When Igor Radcliffe finished reading, Vicar found that they both had tears in their eyes. It had never occurred to him, in all of his recollections and readings of the lives of others, that this man could feel, and hardly so intensely. Perhaps it wasn't the feeling that surprised Vicar, but the object behind the doctor's emotions. That the man could act in so horrific a manner, and yet still possess the passionate desire to sire his own family amazed Vicar.

Life was supposed to be easier than that. Villains were not complex creatures. Their flaws were obvious and predictable. Vicar's bizarre first encounter with the doctor, when he had been parading as a student at Pendragon-Hall, should have been the end of it. You hardly look a Justine to me. Wasn't Justine's life characterised by men and women who were evil simply because they could be? Sex, power - easy to spot, easy to understand.

Igor Radcliffe, he was learning, was not easy to understand.

Mere minutes after reading with relish his cruel treatment of Lord DeCourt, the doctor had nearly given up the effort of relaying Winn's last notes, so overcome was he with the image of his wife, dying in his arms. How difficult it was to believe - Igor Radcliffe loving someone!

And yet, he did. How plainly Vicar could see this, with every tear that trickled down the doctor's face. Every quake of his chest and tremble of his hand betrayed his everlasting grief at her passing. Vicar found that he cried for a different reason, one that only made him angrier at the doctor for having the gall to weep at all.

Vicar cried for Winn. Her journal had been simple, but no less moving and charismatic. Every small interaction she'd taken the time to record had left him with the impression that the world was a better place with her in it. Each harrowing detail, carefully noted down for her own sake, and then the sake of a person who might never exist, filled him with hope for more strong people, for people who refused to curl up and let destiny throw them away. Vicar didn't suppose the doctor would finish reading the journal (there were only a few pages left, at any rate), but he wondered where Winn had found herself in the end, where she'd taken the freshness of her pain and found the will to commit it to paper.

It was all of this that made the bile rise in Vicar's throat, that made his heart squeeze in an anger he had never known before. Just who was the man that sat in front of him? What divine hands had crafted him with such arrogance that he could dare shed tears over the death of a woman he had mistreated so cruelly, all while subjecting one of the purest people Vicar had ever known of to the horror of watching her die?

"You are a monster," he echoed, vision flashing white for a moment. When his eyes had focused, the doctor was looking at him with a slow expression. Was he expecting Vicar to embrace him, to retract his previous airs of disgust? Hardly would he, Vicar thought as he stood for the last time. "What do you want with me and my family that you ceaselessly find yourself torturing us to insanity!" Indeed, why else read out Winn's final entries, if not to push Vicar over the edge? Was it a method of control? Did the vampirism that finally revealed itself find a sick pleasure in anguish in its victims?

"I show you this to prove that I have only ever wanted one of you," the doctor whispered back. He looked down at his hands, folded over the journal. "I wanted a name, Vicar, that had not been bought with force. I wanted what you have."

"I don't have a family anymore. You made quite sure of that."

"No... no, for that, I am sorry." Igor looked up, face painted with newly formed lines of salt. "You must understand: I only wanted to make you, any of you, mine the way I knew how. Unfortunately, that way brings more death than it doesn't. Evelyn was not supposed to die, I was sure of it, but the stupid boy ruined everything. He weakened her!" The doctor jumped to his feet and began to pace around the table, tears giving way to scowls or recollection. "He slithered behind my back, proved I should have killed him when his mother pushed out her last breath bringing him into the world, and cursed his childish love with the same fate."

"You weakened her," Vicar countered, slamming his hands on the table and forcing the doctor to look him in the eyes. "It was not the small kindness of affection that reduced Evelyn's defences to whatever you wished to do with her - it was your conscious decision to fill her with grief and hopelessness that killed her!"

Scoffing, Igor raised a finger, the knuckles glowing white with the rigidity of the gesture. "What do you know of my treatments, Vicar? I needed to know she could survive the heartache that comes with being like me!"

"Just what are you?" The shock of asking and being finally able to know panicked Vicar. All his life, his family had been plagued by instability and insanity, and to think there was a reason, standing before him now, was almost overwhelming. His knees trembled. Did he want to know?

"There is no name for what I am. Loneliness, friendless, lifeless. None of them changes what I want." There was a curious glint in his eye, a sort of glow that seemed to light up face in the reflection. "Gaston knew what I was, but he rejected me for it. We were close, once. He could have been the answer, very nearly was, but he fancied himself too smart for me."

"...Gaston?"

"Yes, Gaston." The melancholic air about the doctor had evaporated, leaving only a cold chill laced with malice behind. Had he realised Vicar would not be swayed? Whatever the reason for the change, Vicar felt his heart squeeze once more as he realised he was locked inside with a man who had given up his attempt at humanity. Cruelty was all he knew, and Vicar could smell his own demise if he didn't act quickly.

"You knew him when he was younger, when I was still a child." It was risky, but if he could just convince the doctor to talk more, to gloat over his successful kills, then perhaps Vicar could edge his way back to the kitchen and out of the door.

He took a step to the right, and Igor matched the movement without missing a beat. This would require more passionate distraction.

"Yes, I knew him. We were friends, once! I had given up the idea of bothering with your family, had come to say my goodbyes once and for all, until I saw him." Igor sighed and shook off his coat, waving it through the air as though baiting a bull before letting it settle on a chair. The movement was enough to distract Vicar and take another step. Dammit! "How could I resist! He had taken a hit from the alcoholic stupour you called a father, a futile attempt to protect you, but the way he bore his pain... I knew he would be the one to help me at last."

They shifted closer, but Vicar at once backed up, brought his fist to his chest and mimicked the pain he ought to have felt all along for the death of his brother. Had he known since hearing the news, that something evil had befallen Gaston, that there was no use in mourning a man when the mystery of his death had yet to be solved? "He told me of you, once," he said at last, his feint mixed with truth as he pictured those drawings of his brother's, the haunted look in his eyes upon seeing them. "He called you friends, didn't he?"

"And we were!" Igor inhaled as though he could still smell the medicinal mix of Gaston's scent. "We encouraged one another like no two people have ever done before! He was perfect... until he wasn't. Even family can break your heart, Vicar."

"You don't have a heart," came Vicar's trembling response. He wanted to remain angry and determined but the image of his brother the last time he'd seen him, so distant and hollow... "All you ever wanted was someone else's, and then you killed him for it, didn't you!"

"You do not understand, not yet." In the brief emotional distraction, the doctor had approached Vicar quickly, cupped his hands across Vicar's face. How intensely did his entire personality change in a matter of seconds! The face looking down was not the gloating one of minutes past, nor was it the emotional mask at the end of Winn's journal. This face was... warm, loving almost. There was comfort and patience in those reddish-browns, hope for the future. "I followed you to America because I suffered a revelation that perhaps I had been looking at the wrong brother. I followed you through every class, every lesson, every night you spent sleeping in that library. You are far more resilient than your brother or the kitchen boy who thought he could fight me by bedding my wife. You looked your family's destiny in the face and spat with as much vigour as I could have hoped my own flesh and blood would. You would be my family, I knew!"

"Then why," choked out Vicar, struggling against the hands that held him so tenderly, "why burn them? They were children, with dreams to last a lifetime! They were beautiful children, and you killed them, too. Why?" The anger had faded as though pierced in the side, bleeding out like a helpless deer. All Vicar felt now was grief. Was that all he was fated for? Was this his inheritance after all? "Why?" He collapsed, but Igor caught him, held him up like the puppet he was.

"I needed to be sure... I am a flawed creature, my dear, and my decisions have not always been wise, but know: I had to be sure. Look at you now!" He lifted Vicar, interlaced their hands and held them high. "You've come where none have before! Your parents, your brother, your friends, your life - all of it destroyed, and yet here you are, where not even your brother could stand to look."

Vicar wrenched his hands free, lurching towards the kitchen. The pain was real, this time, the stagger that mimicked the cries of his heart, but he needed to remember the kitchen. There was fire in the kitchen. How beautiful the irony, he thought slowly, to take from the doctor his last hope the same way he'd tested Vicar!

There was no more reason to live, he decided. Everything he'd done to escape the horror of his familial curse had been thwarted. For all of his scientific pursuits of life and his determination to be something better than their father, Gaston had failed. He'd let this parasite into the home and let himself wither away for it. Had he even recognised the doctor for who he really was?

It occurred to Vicar that Igor Radcliffe was a shapeshifter, a chameleon of dangerous proportions who had no idea who he was himself. He wanted family and respect; he wanted death and dominance. A friend, a student, a doctor - they were all suits for a purpose, nothing he would have worn if all alone. All of his dreams were within reach, and then he burned them all away like he'd burned the library away. What was a library but a den of dreams, from cover to crisping cover? Perhaps he was jealous of Amelia and Bobby and all the rest, jealous that with or without Vicar, they would have their dreams forever. Killing them wasn't necessary. The library would have been enough to traumtise Vicar forever, but the students?

As his vision blurred, the panicked memories flashing across his eyes, Vicar felt his way to the stove, the burner, the matches the help had kept long, long ago because the wiring in the house was faulty, and the damn stove never lit up when you wanted it to. He fell into the burner, disguising his intentions with a perfect stumble, cutting his hand open in the process on the old knob. More blood scattered like the ashes he could still see and feel, frenetically decorating the ground as though they needed to paint it all as quickly as possible.

Behind him, the doctor made some strange noise and approached, far too quickly. Strike, Vicar wanted to shout, begging the matchbook doused in blood to catch a spark and ignite the gas that filled the air. Burn!

There was indeed beauty in the fire, he admitted as he fell slowly to the ground, the doctor's hands just missing his own. Everything moved slowly, in perfect, beautiful detail. Why couldn't life have been like this, at its own gentle pace, the colours and smells all things to cherish? Before he hit the ground, feet slipping in his own blood, Vicar decided little Winnifred was lucky to have been rendered blind to the cruel, rapid passing of time. Eight glorious months she had, to avoid the agonising demise of her friend. Eight peaceful months to ignore the pain in her lungs, the fevre in her head. She had been blessed by that long sleep and for a moment, Vicar was envious.

The moment passed when the match finally caught alight, the careful twisting of his fingers upon impact with the floor twisting the match against the rough hide of the book. If the scene had been filmed, Vicar would have slowed it down as low as he could, so beautiful was the spark jumping and catching with the gas. Would the doctor think it so?

Vicar heard a cry as his head smacked against the ground, and then the kitchen was quickly engulfed in flames. A flash of black here, a dangerous glint of red there, and then he had rolled over to his stomach. Everything was warm, but the floor was somehow still cold. He darted his gaze up and realised that the door had been opened in the blast of fire, and then, that there was still snow outside.

As he stumbled to a stand and ran through the doors, fire swirling around his arms and singing the hairs off, he felt hands grasp at him and trip him. Once he'd fallen back into the snow he turned and saw Igor Radcliffe consumed by fire, a twisting vortex of darkness and light. It was both beautiful and horrific. Could Igor have ever predicted how magnificent he would look, dying the way he'd killed those students? Whatever he was made of, whatever noxious blood swirled in his veins and kept him alive throughout the centuries, it had no love for the fire. His skin crackled and sizzled away; his features burst into streams of inky liquids; his teeth! Vicar watched, fascinated from the freezing pile mere feet from the corpse of his buried brother, as the doctor's teeth resisted the immolation they had been waiting for. They gnashed and clenched together until they, too, conceded in a cloud of white dust.

All that was left were the eyes, the horrid orbs of hatred that could only ever pretend to love. Once they'd popped, though, oozed and sizzled and dissipated like the rest of him, Igor Radcliffe was no more. There was nothing left to burn, no bones left to leave in the fire.

Vicar sat for far too long watching his house burn down, familiar ashes sprinkling down from the sky and covering the snowy field behind him in a wet, gray blanket. The garden beside him and the coffin deep within it would appreciate being put to rest at last, their uses finally completed. Once the kitchen groaned and collapsed inward, a crash filling the street, he stood, wobbling on uncertain legs.

Was it over?

He stared. It couldn't have been, not really. Surely, Igor Radcliffe would rise from the ashes and burst forth, renewed in his desire to finally bring destruction to the family that had resisted him for so long.

There was no movement from where the bones and blood had crumbled away. All that Vicar heard and saw was the steady demise of his family home. A corner of the roof shrieked and angled down, reminded him that he ought to get a little farther away before he, too, died (how quickly the desire for his own end had been replaced by a panicked will to live!). As he slipped on the snow and lurched away, something caught his eyes, rolled into view by a fresh burst of gas and fire. Was that...?

He darted forward, seized the journal, and threw himself out of the way just as the roof finally gave up its fight and fell to the snow. Gasping, he could only look in thankful awe as the rest of the roof followed suit, burying whatever was left of the doctor in the rubble.

Limping into the street, Winn's journal clutched safely in his hands, Vicar decided he was done with Cambridge. Gaston was the only reason to stay, but Gaston was gone forever, now. Goodbyes were unnecessary; they'd parted long before the funeral anyway. As he limped on the curb, he felt a warm breeze and heard a contented sigh. Winnifred stood beside him, her hair waving as though she was really there with him. She held in her hands the pen, clutched like a sword against her chest. How much that pen had done, how many damming words it had written!

Vicar looked in the journal and found there was one entry left, a mere afterthought. He read it, right there on the street, surrounded by snow and fire and who-knew how many more ghosts, until he finished the account Winn had left behind for the baby and its descendants. He smiled and felt these new tears were good ones. They certainly felt good against the skin, warmed by fire. He reached a hand out to Winnifred, hesitated a moment.

"Thank you," he whispered, before turning and walking along the road and away from the Andrews house for the last time.