The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist #2)(88)

“Please, Pellinore, please,” von Helrung urged the doctor. Warthrop’s grip loosened, and the old man pulled me into his arms. He wrapped one around my shoulders and with his large hand pressed my ear to his chest; I could hear the beating of his heart. Like the wind upon which my name rode, an irresistible current runs deep in the hidden chambers of our hearts, “till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

“A dream,” the monstrumologist said. “A hallucination borne of khorkhoi venom and severe physical and psychological trauma.”

“It is my fault,” groaned von Helrung. “I should have barred the window.”

“In all likelihood he would have survived the fall.”

“He would not have fallen, mein Freund. Oh, if that were the only thing to fear! It has come for him. For him! This cannot be. We cannot allow it, Pellinore. He must be sent away immediately—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped the doctor.

“On the first train to Boston.”

“Will Henry is not going anywhere.”

“He is in grave danger, should he remain.”

“And worse if he leaves, von Helrung. I am all the boy has, and I am not leaving.”

“Please don’t send me away, sir,” I whispered. My throat hurt terribly, as if I had been screaming at the top of my lungs.

“I understand, Pellinore, but you must understand it will not stop. It cannot stop. It will call until it finds him—or he finds it, for it compels him now. As it compelled the others—Larose, Hawk, Skala, and Bartholomew—and Muriel, Pellinore. Think of Muriel! Would you have him suffer the same fate? In your stubbornness, will you stand idly by and let it take Will, too?”

“I am at the end of my patience with this lunacy. Nothing has ‘called’ Will Henry. Will Henry had a nightmare, completely understandable and even predictable, given what has transpired over the past twenty-four hours.”

Von Helrung threw up his hands in a gesture of dismay.

“Eyes that do not see! Ears that do not hear! Ack! I thought I had trained you better than that, Pellinore Warthrop! Set it aside, then. Set it all aside! John is not dead—he is not Outiko. He is psychotic, driven to murder by the demons found in the desolation, a monster still, but a monster of human proportions. If it is not the hunger that drives him, what does? Why does he take Muriel, and why now does he try to take Will Henry? What do they share, Pellinore? What is the one thing they have in common? Please, for the love of God, at least admit that. Call it what you will. Call it lunacy. Call it madness. But within the madness there is method. You know this to be true.”

“I won’t make the same mistake twice, Meister Abram. Will Henry will be safe with me.”

TWENTY-SIX

“He Is Not So Different”

Lilly took her leave early the next morning. Though shaken by the strange and disturbing events of the previous night, she was well aware of the plan to hunt down the remnants of Dr. John Chanler, and she was not happy to be excluded from the chase. Her dissatisfaction was made all the more unpalatable by the fact that I, in what she called my “deplorable condition,” would be a full participant.

“It’s because I’m a girl,” she pouted. “Look at this!” She held up her index finger and flexed it rapidly in my face. “It can pull a trigger as well as yours, William Henry—better even, and probably faster. I wouldn’t be afraid, either; I’d walk right up to him and blow his brains out. I don’t care what sort of man-eating monster he’s become.”

I didn’t argue with her. I completely agreed, actually, that she had it in her to walk up to almost anything and blow its brains out. She had the heart of a monstrumologist, that was certain; it just so happened that that heart belonged to a girl.

“You will see,” she promised me. “One day I will. You can’t keep us down forever; I don’t care how hard you try. One day we’ll even have the right to vote, and then see what happens to all you pompous men. We’ll make a woman president! You’ll see.”

Then, moving with the lightning speed of an attacking Mongolian Death Worm, Lilly Bates grabbed my shoulders and planted a wet kiss upon my cheek.

“That is for luck,” she said. “And good-bye. I may never see you again, Will.”

Shortly thereafter the first pair of hunters arrived, the experienced Dobrogeanu and the young Torrance, followed a few minutes later by Pelt, his drooping mustache dotted with fine grains of snow. Bad weather was coming, he said, and Dobrogeanu agreed, averring that the aching in his knees invariably presaged that. Gravois was the last to arrive. He’d had trouble finding a cab, he explained as he brushed crumbs from his vest.

His face lit up at the sight of Warthrop, who winced when Gravois hugged him. The doctor begged off the traditional greeting of a kiss on either cheek. Despite the previous day’s compress, Warthrop’s jaw was horribly swollen.

“It is not so bad,” opined the Frenchman of my master’s distorted features. “An improvement, in my opinion. What does the physician say? You will be able to join us, yes?”

“I am here, aren’t I?” Warthrop answered testily.

Gravois’s eyes grew misty. “Pellinore, words cannot express my grief. The loss, it is . . .”

“Inexplicable,” said the doctor. “And avoidable.”