The Isle of Blood (The Monstrumologist #3)(30)

“Who has vanished like the mist, leaving no trace of himself behind. How will you find him?”

“I will begin by looking under the largest rock on the continent,” answered the doctor grimly.

Von Helrung chuckled. “And if he isn’t there?”

“Then I shall move on to the smaller rocks.”

“And once you find him—if you find him—what if he refuses to tell you what you want to know? Or worse, doesn’t know what you want to know?”

“Know, know, know,” Warthrop savagely mimicked. “You wish to know what I know, Meister Abram? I know Jack Kearns wanted me to have the nidus. He took great pains to make sure I received it quickly. He also wanted me to know he was leaving England—quickly. There can be only one explanation: He knows where the nidus came from. And that is why he let it go. There is only one thing on earth more valuable than an authentic nidus ex magnificum, and that is the magnificum itself. The nidus is a great prize, but the Unseen One is the prize, the prize of all> prizes.” Warthrop was nodding vehemently. “It is the only explanation.”

“But why send anything to you at all? What was the reason for it? Surely he would want no one to know that the prize of prizes was within his grasp, least of all Pellinore Warthrop.”

The doctor nodded. “It has been troubling me a bit. Why did he do it? The only thing that makes sense only makes sense if you know John Kearns.”

Von Helrung thought for a moment. “He is taunting you?”

“I think so. In the cruelest manner possible. You know Kearns, Meister Abram. You know as well as I the depravities to which he will stoop.”

My master then waved the thought away. He did not wish to dwell on Jack Kearns or what drove him. He was too much in the grip of his own demons.

“He is a cruel man,” he said. “Some might say a monster of a man. But that is no concern of mine.”

“Listen to you; listen! My former pupil! Father in heaven, forgive me for my transgressions, for I have failed you—and my dear student! Pellinore, we are men before scientists; it is the human monster we should most concern ourselves with!”

“Why?” the doctor said sharply. “What of monstrous men? I can’t think of anything more banal. I have no doubt—no doubt whatsoever—that once it has obtained the means to do so, the species will wipe itself off the face of the earth. There is no mystery to it. It is in our nature. Oh, one might delve into the particulars, but really, what might we say about the species that invented murder? What can we say?”

Forgetting myself for a moment, I said, “You sound like him.”

Warthrop whirled on me. “What did you say?”

“What you were saying… It sounded like something Dr. Kearns would say.”

“Just because a man is a homicidal maniac doesn’t make him wrong,” the monstrumologist snarled.

“No,” said von Helrung softly, his bright eyes flashing dangerously. “It merely makes him evil.”

“We are scientists, von Helrung; such concepts are alien in our vocabulary. In India it is a sin to kill a cow. Are we Westerners evil for slaughtering them?”

“Human beings, mein Freund,” replied von Helrung, “are not cows.”

Warthrop did not have a ready retort for that, and he listened silently as his old friend begged him to reconsider. Rushing off to England would be premature. Kearns was gone, and, after all, the quest was not for Kearns but for the place where the nidus had been fashioned.

Warthrop hardly listened. He, the caged lion, might have been pacing the floor, but not so his passion—nothing could contain thatsnarled height="0em">

“There are those who live their entire lives in ignorance,” he shouted into the frightened face of his former mentor. “With no inkling of their purpose, who, if pressed, could not answer why they were even born. Many are called, you said. True, and most are deaf! And the majority of them are blind! I am neither. I have heard the call. I have seen the way. I am the one. I am the one.”

He was in the fever’s full grip. It was the call of destiny—his destiny—the reason he had sacrificed so much, endured so much, lost so much. This was fate, to a man who did not believe in fate. This was deliverance, to a man who did not subscribe to any notion of personal salvation. This was redemption, to a man for whom the idea of redemption was a bit of useless esoterica.

Ah, Warthrop! How often you cautioned me to control my passions, lest my passions control me. What now? Do you contain the fire or does the fire contain you? I see it clearly now—not so much then.

Von Helrung saw it, though. Saw it and was powerless against its infernal force. In all his years as master instructor in the art of monstrumology, never had he a finer pupil—and he had taught dozens. Warthrop was his crowning achievement—a monstrumologist without compunction, a scientist without the slightest bias or qualm. And yet! Sometimes our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness: The flame that lit up Pellinore Warthrop’s genius was the same inferno that drove him pell-mell toward the abyss.

Von Helrung saw that abyss, and von Helrung was afraid.

Chapter Eleven: “What Do You Know of My Business?”

Von Helrung, who knew where the true Monstrum horribalis of the case lurked, said, “The call has come, then, and you must answer, but you must not answer alone.”