THE SUM OF HIS PARTS
By Kevin J. Anderson

Kevin J. Anderson has more than twenty million books in print in 30 languages, including Dune novels written with Brian Herbert, Star Wars and X-Files novels, and a collaboration with Dean Koontz. He just finished the sixth book in his epic space opera, “The Saga of Seven Suns.”
Visit Kevin J. Anderson at the websites: www.wordfire.com and www.dunenovels.com
* * * *
Lightning turns the castle tower into a silver silhouette. Energy collects in metal rods, floods into a crackling apparatus. Sparks fly from wires connected to a bandaged figure composed of cadaverous tissue assembled with thick sutures. 
The doctor studies his creation, the mismatched parts, the thick sutures. 
Spiderwebs of electricity flow like white-hot blood into the patchwork body, awakening the components like embers under an insistent puff of breath. The reattached hands twitch, the fingers flex. Transplanted lungs expel fetid air, unleashing a flood of memories. 
* * * *
He drew a deep breath of the open air. The snow-capped Alps framed the fragrant meadows where his sheep roamed. He preferred to be alone in the mountain vales, away from his brother Stefan and his flock; he didn’t like the sound of talking. In fact, he didn’t like sounds at all.
The wind spoke to him with breezes that whispered in his ears and taunted him like the hot breath of a wolf. The waving grasses hissed and rustled.
One afternoon during a thunderstorm, he huddled next to a rock, wrapping his hands around his ears, but the thunder made his head ring. The wind was all around, plucking at his clothes; gasping, wheezing, shrieking. He abandoned his flock, ran to his hut, and slammed the rickety door. The wind moaned through the cracks, slipping inside to get him. Plugging his ears with beeswax only amplified the sounds of his own breathing, the blood pounding inside his head. There was no escape...
When it was time for the two brothers to join their flocks and take them to market in Ingolstadt, he and Stefan climbed a pass that separated their grazing fields from the valley. His brother was lonely, loquacious, and pestered him with constant conversation, to which he received no reply. As the two hiked up the steep slope, Stefan began panting, louder and louder, breathing so heavily that he could not even keep up his inane patter.
The shepherd squeezed his eyes shut, but couldn’t block out the sound of the awful, heaving breaths. Each loud inhalation and exhalation was like the thunder, until he could stand it no more.
He spun and wrapped his hands around Stefan’s throat. His brother struggled frantically while he squeezed, but the shepherd focused only on stopping the noise, smothering it. When he let his brother’s limp body tumble down the steep path, the world was peaceful for a time. A few moments of blessed silence. Then the wind picked up again.
He fled toward the valley. When the shepherd reached Ingolstadt and left his sheep in the market pen, he passed an old woman sitting in front of her candle shop. She coughed incessantly, hacking, wheezing; she spat a mouthful of phlegm into the gutter and started coughing again. The sound was like hammers pounding on his nerves. The old woman breathed and coughed and wheezed and coughed and breathed—until he knew he had to silence her as well.
She stood on creaking legs and tottered into the dimness of her shop, still coughing and coughing. Without hesitation, the shepherd stalked after her. She turned, no doubt thinking him a customer. Before she could speak, before she could cough again, he wrapped his callused hands around her thin throat. His muscles were strong, and he clamped down harder and harder until her struggles stopped, and the silence came back.
When he reeled outside again, the streets of Ingolstadt were a storm of people, a constant din, far too much noise. He had to escape back to the high mountain meadows, but before he could run from the square, a town crier began to bellow at the top of his lungs, announcing a tax that old Baron Frankenstein had imposed. The crier’s words broke through the air like cannon shot.
The shepherd wanted to scream for silence. He needed the crier’s mouth to stop opening and closing, to stop spewing words. Unable to control himself, the shepherd threw himself upon the man, shutting off the breath and the voice. It took four grown men from the astonished crowd to pull him away. The crier squawked and gasped, but his throat was so damaged he could no longer speak.
After the strangler was dragged before the magistrate, he was convicted of killing the old candle-shop woman and his brother Stefan, whose raven-pecked body had been found by another shepherd. In addition, several children around Ingolstadt had disappeared over the years, and (since he was in custody) he was accused of killing them as well, though he denied that. He did not, however, deny the rest.
While the shepherd sat in his cell, the mocking wind stole through chinks in the wall and laughed at him. One blustery night, he watched the Baron’s son, Victor Frankenstein, come to talk to the jowly jailer. From where he huddled sullenly in his cell, he could overhear the conversation. Victor had an edginess and a calculating intelligence. “I am here on behalf of several medical students from the University. We are woefully short of cadavers for dissection.”
When the jailer’s breathing quickened, it set the strangler’s teeth on edge. Victor looked at the pot-bellied and splotchy-skinned jailer; distaste was clear on his face, as if he dismissed him as a potential specimen. “If we are to become physicians, we must have material with which to practice.” He indicated the miserable prisoner. “This madman is penniless and without family. He will be hanged tomorrow. I would like to purchase his body afterward. At present, I have a particular need for a pair of hands and a set of lungs.”
The jailer pretended to be offended. “That’s highly illegal, sir!”
“But quite commonly done—as you well know.” Victor pulled out a pouch of gold coins. “Perhaps this will salve your conscience?”
The jailer looked at the coins, looked at the Baron’s son, then sneered at the strangler in his cell. “Done.” Victor’s breathing was calm with satisfaction. Outside, the wind scraped past the walls. It never stopped...
The following day, when the shepherd was brought to the gibbet in the town square, he heard the mob shouting, breathing.
As the rough noose tightened around his neck, the strangler realized that the loudest sound that had haunted him all his life came from air passing through his own throat from his own lungs. Every waking moment he had been forced to listen to each breath whistling in and out of his mouth and nose. Finally, that noise would cease too!
When the hangman hauled on the rope, lifting him into the air to dangle under the gibbet’s crossbar, the noose squeezed off the sounds he made. All of them. The straining pulse grew to a roar in his head—and then he fell into blessed, total silence...
Until now.
* * * *
Storm electricity floods the muscle tissue. The bandaged legs twitch, as if remembering how to run. 
“Just nerve impulses,” Victor says, checking his apparatus. The legs spasm again, trying to break free and bolt from this hellish place... 
* * * *
He loved to run. As a servant in Castle Frankenstein, he preferred being sent to town to perform errands for the old Baron. He was fleet as a deer, and his muscles sang with the satisfying ache of tired legs after a long and glorious run.
His main duties were to tend Baron Frankenstein’s menagerie of exotic animals on the castle grounds: peacocks, a wildebeest, an aardvark, a spotted ocelot, even a lemur. The Baron’s noble friends marveled at the private zoo, while his son Victor studied the creatures with a scientist’s eye. The Baron also indulged the boys and girls from Ingolstadt who crept onto the estate to look at the animals.
The runner was a happy-go-lucky man with many flirtations, and the young women did not mind his attentions, especially the innkeeper’s plump daughter. The old Baron paid his servants well enough, but coins did not stay long in the servant’s purse. He cheerfully bought food, wine, and friendship for his companions, though the generosity usually went only one way.
The innkeeper’s daughter chided him for his spendthrift ways, especially in the evils of gambling, but he simply laughed her off, then pinched her substantial bottom. He frequented the dicing tables, invoking the name of his master to gain special privileges or to increase his line of credit.
Unfortunately, his luck was never good, even in the best of times. Finding himself out of money and in debt, he assumed that his fellow gamers (who had been happy to accept his coin when he bought food or bottles of wine) would be sympathetic to his plight. But his supposed friends vanished like smoke, and the gambling-house proprietors demanded repayment.
Twice in the past four months, the old Baron had lectured him to be careful. “Because you work for the House of Frankenstein, you have a responsibility not to cause shame and scandal.” So the servant knew he could never ask his master for a loan. Baron Frankenstein was a hard man, not unjust, but not softhearted either.
Owing so much money, the runner didn’t know what he could do. Collectors had cornered him in an alley, describing in great detail what they would do; first they would tie a gag around his mouth to stifle his screams, then they would beat his boots with iron clubs until his ankles shattered. Afterward, they would slowly pull off his boots, drawing out the pain. Once his broken feet were bare, they would take a set of curved tongs stolen from the local blacksmith, and twist his toes one by one, bending them backward and up until the bones snapped. He would never run again.
He could not allow that to happen. He couldn’t! Therefore, when the old Baron went off to be alone in his isolated hunting lodge deep in the forest preserve, as was his habit, the runner slipped into Castle Frankenstein. He bundled up four silver candlesticks and hurried out the servants’ entrance, beyond the squawking and grunting creatures in the menagerie, and ran down the path to Ingolstadt as fast as his legs could take him.
The candlesticks were more than enough to pay his debt, but his tormentors showed no sympathy. They accepted the stolen silver and looked at him as if they knew he would gamble again, that this was only the first theft he would be forced to commit. But they had their money, and the servant was free of his tormenters. Relieved but not at all interested in the pleasure of running, he stayed the night with the innkeeper’s daughter, who did not know of his troubles. In the morning, shaky with both relief and guilt, the runner went back up to the castle, glad to have a fresh start.
When he arrived, the household staff were distraught, and young Victor Frankenstein glared at him with angry eyes. His voice was cold. “We know what you’ve done. Those candlesticks were my mother’s heirlooms, fashioned out of the purest silver from the mines of Transylvania.”
“I ... I did nothing. I didn’t take them.”
“You were seen!” cried the head housekeeper, her face streaked with tears. “I saw you, and so did two others!”
Victor said, “You are hereby discharged from service.”
The runner stood aghast. “I will make up for it, sir. I’ll pay you back. Please don’t tell the Baron!”
“I am in charge while my father is away. You cannot repay this debt. You have stolen from us. You have betrayed people who trusted you. Leave Castle Frankenstein before I call the magistrate.”
The runner went dejectedly to town. Hearing of his disgrace, all those who had laughed and played games with him, all those who had delighted in his generosity, now did not wish to be seen in his company. Very hungry, he begged the innkeeper’s daughter for food, and she scolded him for gambling despite her warnings. She slammed the door in his face.
As he left the inn, the runner turned into a narrow, dim street where he hoped to curl up and sleep undisturbed. At first, he didn’t see the shadowy man following him, but once in the alley, the stranger came close. He had sharp eyes and a broad face with a thin dueling scar on his left cheek. The man said, “I have a gift for you from Victor Frankenstein.”
The runner felt a sudden irrational hope. Perhaps he was forgiven after all! Then he saw a long stiletto with an ivory hilt. With a swift jerk of his arm, the other man slashed his throat. “There, not a scratch on the rest of the body, especially the legs. Exactly as ordered.”
The runner gurgled, feeling hot blood pumping onto his skin, his shirt, and the cobblestones. The assassin leaned over him with a feral smile. “Now Victor says your debt is paid.”
The heels of the young runner’s boots beat an erratic drumbeat on the ground. His legs stuttered, then stopped running forever.
* * * *
The thump is faint at first, then louder. Stronger. No other sound is such a powerful symbol of life. Victor lifts his head from the bandaged chest, raising his triumphant voice to the storm. “One of the hearts is beating!” 
Thump. The blood begins to circulate through quiet blood vessels. Thump. 
* * * *
With a loud thud, the silver smile of his sharpened axe bit deep into the trunk. Pine chips sprayed as the woodcutter swung again, using his mighty biceps. The impact rang through his hands and wrists, up to the shoulders, absorbed by a sturdy chest. His heart was pumping heavily.
His old clothes carried the healthy smell of sweat earned through hard work. The axe handle was stout oak polished by the sweat of his palms, smoothed by years of use. His muscles ached after a day of such labor, and it was a good soreness.
Five more swift strokes, and the gouge had gone to the core. The woodcutter checked the angle, judged where the tree would fall, and struck again. Splinters flew; with a groan of wood and a whisper of scraping boughs, the pine toppled. He stood back with satisfaction, then guided the old horse and cart around fresh stumps to the site of the felled tree. With a saw and a hatchet from the cart bed, he trimmed the branches and cut the trunk into smaller pieces. He could sell the load in Ingolstadt. He would never become a rich man, but he had a cottage in the forest, food to eat, and a beautiful wife, Katarina. She was the most important part of his life.
He’d been gone from home for weeks, chopping wood in the dense and untraveled forests near Baron Frankenstein’s isolated preserve. The loneliness of the forest only made the time sweeter whenever he went back to Katarina. When he was home, he liked to carve little animals out of scraps of wood. Since he and his wife had not yet been blessed with children of their own, he gave the toys to girls and boys in town. The woodcutter loved children.
As night fell, he saw the glow of a nearby fire. Wanting company, he entered a clearing where another man had stopped his wagon and built a camp. “Y-y-you are w-w-welcome to share my f-f-fire,” the stranger said, his words slurred both by a severe stutter and a foreign accent. “I h-h-have vegetables, but no m-m-meat.”
The woodcutter offered some smoked venison that was chewy but edible. “I can add this to the pot.”
The other man was a tinker named Goran, from Budapest. His wagon was full of oddities, pots, tools, trinkets, and five cages of birds (three doves, two songbirds). A gray wolf circled the campsite, making the woodcutter uneasy. Goran introduced it as his pet, named Odin after a Norse god.
As they ate their stew, the woodcutter talked wistfully of Katarina. “I met her in Ingolstadt, a dark-haired beauty. Her eyes are the color of roasted chestnuts, her lips as full as fresh berries, and they taste as sweet when I kiss them. I don’t understand how such a beautiful woman could have married a man like me. But one does not spit in the face of good fortune.”
“N-n-no, my friend,” said Goran.
The lonesome woodcutter inspected the tinker’s wares, hoping to find a special treasure for Katarina. His eyes settled on a fabulous gold medallion etched with a wide-armed cross and trimmed with ruby and sapphire chips. Making up his mind, he went to his cart, where he had two stout axes, both of the finest manufacture. They had served him well. He gripped the wooden handle of his best one, lifted it from the cart, and stepped toward the tinker. “I can trade you this for the medallion. To give to Katarina. It’s not gold, but made of sweat and wood and iron.”
The tinker smiled but shook his head. “N-n-not for s-s-sale. A special k-k-keepsake.” Goran explained with halting sentences that a kind priest had recently given him the jeweled cross as a reward for driving off a robber in the woods. The tinker could never part with his treasure.
Downcast, the woodcutter returned his axe to the cart. He knew that the forest was not safe from highwaymen and assassins.
While the wolf prowled around the campsite, the woodcutter slept, dreaming of Katarina. He wished he could find some way to show her how much he loved her. The quiet cottage life did not suit a fancy woman like her. While he was away, Katarina spent most of her time in Ingolstadt with her best friend Greta. He didn’t begrudge her that. He wanted his wife to be happy...
After he and Goran parted company, he spent two more weeks cutting and piling wood that he would sell throughout the winter. When he returned home at last, calling Katarina’s name, the empty cottage only answered with silence. It took him only a moment to guess that she had gone to stay with Greta in town.
Grinning, he decided to surprise her. His horse pulled the loaded cart down the rutted trail into Ingolstadt, where he sold his load of wood in the square. He ignored the jeers and catcalls from the gibbet, where a mad strangler was being hung. Earlier, there had been a beheading, but the woodcutter didn’t care about such spectacles. He used the money to buy all the supplies they needed and found he had enough left over to purchase some sweet pastries he could share with Katarina.
He tied the old horse and the now-empty cart in front of the half-timbered town home where Greta and her husband lived. With a spring in his step, he went to the door, surprised that the windows were shuttered even in the warm afternoon.
As he approached the loose shutters, he heard laughter, muttered conversation, and the sounds of exertion, groans, a gasp. His brow furrowed as he identified Katarina’s sweet-husky voice and Greta’s musical timbre—and the thin nasal voice of Greta’s husband. He heard rhythmic sounds, heavy breathing, a wooden bed frame creaking under strain.
The woodcutter’s blood ran cold as he peered through a crack. He saw a crowd of arms and legs on the bed, naked flesh, a patchwork of intertwined bodies. He recognized both Greta and Katarina cavorting with a lean man, Greta’s husband. He had long dark hair, a wide face, feral eyes and a thin dueling scar that traced his left cheek. His lips were drawn back in a smile so deep it was almost a grimace. In the candlelight, all three were sweaty and panting, as if they’d been exerting themselves for some time. By the coordinated way they moved together, shifted positions and pleasured each other, they seemed quite well practiced at their ménage a trois.
The woodcutter couldn’t feel his arms or his hands, the muscles that had ached from swinging the axe and lifting heavy wood. He realized he wasn’t breathing. Before he could tear his gaze away, he saw something else; next to the candle on the fine lacquered nightstand lay the beautiful cross medallion fringed with sparkling chips of sapphire and ruby. Two weeks ago, the tinker had refused to sell it to him, but somehow Greta’s husband had gotten it.
The woodcutter’s heart dissolved, leaving only a cold vacuum in his chest. Conscious, rational thoughts vanished with an inaudible pop. He walked leadenly back to his cart, where he selected his sharpest and stoutest axe. He lifted it in one well-muscled arm; for good measure, he took the second axe in his left hand. Holding both, he strode back to the door.
With a single blow, he smashed the latch and the crossbar. Sparks and splinters flew. He kicked the ruined door inward, then stepped inside, raising both axes.
The two women scrambled backward on the crowded bed. With just a flicker of his conscious mind, the woodcutter realized how beautiful Katarina was; her pale skin flushed, her dark and sweaty hair thrown back behind her shoulders. Her lips—yes, as red and full as fresh berries—were now open in a faltering scream.
* * * *
 
* * * *
Greta’s husband sprang off the straw mattress and into a crouch, not caring that he was naked. He grabbed a long ivory-handled stiletto from the nightstand, knocking the medallion aside in his haste.
Katarina and Greta continued to cry out as the woodcutter waded forward, one axe in each hand. As he swung them, their sharp silver smiles whistled through the air. Greta’s husband danced with the knife, twirling the tip in the air as if performing some sort of embroidery. He seemed as familiar with his stiletto as he was in fornicating with Katarina. He didn’t even seem afraid.
But the woodcutter had no need for knife play. Without finesse, he swung his axe, and a single blow severed the man’s forearm, which fell to the wooden floor, fingers still clutching the knife. A second broad sweep decapitated him more cleanly than he deserved. The head fell to the floor, eerily undamaged, and rolled so that the wide-open eyes could watch the rest of the spectacle.
Then the woodcutter turned his axes upon the two women until they were no more than red kindling.
Drenched in blood, he stood with both axes leaning against him. His muscles ached as they did after a day of hard work, and it was a good soreness.
The screams had drawn a horrified crowd, many from the strangler’s hanging. The woodcutter did not resist as the constable and the town guards came to arrest him. He did not explain his horrific actions, though the answer was obvious for anyone who could piece together the myriad of body parts.
He did not speak a word in his own defense. In fact, he never uttered another sentence throughout his trial, sentencing, and swift execution.
* * * *
Bandages shroud the broad, firm face. Victor touches the creation’s head like a lover’s caress, placing both hands on the stranger’s cheeks, one of which is marred by a thin scar from a knife fight. 
“Can you hear me? Are you there?” he says in a voice full of hope. 
* * * *
His head hurt from sharing one-too-many bottles of wine the night before, and the thin scar on his cheek throbbed again, as it often did ... but if the wine and fine food kept Greta and her friend Katarina happy, he would gladly pay the price.
The thrill of the crowd in the town square buoyed him up. Two executions in a single day! He was particularly interested in the beheading of the foolish stuttering tinker. He stood close to the block, one woman on each arm, all three of them watching with intent amusement.
The mad strangler’s hanging would take place later in the day, but by that time, he expected that the two lovely women would be entertaining him in bed, enjoying their good fortune. Life was fine.
More than a simple cutpurse or highwayman, he took any job that paid well enough. He was known in local taverns as a man who could accomplish difficult tasks that must remain quiet, eliminating debtors, traitors, spies ... even rich old uncles who needed to die so families could have their inheritance. Recently, Victor Frankenstein had hired him to slit the throat of a servant who had stolen some family silver to pay off a gambling debt. In his work, he had been cut in knife fights, slashed in the face, even endured the pain of a lead musket ball in his ribs. Thus, the ache of a hangover was nothing.
He had a fondness for good wine and brandy, dice and cards, stylish clothes, and especially women. Greta was as lusty as he was, and both of their appetites extended to her friend Katarina as well. For appearances, Greta’s friend had married an unlettered and oafish woodcutter who was gone most of the time. Doting on Katarina, the oaf gave her trinkets that were small in comparison to what Greta’s husband provided.
A month ago, as a masked highwayman, he had waylaid a plump and red-faced priest who carried a jeweled medallion among his treasures as he traveled through the forest. The medallion would have fetched an excellent price, but before the highwayman could complete his robbery, a meddling tinker and his pet wolf had come upon them and driven the robber away. Some days later, dressed as a fine dandy, he encountered the tinker again and learned that the red-faced priest had given the stuttering foreigner his medallion out of gratitude!
Incensed and wanting it for himself, the now-undisguised highwayman tried to buy the medallion for Katarina and Greta, who were both with him. They ogled the treasure on the tinker’s cart, but the stuttering idiot wouldn’t part with it. So, they had gone back to Ingolstadt with a concocted story. Weeping, Greta reported that the stranger had stolen her dear aunt’s jeweled cross, and then raped her and her friend. The constable and town guard rushed out to arrest the tinker straightaway.
Once the medallion had been “returned” to them, and the tinker got the punishment he deserved, Greta and Katarina went back home with the handsome highwayman, where they all engaged in an afternoon of celebration. Everything was going so well.
No one had expected Katarina’s husband to find them, or his axes to be so swift.
After his head fell to the floor, the highwayman’s vision faded swiftly. He couldn’t feel his body, which lay much too far away. Thoughts, and blood, drained out of him.
* * * *
Once the second heart begins to beat, the creation is close, very close to real life. Another jolt, and the muscle clenches, pumps, stutters to life. Stutters... 
The memories flow smoothly, without the logjam of words that had always caught in his throat. 
* * * *
As a tinker, he loved to make pieces fit together, to fix things that were broken. He owned a wagon full of pots, pans, prisms, swatches of bright cloth, and assorted treasures from foreign lands. Though alone, he had animal friends to keep him company. He whistled to his caged doves and songbirds; his pet wolf followed the cart like a dog. None of them cared about his stutter.
Once, he and his wolf had driven off an evil highwayman who was trying to rob a priest on the forest road. In gratitude, the kindly priest had given the tinker a jeweled cross medallion, one of the tinker’s most prized possessions. Not long ago a muscular woodcutter wanted to buy it as a gift for his beloved wife. Another insistent would-be customer was a well-dressed man with a dueling scar; the man was accompanied by his wife and her friend (both of whom clung to him so adoringly it wasn’t clear which was the wife and which was her friend). With halting, tangled words he tried to sell them something else, but the three had stalked angrily down the road.
A day later, to his astonishment, the constable and a group of guards came to arrest him. Sensing danger, the pet wolf attacked, trying to defend his master—and the guards shot the beast dead. The tinker wailed in grief for Odin, unable to find words in any language.
He was thrown into jail, appalled to learn that the scar-faced man and his two female companions had accused the tinker of stealing the medallion from them; both the wife and her friend wrung their hands and swore that the tinker had raped them. His denials were vehement, though inarticulate. With growing terror, his stutter became worse.
Distraught parents, including the town’s blacksmith, came forward to point fingers of blame, suggesting that the stranger must be responsible for Ingolstadt’s missing children. A baby had vanished only the day before, and ten other young sons and daughters had disappeared in as many years. A mad strangler had also been recently accused of the crimes, though no one truly believed him to be the criminal. Now, despite the fact that the tinker could not possibly have been in the area for that amount of time, the poor man was a convenient scapegoat. Once someone in the crowd voiced the suspicion, many others took up the cry.
Since he had been seen talking to birds and consorting with a wolf, the tinker was convicted as a warlock. He had stolen a holy artifact, no doubt to be used in some satanic ritual (which must involve the blood of the babies or innocent children). The townspeople demanded that he be burned at the stake. The loudest voice came from the blacksmith’s young apprentice, whose family had perished in a forest fire years before. The boy seemed hungry to smell the smoke of burning flesh.
Oddly enough, Victor Frankenstein begged for mercy. “Ingolstadt is a civilized town and should not bow to superstitions.” But the crowd wanted some medieval touch of justice for such heinous crimes, and they already had an upcoming hanging. Very reasonable and persuasive, the Baron’s son suggested, “Perhaps the headsman’s axe should be brought out of retirement? The chopping block could be set up in the town square, as in olden days.”
This sated the bloodlust of the people. And so the old executioner’s axe was sharpened by the vengeful blacksmith, who fervently believed the tinker had stolen and killed his daughter Maria.
Hands tied behind his back, the falsely accused tinker was brought out and forced to his knees. As his neck was stretched across the bloodstained block, his frantic gaze caught a last glimpse of one man in the crowd. Victor Frankenstein looked intensely interested, a scientist studying a specimen. The tinker felt the ripple of a completely different kind of fear. Why was the Baron’s son looking at him so hungrily?
Because the headsman’s axe was razor sharp, and the cut exceedingly swift, the flash of pain seemed as gentle as a feather. The stutter of his heartbeat stopped.
* * * *
Victor checks the machines, adjusts the electrical flow, then hurries back. He presses down on the cloth windings of the sturdy chest. “Live!” he shouts, as if the dead parts will hear him and obey his command. 
“Live!” 
Victor hammers his fist down on the sternum. The torso is thick, muscular, like a suit of armor around the two implanted hearts ... a blacksmith’s chest. 
* * * *
His broad chest was always smeared with soot and smoke from the forge, his hair singed from sparks and cinders. His arms were strong from pounding on an anvil, pumping the bellows.
He had a good wife and fine children, whom he loved more than anything else. But his oldest daughter, Maria, had disappeared a year ago while picking mushrooms in the woods. Many boys and girls had vanished around Ingolstadt—yesterday, even a baby had gone missing! When Maria had been lost, the blacksmith and his wife spent agonized days combing the hills, calling the girl’s name, praying for her safety ... and then, resigned, weeping for her soul.
To fill the emptiness, the blacksmith adopted a new apprentice, an orphan boy whose parents were killed in a forest fire. Though the boy worked hard in the smithy, no one else’s son could make up for the lost Maria.
A traveling tinker had been arrested and charged with the crimes. The blacksmith and his wife were both convinced he had abducted their little girl. Even next to the blistering heat of the forge, the blacksmith shuddered to imagine the things the stuttering foreigner must have done to Maria...
Sparks flew from the grinding wheel as he sharpened the headsman’s axe. The monstrous criminal would pay the price the following day. The bitter but unsatisfying taste of vengeance bubbled like bile in the blacksmith’s throat.
He closed his eyes, quoted scripture to himself, and prayed for forgiveness. His wife often came to sit with him in the smithy, to comfort him by reading aloud from the Bible while the apprentice boy continued the daily work, hovering close to the blazing fire.
Lately, instead of words of consolation, he was more interested in stories of demons, how the darkness of Satan was a shadow over the land—such as the rituals the guilty tinker no doubt performed with the blood of children while his wolf, his demon familiar, watched.
The blacksmith could not get Maria’s musical laughter out of his head. She had loved to ride on her father’s broad shoulders as he walked down the streets. She had played with other children, plucking flowers from the meadows, even running up to Castle Frankenstein where the old Baron showed them the exotic animals in his menagerie.
Now she was gone. The damned tinker had done terrible things to her!
When the blacksmith saw the fiery forge and the sparks flying from the grinding wheel, he thought of Hell’s inferno where this razor-sharp axe would send the evil tinker. He intended to stand so close to the chopping block that the hot and satisfying blood would splash onto his face.
Finished, he lifted the sharpened axe from the wheel, but it seemed very heavy all of a sudden. The blacksmith tried to stand. His apprentice came closer, looking worried.
Though his chest and arms were strong, the blacksmith’s heart was weak. The thudding sounded hollow in his chest, the slowing blood flow faded to a faint roar in his ears. He found himself falling. As the executioner’s axe dropped to the ground, his last thoughts were of his wife, his daughters. How would they survive without him?
Then he clung to the vision of lost Maria, her large blue eyes, her laughter. He collapsed dead to the smithy floor, unable to watch the execution after all.
* * * *
At last, with the bandages removed, the dull yellow eyes open. The lids flutter, the transplanted eyes flick from side to side, seeing the grandeur of the lightning storm outside, the frenzied apparatus in the laboratory. Flashes, sparks, little fires. 
* * * *
He liked to stare into the flickering flames and watch the hungry elemental spirit devour wood. His eyes had an unhealthy yellow tinge, as if part of the fire’s glow hovered there.
He had lived with his family in a cottage near old Baron Frankenstein’s hunting preserve. The summer was dry, and a lightning strike started a nearby fire, which raged in the night. He awoke, smelling bitter greenwood smoke in the air, then crept outside to watch the swift fire come like a marching army. He went far from his house, to a high rock outcropping where he could sit and watch. The hypnotic flames enraptured him so that he did not even think about his family trapped inside the cottage as the fire engulfed it. He had never seen the house look so beautiful, so bright and cheery and ablaze.
Then the flames curled in a different direction—maybe the wind changed, or maybe the fire simply chose to avoid him. When the villagers found him later, they considered it a miracle that the boy had survived, while his family was overcome by smoke.
Though an orphan, he was old enough to be taken in as the blacksmith’s apprentice, where he loved to toil near the blazing heat of the forge. When he pumped the bellows, he made the heat blossom like a flower. He was accepted by the blacksmith and his family, who were grieving over their missing daughter. They thought they understood the boy’s “loss.”
The young apprentice went alone into the forest—an excuse to build secret fires, some of which (not unintentionally) got out of hand. One of his blazes nearly burned down the Baron’s hunting lodge.
Later, he was the loudest voice demanding that a tinker, convicted of being a warlock, be burned at the stake. The apprentice wanted to see a person tied to an upright log, the flames consuming clothes and flesh. He was furious when Victor Frankenstein insisted that the man be beheaded instead. Why did the Baron’s son have to meddle? The fire would have been so glorious, a spectacle he could have remembered for the rest of his life!
It was either irony, or divine justice, that the vengeful blacksmith had died while sharpening the headsman’s axe. Now, the apprentice did not know his future. He was too young to work the forge himself, and he feared the distraught widow would sell the business and turn him out into the streets.
The future did not concern him. The apprentice saw one way to make everything right. On the night after the tinker’s head was chopped off, he lit a flaming brand from the blacksmith’s forge and set the smithy building on fire.
But that was only a start. He went to the jail and then the magistrate’s home, setting them alight as well. It was sure to be the greatest fire in the history of Ingolstadt. The apprentice made no attempt to hide what he was doing. While the alarms rang and people rushed out to help douse the fire, angry men chased after him.
The arsonist ran. One of them shot him in the back with a musket, and the ball lodged just beneath his shoulder blade. The pursuers were coming closer, shouting for his blood, carrying torches as they hunted him down. He staggered into the Baron’s hunting preserve, until he reached a swollen, fast-flowing stream. He tried to cross it, but he was too weak. When he stepped into the icy, rushing water, he could barely keep his footing.
The pursuing mob shot at him again. Another musket ball shattered his leg, and he fell into the water. As he was swept downstream, he caught a glimpse of Ingolstadt and the smoke rising into the air. He hoped his fire would burn for a long time.
His head was dunked under the fast current, and he couldn’t breathe. As the musket shots drained the life’s blood out of him, the apprentice gulped frigid water, praying for fire, yet the spark within him was extinguished. The darkness was cold and wet, but finally his eyes saw a spark again, lights, life.
* * * *
The mosaic of a monster is alive, functioning, but without a mind it does not truly live. 
Victor attaches an electrode, unleashes a flood of condensed lightning. A sharp shock pours into the head, like a musket touching off a flash of gunpowder, the last surge of memories. A mind adrift, separate. Thoughts run like raindrops down an uneven pane of glass. 
* * * *
Despite his wealth and bloodline, he had never been a strong man, the runt of the litter. His younger brothers—even his sister—spurned him, though the noble title was his by birthright. Years ago, as a boy, he had turned his feelings of inferiority against small animals—secretly killing cats, clubbing puppies. The young, helpless ones were the most gratifying.
Copying the more eccentric European nobles, he had purchased exotic animals from foreign lands, darkest Africa, South Sea islands, the Americas. He kept a menagerie on his estate, and though the miserable creatures did not live long, he replaced them with other specimens as fast as they died. His son Victor delighted in having so many dissection subjects for his medical studies.
The Baron’s fondness for strange animals made him popular among the children. Generous and benevolent, he would let them stare at the creatures, even pet the tame ones.
Most of the time he could control his urges. Most of the time.
And when it became imperative that he follow his obsession, he had a special private hunting lodge deep in his forest preserve with secure doors and stout shutters. After he lured the children out to the cabin, just like in the story of Hansel and Gretel, he would lock them in so he could have his way with them over and over; then he would kill them and bury them out in the forest.
All the servants at Castle Frankenstein were familiar with their master’s habit of slipping off for solitude. No mere peasant would dare to accuse, or even suspect, Baron Heinrich Frankenstein. A wandering band of gypsies or a suspicious stranger could always be blamed for the latest disappearance. Over the years, many were arrested; a shepherd had been hanged and a tinker had been beheaded that very day, both accused of the same crime, providing a convenient excuse for the little “lamb” he had just stolen.
Back at the Castle, he regularly told the cook to prepare veal, suckling pig, a fine tender lamb, or fresh kid spitted over a fire. Innocence seemed to give the flesh a better flavor. Thus, once a new idea had occurred to him, he couldn’t drive it out of his head. What might be the taste of another sort of tender flesh?
Only two days ago, he had wandered the streets of Ingolstadt in a filthy disguise, until he saw the chance to snatch an infant, still breast-fed. After roasting all day over a slow fire, the flesh would be succulent, better than veal.
Now, as the forest darkened around the hunting lodge, the Baron was glad to be away. The meat was still on the spit over the fire, almost ready for an evening feast, when he heard the shouts of searchers outside, musket shots. From the window of his cabin, he looked down the steep slopes to Ingolstadt. The city itself seemed to be on fire!
Alarmed, the Baron went to the door and threw it open just as the constable and six guards rushed up the path. “My Lord Baron, beware! There is an arsonist in these woods. We are hunting him—”
Then the constable saw what was on the fire. One of the guards cried out in horror before he began to retch. The old Baron could not slam the door quickly enough...
Locked in the jail—the same cell that had held a strangler only two days before—the Baron confessed. Despite his admission, the torturers still wanted to break his arms and scourge him. The townspeople howled for his blood, ready to lynch the old Baron, and only a contingent of guards reluctantly prevented them from doing so. His noble rank would not save him. The magistrate had no choice but to sentence him to death by a slow garrote in the public square.
Victor—now the new Baron Frankenstein—came to see him. Oddly, the intense young man showed no revulsion at his father’s crimes, no greed for the position of power he now held. He looked at the older man clinically, as if he was already making plans.
Victor turned to the jailer. “It is a pity what my father has done. He always had such a fine mind.”
* * * *
The beating hearts grow stronger. “He’s alive!” Victor cries. “Alive!” 
The yellow eyes are open, the patchwork body twitches and trembles. Victor unwinds the gauze to reveal the scars on cadaverous flesh. He unstraps the restraints binding the arms and legs. The creature is awake now, aware. 
“I made you. You will be greater than the sum of your parts!” He looks at his creation with pride. “Can you hear me? Do you know who you are?” 
Yes, the pieced-together man knows who he is. The hands and lungs of a strangler, the legs of a thief, the head of a hired assassin, the torso of a vengeful blacksmith, the eyes of an arsonist, one heart from an axe murderer and the other from a wrongly executed man, the mind of a child molester and baby killer. 
* * * *
Voices clamor through him, so many identities roiling in a single body. Fusing the cacophony into a consensus, he remembers the Bible he read in his blacksmith persona, a particular verse from the Gospel of Mark. The other converging memories and lives know it as well, and they all agree. 
His voice crackles out like a dry wind. Victor, face shining with perspiration, leans closer to hear. 
“My name is Legion,” the creation says. “For we are many.” 
He grabs Victor’s throat with the hand of a strangler. With all the lives inside him, he finds it very easy to squeeze. 
* * * *
 
* * * *
Kevin J. Anderson on the origin of THE SUM OF HIS PARTS...
“When I began working with Dean Koontz on our novel, FRANKENSTEIN: PRODIGAL SON, I developed a lot of fictional “background” of the famous monster, brief biographies of all the various criminals that made up his component parts. During the actual writing of the book, Dean wanted to keep the focus entirely in the present with very little extraneous background or flashbacks. However, I felt that all those little vignettes could be “stitched together” into a very interesting story, and Dean gave me permission to use the material as a standalone piece.”