The doctor had finished sewing the opening of the corpse and was now making strange gestures with his hands on the body; as the spell increased in intensity. This curious procedure made Viktor's stomach turn. Every gesture the doctor made was burned into his memory. The incomprehensible words of the spell reverberated in his mind as if they were familiar.As the mantra continued, the atmosphere in the laboratory cellar changed perceptibly. Viktor felt static electricity build up inside his own body as if he were trapped in the middle of an incipient electrical storm. He felt the shadows thicken around him. The air itself had taken on a suffocating quality. He looked greasy and tainted.Seen out of the corner of his eye, as he watched the doctor and the ritual taking place below, the impenetrable darkness that refused to disappear from the corners of the vault seemed to run like oil across the ceiling and ruined walls and gradually envelop the room, as if the shadows we

I can still remember the first time I took the life of another man as clearly as it had been yesterday.I have killed many. The bully Inquisitor, the desperate prostitute, the unloyal soldier, the alcoholic priest, the grumbling ferrywoman, the repulsive and manipulative bloodsucker of the Moroi clan, the rude undertaker, the half-deranged militia soldier, the pompous nobleman, the master of the wizard's guild, my own apprentice, the big-whisked rat catcher, the stupid adventurer who fancied himself a hero, the innocent twins, the greedy thief.But I still remember the first. The first is special.I can still see his face as he strangled him. I can see the red and bulging eyes, the swollen tongue sticking out of the mouth, the puffed cheeks turning from pink to purple. I can hear the husky gurgling sputtering of the man choking and trying to inhale air that will never reach his lungs. I feel his desperate hands hitting mine, the nails scratching my skin and pene

Viktor turned his head slowly and saw that Erich was standing in the doorway, his horrified face turned into conspicuous shock. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Viktor was busy panting, and Erich was simply too scared to say anything.Viktor's roommate had no need to explain what he was doing there. If anyone had to explain something, it was Viktor. And yet it was Erich, still standing in the doorway and not daring to step through, the first to speak.“I… I heard the cat. He was meowing. M… I wondered what had happened to him. "Viktor glanced at the body lying on the workbench. The front of the ginger cat hung from the edge of the table."Well, now you know," Viktor replied.Erich looked from Viktor to the cat and back to Viktor, the same shocked expression of horror painted on his face."H ... how?" was the only thing he could pronounce."I don't know very well ..." Viktor admitted, puzzled by the exp

After Viktor delivered the letter to be sent to his sister, he and Erich met again at the warehouse. Now, after sunset, the air had a characteristic autumnal chill that suggested the season was about to change again. In too little time the decline of autumn would give way to winter and the dead months of the year. A chilly wind blew in from under the wooden doors and whistled through the slate tiles above the hayloft.They were surrounded by a scene not much different from the one they had discovered in Dr. Tepes's basement. There were trestle tables, covered with Viktor's open notebooks. On a workbench were the instruments of a surgeon. And in the middle of all this was a heavy oak table set to become an autopsy table when the opportunity presented itself.Erich had "acquired" most of the equipment and Viktor preferred not to ask how he had gotten it. Viktor had just told him what he needed and Erich provided it. Around all this he hung a sackcloth curtain so that, in

Viktor spread his hands over his body, palms down, trembling. It wasn't Herwin Reiss, he told himself, it wasn't anymore.As the vital spark disappeared from him, the corpse was nothing more than an empty vessel, an empty man. Inside his mind he saw the words he had to speak form into letters of fire, and he began to speak the words required for the spell. Erich's wavering voice joined hers and his accomplice began to recite the words whose pronunciation Viktor had spent long hours teaching her.The two students did not know what the words meant, but the power of the words could not be denied. The darkness of the warehouse took on a body. The air they breathed thickened, like the suffocating river mists that drowned the streets of the half-dead city, and it entered their lungs like mud.The alchemical stench of the preserved body was increased by the intense odor of plant decay, the ferrous aroma of spilled blood, and the bittersweet scent of rotting flesh.