His eyebrows rose. He picked up the folder and straightened the papers carefully on the desk. “You have quite an imagination.”
“Don’t lie to me.” I jerked the chain. “There’s a file with my name on it, just like the others.”
He flipped through the pages leisurely. “And what precisely did you find here? Diagrams of rabbits? Notes on how I turned a sheep into a girl and named her Juliet? Funny, I don’t see any of that.”
My fingers itched to claw the smirk off his face. “You named me after a character in one of your books, like them. You stick a needle in my vein, like them. It’s written right there.” I pointed a tense finger at the first page.
He followed my finger and tapped the word. Cervidae. “You’re mistaken,” he said. “I don’t give you the same treatment as them. I give them the same treatment as you.” He closed the file. “You were the first.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
BLACK RAIN FILLED MY vision, making me light-headed.
Father continued, “It’s not precisely identical to theirs, but it’s the same basic compound.” His fingers stretched and itched as though they missed the familiar clutch of a scalpel. “You see, when you were born—yes, born—your spine was deformed. The doctors said you would die within days. But your mother wouldn’t believe it. She begged me to fix you. Whatever it took.”
He leaned against the desk, his eyes wide as they delved into some long-ago memory. “And I did fix you. It’s all right here, in plain print, in your file. But the surgery was unconventional. By the time I was finished, you were missing several essential organs.” He brushed a hand over his chin. “The medical department always kept a few live specimens on hand for the zoology classes. There was a newborn deer—well, it served its purpose.”
My fingers prodded my rib cage, the taut line of my diaphragm, feeling for something unusual to verify his wild claim. But even if it was true, how would I know? My body was no different than it had always been.
“They said you would die, so I had nothing to lose. I did what any father would have done. Luckily, I was also England’s best surgeon.”
I dug my fingers into the soft place in my back just above my kidneys, feeling the lower edge of my ribs. “You can’t substitute a person’s organs with a deer’s. That’s impossible.”
“So is vivisecting a dog and a bear to make a man. At least that’s what they tell me. Perhaps they should ask Balthazar.” His eyes gleamed as though I were some fresh specimen on his operating table. “The injections are to keep your body from rejecting the foreign organ tissue. If you stop taking the serum, your organs will fail. You won’t regress like they do. You’ll die.”
“You’re mad,” I said. My eyes flickered to the glass cases, where a shadow slunk over the rows of jars.
“Don’t you see?” he continued. “They exist because of you. If you hadn’t almost died, if I hadn’t taken the risk of substituting animal flesh to save your life, I’d never have known it was possible. I’d still be in London teaching ignorant medical students how to dissect street dogs.”
I pressed my eyes closed. Even so, I could feel the shadow moving closer.
“I’d never have sliced open that first dog if it weren’t for you. I’d never have come to this island. Never rivaled God in his power to create. You’ve made everything possible, Juliet. You’re responsible for all of it.”
I wet my shaking lips, feeling faint. All those years of worry, all those sleepless nights, wondering if my father had unlocked some dark science that made him a monster. And it all came down to me. I was to blame for all the rumors, the scandal, even Montgomery’s years spent as a slave on a madman’s island.
It was my fault.
The wind blew the door half closed, dimming the light.
“So you see, you do share my blood. We’re more alike than you think.”
I balled my fists, practically feeling his poisoned blood coursing through me like a disease. That was the source of my dark inclinations. Him. I could never escape what flowed in my veins, not even if he was dead.
The sound of a boot crunching broken glass came from beside the cabinets where the pane had shattered earlier. The shadow approached. Father turned, but not fast enough.
Edward jammed a needle into his neck. Father clawed at his arms, but Edward held him with an incredible strength for a man his size. At last Father went limp. Edward let him slump to the floor, unconscious.
I fell back against the table. A held breath slipped out between my lips. Edward fumbled in Father’s pockets for the key ring.
“I feared he’d hear you coming,” I said breathlessly.
Edward found the small key and unlocked the manacle. “So did I.”
He took my hand and we raced for the door. I stepped around Father’s prostrate body. Maybe I was his flesh and blood. Maybe I was as cold as he. But I wasn’t totally without feeling.
I hated him.
WE DASHED OUT OF the laboratory. My head spun with everything I’d learned, and it was all I could do to stumble behind Edward toward the wooden gate.
“Wait, he took Montgomery,” I said breathlessly. “He had a pistol. I’m afraid he might have—”
“Montgomery’s alive. The doctor has him caged outside the walls.”
Relief spread through me. Alive! We could still escape. Edward sorted through Father’s key ring and then shook his head, frustrated.
“He must keep the gate key elsewhere. We can’t go through the barn thatch. They sealed the roof.”
“We don’t need a key.” I darted into the barn and dug through the toolbox in the tack room. My hand fell on a smooth, heavy crowbar. Edward and I both had to strain to wrench the boards from the gate. At last a thick plank came free, and we climbed through into the thick grass below the carved Lamb of God and Lion of Judah.
“This way,” Edward said. We hurried along the north wall, where the jungle grew thickest. The early sun beat down on our necks before we plunged into a dark tunnel of trees that seemed to close in on us the farther we went, until we were climbing over vines and branches, pulling ourselves forward. The vegetation pressing in started to make me panic. I imagined the vines holding me there, ensnared, waiting for Father to wake and find us with the dogs. Father, or the monster.
I pushed away a slick leaf, and my fingers grazed something metal. A bar.
“Over here,” I called.
We spilled out into a clearing tangled with overgrown vines. A circle of rusted cages, each big enough to hold a bear or tiger, rose from the jungle floor like a new, terrible kind of thicket.
I caught a glimpse of movement in the farthest cage. Someone standing up.
Montgomery.
I rushed over, threading my fingers through the rusted bars. A deep bruise covered his jaw. “You’re alive,” I said.
He wrapped his powerful hands around the bars. “He thought to punish me. He puts the islanders here when they disobey. Locks them here for days without food or water or shade. He told me … blast, it doesn’t matter anymore.” He didn’t have to finish his thought. I understood the tender pain in his eyes. Montgomery had believed he was like a son to my father, but in the end we were all animals to him.
Edward searched the rusted cage until he found the lock and tried each key. My heart faltered with each failed try. I paced, chewing on a fingernail.
“How did you know these cages were here?” I asked.
Edward tried another key, uselessly. “I came across them when I was trying to find my way back after I shot that …” His voice seemed to slip from his lips as he remembered killing the beast. The next key turned with a groan, banishing the terrible memories. The cage door swung open on rusted hinges.
Montgomery climbed out, slapping Edward on the shoulder, and gave me a look like he wanted to do all sorts of scandalous things to me. My body longed to touch him, but I told myself there wasn’t time for that.
“This way,” he said.
We trekked through the jungle, slow
ing as the sun rose. Sweat soon poured down our backs. Montgomery led us away from the wagon road, in case anyone was looking for us. He never once hesitated. The island was as familiar to him as our childhood home was to me.
He stopped at the edge of a bamboo grove, staring ahead. I squinted, but all I saw were leaves.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The village. Twenty yards ahead.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Neither do I. That’s why I’m worried.” He nodded at the crowbar in Edward’s hand. “If you have to use that, don’t hesitate. They won’t.”
Edward’s face was a mystery. The sea-mad castaway who couldn’t remember how to set up a backgammon board had faded with each day as that rugged part of him took over, the part that would survive at all costs. The island had turned him into a killer. If he was forced to kill again, I feared his soul would fracture.
“You should stay here, Juliet,” Montgomery said.
“Like hell.”
Montgomery sighed. “Then stay near. Don’t make any quick movements.”
We crept through the bamboo toward the village. The tops of huts slowly appeared through the trees, sagging and torn down. There was no hammering, no praying, no sound of people. The wind blew the smell of burnt wood into our faces.
Montgomery went first. He crept along the side of a wooden fence, his body on alert. I peered down the dusty streets. Empty.
“Where are they all?” I asked.
Montgomery didn’t answer, but I could tell from the tense set of his shoulders that he didn’t know either.
The farther we went, the bolder we became. The few footprints in the muddy pathways were old and dried out. Montgomery stuck his head inside one of the huts. Empty.
“They’ve all left,” he concluded.
“And gone where?” Edward asked.
Montgomery shrugged. “It’s a big island.” But his eyes weren’t so certain. The islanders had lost their humanity now. They could be anywhere: in the trees, in the grass, watching us like the animals they’d always been. He pointed at a stone building behind the main square. “There’s the church. Let’s get the boat.”
We hurried across the square. The village was a ghost town, though days before it had been teeming with half-crazed creatures who stank and growled and crawled on all fours. Where was the python-woman? Cymbeline? Caesar?
Montgomery ducked his head into every hut. After each one, his expression grew more troubled. But he said nothing.
The wooden cross had been torn from the front of the church. Montgomery brushed his fingers over the hollow spot where it had once stood and then led us around the side to a rough stone patio in the back. He froze. When Edward and I caught up to him, I understood why.
The shed was gone. Burned. If there was ever a boat, it was now nothing but ash.
“Oh no,” I said. “Not this. Not now.” My feet sank into the soft earth outside the church’s open door. Without a boat, we’d have to wait for the next cargo ship—in a year or more. We’d never survive that long. Just as I stumbled forward, my mind whirling, a spindly set of fingers appeared from within the church and closed over my arm.
I screamed. With brutish force the hand jerked me inside the church, where muted splashes of colored light lit the walls from the few unbroken stained-glass windowpanes. The sudden rush of blues and reds and yellows made me forget where I was until Edward hurried in behind me, crowbar raised like a bludgeon. Montgomery was just behind him.
“Don’t!” he cried. “It’s Caesar.”
My erratic heartbeat calmed. This hulking beast, now barrel-chested and hunched at the shoulders, with broken stumps on his skull, was a far cry from the regal antlered minister we had seen before. I barely recognized him. His horse lips gaped at the end of an elongated face. Even if he’d still had his tongue, I don’t think he could have spoken. He was too far regressed.
He let me go and crossed the floor on four shaky legs, his back feet bent and hardened like hooves. The church echoed with the sounds of his feet skittering across the ground. Montgomery crouched next to him, unafraid.
“Where has everyone gone?” he asked gently.
Caesar bobbed his head mechanically, the stumps of his former antlers scraping against the stone wall. His eyes were glassy.
“We need the boat,” Montgomery said. “Did they burn it?”
Caesar’s head snapped around, his eyes drifting to the burned shed outside. Then he started bobbing again, faster and faster, getting agitated. He jumped up, pawing around the room. His hardened, curled fingers rested on the lip of a bowl, which he flipped onto the ground. It shattered, spilling dirty water and shards of pottery all over the floor.
With his hoof, Caesar nudged a curved shard across the wet ground, next to a piece of singed wood. He moved the wood closer, then looked at Montgomery.
“What’s he doing?” I asked.
Montgomery jumped up. “He’s telling us where the boat is.”
BY THE TIME WE made it to the coast, the midday sun had given us all a thick sheen of sweat. Montgomery led us to the murky edge of a mangrove forest. Thin, spindly trees grew from the swampy tidal waters like giant skeletons. The ground was spongy under my feet. Something clicked. I paused. Another click.
“It’s the trees,” Montgomery said. “They filter salt from the water. Makes the roots contract and expand.”
I hugged my arms. The clicking sound echoed through the ghostly trees, as though they were telling a story.
“He used to keep the rowboat tied here sometimes. The mangroves protect it from storms. He must have moved it when the regression began.” Montgomery waded into the water, navigating through the tight trees. Mud sucked his boots down. The water was soon up to his waist, and then he disappeared through the watery tangle of trees.
Edward and I stood alone on the shore, an uneasy silence between us. Ever since he’d killed Antigonus, a shadow had settled over Edward. He’d drugged my father so easily. It was the island, slowly corrupting his heart, as it was corrupting everything. We had to leave before it turned us into things we weren’t.
Get off this island, I told myself. Then sort out the messes of our lives.
The water rippled in graceful arcs that spread across the tidal inlet and lapped at our feet. After a few minutes Montgomery returned, pulling a blue-and-white-painted boat through the water. It looked too cheerful for a bleak, savage island. He beached it in the soft silt. “Climb in. We’ll row to the dock and tie it there. It’s too heavy to carry overland.”
Edward helped hold the boat. I bunched my skirt and climbed in, trying to steady myself. My foot slipped, and warm seawater flooded my boot. Edward climbed in with considerably more grace. Montgomery tugged us free of the shore and pulled the boat through the tunnel of trees until the water was at his waist, then his chest, and finally his shoulders. We broke from the trees.
Oh, the open sea. Freedom felt so close. I wanted to tell Montgomery to just keep going, farther out to sea, to never turn back to the island.
Edward was watching me keenly. “We won’t last a day without shade and water,” he said, dashing my hopes.
Montgomery hoisted himself into the boat, water pouring off his massive shoulders. He wiped his face and picked up an oar. The other one he tossed to Edward.
“Hug the coast,” he said, pointing ahead. “The beach is on the other side of the mangroves.”
The tide tried to drag the boat away from the island, but Edward and Montgomery kept it steady. From outside, the forest of mangroves looked dense and impenetrable. Every few breaths, I heard the roots clicking, reminding us they were living parts of the island.
“We should leave tonight,” Montgomery said. His face was hard, making it impossible to tell what he was feeling. “Edward, pack as much food as you can in the rucksacks and fill the waterskins. Juliet, go through your mother’s things. We’ll need parasols. Shawls. Anything to keep off the sun. And take everything you think is val
uable. We might have to buy our passage back to London.”
“Assuming we find a ship,” Edward said.
Montgomery studied the sky. “The full moon was last night. The Polynesian traders might still be out. Their course takes them five miles from the island. The tide will bring us just south of their shipping lane. We’ll have to row a few degrees north to cross their course.”
I was starting to feel faint. My insides clenched, threatening to bring up bile from my empty stomach. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something would go wrong.
Montgomery rested a hand over mine. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know the way. We’ll find a ship.”
The mangroves clicked louder. A shadow passed overhead, giving me a sudden shiver. The wind made the water shimmer as if something swam just below the surface.
We rounded a bend and saw the long dock stretching out ahead. I let out a tight breath. Soon the whole beach was in sight.
Tonight, I promised myself. It felt as unreal as a dream. My mind wouldn’t let me dare to believe it, but my heart pumped wildly.
Edward’s oar hit something hard in the water. He jerked it, but it was stuck. I frowned. We were too far out to graze anything along the ocean bottom. “It’s caught on something.”
“Maybe a coral reef,” I said. “Or a shipwreck.” I glanced at Montgomery, but his attention wasn’t on the oar. He was scanning the beach, body tensed, eyes narrowed like a hunter’s.
“What do you see?” I asked, feeling creeping tendrils of fear crawl up my back.
He shook his head, just a quick jerk. “Nothing.”
But he didn’t tear his eyes away. I sat straighter, gripping the sides of the rowboat. Suddenly we felt as small as a bobbing toy in the endless ocean.
Edward leaned over the side, fingers disappearing into the water as he felt for whatever had caught the oar. The boat rocked, suddenly unbalanced by his movements. I clutched the sides harder, as panic made my toes curl.
The Madman's Daughter (Madman's Daughter - Trilogy) Page 26