“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.