I had cursed my fate on that seemingly endless night of the necropsy, had been forced, I felt, to endure the doctor’s interminable lecture, and witness the gruesome dissection of Warthrop’s “singular curiosity.” Frightened and weary beyond words, still I had paid attention. What else occupies your thoughts? he had asked, implying not much did beyond my appetite. But my answer had been an honest one: I watched; I tried to understand. Like this young Anthropophagus, I had learned by observing my elders. I knew, you see, the exact location of its brain.
Holding the hilt with both hands, I drove the knife home with all my strength, into the spot just above its privates. The thrust landed true. Stiff as a board the monster went, arms straight out from its sides, with arched back and open mouth, teetering on the precipice of oblivion before oblivion took him down.
I fell over too then, to lie beside the murdered beast, clutching the dripping knife against my stomach, shuddering in the aftershock of those fleeting, eternal moments of terror. A hand touched my shoulder, and instinctively I raised the knife, but of course it was only Malachi.
His face was streaked with mud; his left cheek bore three bloody stripes where its claws had raked. “Are you hurt, Will?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, but it is. I killed it, Malachi,” I added with breathless obviousness. “I killed the damned thing!”
He smiled, and his teeth seemed very bright against the backdrop of his blackened face.
Kearns had been correct in his prediction: It was over in less than ten minutes. The gunfire over our heads dwindled to a few sporadic pops; the fire, having consumed quickly most of its fuel, and suffering from the steady onslaught of rain, petered out, leaving in its wake an undulating black curtain of smoke; and inside the circle itself was heard nothing but the gurgling and muffled grunts of the mortally wounded. The doctor appeared first, and, upon seeing the lifeless young Anthropophagus at our feet, his face lit up with surprise and alarm.
“What happened?” he demanded.
“Will Henry killed it,” Malachi explained.
“Will Henry!” exclaimed the doctor. He looked at me with wonder.
“He saved my life,” averred Malachi.
“Not just yours,” Warthrop said. He knelt beside the woman, felt for her pulse, rose. “She has lost consciousness-and a great deal of blood. We must get her to the hospital immediately.”
He hurried away to make the arrangements. Malachi picked up the shattered remnants of his rifle and wandered toward the smoking ring, before which Morgan and his men had gathered. I did not see Kearns. The doctor returned after a moment with O’Brien, and with me trotting beside holding the makeshift compress against her stomach, they carried her to the back of the truck.
“What do I tell the doctors?” asked O’Brien.
“The truth,” answered Warthrop. “You discovered her wounded in the woods.”
We joined the others standing in the no-man’s-land between the edge of the platform and the smoldering trench. No one spoke. It was as if we were all waiting for something, but none could say exactly what we were waiting for. The men seemed shell-shocked; their breath was shallow, and the color was high in their cheeks. Morgan lit his pipe with shaking fingers, the match light sparking in his foggy pince-nez. Warthrop beckoned me to follow, and then hopped through the billowing screen of smoke into the killing field. There we spied Kearns, stepping carefully through the tangle of albino limbs and the twisted headless torsos of his victims, their bodies steaming in the warm, moist air.
“Warthrop, lend me your revolver.”
I handed it to him. He kicked one of the creatures-a big female-onto her back, and her body jerked in response. A claw swiped feebly at his leg. Kearns jammed the barrel into her abdomen and pulled the trigger. He stepped over to another, poking it in the side with the toe of his boot, then, just to be sure, shot it, too. He cocked his ear toward the ground, listening for any sounds of lingering life. I heard only the hissing trench and the soft, whispery rain. Kearns nodded with satisfaction and handed the gun to the doctor.
“Count them, Warthrop. You, too, Will. We’ll compare our numbers.”
I counted twenty-eight bullet-ridden, shrapnel-torn corpses. The doctor concurred; he had counted the same.
“My number as well,” agreed Kearns.
“There’s one more, sir,” I said.
“Under the platform.” “Under the platform?” asked Kearns, startled.
“I killed it.”
“ You killed it?”
“I shot it, and then I stabbed out its eyes, and then I stabbed out its brain.”
“Stabbed out its brain!” cried Kearns with a laugh. “Well done, Mr. Assistant-Apprentice Monstrumologist! Very well done indeed! Warthrop, award this boy the Society’s highest honor for bravery!”
His smile faded, and his gray eyes seemed to darken.
“That makes twenty-nine. Assume three, perhaps four immature juveniles tucked away someplace safe, and we are at thirty-two or thirty-three.”
“About what we estimated,” said Warthrop.
“Yes, except…,” began Kearns in a rare moment of gravitas. “We’ll fetch a light to make sure, but I can’t find a female fitting her description. Warthrop, the matriarch is not here.”
Morgan had regained some of his composure when he joined us among the steaming carcasses. Strained to its breaking point by the events of the previous two days, there was not much of his composure remaining for him to regain, but enough for him to reassert-or attempt to, at least-a measure of his authority. His tone with Kearns was stern and uncompromising.
“You are under arrest, sir.”
“On what charge?” asked Kearns, blinking coquettishly.
“Murder!”
“She is alive, Robert,” Warthrop said. “At least, she was when she left.”
“Attempted murder! Kidnapping! Reckless endangerment! And… and…”
“Hunting headless monsters out of season,” offered Kearns helpfully.
Morgan turned to the doctor. “Warthrop, I deferred to your judgment in this matter. I relied upon your expert opinion!”
“Well,” said Kearns. “The bloody beasts are dead, aren’t they?”
“I would suggest you save the self-serving statements for the trial, Mr. Kearns.”
“Doctor,” corrected Kearns.
“Dr. Kearns.”
“Cory.”
“ Kearns, Cory, I don’t care! Pellinore, did you know what he intended? Did you know beforehand what was in that box?”
“I wouldn’t answer that if I were you, Warthrop,” said Kearns. “I know an excellent attorney in Washington. I’ll give you his name, if you like.”
“No,” the doctor said to Morgan. “I did not know, but I suspected.”
“I am no more responsible for their diet than I am for them being here,” Kearns said reasonably. “But I understand, Constable. This is the thanks I get. You are a man of the law and I am a man of…” He let the thought die unfinished. “You hired me to do a job and made certain promises contingent upon my completion of it. I only ask that you allow me to finish it before you renege on our contract.”
“We had no contract!” snarled Morgan, and then stopped himself, the import of Kearns ’s words sinking in. “What do you mean, “finish it”?”
“There is a strong possibility there are more,” said Warthrop carefully.
“More? How many more? Where?” Morgan cast his eyes wildly about, as if expecting another swarm of Anthropophagi to leap at us out of the dark.