The Isle of Blood by Rick Yancey Page A

ceiling. This after we negotiated the serpentine path through books, boxes, and crates—shipments waiting to be catalogued and stocked in the Society’s house of curiosities on the corner of Twenty-second Street and Broadway. On the wall behind the irascible old man hung the Society’s coat of arms, inscribed with the motto Nil timendum est —“fear nothing.”
    “There are no children allowed within the Monstrumarium!” he shouted at my master without preamble.
    “But this is Will Henry, Adolphus,” replied Warthrop in a loud but respectful tone. “You remember Will Henry.”
    “Impossible!” shouted Adolphus. “You can’t be a member until you’re eighteen. I know that much, Pellinore Warthrop!”
    “He is my assistant,” protested the monstrumologist.
    “You watch your language with me, Doctor! He’ll have to leave immediately.” He shook the head of his cane at me. “Immediately!”
    Warthrop placed a hand on my shoulder and said in a voice only slightly softer than a shout, “Iops bristl Will Henry, Adolphus! You remember—last November. You saved his life!”
    “Oh, I remember very well!” cried the old Welshman. “He’s the reason we have the rule!” He wagged a gnarled finger at my face. “Poking around in places where children shouldn’t poke, weren’t you, little man?”
    The doctor’s fingers squeezed the back of my neck, and I, as if his puppet, nodded quickly in response.
    “I will keep him under the strictest supervision,” promised the doctor. “He shan’t stray an inch from my sight.”
    Before Professor Ainesworth could protest further, Warthrop placed the black valise on the desk. Adolphus grunted, popped the clasps, pried open the top, and peered inside.
    “Well, well,” he said. “Well, well, well, well !”
    “Yes, Adolphus” returned the doctor. “Nidus ex—”
    “Oh-ho, do you really think so, Dr. Warthrop?” interrupted the curator, clicking his teeth. He shoved his gnarled hands into a pair of gloves and reached inside the bag. The doctor stiffened reflexively, perhaps apprehensive that the arthritic hands might damage his precious cargo.
    Adolphus pushed the empty bag aside with his forearm and gingerly lowered the gruesome nest onto the desktop. He produced a large magnifying glass from his coat pocket and proceeded to inspect the thing up close.
    “I have already thoroughly examined the specimen for—,” began the doctor, before Ainesworth cut him off.
    “Have you now! Hmmmm. Yes. Have you? Hmmmmmmmm.”
    His eye, magnified comically large by the glass, roamed over the specimen. His false teeth clicked—a nervous habit. Adolphus was quite proud of his dentures and somewhat emotionally—as well as biologically—attached to them. They’d been fashioned from the teeth of his son, Alfred Ainesworth, who had been a colonel in the Union army. He’d fallen in the battle of Antietam, and his teeth had been rescued after his death and sent to Adolphus, who thenceforward proudly—and literally—sported a hero’s smile.
    “Of course, I would not have brought it to you for safekeeping were I not unequivocally certain of its authenticity,” said the monstrumologist. “There is no one else in whom I place more trust or hold in higher admir—”
    “Please, please, Dr. Warthrop. Your incessant chattering is giving me a headache.”
    I cringed, waiting for the explosion. But none came. Beside me Warthrop was smiling as benignly as Buddha, completely unfazed. No one in my experience had ever talked to my master with such impertinence, with such condescension and disdain—in short, the way he usually spoke to me. Many times I had witnessed eruptions that would rival Krakatoa in their ferocity over the smallest slight, the most trivial of untoward looks, so I expected “the full Warthrop,” as it were.
    The curator pinched a bit of the sticky resin between his gloved thumb and forefinger and tugged it free. He rolled it into a tiny ball and snifft,