The Isle of Blood (The Monstrumologist #3)(124)

“Can we go find him, please?” I whimpered. There was the familiar tightening in my chest, the compacting force that could break the world in half, and the doctor’s voice in Aden, saying, We must be indispensable to each other.

“Well, of course. We’ll go together, Will. Strength in numbers, yes?”

He broke out his Kearns-ish grin, shifted the rifle into the crook of his arm, and patted me kindly on the head, the way an uncle might a beloved nephew.

“There is no need to be afraid,” he said.

I lifted up my eyes—Oculus Dei, Kearns had called them—and looked directly into his, and he recognized in them his own, but too late, too late, and before he could raise the gun or pull away, Awaale’s long knife came whistling around and buried itself in his neck.

He sank to his knees, his eyes wide in astonishment. He started to raise the rifle. I kicked it out of his hands. He brought them up toward the gushing wound in his neck—the blood pulsed with the rhythm of his dying heart—while he looked up at me with wonder. And then he toppled over, reaching for me with bloody hands, but I was too far. I was beyond his grasp.

I went over to the rifle, picked it up, brought it back to where his body lay. I shoved it under him. Then I lifted his right hand and forced his finger through the trigger guard. I stepped back to examine my handiwork.

There are no monsters. There are only men.

I scooped up the knife and ran to fetch the doctor.

Chapter Forty-Four: “A Fallen Star”

“Tell me again,” the doctor said.

I did without hesitation, my gaze, like my story, unwavering. Kearns had indeed smelled a rat and had given me no choice but to defend myself.

“He was going to shoot you point-blank,” the monstrumologist said dubiously. “With a Winchester rifle.”

“Yes, Doctor. He pointed it right at my chest and told me he was sorry but he didn’t have a choice.”

“Like you. No choice.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So you stabbed him in the neck. While he held a rifle to your chest.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How did you manage it? To get close enough with the barrel of a Winchester between you?” He was having a hard time picturing it.

“I knocked it away with my left hand and swung with my right.”

“You knocked it away?”

“I mean I shoved it away. He never let go of it.”

“And he didn’t notice you were holding a knife the whole time?”

“I was hiding it behind my back.”

“So when he brought the rifle up to shoot you,” he said slowly, “you whipped your right hand behind your back, knocked the gun away with your left, and at the same instant pulled out the knife with the other and swung it around to stab him in the neck?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

He scratched the underside of his chin thoughtfully. “That was quick thinking.”

“Yes, sir. I mean, thank you, sir.”

“And even quicker reflexes. You must demonstrate it to me sometime.”

“I had to kill him, Dr. Warthrop.”

“Hmm. Yes. I suppose you did, Will Henry. Self-preservation is your inalienable right.”

“I had to,” I insisted. “For both of us.”

“I liked the plan better when it entailed luring him down the path so I could bop him over the head.”

“I didn’t plan it. It just… happened.”

“Did I say that you planned it, Will Henry? Now, that would be a different animal altogether. It wasn’t like what happened in Aden. There was no need to kill John Kearns.”

“It’s better that he’s dead, though.”

He frowned. His eyes sought out mine, and still I did not look away.

“How so, Will Henry?”

“If we had just left him here, he might have found a way off the island. I think he would have somehow, because he’s… he’s John Kearns.”

“So? What does that matter as long as we escape?”

“It matters, sir, because you’d still be a threat to him. You know too much. You’ve seen too much.”

A silence came between us. He looked at me, and I looked back at him, as the last stars faded gently from the sky.

“I think we both have, Will,” he said, breaking the silence between us but not the thing that lay in silence between us.

On the tenth hour of our last day on the Isle of Blood, the great arms of the mountains opened before us, and we saw the plain stretching toward the sea. The day was bright and hot and nearly windless, and I saw several brilliantly colored lizards sunning themselves on the rocks. A butterfly fluttered by upon wings of iridescent blue. The monstrumologist pointed it out and said, “Look at him. Not a flower for miles. He must be lost.”

A hulking figure appeared below us, between the two boulders marking the trailhead. At first my heart rose. It must be Awaale, I thought. I quickened my pace; the mo eyes soogist grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back. We stood and watched the huge figure shuffle painfully toward us. Rags hung from its massive frame. Its feet were bare and lacerated by the sharp stones, and left bloody footprints in its wake. Its mouth hung open; its eyes were black and unblinking; its hands were large and caked in blood. A large horn protruded from its wide forehead. We had found the Minotaur.