And there stands the work table, littered with every macabre, unnameable instrument and beaker of the alchemist’s art. There are the chains and manacles bolted into the thick stone of the walls. There the flames soaring and dying in the tower grate and the jet-black pot which holds the unholy potion churning, frothing.

And there, before the poor girl’s streaming eyes, stands the alchemist himself, his stare bright beneath his black cowl, his features crimson in the infernal radiance of the fire—and in his hand—oh, in his hand, one final, most terrible implement of all, its thin, curving blade red and glittering.

“Oh, cousin, cousin!” Theresa shrieked. “Why have you brought me to this dreadful place?”

“Because we need just one ingredient more!” Conrad cried.

And he slammed the door behind her.

4

The chateau on the borders of the Black Forest has stood empty of life now, lo, these many years; and the tower of Castle Blaustein has long since fallen to dust. Neither Conrad nor his young cousin Theresa was ever seen after that one tempestuous winter night; and there are some who say they removed themselves to a family villa in the south, while others tell far grimmer tales of what befell them. Whatever the truth of the matter, the villagers rarely go near the old manse, fearing, in their unsophisticated way, that even the sight of its decomposing battlements can portend no good. And yet, there are those informants who report with an air of complete authority that one chamber in the chateau’s uppermost story remains occupied, if not peopled; and that anyone temerarious enough to brave the rats and spiders, cobwebs and spectres of the place, may see for themselves the antique marriage bed on whose tattered and putrefying sheets lies the skeleton of Conrad—forever entwined with the crumbling bones of Anna, his cherished bride.

IV

SOPHIA,
THE
NOOSE
AROUND
HER
NECK

1

“Something is terribly wrong,” said Harper, tapping the kraken’s eyeball.

“What is it?” asked Storm.

“I. Just. Don’t. Know,” she said, each word a sentence, each sentence punctuated by another tap of her fingernail against the glass. The jar stood on a stone pedestal between them. In the jar—in a clear preservative that filled the jar—lay the carcass of an enormous serpent, its flat, white, gelatinous body rolled into a coil the size of a firehose. Harper Albright leaned in close to the glass and peered through it at Storm. The curve of the jar magnified and distorted her features. The orange torchlight hopped on the lenses of her spectacles. “Every word Sophia said to you, every gesture she made, conveys to me a message of distress.”

“No, I mean, what is it?” Storm repeated. “This. In the jar.”

He circled around it until he stood beside her. Hands behind his back, he leaned in too. He examined the leviathan’s horned proboscis.