Nexus [COMPLETE]

2. Mordekai

(April, 1940)

Cracking an ax over your best friend's skull is not supposed to be satisfying.

It's a heinous act. Appalling really. 

Though I loved Lewis with every bone in my body, I couldn't shake the sense of accomplishment that came with killing him. The holy trinity of negative emotions burned though my veins too: grief, anger, and betrayal. The manic urge to grin, however, was unexpected.

Three people bursting into the lab was also a bit of a surprise, and I stopped grinning just in time for them not to notice. Of course, it was Gentry, Ned, and Maryanne--the worst possible people who could've walked in on this scene. My poor luck had struck again.

"What have you done?" growled Lewis' father, Gentry. His eyes darted between the bloodied ax in my hands and the mutilated corpse of his son on the floor.

I thought about dropping the ax, but that look on Gentry's face kept my fingers tight on the wooden handle.

"Gentry," said my best friend's mother, Maryanne. Pale as death, she placed a placating hand on her husband's arm. "Wait."

I've always liked her.

"He turned," Ned guessed, looking more rumpled than usual. The old scientist readjusted the glasses hanging off the end of his nose and somehow hunched even further as he leaned over Lewis' mutilated body. He didn't even have the shame to look remorseful.

Anger consumed me at the sight, burning out my giddy bloodlust. I pointed the ax at the scientist. "Your stupid formula turned him into a monster," I accused. "I had no choice but to kill him. He didn't even recognize me!"

"My 'stupid formula' has turned you into a slayer's dream," Ned corrected, unconcerned that his life was in danger.

The head of Covington house turned on the old doctor, his face twisted with fury. Gentry looked so much like Lewis in his final moments that I raised the ax a little higher in anticipation.

"This led to the death of my son?" Gentry shouted.

"I was working on a cure, if you will recall," Ned said, unflinching as he looked at Gentry above the frame of his glasses. "It seems we ran out of time."

Maryanne bent over Lewis' corpse, and as her eyes fell on the bloody remains of his face, she let out a stilted sob.

"My poor boy," she whispered, then glanced up at me. I took a step back from her pleading expression. "Why would you do this, Mordekai?"

"She's right," Gentry growled, blazing eyes on me again. "There was still hope to save him. You're his best friend. Why would you kill him?"

"Do you think I wanted to?" I shook my head in denial. "Did you not see the trail of carnage he left in the hall? Carlene's spleen is resting there on that table. He did that! And you think I shouldn't have stopped him?"

Gentry's fingers twitched at his sides and I turned the ax-blade towards him. I knew the violence those hands were capable of. "Stopped him, yes. Killed him? No."

"They must be stopped at any cost," I reminded him. "Lewis wouldn't have wanted to live as a monster." Tears clouded my vision, because when all was said and done, Lewis was dead. And I had killed him. To me, Lewis had been everything.

And now he was nothing.

Dry-heaving, I dropped the ax. It clattered against the floor.

"At any cost," I repeated, gazing at the bloody holes I had beat into my best friend.

Murder gleamed in Gentry's eyes. Maryanne shook her head, crying quietly. Ned merely spectated, no interest discernible in his withered face.

"They should be stopped, but Lewis was not past saving!" Gentry headed for the ax, and I did the only sensible thing I could think of at the time.

I spun and kicked him in the head. And then I ran.

No thought for whether or not I'd just killed another member of the family, I darted from the lab, the east wing, and finally the Covington estate, running faster than the eye could see.

I settled in a dark alleyway in town. Familiar, it was the first, the one in which I had first met my Lewis on a cool night two years ago. The one in which I'd shamed myself to no end for a meager bit of coin.

Crouching in the gutter, I thought long and hard about Lewis. I cried. I despaired. And then I laughed.

God, did I laugh.

I was the success story.

Lewis was Frankenstein's monster.

The only thing left to do was to decide whose fault that was.

And kill them.

Author's Note: Please vote if you enjoyed this chapter. Thanks for reading. Sweep-edited on 1/1/19.