the electrical-shock machine, they use these leather restraints, see, and they strap you in hard because they know that when the lightning shoots through your body, you’re going to buck and scream. So they gag you, a special gag so you don’t bite off your tongue. And you jolt against the board, and the leather binding your wrists and ankles cuts into you until it’s actually red with blood. Red red, always stiff. And that is why, Armand, you should shut the hell up about the nature of illusions. Forever.”
His face had gone, if possible, even paler than before. There was none of the horror I’d expected to see; I’d been trying to provoke it, because horror was more tolerable than compassion. But, once again, Armand did the unexpected. He bent his head and pressed his lips to the inside of my wrist, right up against the scar and my hammering pulse.
My fingers opened. The pins clattered to the deck and my hat floated free. Out to sea.
“I hope the Germans get them,” I said. “I hope they blow that place to hell along with everyone in it.”
“I hope it, too,” he said.
• • •
The rains did catch up with us, but not before a group of the linen gentlemen had a chance to cast their lines off the back of the yacht. That was about all they did with them, too. They stood in the shade with their drinks and laughed and told jokes while three of the servants sweated and baited the hooks and minded the nets and everything else, calling, “Here, sir, if you please,” should any of the strings hitch.
Then the gentleman in question would come up, grab the pole, and reel in his fish. Easy as pie—for them, at least.
The sky began to lower upon us. The clouds simmered black and grim. From a place that seemed not all that remote, lightning flashed and the thunder that accompanied it rolled in a deafening boom! across the waves.
The yacht started turning about. Everyone was packing it in, but then one of the lines snapped hard, lifting up from its dragging angle.
“Sir! Sir!” summoned the servant, and a man bustled up to take over the rod.
He couldn’t spin the reel against it, whatever it was. Even with the manservant struggling to help, it wasn’t working. In the white wake of the boat, the creature fought ferociously for its life, thrashing and twisting, trying to break free.
It took three men and a brace to reel it in. Two men to net it. There were cries of excitement and hands thumping backs in congratulations, and all the cheery fellows shouting, “A shark! A shark, by gad!” as it spasmed on the deck and gradually bled to death in the confusion of netting. Before it was completely lifeless, they hoisted it up by its tail on a hook and let it hang upside down while they all postured by it, still grinning.
I stood far back from the commotion; Armand had become swallowed in the crowd. I don’t know how, I don’t even know if it was true, but I felt that shark’s dying gaze, its cold flat eye fixed on me.
I couldn’t look away from it, all the blood and silver skin. An unspeakable thought had entered my mind and it would not leave.
This is what they do to monsters. This is what they’d do to me.
Chapter 25
Try thinking about something else after witnessing that.
I couldn’t.
We’d landed back at the wharf in the pouring rain. I’d been driven back to Iverson in the pouring rain. I’d dragged myself out of the motorcar, along the driveway, wrenched open the castle doors, all through the pouring rain, and all I could see the entire time was the gasping death of that fish.
I’d bet that someone was eating it by now. I’d bet they sautéed it in chunks. Chopped off its fins, stewed its head. Tossed its guts to the cats. Hacked free its jaws to mount on a wall, good for drunken reminiscences for years to come.
I buried my face in my pillow. A scream was building within me, but instead of freeing it I dug my fingers into the sheets and pushed it lower and lower into my chest, until it came out as a rasping moan.
Why did you think there aren’t any dragons around anymore? whispered a voice inside me—not the old voice, the familiar fiend, but one of plain ordinary common sense. What did you think happened to them?