The Isle of Blood (The Monstrumologist #3)(103)

And when the light struck him, his body jerked violently, his mouth came open in a gargled scream, and he heaved up a mass of clotted blood mixed with a clear, viscous fluid. The boy lunged toward the light, but he was very weak; he collapsed upon his belly, clawing at the hard stone. His back arched, and the skin pulled taut over the protuberances growing from his spine and then split apart, from the base of his neck to his lower back, like a zipper coming open.

Awaale heard my cry of revulsion and rushed into the house in time to see the monstrumologist step up to the writhing body, level the revolver at the small head, and, with a quick squeeze of his finger, launch a saving bullet into what was left of the child’s brain.

The former pirate (who had lost count of the number he had killed; Awaale the Devil, they had called him) stared at Warthrop uncomprehendingly for a long moment. Then he looked at the dead child by the doctor’s feet. One of the tiny hands had fallen upon Warthrop’s shoe and was clutching it tightly, as if it had been his favorite toy, and the blood from the wound spread out slowly beneath his small, round head, creating a half-moon shape that reminded me of a Byzantine painting of the Christ child.

Awaale backed out the open doorway without saying a word. The doctor’s shoulders relaxed—Awaale’s appearance had unnerved him more than shooting the child—and he asked for his instrument case.

“Just a sample or two—the first fresh one we’ve found. I won’t need you for this, Will Henry. Perhaps you should keep watch with Awaale.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, you had better take this.” He dropped the revolver into my hands. “You aren’t afraid to use it, are you?”

“No, sir.”

“I didn’t think so.”

Awaale was sitting in the dirt just to the left of the doorway, pressing his back against the wall of the house, facing toward the sea. I sat beside him. We were only a mile from the ocean, but there was no breeze. The air was still and heavy with dust, and towering behind us, like a great gray battlement, the gray cliffs of the Diksam Plateau.

“Who is this man?” he asked me. “Who is this dhaktar you serve?”

“He is a monstrumologist.”

“A strange name, walaalo.

What does it mean?”

“Someone who studies monsters.”

“What monsters?”

“The ones worth studying, I suppose.”

“The one in there—who looked so very much like a child, a little boy—he was a monster?”

“He was sick, Awaale—very sick. The doctor did the only thing he could. He was… he was helping him.”

“Helping him? What a very strange kind of medicine this monstrumology is!” He looked at me. “And you have been with him how long?”

“Two years now.” I could not meet his appraising stare. I kept my face toward the unseen sea.

“And such things”—he meant what had happened inside the little stone house—“they are not new to you?”

“No, Awaale,” I said. “They are not new to me.”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, walaalo.” His huge hand engulfed mine. “I am sorry; I did not know. You have seen the face of the faceless one, haven’t you?”

He closed his eyes and his lips moved, but he spoke no word. It took me an absurdly long time to realize that he was praying.

Chapter Thirty-Seven: “We Are Not Too Late”

The doctor stepped outside, and Awaale and I scrambled to our feet. We both were anxious to quit Gishub. The village was nasu. The monstrumologist had a different idea.

“We will stay here for the night,” he announced quietly. “By all accounts magnificum is a nocturnal hunter, and as his hunters, we should keep his hours, but there is great risk in that. Exposure to pwdre ser leads to extreme sensitivity to light as well as a ravenous appetite for human flesh. A brilliant adaptation, really, for by so infecting his prey he forces them to keep his hours. The survivors act as his scouts. Oculus Dei indeed!”

We chose one of the clean abandoned houses in which to spend the rest of the night. Awaale volunteered to take the first watch, but the doctor demurred; he was not tired. He would wake Awaale in four hours.

“I shall take the rifle. Will Henry, give the revolver to Awaale, and try to get some sleep! We have a long march ahead of us.”

There were no beds, just sleeping mats that we rolled out onto the floor of hard-packed dirt. I saw the monstrumologist sit down in the open doorway. Anything that might want to get to us must first get past him.

“Walaalo,” Awaale whispered. “What happened to your hand?”

I kept my voice very low, lest the doctor hear me. “It makes a nest, and it uses its spit—the pwdre ser—to hold it together, and if you touch it, you change into… into what you saw tonight.”

“And that is what happened? Y hoched the nest?”

“No, I… Indirectly, yes, I touched it.”

He was silent for a time. “He cut it off, didn’t he? The dhaktar.”

“Yes. To save me.”

“Like he saved the child.”

“It wasn’t too late for me.”

He was silent for a long time. “What is this thing, this magnificum?”

“No one knows. No one has seen it. That’s why we’ve come.”