It wasn't the manservant deception that made him fuss over Raizel.

He had so little. He had so much power, he could have traded it for riches in the human world, but he lived here and had no food, nothing but a handful of outfits. He stood by his window and that was almost all he did, bar a ritual of changing clothes, Frankenstein saw as he observed the noble over a few weeks. Had he even explored the rest of the manor?

Raizel had looked distressed when Frankenstein asked where the food was stored, before confessing that there wasn't any. He'd raised his hand to offer blood instead, and while Frankenstein remembered that taste, he didn't want Raizel to feel obligated to offer it as though it was his fault he lived such a Spartan life with few pleasures. "I'm the one who has imposed on you," he said gently, pushing that hand down. "I'll find food, if you'll permit me to use your kitchen."

Raizel blinked when Frankenstein said kitchen. A noble's ability to absorb languages at work?

Had he really never explored this manor and seen the kitchen?

Despite shaking his head over Raizel's strangeness, Frankenstein was not surprised to see the clan leaders when he stepped outside the manor. He'd sensed Gejutel's approach at quite a distance. Ragar was harder to detect even without summoning his soul weapon.

"Taking care of the shopping is part of a manservant's duties. There is not a scrap of food in that house," he informed them. Or rather, accused. He had a policy of going on the offensive with more powerful beings for a reason.

As usual, it put them off-balance. "So you intend to return?" Gejutel asked after a moment.

"It's not as though I'll be going far." He'd be scouting the surroundings while ransacking them of everything edible he could find in these woods. Or any kitchen gardens he happened upon. It wasn't as though nobles needed to eat.

When he returned with a quickly-woven basket full of greens, eggs and other bounty (no kitchen gardens, at least not nearby. That would be both helpful and practical, and nobles weren't either), he found the pantry overflowing with… with…

He didn't even know what half of this was.

It left him vexed and embarrassed. Did he really know that little of the world outside his research and attempts to find out what was truly behind that organization and the vampire plague? How many centuries old now, and how much did he really know about the world outside of his particular corners? He knew far more about Lukedonia than he did about equally far-off human realms.

"It is the Lord's doing," Raizel said, walking into the kitchen while Frankenstein was still staring.

"Because he knows I'm here?" What was the message in this?

Raizel shook his head. "The Lord…" Frankenstein saw Rai give up, sighing. He raised a hand.

"There's no need to get rid of it," Frankenstein told him, guessing at the reason Raizel might be gathering power. "Some of it must be usable." Well, trying to figure out how one cooked those roots and tubers would give him something to do. He would have to set up some testing for poisons, a great many foods were inedible or unsafe unless stored or prepared properly, and this did not look proper.

"You… need this." Raizel waited after saying that. The same as when he said he'd sensed Dark Spear's hatred within Frankenstein.

He hesitated. "I want it. I am capable of surviving without it."

"The power over blood does not only affect humans and nobles. Do you dislike animals?"

"I found out I had this power when I accidentally turned a chicken into a mutant," Frankenstein said, failing to make a joke of it even when it was a joke. "I'd rather not risk unleashing a larger, deadlier animal on innocent humans."

He saw Raizel realizing that he had pried. The noble turned back towards the window.

"You are allowed to ask questions," Frankenstein told him. "You've given me your blood: the least I owe you is an explanation."

Raizel turned back, with that puzzled expression that was somehow as endearing as Tesamu trying his hardest to be deliberately cute. "Without it, you are in pain. So it is what I want to do, not something that requires thanks. Humans have never owed nobles anything for aid. They are weaker than us, therefore it is our obligation." Then he frowned.

"I'm not weak compared to nobles," Frankenstein reminded him. From Ragar or Gejutel, he would have been insulted, but Raizel was… sheltered.

"It is still not something I do for thanks. It is something I do of my own will. I do not need food, not even as much as you need blood. Its absence does not cause me discomfort."

Frankenstein's eyes widened slightly. "I… well, it's no more work to prepare two meals than one, but… yes. I do it because I want to take care of you." He laughed. "It's strange. You are a very strange being, even for a noble, and yet… I feel we are alike, in some ways. I felt alone in this world. No other human has power like mine, and perhaps no one ever will, with the Union out there hoarding knowledge not to help humanity but to supplant it. You are also alone, the way I was. Separate from the people you want to protect. I want to make you happy. I want you to not be lonely anymore, because I am here. The way I'm not alone anymore." He realized he hadn't said this to Raizel before, not when Raizel spoke so rarely. His movements had the elegance of practice. His words… he was not used to speech. There was something so endearing about how he had to carefully pick his words, watching his steps trying not to stumble over his own feet like a clumsy puppy.

Ancient and wise in some ways and yet so young and innocent in others. It drew equal amounts of respect and the desire to nurture.

"I am no longer lonely, because you have let me stay here with you. I want you to feel that you are no longer alone in this world, because I am by your side."

He was accomplishing more than just introducing Raizel to tea and regular meals. He needed to investigate Lukedonia. Learn how to fight clan leaders and keep Dark Spear from consuming him in the process. Yet all of that was duty. "Taking care of you is my pleasure."

Raizel was blushing. Color in his cheeks, and for Raizel? That was utterly losing control of his emotions and his appearance. Frankenstein really had affected him.

He really did matter to this noble. This person.

Wanting control back, Raizel turned towards the window as Frankenstein smiled at him. Doting, yes. He was doting on Raizel. Content just to stand here and watch him be happy. To spend time not on work or research, but simply… for himself. Because when Cadis Etrama di Raizel was happy, he was happy.

Finally Raizel turned back to him. "I understand why humans… why humans will insist on giving thanks even if it was not done to incur a debt." He held up his hand. Frankenstein could see the slash in it appear, a moment before it bled.

"I hope that doesn't hurt," he murmured, taking the hand. "Si vales bene est, ego valeo. If you are well, then I am well." He pressed his lips to Raizel's palm. Slowly this time. Not with hesitation, but very deliberately.

It felt like a pledge. It was a pledge.

For a moment, he wished that he could tie his mind to Raizel's permanently. That this sense of him wouldn't dim when the last of the blood drowned in his stomach. He could still sense Raizel even without the blood – now that he had someone to listen for, he was trying to learn how to use his psychic abilities for more than interrogation. Leaving them on instead of trying to turn them off so he didn't intrude.

No. It was a good thing he couldn't bind Raizel with blood. The last thing he wanted was to turn this strangely gentle being who cared so much for his honor into a mindless mutant. Raizel would rather die than attack the innocent.

They were alike in that.

"There is a myth, that once humans had two heads, eight limbs. The gods feared the power and intelligence of those humans, so they cut all of them down the middle. Without the strengths the other half of them possessed, with only half their good sense, the divided humans were weak, and had to spend their entire lives trying to find the parts of themselves that they were lacking, so they could be a whole person," Frankenstein said, heavily paraphrasing. "They could survive alone, but they didn't want to. Perhaps because they knew that by themselves, they could be adequate, but with their other halves they could be truly great. Something went wrong in one of the changes I made to myself. There is a part of me that feels as though I need to have my mind connected to another's, even though I can survive without it. When I have your blood within me, I feel whole."

Cheeks still pink, Raizel was touched. He held up his hand again, but seemed to realize that Frankenstein had just drank. So instead he pressed his palm to Frankenstein's cheek, to the side of his mouth so Frankenstein didn't need to stop talking. Red eyes and a tilt of his head asked if that was right?

It made his own red eyes smile, and he leaned his cheek into the hand for a moment.

"You are not afraid of me," Raizel said quietly, framed by his window as he stood with his back to it, looking into Frankenstein's eyes. "I thought that to live alone was necessary for the Noblesse, so others did not have to live in fear."

He laughed – mocking the nobles, not Raizel. Then his eyes narrowed. To hurt Raizel so? "If they knew you as I knew you…"

Raizel gave a small shake of his head. "They would know that I fear I will have to send many of them to eternal sleep eventually."

"Who?" Frankenstein asked. If Raizel knew who among the clan leaders had sinned, were their sins connected to the creation of vampires? Frankenstein suspected there was corruption among the clan leaders, but Raizel would know.

Raizel shook his head again, looking at Frankenstein apologetically. "It is information taken from their minds." The worst kind of prying. "It is my duty to know this, but I cannot violate their privacy any further. I am not permitted to take any action based on that knowledge save forcing them into eternal sleep."

"It is alright," Frankenstein told him. "I will continue to pursue my own investigation." He took that hand from his cheek to kiss it. "I have the greatest respect for your principles."

The first symptom that he was infectious wasn't hunger.

He had began to feel lonely.

Even in the middle of a crowd, with everyone thanking him for saving their lives. Even speaking with people who had been invaluable to him, whom he counted as friends.

It felt that there was something missing, that it wasn't true fellowship, but somehow lacked the depth or reality that should have been there, if he had a true connection with them.

At the time, he thought that it was because inside, he doubted them. Or feared that they would fear him if they knew the full extent of what he had done to himself. He had been angry with himself, for thinking so poorly of them, not afraid.

He should have been.

Frankenstein knew that giving himself vampiric powers wasn't safe. He ran tests, to be sure he wouldn't harm the townsfolk under his protection. He was a doctor, he needed to be certain that he didn't react to blood. Even if he could keep himself under control, he needed to know the instant he began to react to it so that he could practice that control and be certain he would be able to focus in emergencies.

He used chickens. Keep a few breeding hens, and there was always a supply of the creatures. Taking a taste of the blood when he slaughtered one for dinner provided a regular test.

One day, he'd almost idly tasted the blood while the chicken wasn't quite dead, not yet.

That was his second mistake.

He felt it die.

First its pain echoed through the link between them, and then he felt it go, the newly-forged link between them breaking, and the emptiness left behind!

When Frankenstein got control back he cursed himself. What had he been thinking, using the blood of dead animals as a test! He knew that vampires only craved the blood of the living.

He needed to do this properly. That was why he got another chicken, or at least that was what he told himself. He drew blood from it carefully this time.

He felt the connection form as he tasted the blood. He felt its fear and his heart went out to it, even though it was a chicken, and not a very bright animal at all. The void within him seemed to be filled.

It was easy to make the chicken sit by his feet as he recorded his notes. Worries about sorcerers and familiars aside, the ache within him seemed to be gone. He needed to isolate what caused him to experience discomfort unless he drank the blood of a living animal and formed this bond, of course. It was an unwanted side effect, and he wouldn't want others to be afflicted by it.

Yet perhaps… maybe a dog. If he could guide one and make it stay quiet, then it would be of assistance hunting vampires. They were affectionate, and loyal. He couldn't have one because he could not stand the mess, but if he could use this link to make it go outside to do its business?

Then the chicken refused to come out from under his bed the next morning.

Dragging it out into the sunlight, he felt its agony. Felt it crave blood so it could heal.

He had to kill it. He couldn't let it savage the flock, much less attack people.

This was why he didn't experiment on other people or living things, he cursed himself, looking at the body on the chopping block. Taking risks with his own life was one thing, but this!

It sunk in while he was washing the blood off his hands. He'd turned a chicken into a crazed vampire.

A dog would be larger. And smarter. What if it left the house while he was distracted and it was hungry?

But the emptiness kept gnawing at him.

Once his friends began to die of old age, it was far worse. Fellowship didn't make the loneliness go away, but had it allowed him to remind himself that no, he was not alone.

Perhaps that was why it took him so long to suspect the Union. By that point, it was hard to begin to think of anyone as a true friend, when there was always this barrier between him and them, one that he wished would go away. Even if he was the one who had decided that he would not turn anyone into a vampire. It was hardly as though they were refusing him anything.

Yet the Union wanted more and more data, pushed at things he didn't want to give them because he was having trouble tracking down exactly what factor, or combination of factors, had awakened this hunger in him and was slowly changing his body around him, starting with his eyes and progressing to the skin. He considered trying to remove all the mental abilities he had given himself, but the ability to track vampires was vital.

Once he captured one of the vampires, the 'nobles' giving contracts to the Union and spreading the vampire plague? If they saw humans as toys, why not give them a taste of their own medicine? He could study them, the way he had vampires who used to be human, and perhaps find what part of their abilities corresponded to this hunger. Or what had gone wrong in the ability he gave himself, since they certainly weren't compelled in any way to vampirize humans. It was purely born of greed, not a desire to connect to someone.

A taste…

What would happen if one attempted to vampirize a vampire?

He was going to execute them anyway, for the countless people who were dead because of them. It was the same sentence their own kind would give them, or would if their rulers ever did their duty and made sure their subjects were obeying the law.

It was tempting to make the test subject watch, think that what they did to humans was about to happen to them, but he knocked them out first so they weren't awake to try to seize control of him.

He washed the upper arm, made the incision and placed the top of the test tube within the cut to hold it open until it filled. The scent and sight of blood itself didn't make him hunger, but watching the vial fill he found himself craving it, not even minding when a trickle of reached his white gloves. Careless, so careless of him, but the hope of relief? Of having something to fill the emptiness other than Dark Spear?

Raising it to his lips without even washing the gloves first, he took a careful sip to sample.

There was no bond clicking into place. The accidental power he'd given himself was unable to take control over the noble. So it was true that nobles could not be vampirized. If humans could be given that immunity, then they would be safe from the scourge.

This wasn't a mind he would wish to have bound to his, even as his servant. Shallow and selfish, with no respect for honor or others' lives. Weak-willed enough to think that it was alright to exploit human greed, when 'everyone else was doing it.' Yet they were another presence. Another living being, even if they weren't much better than that chicken.

It was not what he craved, but it was something, enough to quiet the urge within him.

It was also a potential interrogation method, something that would tell him something of the nobles he captured, and how likely they were to be among the criminals. Drinking blood was disgusting and debasing, the act of monsters, but killing two birds with one stone? Perhaps he could let them watch, and just erase that memory along with the other memories of their interrogation from the innocents he released.

Now that the Lord had told him of true contracts, so much was obvious.

He gained his powers from studying and attempting to safely imitate, then surpass, beings born of flawed, distorted, corrupt contracts. Because unaltered humans could not adequately direct noble power, errors crept in they were not competent to fix, if they even cared to do so.

Nobles could wield their power correctly, and fix errors.

He didn't have nobles to study at the beginning, so he'd started out trying to imitate, to become more like, beings without proper control. His experiments were more controlled than their creation, but even mutants had some link, however distant, to a noble who was regulating that power. They had that to help them, while they contained no power regulation mechanism for Frankenstein to copy. He'd tried to come up with his own means of power regulation, but of course they were imperfect when he was imitating imperfection.

If he made a contract with a noble who cared for him, they could regulate the chaotic power within him. Fix what was wrong with him.

He could have his own eyes back. When he caught glimpses of them in mirrors or ponds (and he did, despite his efforts) or had to examine them to track his condition he would see blue instead of noble red at best. More often vampiric red. The fangs and claws his body had grown in response to his subconscious turning the need for a contract into the want of blood could be turned back into ordinary canines and fingernails.

He could be human again.

All he had to do was pour his blood into this tea and hope.

Hope for another gift from the noble who gave him sanctuary and saved his life. The noble who had given him blood to drink.

He, he should talk to Raizel about this, he should ask, but his hands shook with stress and need and he did not want his emotions to pressure that generous being. Raizel was far too likely to give him anything he asked for. So he could not ask. All he could do was give him the option and, and try not to hope too hard.

He bowed his head before his noble master when he made the contract, and when he finally raised it to look at him he held his breath.

Cadis Etrama di Raizel reached out to touch his face. "Blue," he said in answer to the question he could hear in Frankenstein's heart.

Blue. His eyes were blue again.

He buried his head in his hands. "Thank you," he said, wondering that he was shaking with gratitude for this, not for saving his life. But how could he be grateful that this exquisite being was closer to death now, because of his own failure? "Thank you, Master."

A laugh rose in his throat, at the irony of becoming a true vampire to be human again.

Ragar examined Frankenstein, finally asking, "Is it acceptable to offer congratulations?"

He smiled, dwelling on the warmth within him for a moment. "Yes. All I knew of contracts came from the greed of the power-hungry, and the suffering of their victims. The Lord was correct: a true contract bears no resemblance to how those nobles perverted it. To take this and sell it for money and power, to turn something that unites souls into something that defiles them…" He laughed, and there was no flash of fangs. "Well, I was already sworn to slay them all."

Ragar nodded. The Kertia clan leader was an honorable noble: Frankenstein had taunted him and Gejutel with the fact he had only done what they should have done, but it was the truth. Ragar would have sent them to eternal sleep, if he knew how many humans suffered. "The Lord is wise. How appropriate for you to become the Bonded of Cadis Etrama di Raizel, when you already took his duty upon yourself. I will be honored to continue to assist you with your training."

"His duty as the Noblesse. To spend his life to slay clan leaders," Frankenstein mused. And smiled. "There's something else you can assist me with," he said, openly eyeing Ragar's neck.

Raizel's blood was his soul, and his very life, but Frankenstein hadn't taken that much, compared even to the power Raizel had left. Since Frankenstein had been forced to develop an understanding of blood, if he took a noble's blood he should be able to strip away small pieces of their soul, and use that to patch up Raizel, at least until Raizel recovered enough that he could start to heal on his own.

It wasn't going to be difficult to get Ragar to hand over some of that blood, or Gejutel. And the Lord had better cough up his fair share when this must have been his plan all along.

Ragar just blinked at him, relaxed and trusting and Frankenstein's fingers twitched. So getting his energies under control hadn't removed the urge to pounce nobles when they were stupid enough to leave openings.

Good.