Prologue

"I did not ask for the nature you've thrust upon me," the fiery redhead hissed at the man who had once presumed to be her master and now stood before her in awe of both having achieved the scientific breakthrough he had sought and, worse, the debilitating fear he felt as he stood before it, powerless beneath the once submissive eyes that were now turned upon him in such a heat of molten fury.

And something else...

Hunger!

And not for the sustenance of food.

Even if it was all too plain to the professor that she revelled in this new and authoritative persona his own chemical genius had, as she said, "thrust upon her".

Not only was she more authoritative but she also seemed to have undergone a leap of intellect when compared to the former timid and obliging housekeeper she had been before he used her as a human guinea-pig.

And without her consent.

An abandonment of long-held ethics for a scientific curiosity and desire to benefit humanity that had led to the pass in which he now found himself.

For the woman who stood and regarded him so imposingly, naked form a source of both fear and a most unwelcome desire to her former master, was undoubtedly...

EVIL.

And becoming purer in her malevolence each time she took over what remained of his hapless and ignorant housekeeper's soul and form.

The takeover becoming more frequent with each passing day as he worked feverishly on a serum that would reverse the unholy transformation his meddling had wrought.

"You wished to eradicate evil in the heart of man and have succeeded only in unshackling it from the goodness that kept it at bay in the dark recesses where it lurked."

Her laughter, far from high-pitched and maniacal, was low, sultry, and provocative; almost as if she savoured the future ahead of her and the atrocities she would wreak.

Her bare nipples upon what her master could only acknowledge - even with the distance a scientific and academic mindset necessarily maintained - were a pair of truly incredible breasts were hard at the prospect and he watched, aforementioned detachment weakening, as a slender hand glided downwards and she let out a throaty laugh when it made contact with the lips of her sex beneath the flaming red bush standing sentinel above it.

Self-recriminatory and growingly terrified as he was of his incarnation, the one-time master could do nothing but stand and stare as she ran a finger the length of her gash and then held it out to him, sopping and indecently fragrant, as his eyes bulged and his nostrils twitched.

Then, as she inserted it into his unwilling but unresisting mouth, she placed a hand upon shoulder and began to exert pressure.

Pressure that took him to his knees, even as she ensured the finger in his mouth remained in place that he might - to his own disbelief and mortification - continue to both taste and suck as if were no more than infant in adult clothes being pacified by some demonic governess.

"That is my good boy," she cooed at him in a way that held more of mockery than affection - all mockery, in fact.

"Things are going to change around here very soon. And I am convinced you will not be pleased by those changes."

Even as he continued to suck upon her finger, the man of science still found time to question how he felt unable to disobey her.

Was it a side-effect of his own serum that endowed her with this power to render him obedient to her will?

And if so, could it be reversed before she finally took complete control of his housekeeper's body and there could be no reversal?

His thoughts were interrupted as the finger was withdrawn from his mouth and he felt her hand grip the hair at the back of his head.

"As you seem to like sucking upon your new master's finger," she told him, yanking his eyes up to hers and revelling in the power she now wielded in his regard, "I have something much more interesting for you to show your respect."

He felt her grip upon his hair tighten and watched as she swivelled upon her bare heels to present him with...

 

Chapter One

 

There were three of them nursing brandies around the club's roaring fireplace, but only one of them was speaking at that moment, holding court as the others followed his every word with expressions ranging from disbelief to repugnance, unsure as they were whether his tale was fictional or factual in nature.

The warped sexuality at the heart of the tale serving only to heighten their repugnance and distaste.

If not their disbelief.

The club itself was indistinguishable from any number of "Gentlemen's Clubs", from London's Carlton House Terrace in which it resided, to its counterparts throughout the capital itself - though it was unlikely a story of the kind being told would be found in any of the environs belonging to its counterparts.

And would if it were to be found, be a tale spoken in the same hushed tones it was spoken of now; despite the fact it was mid-afternoon and the club was almost deserted but for the three of them and a single retainer required for the serving of drinks.

All of the men were in their late-sixties or headed there and were alike in both learning and temperament; the speaker himself being a man of a sombre and unsmiling countenance as well as - again, just like his listeners before the fireplace - a man who was somewhat backward in both sentiment and imagination.

Judgemental must go without saying, as he was also a man with but the most limited experience of those more physical and metaphysical adventures likely to enliven what would otherwise be a long and drab life - though it must be said, and in spite of his own emotional aridity, that he had been known at times to help rather than punish and reprove those he found in extremis, and be sympathetic rather than allow his natural and judgemental disposition a free rein.

Such was the case now.

At sixty-nine, he was the elder of his two companions by just one year and three respectively; even if the foam of white resting upon the high forehead cresting the dome of his skull was a little more arctic than the snow-capped peaks upon the heads of those whose eyes and ears were trained upon him.

His name was Cedric Winterton and his professional life had been spent within the various and more elevated branches of academe as, at first, a teacher and, now, lecturing on the less than pulse raising subject of the higher mathematics - though, to listen to him on it, there could surely be no more exciting and worthy way to spend a lifetime than in the study of such a "perfectly beautiful" subject.

And yet, for all his personal dryness, Professor Winterton was a modest man and loyal to a fault to those who fell under the limited umbrella of his friendship.

Without family, his friends were mostly those who followed the same dry occupation and interests as himself.

He was well-known and respected for not being given to tittle-tattle or the repeating of unfounded allegations.

Which made his willingness to speak in such a frank and baldly sexual way of a younger friend and one-time pupil in such a... personal ...way - though he neglected to mention him by name - all the more surprising to the men listening who had known him on at least "clubbable" terms for a decade and more; their surprise made a little less complete in the presence of the man's obvious agitation and concern and the realisation he needed to either confide his story to someone or burst - even if their opinion was that the story was indeed fictional and the normally dry professor had been so taken with it he simply had to relate its contents to others.

In this, the two listening men were wrong; but it would be only the passing of time and reportage that would reveal their error to them.

The younger friend in question of whom the listeners were in ignorance, being none other than Dr. Alistair Purbeck, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S. At one-time a gifted mathematician and, now - though not perhaps for much longer - an even more gifted and respected researcher into the causes of those ailments - physical and mental - with which even the healthiest of are afflicted from time to time. A respected researcher who was not in the best of places on either score himself.

After having sworn both to secrecy in respect of what he was about to confide to them - despite the fact he named no names - and feeling vindicated in the sharing of a secret he had thus far kept to himself by the knowledge newspapers and gossip would soon make it common currency, Professor Winterton had waited for their brandy-tumblers to be refilled, ensured they could not be overheard, and began his tale.

A tale that would end in the public ignominy, sexual shame, and ultimate downfall of his youngest friend.

"I am not in possession of an end to my story at this time and, when I am, I do not suspect it to prove of a happy kind, but soon, perhaps later this evening, perhaps, myself and the world will know more."

Having no belief in the truth of the outlandish subject their friend was laying before them and having given no inkling he had the least gift for storytelling, the two listeners were in quite a confusion as to whether what they were hearing was real or imagined.

The professor's next words not helping them any.

"In the meantime, however, I shall relate to you those events with which I am familiar..."

*****

...It had been with a sombre spirit that Professor Winterton came home to his bachelor house Russell Square on a Wednesday in April in the year of Our Lord 1889; the glorious spring day and its promise of a glorious summer barely registering upon his senses - and certainly not upon his mood.

The dinner provided by Upton, his man - Winterton found the presence and fussiness of women too much to bear at times; even in the form of a servant - was taken without the least relish and, had he been asked to vouch for what fare he had been served five minutes after having placed the plate aside, he would have been unable to provide an answer.

Normally of a Sunday at this time, he would take himself to his study and sit in his study with a glass of the brandy which was one of his few vices and a volume dealing with some dry facet of the subject he taught and loved; reading until the church rang out the hour signifying it was time to retire.

On this night, however, and as soon his repast had been taken, he went into his business-room. There he opened his safe and took from the most private part of it a document.

A document endorsed on the envelope with the name: "Dr. Alistair Theophrastus Purbeck".

Beneath the name, in emboldened capital letters, could be seen:

 

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

 

It was with a creased brow that he studied the contents to which his friend had insisted he be executor; insistence made despite the discrepancy in their ages and the likelihood the professor would depart the mortal coil long before Purbeck himself was in need of having his will disseminated to those with an interest.

The will itself was hand-written and insisted that, upon the death of Purbeck, all his possessions were to pass into the hands of one "Rebecca North".

That alone had stunned Winterton, and only a highly developed sense of personal decorum had prevented him from questioning the advisability of such a bequest.

That his younger friend was leaving his entire estate to the woman who kept house for him in his Bloomsbury home that was not a mile from Winterton's own, had come as shock enough to the older man - even if, as said, he was far too much the gentleman to question Purbeck's reasons for such largesse.

But the real shock had come later, after reading the codicil and the way his friend's humiliated eyes could not meet his own as he offered him a pen with which to witness the document, before then having his man enter and do the same that the requisite signatures of two witnesses might be present upon the parchment and render it legal.

Shock that, along with his concern for the handsome doctor's paleness and obvious exhaustion, had led Winterton to finally surmount his own reservations regarding proper behaviour and question the will's... advisability:

"Really, Alistair," he began; "you have asked me to undertake this responsibility as a friend, and I am glad to be of service, but..."

"Please, Cedric," Purbeck had intervened, divining the coming rebuke, tired eyes almost pleading with his friend and former mentor not to question him too deeply. "I have my reasons for arranging matters in this way."

To underline his mental disturbance in Winterton's eyes further, Purbeck had produced a white handkerchief and mopped at a moist brow before continuing:

"It... It is only right and seemly that Miss... Miss North is provided for by me in such a way when I am the one responsible for..."

The doctor, who Winterton already sensed had voiced the final and unfinished sentence unwillingly, had been unable to continue at that point and simply begged his friend - who now, despite his unworldliness, felt he was in receipt of the state of affairs so troubling his former pupil - to ask no further questions but to sign and witness the will and then have his man do the same.

It was request to which the professor, with many reservations, had consented.

Winterton thought back to that day and reprimanded himself for not having pressed his friend further; seeing his own dismissed offer of assistance as wholly unsatisfactory and nowhere near forceful enough.

"Surely," he had thought at the time; "he cannot be the first man to have had... relations ...with a maid or a housekeeper that has led to such an obvious conclusion?"

It was both careless as well as stupid and, to the unworldly professor, beyond his ken that a man of Purbeck's character and intelligence could find himself at such a pass.

But to leave all his worldly goods to the serving-woman for whom the above two assets had taken a temporary hibernation was surely far in advance of what the situation required.

Moving back to his study and taking the will with him, Winterton again read through the codicil which, even more than his young friend's determination to leave the housekeeper everything, so disturbed him.

There, in his friend's own hand, he read...

"In the event of Dr. Purbeck's "disappearance, imprisonment, or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months, the said Rebecca North should step into the said Alistair Purbeck's shoes without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation, beyond the payment of a few small sums to those tradesmen and others to whom the doctor is beholden."

This document had long offended Winterton and now it frightened him.

Alarmed him with a sense of dread he could not recall ever having experienced before.

And it was not only the fact he knew so little of this... "Miss North" ...that disturbed him.

Certainly, he had seen her when visiting his friend, but, and as was the way people of such a class were invisible to their so-called betters, other than the fact she had seemed sturdy of build and possessed of red-hair she kept pushed from her face and tied at the back, he was in complete ignorance of her.

And especially of any... charms ...likely to have turned his formerly studious and correct friend's head.

"I thought it was a simple matter of overwork and obsession," he said aloud as he took the obnoxious and ominous paper from the study and back to its resting place in his safe. "And now I begin to fear it is disgrace also."

His always straitened imagination seemed to overheat and his eyes went wide with concern:

"And disgrace of the worst and most lasting kind."

With that he had blown out his candle, taken the stairs to his bed, and decided to set forth later the next evening in the direction of Cavendish Square.

The citadel of medicine, where Purbeck's friend, and yet another former mentor, the great Dr. Jacob Aylesbury, had his house and received his patients.

"If anyone knows and can help, it will be Aylesbury," he had thought.