The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist #4)(52)

I threw open the door. He shouted for me to close it, and I, ever the faithful servant, started to—then stopped.

“I said close that door.”

“I am leaving you, Dr. Warthrop,” I said, facing the open door and the hall outside and the elevator that would take me down a final descent and out the lobby and into a world without monstrumology and murder and the things that claw helplessly in glass jars and the inarticulate horrifying beauty that dwells in the chrysalis. I was light-headed, extremities tingling, heart buzzing with adrenaline. Freedom.

He barked out a laugh. “And where will you go? And what will you do when you get there?”

“To the other side of the world!” I shouted. “Where I will labor to forget you and everything you represent, though it takes me a thousand years.”

Man has a right to defend himself.

That is the issue. The only one that matters.

I left.

TWO

By the time I reached Riverside Drive, I was running.

How absurdly simple, I thought, and how simply absurd—the chain that bound me was made of air! The prison that housed me had walls insubstantial as water; I only needed to kick hard to break the surface and be free. Free! I was hurtling along at a hundred times the speed of light, flying to the ticket office first, unbound and unhindered, the past receding to a point infinitesimally small behind me. Free! I heard their cries from the flames no longer, nor his voice, desperate and shrill, calling me, Will Henreeeeee! and to hell with those who dance in flames and to things that swim in jars and the prison of the amber eye, the cruel mockery of monstrous things, the godlessness of nature perfected, and to him, to him, to hell with him, too: the little boy in the tattered hat who having lost God made god of the one who found him. To hell with all of it and all of him and all the blood that serving him extracted. Blood, blood, blood, rivers of blood, drenching, soaking, suffocating blood; kick, kick, kick hard and you will break the surface and breathe again.

Breathe.

“Where is she?” I demanded, breathless at the door.

“Miss Lilly? She is lying down and wishes not to—”

I shoved my way inside and raced up the stairs two at a time, ascending finally, rising at last, to burst into her room, hitting my foot hard against the side of the open steamer-trunk and toppling forward to arrive flat on my face, sprawled out upon the floor.

I heard the door close. Then her voice: “Don’t you have the nerve . . .”

I rolled onto my back and pulled the paper from my jacket pocket. “I do—and better! I’ve got this.”

“What have you got?”

I sat up, waving the slip. “My ticket on tomorrow’s passage. I am sailing with you, Miss Bates—to England!”

She frowned. “I do not think that you are.”

“Well, I most definitely am.” I leapt up, laughing. “Steerage, though; I’m no child of Riverside Drive, after all!”

She crossed her arms and frowned at me. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m free, Lilly! Done with it and done with him.”

I pulled on her wrists, forcing her arms apart. She yanked free. “You’re drunk.”

“I am, but not with drink. I don’t know why I never saw it before—but you did, from the beginning you saw. My doctor, you called him. I wasn’t his; he was mine. And what belongs to me I may keep or discard as I wish. As I wish!”

“But why now? What has he done this time?”

I shook my head. “It isn’t about him.” I reached for her again, and she tried to pull away again, but I was too quick: The hunter snared his prey. I pulled her close and said, “I love you, Lilly.”

She turned her head away. “No.”

“I do. I love you. I have loved you since I was twelve years old. And I would do anything for you. Name it. Name it and it’s yours.”

She looked at me. And her eyes were blue and clear all the way down, like the lake high in the Socotran mountains into which I had plunged to wash away my contagion. I was nasu, unclean, and the icy water purified me. Yes! I thought. And herein lies our salvation.

“Leave me alone,” she said softly. “Go where you will, but leave me alone.” She freed herself from my arms. “You frighten me, Will. Oh, that isn’t right—I’m not going to say this correctly; I don’t know how to put it into words—but there is something missing. Something that should be there, that I think once was there, but isn’t anymore.”

“Missing?” I felt the blood rising in my cheeks. What was she talking about? I thought I knew. “I am not lying. I do love you.”

“Stop saying that,” she said sharply. “Run away if you want to, but don’t use me as your excuse.”

“I’m not running away, Lilly. I am running toward.”

I stepped forward; she stepped back. For a terrible moment I fought the urge to strike her.

“Please, Lilly, don’t turn me away. I could not bear it. I never told you this and I should have told you this and I don’t know why I never told you this, but your letters were the only things that kept me going. Your letters tied me down, kept me from flying away into nothing. Please, Lilly, please let me come with you. Let me prove to you that you’re not an excuse but the reason. There is nothing missing. I am whole. I am human.”