the Wardens. 'Open the door,' he demanded, and added more words still. 'We're supposed to be the heroes of this bloody story!' he roared. 'We don't starve our enemies to death!'
Martin could not bring himself to open the door, but he handed Hannibal the key and the pair of heavy leather gauntlets that hung from the wall on a peg. Garner pointed a rifle at the opening as the door growled open on its heavy hinges.
'Fetch water,' Hannibal said coldly. 'Clean cloths, and lukewarm mash of bread and milk. And for Christ's sake, find Green.'
He expected them both to obey, but only Martin scuttled off toward the stairs. Garner and his rifle remained. Wise, Hannibal had to admit, but it still irked him. He had put a lot of time and effort into this. He had nearly died seeing it through. If the boy was not dead of hunger already, there was no way Hannibal meant to let him get shot.
It was dark in the cell. The nature of the seals meant the space could not be wired for electricity, but no one wanted to leave the boy with an open flame, either, so they had provided an electric lantern, instead, with a bright, tungsten-filament bulb. No one had brought food or water, and no one had brought fresh batteries, either. The dead lantern lay on its side next to the mussed cot.
The boy lay beside it.
A smudge of dried blood and paint dragged from the door to where he had collapsed, face-down on the cold floor. Beneath the paint, between the bloody splits in his skin, his previously-white body was a solid mass of bruises.
Hannibal's gut lurched. There was none of that morbid beauty left, only sadness. He hung back a moment, wary of a trick, but the limp form did not move. In the gloom, he was not sure it even breathed.
'Light,' he ordered.
Garner muttered angrily, but did not move. Fine.
He hobbled into the cell. Closer, he could barely see that the boy's sides moved almost imperceptibly in and out. His skin was bunched into gooseflesh where it was not stretched by swelling.
Hannibal lowered himself to his knees and pulled on the gauntlets. Pity could not be allowed to override common sense. Even a decapitated snake can still bite.
'Can you hear me?' he asked quietly.
The patient did not move.
Making sure there was no gap between the cuffs of the gauntlets and the sleeves of his cardigan, he rolled the boy onto his back. His face was green and blue and misshapen from his mad escape attempt. Evil was smarter than that. It was fear that made men foolish enough to take on a solid wall. The kind of fear that ate a man from within.
Hannibal understood why. The things he had called down into that room were more than he could bear to remember, and he had been expecting them. The boy had not been warned. Before he was a patient, he had been a prisoner, and one does not give that kind of prisoner time to plan his defence. But he was a sorcerer as well as a monster. Surely, he called on demons and devils regularly as he did his wicked work.
What had frightened him, then?
Was it being surrounded by evil he could not control?
Or having the evil wrenched out of him like a bad tooth? Had he changed enough to be driven mad by the very thought of his former self?
Hannibal clucked his tongue. That was absurdly optimistic. He had not known what to expect when he designed the experiment, but he had no illusions that it would be easy or painless.
He pulled the blanket from the cot and wrapped it firmly around the blotchy torso, pinning the arms in case the patient regained consciousness.
A bowl and a pitcher of water appeared, and a stack of bleached flannels.
'Green's gone into town,' Martin whispered. 'I've sent someone to find him. Not likely wise to send for another doctor in the meantime, though.'
Hannibal agreed. Another doctor would not understand why he was not allowed to touch the patient.
He wet a cloth and cleaned the crusted blood away from the boy's nose and lips. His nose looked broken, dark and swollen. The blood had flowed down his face to cover his chest. It caked his hair. He had done this to himself.
Hannibal's hands tightened. What if he had done more harm than good? What if the experiment itself was crueller than letting the monster exist as a victim of his rotten heritage? Was the murderer more vicious, or the one who inadvertently committed acts of torture?
Fixing this would be even more gruelling than spiritual warfare, he feared.
He lifted the boy against his knee. He was breathing through his mouth, and it fell further open as his head fell back, lips dry and parched. Hannibal took a clean cloth, soaked it, and squeezed two drops onto the boy's tongue. He waited. Two more. And two more. When choking began to become a risk, he massaged the boy's throat until he managed to trigger the swallowing reflex, and he began again.
Every so often, he heard Garner's harsh breath behind him, or the shifting of a heel on the stone floor. Their scepticism was palpable. They did not understand his determination to save the thing that had killed Barbara. He hardly understood it, himself. But if there was a person inside the monster, or even the potential for a person, he would not let it die.
Two more drops, and two more, and two more.
'Green?' he asked when Martin reappeared.
Martin shrugged. 'He said he was running errands. Didn't say exactly where. He may get back before anybody can find him.'
Two more drops, and two more, and two more.
A sliver of veinless white appeared beneath the boy's puffy eyelids, and Hannibal's hands stilled. The boy's shallow breathing hitched.
Hannibal hurriedly made sure his arms were immobile, even though he could not possibly have the strength to fight. 'I'm sorry for this,' he muttered. 'For all of this. We are not usually this kind of men.'
The patient was not aware enough to understand, maybe not even aware enough to hear. He coughed, and Hannibal turned his head to one side until the spasm had passed.
As the life returned to him, so did a fragment of that inhuman magnetism. The effect was jarring, attraction in battered flesh and fractured bones. Longing battled with pity and revulsion. Pity won.
The gauntlets were wet, now, and the leather chafed Hannibal's hands. He flexed his fingers, wondering. The monster drew power through touch. He used it as fuel for black magic, but what he took was essentially life-energy. Perhaps it could heal him. That would only be fair, after this ordeal. But if it did not work like that, such a risk would be idiotic.
'Can you hear me?' he asked again.
The black edge of a rimless pupil appeared. The face turned toward the sound of a voice.
They had not believed he would actually kill Barbara. That was why, of all the monsters out there, Hannibal had chosen this one to pursue. He manipulated people, controlled them. Given long enough to work, he distorted them and enthralled them, but he seemed to kill rarely, if at all. In retrospect, that probably only meant that he was very good at hiding bodies, but in the present, it also meant that he was at least capable of stealing a little life without taking all of it. Garner could be on hand to put a stop to things if they got dangerous.
Hannibal analysed that thought for outside influences. Would he even be able to tell if his decision-making were impaired by the monster's magnetism? There was no use second-guessing everything that went through his head, though.
He set speculation aside.
'Can you hear me?'
The eyes opened, glassy and blank. They slid aimlessly, unfocussed, from Hannibal to the ceiling to the wall.
'I'm sorry. Do you understand? This was not planned. You were not to be harmed in any way. There is a doctor coming to treat you.'
Green had not appeared, though.
Hannibal wet the cloth again and pressed it to the boy's mouth. This time, the patient responded, sucking the moisture from the fibres. He stirred, but his arms were secured by the blanket.
'There, now. Easy. You've hurt yourself very badly. Try not to move.'
The eyes locked onto him, now, dull and distant, but with growing recognition. The stirring became a struggle.
'Tu,' the boy rasped, and a few more tattered syllables, his command of English fled.
Hannibal was weak, himself, but he held the boy still without difficulty. 'Yes, I,' he confirmed. 'Come, now. I'm not going to hurt you.'
'Omoara-mă.'
'I'm sorry, I don't understand you.'
The boy exhausted himself and fell quiet again, his breathing ragged. 'You are going to kill me. Just do it.'
'I am not going to kill you.'
The eyes darted fearfully. 'You are going to torture me, first.'
He really was so young. Eighteen, perhaps? His upbringing had hardened him to the suffering of others, but it had not prepared him to cope with suffering of his own.
Or perhaps it had, and only too well. He gritted his teeth, the fear mingling with contempt. Resignation.
'No,' Hannibal said softly.
The boy did not believe him.
He sighed. That was perfectly reasonable, after the mistakes that had been made. He hadn't anticipated being laid out for so long, should have made explicit arrangements for the possibility. The days of dangerous neglect were his fault.
'Have you any way of healing yourself?'
The eyes rolled back. Perhaps the boy was not strong enough for conversation. But he did not lose consciousness again, and recovered after a moment.
'This room is sealed,' he said.
'You can't perform sorcerous works in here, but our seals don't touch passive magics, like your... What would you call it? Feeding?'
The boy grinned. 'Touch me and see what happens.'
'Killing me won't do you any good.' Hannibal shook his head. Yes, that optimism had been ridiculous. Even if his experiment had worked, it was only the beginning of a long process. The boy was the same person he had always been. 'I'm willing to help you,' he continued, 'but if you prove yourself intractable, Garner there will shoot you until you stop moving, and then Lang will cut off your head, burn your body to ashes, and scatter you at a crossroads. It was his wife you killed, so he'd likely mount your head on his wall, too.'
'Ah, but you wouldn't. Because you are my friend, yes?'
The bitter cynicism masked fear poorly. The boy's eyes remained fixed, large and unblinking, on Hannibal, when simply keeping them open had to consume energy he did not possess. He would not let himself relax.
'I wouldn't because I do not believe in revenge as a form of justice. I'll keep you from hurting anyone else, but I don't see that punishing you for what's past serves a purpose. I also do not believe that you deserve punishment.'
He expected more derision, but the boy seemed more perplexed than scornful. Suspicion joined the fear as his starved brain tried to make sense of the idea of forgiveness.
'Why?' he asked after a long pause.
'That will be a lengthy conversation best left till later, when you've recovered some.'
'Why?' the boy repeated fiercely.
'Compassion isn't a good enough answer for you?' But he could see that the boy barely understood the word. He sighed. 'Then let's say that this is an experiment. It all is. I mean to see it through to the very end. I want to know about you, things I cannot find out through torture. I must have you safe and well, or the entire experiment is invalidated. That, I believe you can understand.'
The boy was not a scientist, but Hannibal thought he was a scholar, or at least had aspirations. He had first come to their attention when a friend of the Academy wrote to describe a strange youth's attempts to steal occult volumes from a private collection on the Continent.
'I've no incentive to cooperate with you.'
'No, but you do see that I've no incentive to torture and kill you, either. Will you let me help you?'
The boy looked thoughtful, but thought seemed to be difficult for him. He was weak, in a lot of pain, and surrounded by enemies. He had never been taught compassion for his fellow man and could not comprehend it when it he saw it directed to himself. He did not reply.
That Continental friend had, rather sheepishly, included other information in that letter.
'When you touch someone, you can sense them, correct? You are momentarily subject to their emotions?'
'And their intentions,' the patient confirmed. It had the tone of a warning.
'Even better. Then you will know I mean you no ill.'
'Your woman did. That's why I killed her.'
Hannibal froze, suddenly very aware of his own feelings. Disgust and fury would not serve him. Both were valid responses to a statement like that, but neither was useful in the present. Neither would result in progress. He was there in that place because he wanted to believe that monsters could be helped just like any other sick person. His fury was not for the boy, but for what he suspected had been done to him, what had made him into this. He focussed on the boy's explanation, his excuse. He had killed Barbara because he perceived that she meant him harm. It was self-defence. Hannibal himself had only just made the same threat.
The boy watched for a reply.
Phase two of the experiment, then. One could not explain compassion to someone who did not understand it. But perhaps it could be transmitted.
Hannibal gathered all the pity he could muster for a child born in darkness and raised to scorn mercy. He held tight to the belief that no one is born evil. He looked at the boy and forced himself to see a victim inside. Pity, grief, love. In a perfect world, all the monsters could be healed.
'Ralston,' Garner said sharply.
Hannibal ignored him. Green hadn't come, and there was no telling when he would. Someone had to do something.
Like a father over his newborn, he bent and pressed his lips to the monster's brow. Pity, grief, love.
The life rushed out of him.
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