Prelude (Underworld Lucian Fanfiction)

41 - Chapter XLI: An Eye for a Candle

The next evening.

It was a quarter past eight. The ladies of the East Wing restricted to the top floor, while far below ground, Lucian was hunkering down in a rock-faced, fifteen by twenty foot laboratory, the majority of space taken up by three tables, a bed, a chest, and a plethora of metallic instruments. The smell of formaldehyde and iodine melded easily with the blood-scent of an abandoned dinner, one that had hastily been sent back in an attempt to remove the odour. On one side of the room, Raze and Singe spoke amongst themselves, their words barely audible to the common ear, their attention on a small bowl centred on the main table between them.

Rather than joining the conversation, he was straddling a wooden stool, his head facing down and his eye trained on a brass microscope, the slide containing one of four blood-samples collected from Reinette over the past week. The view had much to do with the grimace he had been wearing since entering the room. Vampires often displayed symptoms of acute anaemia, but Reinette's cells were oval-shaped, almost globular, far removed from the sickle they should have been.

He sat back, running a finger through his hair, scratching the side of his temple. Not the most surprising of revelations. He had always assumed most of the damage was permanent, but he had hoped there would be something they could do about the problem. Particularly now that Singe had a living, breathing vampire to observe for much of his evenings.

He flipped a page of the small chart near his right hand, Singe's report going into extensive detail. Other than the ageism and weakness, she suffered from little pain. Her memories returning slowly, her mind functioning well enough, her reflexes quicker than a human...yet the blood remained in stasis. Frozen in its state. The veins had become withered over the past twenty years, and the outlook was not positive.

She was not healing.

"Lucian?"

He looked up.

From the other side of the room, Singe was eyeing him over his glasses, clearly losing patience...and for good reason. On the table before them was a porcelain dish holding a single eyeball. The blue iris tinged with red, the whites no longer white but yellow. The so-called 'eye without a scent' that Taylor had found in the home of Mrs. Grimsby. Something they had grappled over for a good twenty minutes before Singe shut the door, leaving little room for doubt as to the source. Unfortunately, he had yet to share it with them. Lucian put the chart down.

"Well, the smell is obvious," he muttered.

Singe frowned. "You think it is obvious?" He looked at Raze. "He thinks it is obvious. Forgive my intellect, old friend, but..." Singe took a strong whiff of the air. They had been sniffing the bowl for ten minutes straight. "How can a smell be obvious if you are the only one who smells it?"

"Precisely..." He picked up a pair of forceps and started to open and close the ends. He soon grew tired of this, namely because Singe's eyes were starting to bore into his skull. "...and as far as who left it, I'd say it was someone remarkably small. Perhaps even the size of a child." The smaller the culprit the less likely a scent would be left with its passing. He put the forceps down and angled his neck round, staring at Raze. "Victim's name?"

"Ina Jacobsen." Raze had had this information for over six hours, however, between the two of them, they both knew he preferred to wait until Lucian had gathered the obvious before volunteering that which was unattainable by clues. A subtle means of keeping the lycan-master interested in that which he found 'obvious'. "She failed to check in with the morning shift."

He got off the stool, starting to wander around the table, picking things up and putting them down again. It did not occur to him that perhaps this might have the same effect on Singe as Allegra had on him. "Location?"