Page 58 of Meeting Her Mate

I can feel it in my bones. At the age of a hundred and twenty-six, I no longer have it in me to fight death anymore. I set out on this journey, built my manor in this place, to study the more fascinating life forms to divine the secrets that nature held. I wanted to create a masterpiece of my own. Play God. I wanted to cheat death. I wanted a miracle. That creature I have trapped in my basement, a werewolf of all things, has been an interesting subject, to say the least. In all my experiments with supernatural creatures, none have survived the harshness of my methods. Except for him. His body has taken to every single chemical I injected into him.

I am afraid at this point, given all the strange concoctions that are running wild into his body, he is no longer man or werewolf. He is another creature entirely. I seem to have rendered him perpetually youthful, stronger than the strongest of beasts, and more powerful in resolve than even myself. That’s why I must kill him before I die. I cannot let loose a being such as himself into this world. And what would be the point of it? All whom he knew are probably dead.

I have created a strange breed. I, Frankenstein. Will, my monster. May Lord have mercy upon any soul who comes across him if he escapes. There is simply no hope for him.

He took the best parts of my life. I was a mere man of fifty when I first found him, barely able to cast a spell, unable to scry. For seventy-six years, I conducted my studies, doing my experiments, trying to create a serum from his blood, his lymph, and his ether that would make me immortal.

While the experiment has not failed entirely, it has not succeeded either.

I have outlived every person I ever knew. I have been periodically injecting myself with the serums that I crafted from wolf blood and wolf lymph, and I have prolonged my age. At the age of ninety, I was a spritely fellow when others my age dwindled in old homes. At a hundred, I could run a hundred miles without breaking a sweat. I knew this was because of the serums. I also knew that this was not a permanent fix.

Now it’s time to pay the piper.

I cannot inject myself any longer.

My body has rotted from the inside.

At the age of a hundred and twenty-six, I feel the scythe of death slithering across my bedroom window. I leave it to my son to finish my work if it can ever be finished.

And I am doing this mercy upon Wilhelm Grimm. I am ordering my men to kill him swiftly. The world is not ready for him, and he is not ready for the world that awaits him.

All in all, one of my greatest failures.

I know for certain that an eternity in hell awaits me for all the sins I have committed. I have made my peace with that. I have transgressed against God and nature and man and beast in only the most fiendish way. Was I given another chance, I would do it all again.

My fingers trembled as I held the journal.

“Will?” Alexis stood with a red canister in her hands. “What did you read?”

“He knew. The son of a bitch knew what he was doing was wrong, and he didn’t care. He confesses in the final pages that he’s created a monster. I’m his monster! Says right here. Look!” I threw the journal at her.

Alexis read the final page with a shocked face and then stayed quiet for a long time.

“You know what, fuck him. He’s dead. Despite using your blood and lymph or whatever to prolong his life to live for more than a hundred years, he couldn’t outrun fate. He’s dead. That’s what matters. And we’re going to make sure that this place goes to hell with him!” Alexis yelled.

She threw the journal into the house.

I walked up to her and took the canister from her. It was empty.

“I doused the whole place while you were reading,” she said, looking up at me. Alexis procured a lighter from her pocket and handed it to me. “Will you do the honors?”

I lit the lighter and threw it into the house.

The place caught in flames immediately. At first, there was a sound akin to a loud implosion. A loud whoosh. Then the windows exploded, throwing painted glass in every direction.

Alexis and I stood far from the burning house, hand in hand, watching as the flames leaped into the air, enveloping the entire manor. Black fumes billowed from within the burning manor, reaching the afternoon sky.

“Fuck you, Edward Beckett!” Alexis yelled. “Now you try.”

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and yelled, “Fuck you, Edward Beckett!”

“Now tell me that didn’t feel good,” Alexis said, smiling at me.

“I feel as if a part of me has been set free in those flames. As if my spirit was still trapped in that prison, and the only way to release it was by burning this place to the ground,” I said, looking deep into Alexis’s eyes.

“I am glad. Hi, Free Will. Nice to meet you,” she said, holding her hand out and smiling at me.

“No. I am serious,” I said, taking her extended hand and placing it on my chest. “I made a mistake. I can see it clear as day now. I know now why fate bonded us together. You are the balm of all my pain. You are the cool rain to the fire that burns within me. You were meant to heal me. You have been doing that ever since I met you, even after I rejected you. I was a fucking fool to do that. Feel my heart.”