Something crashed in the salon, and Montgomery grabbed my hand. “Hurry.” We untied Duchess and rushed out of the main gate to where Balthasar 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 each other like the glass vials in my wooden box. The treatment was safely stashed in my old carpetbag, which Montgomery had already loaded in 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 courtyeard 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 plainwooden 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 Balthasar 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 genius, 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 brilliant 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.