The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist #1)(96)

The doctor nodded reluctantly. “Agreed.”

“And if they haven’t escaped to the surface, the ruckus up here will have alerted her to our proximity. She is, no doubt, expecting us.”

“That’s fine with me,” said Malachi, grimly gripping his gun. “I won’t disappoint her.”

“You are staying here,” said Kearns.

“I don’t take orders from you,” Malachi sneered.

“All right,” Kearns said mildly. “Take them from Pellinore if you wish. We need someone to stay here and guard the exit-and keep an eye on Will Henry, of course.”

“I didn’t come all this way to be a nursemaid!” cried Malachi. He appealed to Warthrop, “Please. It is my right.”

“Really? How do you mean?” interjected Kearns. “It wasn’t personal, you know. They were hungry and needed to eat. What do you do when you’re hungry?”

Warthrop laid a hand upon Malachi’s shoulder. “ Kearns must go; he is the expert tracker. And I must go, for if anyone has earned the “right,” it is I.” I remembered the haunting question posed in the basement as he considered her mate hanging before him. I wonder if she would be satisfied with his son. “Another must stay, in the event she somehow escapes and returns here. Would you have it be Will Henry? Look at him, Malachi; he’s just a boy.”

His startlingly blue eyes fell upon my face, and I turned away from the unbearable torment I saw within them.

“I can do it,” I offered. “I’ll guard the exit. Take Malachi with you.”

I was ignored, of course. Malachi watched glumly as the doctor and Kearns doubled-checked their ammunition and supplies. Kearns took two flares and several of the paper sacks used for trail marking from the doctor’s bag and dropped them into his, and examined their grenades to be certain they were in working order. The doctor took me aside and said, “There is something that feels wrong about this, Will Henry, though I can’t put my finger on it. She wouldn’t back herself into a corner-she is far too clever for that. Neither would she willingly abandon two of her young to our mercy. It is exceedingly curious. Keep a sharp eye and call out at once should you see or hear anything out of the ordinary.”

He squeezed my arm and added sternly, “And for God’s sake, don’t wander off this time! I expect you to be here when I return, Will Henry.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, trying my best to sound brave.

“Preferably alive.”

“I will try to be, sir.”

With heavy heart I watched him walk with Kearns to the narrow aperture. Something nagged at me. There was something I needed to ask him, something important, something I should remember but was forgetting.

“How long should we wait?” called Malachi.

“Wait for what?” Kearns asked.

“How long should we wait before coming after you?”

Kearns shook his head. “Don’t come after us.”

At the wall Kearns made a grand, sweeping gesture, extending the honor of going first to the monstrumologist. A moment later they were gone, the gentle glow of their lamp fading quickly as they slid out of sight in pursuit of the matriarch and the last of her brood.

Malachi did not speak for several moments. He walked over to the felled Anthropophagi and poked the one shot twice in the back with the muzzle of his rifle. “That’s mine there,” he said, pointing to the blackened hole in the middle of its back. “The second shot-the killing shot.”

“Then you saved my life,” I said.

“Do you think it works that way, Will? Now I have only five more for which to atone?”

“You couldn’t help them,” I offered. “You were trapped in your room. And you couldn’t help Elizabeth, either, not really. How could you have saved her, Malachi?”

He didn’t answer. “It feels like a dream,” he said instead, after a pensive pause. He was looking at the body lying at his feet. “Not this. My life before this, before them. You would think the opposite would be true. It’s very strange, Will.”

He told me what had happened after I’d last seen him in the passage connecting the devil’s manger to the nesting chamber, confirming at least part of Kearns ’s rendition. They had indeed discovered two main arteries whose directions seemed to tend downward. He and the doctor had taken one and Kearns the other-apparently the one into which the abandoned Anthropophagus and I had tumbled. I suspected Kearns, the expert tracker, had noted the signs of our scuffle and knew-but did not tell the others-precisely where I had gone, choosing not to inform them of this intelligence.

The passage, Malachi related, connected to countless others, and at each branch or juncture they chose the downward path. Halfway to this final hiding place, he surmised, the doctor stumbled upon her trail, fresh tracks left in the moist soil, and they followed them until they reached the chamber in which we now waited for the doctor’s return.

“It came out over there,” he said, pointing to a spot in the shadows directly across from the bodies. “We knew Kearns must have found it first, for we saw the light within and heard the sound of gunfire. But I never expected you would be here, Will.”

“Neither did I.”

He leaned on his rifle, and his weight forced its butt to slowly sink into the soft soil. He lifted it out and watched water seep into the indenture.