“I can’t do it.”

The voice sounded like it was coming from a hundred miles away. Jamie struggled to open his eyes. He was lying on the grass, the girl called Larissa sitting next to him. He tried to crawl away but couldn’t move. His limbs ached, and his head was full of cotton wool.

“Damn it, I just can’t,” she said, apparently to herself. “What’s wrong with me?”

He forced his eyes open and looked at her. Her eyes were brown again, and she was looking down at him, a gentle expression on her face.

“Who . . . are . . . you?” he managed. “What did you do to me?”

She lowered her head.

“You were supposed to be mine,” she said. “He said so. But I couldn’t do it.”

“Your . . . what?”

“Mine. In every way.”

With a huge effort Jamie forced himself up to a sitting position.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter.” She looked up at the sky. “You should go,” she said, looking back at him with sadness in her face. “They’ll be there by now.”

A tidal wave of adrenaline crashed into Jamie’s system. “Who? Where?” he demanded.

“My friends. You know where.” Jamie leapt to his feet and looked down at Larissa.

“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” he asked, his voice trembling. In his mind’s eye he saw a face at a window.

She nodded her head.

Jamie turned and sprinted out of the park, running as though his life depended on it.

Please not my mom. Please don’t let them hurt my mom.

When Jamie reached the end of his road, his heart was pounding so loudly in his chest he thought it might explode. His vision was graying, the muscles in his legs screaming, but he pushed through the pain and sprinted the last fifty yards to his house and pulled himself round the gate post and toward the front door.

It was wide open.

He ran into the hallway. “Mom!” he yelled. “Are you here? Mom!”

No answer.

He ran into the living room. Empty. Through into the kitchen. Empty.

No sign of her.

He ran up the stairs and pushed open the door to her bedroom. The window above her bed was open to the dark sky, the curtains fluttering in the evening breeze. Jamie ran across the room and put his head out the window.

“Mom!” he screamed into the inky blackness. His right hand slipped on something on the ledge, and he looked down and pulled it away. Red liquid dripped down his wrist.

He looked at the windowsill. There were two small pools of blood on the white surface and more smeared across the glass of the open window.

Jamie stared in horror at his hand, then something came loose in his head as he realized that his mother was gone, and he put back his head and wailed at the sky.

And miles away, high in the dark clouds, something heard his cry and turned back.

Time passed. Jamie had no idea how long.

He couldn’t stay in his mother’s room, couldn’t look at the blood, horribly bright against the white paint and the clear glass. Somehow he made it downstairs to the living room. He was sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the wall, when he heard something come through the front door and close it softly behind them.

He was beyond fear now. He was numb. So he just watched as the tall, thin man in the gray suit walked into the room and smiled at him with teeth like razorblades, his dark red eyes shining in the gloom.

“Jamie Carpenter,” the man said. His voice was like treacle. “It is a supreme pleasure to finally meet you.”

The man bared his teeth and took a step toward Jamie, and then the front door exploded into sawdust and an enormous figure, holding what looked like a huge pipe, stepped into the living room doorway.

“Get away from him, Alexandru,” the massive newcomer said, in a voice that shook the entire house.

The man in the gray suit hissed and arched its back. “This is not your concern, monster,” he spit. “There is unfinished business here.”

“It will stay unfinished,” the figure replied, then pulled the trigger hanging below the pipe. There was an enormous bang, like a giant balloon being burst, and something sharp exploded out of the weapon and flew across the room so fast it was a blur, trailing a metal cord behind it. Alexandru leapt into the air, impossibly quickly. The projectile smashed a hole in the wall of the living room, before retracting as rapidly as it had been fired, spiraling back into the end of the pipe.

The creature in the gray suit hung in the air, its eyes blazing with anger. It snarled at the figure in the doorway, then smashed through the big window at the front of the house and accelerated into the sky.

Jamie hadn’t moved.

The giant darted to the window and craned its enormous neck in the direction the thing called Alexandru had disappeared.

“He’s gone,” the figure said. “For now.”

It turned to Jamie, and in the light of the living room, he got his first look at his savior and cried out.

The huge figure was a man, at least seven and a half feet tall and almost as wide. He had mottled grayish-green skin, a high, wide forehead, and a shock of black hair above it. He was wearing a dark suit and a long gray overcoat. A wire ran up his sleeve from the end of the pipe he was holding and disappeared somewhere over his shoulders.

He walked forward, and as fear and loss started to shut down Jamie’s mind, he saw two wide metal bolts sticking out of the sides of his neck. The man extended his hand toward him.

“Jamie Carpenter,” he said. “My name is Frankenstein. I’m here to help you.”

Jamie’s eyes rolled back white, and he fainted into sweet, empty darkness.

4

SEARCH AND RESCUE

Staveley, North Derbyshire

Fifty-six minutes earlier

Matt Browning was sitting at his computer when it happened.

He was working on an essay for his English literature class, a comparison of the speeches by Brutus and Mark Antony in Julius Caesar, typing quickly into his aging laptop, when something thundered out of the sky and crashed into the small garden behind the terraced house he shared with his sister and his parents, throwing dirt and brown grass into the evening air.

Downstairs he heard his mother shriek and his father slur at her to shut up. In the bedroom next door, his little sister Laura started to cry, a high wail full of confusion and determination.

Matt saved his work and got up from his desk. He was small for his sixteen years, and skinny, his brown hair flopping across his high forehead and resting against the tops of his glasses. His face was pale and close to feminine, his features fine and soft around the edges, as though he were slightly out of focus. He was wearing his favorite crimson Harvard T-shirt and dark brown cords, and he slid his feet into a pair of navy Vans before walking quickly across the small landing and into his sister’s bedroom.

Laura was lying in her crib, her face a deep, outraged red, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth a perfect circle. Matt reached into the crib and picked her up, resting her against his shoulder and quietly shushing her, bouncing her gently in his arms. There was a glorious moment’s silence as she took a deep breath, then the cries began again. Matt crossed the tiny room, pulled the door open, and headed downstairs.

In the kitchen at the back of the house, his mother was frantic. She was wearing her cream dressing gown and a pair of pale blue slippers and flitting back and forth beneath the two windows above the sink, peering into the dark garden and telling her husband over and over to call the police. Greg Browning stood unsteadily in the middle of the room, one hand pressed against his forehead, a can of lager in the other. He looked around as Matt walked into the kitchen.