The Isle of Blood (Monstrumologist)

he. It was as old as life and just as inexorable. It burned in him and it consumed him. He was the predator; he was the prey.

“How did they find us?” I wondered aloud that night as we readied for bed.

“I think they never ‘lost’ us,” he answered. “They have been on this train since Calais, or at least since Lucerne. They followed us into Venice because it was thei first and best opportunity.”

“Opportunity to do what?”

“To say hello and catch up on old times. Really, Will Henry.”

“If they let you go before, why do they want to kill you now?”

“They did not let me go, as you recall. Unless you consider throwing someone into a lunatic asylum letting him go.”

“But why would they want to kill you if they think you don’t know where the magnificum is?”

“For the same reason they wanted to kill me when they didn’t know what I thought.” He lay back in his bunk and said, “They’ve had months to consider my little trick in the sewer, long enough for even a man of Rurick’s limited mental agility to come to the conclusion that I might have been lying. Or it could just be they think I’m better off dead.” He gave a dry little laugh. “And they are not alone in that!”

“Who is she, Dr. Warthrop? Who is Veronica Soranzo?”

“Someone I do not wish to talk about.”

“Were the two of you…” I did not know the word I should use.

He apparently did, for he answered, “Yes… and no. And what does it matter?”

“It doesn’t.”

“Then, why did you bring it up?” he asked testily, flopping onto his side and fussily snapping the sheet.

“I just never thought…”

“Yes? What did you never think? There are so many possibilities; don’t make me guess. What? That I might have had a life before you came into it? I did not spring into existence upon your entrance, Will Henry. Before you were, I was, and for a good while too. Veronica Soranzo belongs to what was, and I try to concern myself with what is and what will be. Now, please, give me some peace. I must think.”

When I woke several hours later, for a disoriented instant I thought I was back in my little loft on Harrington Lane, shaken from a deep sleep by his desperate cries beckoning me to his bedside. The doctor had drawn the blinds, the little compartment was as black as pitch, and I found him by the sound of his choked sobs. I reached for him. His body jerked at the touch of my hand.

“Dr. Warthrop?”

“It is nothing. Nothing. A dream, that’s all. Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. It did not seem like nothing to me. I’d never heard him sound so terrified.

“What if he killed her, Will Henry?” he cried. “When he discovered our charade, he would have confronted her, don’t you think? Yes, yes. He would be furious; he would express his rage upon her. Oh, what have I done, Will Henry? What have I done?”

“Should we go back?”

“Go back? Go back for what? To bury her? you ever listen to what I say? Do you ever listen to what you say? I have offered her up in my stead, Will Henry. I have killed her!”

“You don’t know that, sir. You can’t know that.” His terror was infectious. I wrapped the covers around my quivering shoulders. Suddenly the compartment was very cold and very small. I could not see his face; he was an insubstantial shade against the darker gray.

“Look not into my eyes,” he muttered feverishly. “For I am the basilisk. Fear my touch, for I am the Midas of annihilation.” He sought out my hand in the dark, for comfort, I thought, but I was wrong. It was for proof. “James and Mary, Erasmus and Malachi, John and Muriel, Damien and Thomas and Jacob and Veronica, and the ones whose names I have forgotten and the ones whose names I never knew…” He pressed the spot where my finger should have been. “And you, Will Henry. You have given yourself in service to ha- Mashchit, the destroyer, the angel of death whom God created on the first day, the same day he said, ‘Let there be light.’

“And when I step upon the shore of the Isle of Blood to plant the conqueror’s flag, when I attain the summit of the abyss, when I find the thing that all of us fear and all of us seek, when I turn to face the Faceless One, whose face will I see?”

In the darkness he raised my hand and pressed it against his cheek.

His face is beatific when I picture it now, frozen in an attitude of godlike serenity, like a Greek statue of an ancient hero—Hercules, perhaps—or the bust of Caesar Augustus in the Musei Capitolini. The face of the living Warthrop has petrified in my memory, and his eyes, like those of a statue, are blank, devoid of detail, devoid of sight. It isn’t a failure of memory—how well I remember those eyes! It is the mercy I grant myself. And it is my gift to him—the absolution of blindness.

He fell silent. I do not think he spoke more than three words to me between Venice and Brindisi. He broke the verbal drought once, while we were standing in the ticket line at the P&O offices to secure our berths for the passage to Port Said.

“We are a few hours ahead of them, Will Henry. Barring the unexpected delay, we may expect to arrive at Aden long before they do. But there they may catch up to us. I don’t know how long it will take to arrange our passage to Socotra.”

He looked down at me. “Unless you wish to turn back.”