The Madman’s Daughter (39 page)

But the claws, at least, were no trick of my eye. He raised them like deadly knives in Montgomery’s direction. “Edward, stop!” I screamed. But he didn’t seem to hear me.

Edward slammed Montgomery against the wall of bridles with enough force to crack the boards. The seam of his shirt split around his shoulders. He
had
gotten larger. I rubbed my eyes, trying to make sense of it.

Montgomery managed to twist out of his grasp. Leather straps fell, tangling around them. If I could get closer, I could pull one down and try to get it around Edward’s neck like a noose.

Edward curled his gnarled fist. The black claws dripped with blood. Suddenly they retracted, and he punched Montgomery so hard that the wall cracked under his weight.

“Stop!” I said.

But Montgomery got back up. Blood trickled from his mouth. Edward threw another punch that Montgomery evaded. Something silver gleamed in his hand—a broken metal bit from one of the bridles, sharp and ragged at the end, dangerous as a dagger. Or claws. He slammed it into the side of Edward’s neck.

Edward howled. He wrenched the broken bit out of his flesh. For an instant he looked like himself again, and my heart twisted. I almost ran to help him.

Montgomery grabbed my arm. “Run,” he said.

But running was useless. Edward was already blocking the door. His claws were out. His face was the dark before a storm. He lunged for Montgomery, ducking
just as Montgomery brought down the broken edge of the bit. They fell to the ground, wrestling in the straw. Dirt choked my throat, blinded my eyes. Edward’s claws too were like daggers. He swiped at Montgomery, grazing his arm. I pressed my back into the wall, the hanging bridles dangling over me like a curtain. I ripped one down and wrapped the leather strap around my hand, waiting for a clear shot at Edward’s throat.

Just as I was ready to lunge, they rolled, bumping into the table that held the lantern. It fell to the ground. Flames leapt to life in the straw.

“The straw’s on fire!” I yelled.

Montgomery thrust his fist at Edward’s jaw, causing him to fall back long enough for Montgomery to stand. Edward scrambled to his feet, ducking away from Montgomery’s fist. Montgomery swept out his leg, hooking it around Edward’s ankle. Edward slammed to the ground, his head smacking against the corner of the table with a sickening crack.

Montgomery held his fists up, ready to strike, but Edward didn’t get up. His eyes were closed. Blood pooled beneath his head. Suddenly he looked like an innocent young man again, and my heart cried out that we were making a terrible mistake. Had it all been a trick of my eyes? Or my mind? Montgomery felt for his pulse, but I grabbed his arm.

“Leave him,” I said.

“I have to finish it.” He reached for the old iron spade in the corner. An image flashed in my head of the sharp edge coming down across Edward’s neck. My stomach clenched.
I stared at the blood trickling through Edward’s black hair, blood that was warm and flowing. A groan so low I could barely hear it slipped out of Edward’s mouth.

Still alive.

I glanced at Montgomery. The spade’s rusted blade was caught on a tangle of leather straps that he tugged on angrily.

A snarl sounded outside. Heat from the fire bathed me in an uncomfortable warmth and then, with a spray of sparks, a roof beam split and fell. I shrieked and covered my head. Montgomery rushed toward me, still holding the spade’s handle. I pulled it out of his grasp and threw it on the floor. “He’s no threat to us now,” I said. “The fire will kill him. Come on, before we burn with him.”

W
E STUMBLED OUT OF
the barn into the moonlight.

“Balthazar’s loading the wagon outside,” Montgomery said in a rush. “I just need to hitch Duke.” He started for the wooden gate, but I grabbed his arm. Duchess, the little mare Father had taken to find Montgomery, stood in the courtyard. She was loosely tied to the veranda rail, her eyes white and wild in the chaos.

I froze. “Father’s back,” I said.

Montgomery paused. Shadows darted in the edges of the courtyard, stealing my attention. “I know. He came back half an hour ago,” he said slowly. “The beasts were after him. He closed himself in his laboratory in a panic.” He ran a hand over the back of his hair, reluctantly. “He expects us to join him there. He said it’s the only place that’s safe.”

“No place is safe.”

He swallowed. “I told him we would gather some supplies and come join him. I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t tell him.…”

I took a deep breath, feeling the weight of the blood-red building beside us. I pictured my father on the other side of that metal door, listening to the snarls outside as his precious creations tried to find a way to kill him. Waiting for Montgomery and me, who would never come. We’d never see him again, I realized. The laboratory was a fortress. He could survive in there for days, even weeks maybe—if it weren’t for the fire. Smoke was already pouring out of the barn. The laboratory walls were tin, so they wouldn’t burn. He might escape. And then what? Would he start experimenting again?

Something crashed in the salon, and Montgomery grabbed my hand. “Hurry.” We untied Duchess and rushed out of the main gate to where Balthazar was stacking jars in the back of the wagon. He’d filled the few specimen jars I hadn’t destroyed with water for our voyage. They rattled against one another like the glass vials in my wooden box. The treatment was safely stashed in my old carpetbag, which Montgomery had already loaded into the wagon. I did a quick calculation—it would be enough for several weeks. I had everything I needed.

And yet an invisible hand pulled at me from the direction of the compound. It beckoned me back into the flames, to the tin building with burning red paint that bubbled like blood.

“I forgot my medicine,” I said suddenly. The lie made my mouth dry. “I have to get it.”

Montgomery glanced at the billow of smoke rising to the heavens, then turned his attention back to hitching the last few buckles to Duke. “Hurry,” he said from behind sweat-soaked hair.

I darted back inside the compound. The lie gnawed at my heart, but the invisible hand was too strong. The courtyard all was quiet save the roar of flames—the fire had scared off the beasts. The raging blaze reflected in the salon’s glass windows. Inside I could see the piano, the dining table, the photograph of Mother. The fire would burn every last scrap of memory. And all evidence of my father’s terrible work.

But it was the only way. Such science wasn’t meant to exist. We weren’t meant to rival God. And yet a small part of me wailed to see it destroyed. That part of me—the darkness—would live in me forever, I realized. As long as Moreau blood flowed in my veins. It had driven Father mad. It wanted to do the same to me—and I didn’t know if I was strong enough to stop it.

I hurried to my room and grabbed a plain wooden box so that Montgomery wouldn’t be suspicious if I came back empty-handed. I didn’t let my thoughts linger on the meager belongings I was leaving behind. By morning all evidence of my existence on the island would be gone, too.

I faced the red walls of the laboratory. The invisible hand tightened. The Blood House. Was father inside right now, holed up with some Elk Hill brandy and a good book?
Waiting for the rest of us to join him, never suspecting we’d flee and leave him behind?

This was what the hand had been pulling me to—Father. To say good-bye or to claw his face or just to stand outside the door and make my peace while he burned in flames. Some kind of closure.

Beyond the main gate, Montgomery and Balthazar waited for me. I only had to cross the threshold and never look back. Forget peace. Forget closure. We’d sail to London and never spare another thought for the island.

But my feet took me to the laboratory door. The heat from the nearby barn made me sweat. Paint bubbled on the tin, and I let my fingers hover a breath above it. Was he standing just on the other side, waiting for us?

He’d left me behind without a single letter, so why shouldn’t I do the same to him? The newspapers had called him a brilliant criminal, but they’d never mentioned the little girl he’d abandoned. As far as the world was concerned, Dr. Henri Moreau was a collection of research papers and a grisly story. Was he more than that to me? Was he a father? He’d thought of me as nothing more than another experiment, a chance to see what happened when humans and creatures bred.

Anger curled inside me. I pressed the tips of my fingers to the burning door, letting the pain sear and stir my anger. Something caught my attention from the corner of my eye—a shadow slinking along the portico. It didn’t run. Didn’t attack. It came forward stealthily, its eyes glowing in the moonlight.

“Jaguar,” I muttered.

Maybe I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. It wasn’t me he was after.

He stopped just paces away. This was the creature Montgomery had once called a brother. And were we really so different? We were all animals, in a sense. Even a sixteen-year-old girl needed to eat and drink and survive—and might kill to do so.

A rustling within the laboratory drew Jaguar’s attention. He glided past me, his tail flicking against my feet as he slunk toward the door. His thick paw slashed at the door latch with claws as long as my fingers. He tried a few times, cutting grooves in the door but unable to grip the latch. A growl rumbled in his throat, low and angry. His golden eyes looked back at me.

I knew what he wanted.

But twisting that latch didn’t just mean opening a door. It meant murder. Jaguar wouldn’t hesitate to slice my father into little chunks of flesh. It was exactly what he wanted—what all of them wanted.
Revenge
. If Jaguar could speak, he’d tell me it had to be this way. Father was brilliant. He’d escape from the burning laboratory. He’d start over. There’d be another island. Another Jaguar. Another Edward. Or worse.

My fingers dropped to the latch.

Jaguar’s hind legs tensed, ready to spring. But how could I open that door, knowing what lay on the other side? No good-bye. No reconciliation. Only a bitter, ragged end.

The barn roof cracked and splintered. A shower of
sparks rained down. In another minute the whole structure would collapse. Edward would be killed, burned alive or crushed under falling beams. Even though logic told me Edward couldn’t be allowed to live, my heart said he didn’t deserve to die either. It wasn’t his fault. It was that of his maker, who hid in a locked room while his children burned alive.

Edward had said I could make things right.

Maybe I could.

My fingers felt for the latch. The flames leapt to the bunkhouse. It would catch quickly, then the salon, then my room. Beside me, Jaguar’s claws dug into the portico ground, ready to spring.

I squeezed the latch.

The door came open in my hand, almost too easily. Father’s fail-safe had accounted for the beasts’ limited dexterity, but not for deceit. He’d been too arrogant to think one of
us
would betray him.

I opened the door an inch—that was all it took, just an inch.

I fell back, my face burning from the heat. Jaguar slunk inside.

The barn roof collapsed with a roar. The heat singed my cheeks as I clutched the wooden box to my chest and stumbled back toward the main gate. Montgomery was there in the entryway, calling for me. Whether he’d seen me open the door I didn’t know. His hand latched onto mine, and he pulled me from the flaming compound into the
cool evening air, where Duke pawed at the ground, ready to bolt. Balthazar took up the reins as we clambered into the wagon and vanished into the jungle, leaving the smoldering wreckage behind us.

F
ROM THE STRIP OF
sand at the ocean’s edge, we could still hear the fire’s roar. The beasts had started howling as the fire intensified, filling the night with wild screams. Montgomery held me close in the back of the wagon, hands pressed over my ears. But nothing could keep the sounds away. They’d haunted me since childhood. They would haunt me forever.

At the dock Balthazar stopped the wagon. Our blue-and-white boat waited, tethered to the pile, ready to take us to sea. Only when Balthazar climbed down from the driver’s seat and offered me his massive hand did I remember my promise.
You can come with us
, I’d told him. But I’d never had any intention of bringing him. Someone would find out what he was and try to replicate him. Someone would take it too far, just like my father.

Balthazar cocked his head at my hesitation. I took his hand and climbed out of the wagon. Montgomery was already carrying an armful of jars down the dock. His steps were purposeful and determined, as if he was as ready to get
off the island as I was, even if it meant abandoning the place he’d called home for six years.

Would he be the one to tell Balthazar or would I? We’d never spoken of it, but I knew Montgomery felt the same way. This island was my father’s prison, his tomb, and all evidence of his work had to be buried with him. Even Balthazar.

Balthazar picked up two water jars, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, and followed Montgomery down the dock. My heart wrenched. Was I a monster for leaving him behind? Balthazar was the only innocent one of us. He hadn’t killed. I didn’t think he was capable of it.

I cradled a glass jar in the crook of my arm, watching the two of them in the moonlight. There should have been so many more of us. Alice. Edward. Their ashes tied their souls to this horrid island.

Montgomery came back to fetch a small trunk that contained an expensive china set. He glanced at me. I sensed that his resolve had hardened, as if he was steeling himself for the awful task of leaving Balthazar behind.

“We don’t have a choice,” I whispered. I shifted the weight of the glass jar to my other arm. “They were cursed as soon as they were created.”

He didn’t answer but hoisted the trunk onto one shoulder and started down the dock. Balthazar took a load and followed Montgomery like a shadow. I brushed the hair out of my eyes and looked back toward the burning compound. I couldn’t see the flames, but the column of smoke said enough.

I hugged the jar and hurried down the dock. Montgomery was already carrying another load. There was an urgency to his every move. I dreaded the moment when we would push off in the launch. I was afraid of what we would tell Balthazar, left on the dock, the last innocent being on the island.