My heart crashed and throbbed, trying to break free of my ribs, pulled toward that monster in the night like rivers to the sea. I was hopelessly bound to the thing outside.
I leaned even closer, my trembling fingers a hair away from the glistening claws. I felt a deep, pulsing need to know the nature of the beast still hidden in shadows.
Alice screamed. The spell broke. I blinked, looking at the claws that were even now reaching for me. I slammed the shears into the longest one. It split down the rigid seam, shattering at the point. I dug the shears harder until I wrenched it off. The beast howled. The claws were pulled back into the darkness, save for one that fell to the floor.
“Miss, get away from the window!”
I crawled over the bed, fast as I could, and collapsed beside her. The wind whistled, calling me back. I fought the urge and pulled Alice into my arms instead. “It’s gone,” I said.
“It’ll return!”
“It can’t get through the bars.” My chest heaved. I wanted to tell her we were safe, but the lie wouldn’t form. “Get back on the bed, Alice. Finish your needlepoint.”
“I can’t! Not with the monster out there!”
I cocked my head. Something about the way she said it: the monster. Not a monster. As if she had a certain one in mind. Jaguar had said the same thing. I gave her a sidelong look, wondering if she knew something more than she let on. “Try.”
She could tell I was serious. We climbed back onto the bed and I picked up my milk goat and stabbed it with the needle. The men should return soon. They had rifles. Horses. We just had to wait it out.
I kept stitching, stiffly, until she picked her needle up, too.
“You called it the monster,” I said slowly.
Her hands shook. She didn’t look up.
“Did you mean Jaguar? The one they called Ajax?”
She bit her bottom lip. Her needlepoint had apparently become endlessly fascinating.
“What aren’t you telling me, Alice?” The edge to my voice slapped her. The harshness of it startled even me—I sounded so much like Father.
“Not Ajax, miss,” she said softly. “Ajax was friends with Montgomery. They could have been brothers they way they went on. He used to tell me stories. I’d never be afraid of Ajax.”
My needlepoint fell into my lap, forgotten. If she wasn’t afraid of Ajax, then why was her voice shaking?
“Jaguar isn’t the one killing the islanders, is he?”
Her lips pressed together. It was enough of an answer.
I grabbed her wrist. “Then what is?” She shrank back. I hadn’t meant to scare her. I wanted to protect her, but I couldn’t do that without the truth.
“I can’t say, miss!”
“Why not?”
“It’s listening! It’s always listening. It’ll kill me if I tell.” Her eyes welled with tears. She was so young—a child, really. A kind person might have patted her hand and told her everything was all right. I dug my nails into her palm instead.
“What do you mean? What’s listening?”
“The monster!”
Something scrambled on the roof. Something big. Fast. Tiles crashed to the ground outside.
My breath froze. Alice cried out. I pulled her close, a finger against her lips. We both looked upward. It was right above our heads. The walls had to be twenty feet high. What kind of creature could scale a sheer wall? Another tile fell. Then came a thump in the courtyard. My head jerked toward the sound.
It was inside the compound.
I closed my eyes. My heart hammered wildly. The men were gone. The guns were across the compound in the barn. We hadn’t even any proper locks on the doors. All we had was my wits.
“Alice, I want you to crawl under the bed.” I knew, somehow, that hiding from it was useless. But at least she would feel safer.
Her eyes were riveted on the door. “They can’t open the latches unless they have five fingers,” she said. “The doctor said so.”
There was conviction in her voice. She believed in him blindly, just like his beasts did.
I scowled. “He said they couldn’t get past the walls, either, and that was a lie.” I bit my tongue before I said more. I’d only scare her. He was deluded into thinking himself a god, so adored by his creations that they’d never turn against him. But animals were animals. And there was only one way of dealing with a bloodthirsty wild animal: kill it before it killed you.
I picked up the shears in one hand and the lantern in the other. “Stay here,” I said.
“Miss, don’t go out there!”
But I already had the door cracked open. “Montgomery keeps ammunition and rifles in the barn. I’m going to try to make it there.”
Outside, rain poured off the roof into puddles. A lantern hung by the salon door, dimly lighting the courtyard. The tomato plants looked like skeletons in the shadows. A set of slippery tracks staggered across the mud, too muddled to count the number of toes. Leading to where, I couldn’t tell.
“Keep the door closed,” I said. “And stay under the bed.”
“Wait for the doctor and Montgomery, miss, please!”
But I didn’t trust Father’s promises like she did. The monster didn’t obey my father’s rules. It had made it into the compound. It had killed wantonly. It would find us.
“I’ll be back soon. I promise.” I slipped out.
The compound was quiet, except for the rain and the wind. I moved silently, as I’d seen Jaguar do. Toe-heel. Toe-heel. I expected every shadow to jump to life. I could feel eyes watching from some dark place. I tried to tell myself I might be mistaken. In the haze of fear, every noise sounded louder. It might have only been a bird on the roof, or a squirrel.
But the tracks didn’t belong to a squirrel, and no bird could knock tiles off the roof. I held up the lantern, my throat feeling exposed and vulnerable in the light. If it was out there, watching, I was an easy target.
I studied the tracks from under the eaves of the portico. They seemed to go everywhere and nowhere. It was impossible to single out a footprint in the mud and darkness. All I could tell was that they were large.
Very large.
A cry came from the jungle and I leapt. An owl. But it was startling enough to make me dart the rest of the way to the barn, panicked, the lantern light flickering wildly, until I threw open the barn door and closed it behind me, sealing myself inside.
Total darkness. The wind had extinguished the lantern’s flame.
I could hear only the rasp of my breath and the steady drip of the leaky barn roof. Smell only the earthy, damp hay. My eyes fought for a glimmer of light to lock on to. Nothing but blackness.