Chapter 8

The grandfather clock's chimes trembled through Mayfair House like a dying man's last breaths. Lucian Sinclair lay rigid atop Egyptian cotton sheets, his fingers clawing the headboard as pharmaceutical fire raced through his veins. The vial of experimental neural stimulants glinted on the nightstand, its label bearing the crest of a Zurich clinic Malcolm had once joked about eloping to.

Downstairs, Finn Fitzgerald hovered at the library threshold, clutching the eyeless teddy bear Pembroke had resurrected from Fitzgerald's ruins. The bear's remaining button eye caught firelight, mimicking the earl's frost-blue gaze.

"You shouldn't have," Finn whispered to the relic. His thumb brushed childhood scribbles—*Fu Tinglin*—characters warped by decades of childish grip. The bear smelled of crypt dust and Lucian's sandalwood cologne, a scent that lingered in East Quadrangle's nightmares.

Voices slithered up the staircase.

"Pembroke, you're worse than the Harley Street quacks."

The earl's drawl held arsenic sweetness. Finn pressed against cold paneling, imagining Lucian's long fingers drumming the wheelchair armrest. Three rotations. Five. The telltale sign of pain breaking through aristocratic composure.

"Master Lucian—" the butler's voice cracked like aged port, "—you promised."

A silvery pause. Finn's pulse hammered against the bear's matted fur. The hybrid monster within whispered, *Listen*.

"Very well." The earl's wheelchair creaked toward the drinks cabinet. "Fetch the green vial. Not the one from Geneva—the *other*."

Finn's Latin primer slipped from numb fingers. Its thud echoed through the house.

Silence.

Then Lucian's voice, sharp as a dueling saber: "Master Fitzgerald, I trust you're not eavesdropping."

The boy stepped into the library, firelight gilding his Harrow bruises. The earl's gaze cataloged each injury with clinical precision: split knuckles from ice shovels, bruised cheekbone courtesy of Beaumont's signet ring—the C Stream's mark.

Lucian rotated a crystal tumbler. Its facets fractured his face into a cubist nightmare. "You're learning to hide pain, I see."

Finn's grip tightened on the bear. "Only from them."

The earl's smile didn't reach his eyes. "A start."

Pembroke materialized with a lacquered box. Within lay a syringe filled with liquid moonlight—the neural cocktail Dr. Laurent prescribed.

Lucian rolled up his sleeve, revealing track marks like constellation maps. Finn's stomach lurched. The hybrid monster roared, *Stop him*.

"Don't."

The earl paused, needle hovering above radial pulse. "Your objection is noted."

They stared across the chasm of privilege and pain. Finn's voice emerged raw as fresh grave dirt: "Let me help."

Lucian plunged the needle home. A shudder ripped through his frame. The wheelchair armrest splintered under his grip.

Finn lunged forward instinctively. The earl's hand caught his wrist, bones grinding. "You mistake vulnerability for invitation."

The bear's button eye rolled underfoot as they struggled. A decade of suppressed rage erupted. Finn's knee connected with the wheelchair, sending it careening into the fireplace.

Embers rained down. Lucian sprawled amidst ashes and shattered dignity. His laugh chilled the room more than winter drafts.

"How very Fitzgerald of you."

Finn recoiled. The hybrid monster whimpered.

A fist pounded the door. "Master Lucian!"

Pembroke's cry went unanswered. The earl clawed upright using the shattered wheelchair for leverage. Finn glimpsed scar tissue mapping his spine like trenches from some invisible war.

"Still playing the hero?" Lucian spat bloodied phlegm into Ming dynasty porcelain. "Your brother tried that too."

The words hung between them—a grenade with clipped pin. Finn's foot crunched the teddy bear's eye. The sound echoed like a skull cracking.

Dawn found them in the rehabilitation suite, mirrors multiplying their shame. Lucian hung in a web of medical straps, his legs twitching under electrostimulation. Finn counted each convulsion like rosary beads.

"Forty-three."

The earl's head lolled, sweat-soaked hair obscuring his face. "Forty-four."

Finn's physics notes lay abandoned. Variables of force vectors blurred with the smell of burning flesh.

"Forty-five."

"Stop."

Lucian's command emerged slurred. The hybrid monster bared its teeth. "Forty-*six*."

The earl's hand shot out, yanking the emergency cord. Alarms shrilled. Through red-tinted haze, Finn saw it—the briefest crack in marble composure.

They came then: white-coated acolytes bearing syringes of oblivion. Finn fought until a needle found his jugular.

Last conscious image: Lucian's wheelchair retreating, the bear's severed head peeking from his pocket.

***

The dream began with peonies.

Lucian floated through Fitzgerald's conservatory where he and Malcolm had exchanged vows over stolen champagne. Sunlight dripped through glass panes like liquid honey. He wore Oxford robes, ink still wet on his mathematics doctorate.

A shadow moved beyond the camellias. The earl wheeled forward, cane slicing through cobwebs. "Malcolm?"

But the figure emerging held Finn's face aged a decade, eyes hollow as Cheapside whores. The man reeked of gun oil and prison tattoos.

"Hello, lover."

Lucian's cane clattered to mosaic tiles. "You're dead."

Finn's laugh cracked the dreamscape glass. "I got better."

They danced through rotting greenery, the maniac's hands leaving bruises on Lucian's wrists. "You should've let me kill them all."

Peonies mutated into funerary wreaths. Lucian glimpsed newspaper fragments swirling in the fetid air: *Sinclair Heir Sentenced to Life*...*Mayfair Massacre*...

The mad Finn pressed a blade to Lucian's throat. Its edge bore Latin engraving—*Omnia Mutantur*. "You changed me. Now watch me change the world."

Blood bloomed scarlet across doctoral robes. The earl awoke screaming.

***

Reality returned in fragments:

IV drips beeping like stock tickers.

Pembroke's tearstained face.

The teddy bear's corpse on the bedside table.

And Finn asleep in the wingback chair, his Harrow tie knotted like a noose around his fist.

Lucian watched dawn gild the boy's bruises. The hybrid monster had grown new fangs overnight.

When Finn stirred, the earl spoke first: "Harrow's headmaster will receive a bill for the wheelchair."

Finn examined his splinted finger. "Your doctors want me gone."

"They want many things." Lucian traced the IV needle lodged in his arm. "The trick is deciding which deaths matter."

The boy flinched.

Outside, Mayfair's golden youth trotted to park rides, their laughter floating through bulletproof glass. Lucian's finger tapped the bear's severed head. "Your brother hid letters in its stuffing."

Finn froze.

"Love notes to some Cambridge poet." Lucian's smile cut like shrapnel. "Seems the Fitzgerald talent for doomed romance is hereditary."

The boy snatched the bear. Its remaining eye glared accusingly. "Why show me?"

"Because," Lucian wheeled into the antiseptic sunlight, "you'll need practice mourning."

***

Harrow's gates loomed like prison bars. Finn's amended schedule burned in his blazer pocket: *Advanced Latin*, *Corporate Finance*, *Weapons Training*.

Beaumont's gang waited at the crossroads. Their new leader wore Lucian's signet ring stolen during the earl's fevered collapse.

"Look who's still the earl's bitch."

Finn's calculus text connected with the boy's nose. Cartilage crunched sweetly as chapel bells.

Chaos erupted—C Streamers versus A Stream aristocracy. The hybrid monster danced through bloodied snow.

When groundskeeper whistles pierced the fray, Finn stood astride Beaumont's chest, his knee grinding broken ribs. The mad Finn's specter whispered, *More*.

Headmaster Vaughn's Rolls-Royce screeched to a halt. Lucian emerged draped in sable and icy contempt.

"Well," he purred, surveying the battlefield, "it appears Harrow's character-building curriculum requires recalibration."

Finn met his gaze over the carnage. The hybrid monster nodded.

As the earl's lawyers swarmed Vaughn, Finn limped to the chemistry lab. The teddy bear's hollow belly now held Lucian's stolen signet ring and a single gardenia petal.

*Omnia Mutantur*, the mad Finn had whispered in the dream.

At the Bunsen burner, Finn began his first true lesson.

***

Dusk found Lucian reviewing security footage. Finn's fight replayed in triplicate across surveillance screens. The earl paused on a freeze-frame—the boy's face mid-snarl, mirroring Malcolm's expression during their final argument.

Pembroke entered with the evening's neural cocktail. "Master Fitzgerald has requested firearms training."

Lucian zoomed in on Finn's eyes—where the hybrid monster now danced unchained. "Denied."

"But sir—"

The earl's finger traced Finn's frozen rage on the screen. "Let him believe he's choosing."

As Pembroke retreated, Lucian unlocked the wall safe. Malcolm's autopsy photos spilled across the desk. Alongside them—a newly developed snapshot of Finn standing in East Quadrangle shadows, the teddy bear's severed head dangling from his fist.

The earl raised his glass to the surveillance feeds. "The game's afoot, dear boy."

Outside, Mayfair's first snow began to fall, burying all tracks.