Chapter Sixteen
The Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin (Baile átha Cliath)
Two Days Before Samhain
Sam lay in the dark in the Shelbourne Hotel, her grandfather’s numbers whispering to her in the rain.
Another feather in the drawer. Another feather forgotten.
Growing up, her grandfather had always seemed like a good man.
His patience had seemed endless as he taught Sam the workings of the radiotelegraph.
He’d had the soul of a storyteller, dropping his voice to a quavering whisper and raising it to a belligerent roar as he told tales of wyverns and witches, Hydras and heroes.
He was the reason Sam had fallen in love with books, and for the longest time, he’d been the only person who hadn’t treated Sam’s channeling as something to be pitied or feared, but simply as a part of who she was—like her rabbit-brown eyes and her love for salty cheese.
But then, when Sam was ten years old, her grandfather had abandoned her, and even if what Hel had said wasn’t true, even if he hadn’t left because he wanted to but because Professor Moriarty had forced his hand, Sam wasn’t entirely certain she could bring herself to forgive him.
Lord Lusk had seemed like an honorable man, too.
Sam wanted to remember him the way he was when he’d run out to defend Mr. Enfield, his fox-headed cane in his hand, as if he’d beat back the Wild Hunt himself.
But still, when the end had come, he had been unable to accept it.
Willing to spill Van Helsing’s blood on the altar of the Wild Hunt to save his own.
Sam wanted to be angry with Miss Shinagh for being willing to sacrifice Van Helsing, for being willing to sacrifice Sam if it came to it, but could she truly say she wouldn’t do the same if the Wild Hunt came for Hel?
Or when it came for Sam?
She wished Heathcliff would come, that she might have some company at least. Sam turned the key in the lantern beside her bed; the flame flared.
Feeling her way through the dark forest of her bedchamber, she padded over to the door, illuminating the shadow of someone sitting on the other side.
Settling her back against the door, Sam sank down to the carpet, cradling the lantern in her hands.
“Hel?” Sam whispered.
There was an uncomfortable creaking of leather on the other side of the door. Her heart sank. Not Hel, then.
“It’s Jakob,” Van Helsing said. Sam’s heart sank. Oh.
“Jakob?” Sam said. “Who is that?”
“You know who it is.” Sam could’ve sworn she heard Van Helsing’s scowl.
Sam closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the door. “I knew a Jakob once, when I was a girl. But I’ve since been informed we’re not children anymore.”
“We’re not,” Van Helsing said. “Which means that by now you should know that if you’re going to punch someone, it shouldn’t be in the mouth.”
Sam flushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you had requirements for saving your life. Sorry, I mean your immortal soul.” Something that should matter to him, considering the way he went on about murdering Sam to save hers.
“Your hand hurts, doesn’t it? I know it’s tempting, to punch someone in the mouth to stop them talking.
But teeth are made for cutting skin and flesh.
” The way Van Helsing spoke, it was like he was telling her a recipe.
So matter of fact about his violence. “It may hurt them, but it will hurt you too.”
Sam believed this applied to most violence. But that wasn’t what he was talking about.
“It’s much more effective to punch them in the solar plexus, knock the wind out of them,” Van Helsing said. “No air, no more words.”
And so this was his attempt at . . . what?
An apology? A thank-you? Sam thought she’d liked him better before whatever all of this was.
At least when he’d been cruel, she knew what to do with him.
How to think of this man who had stalked her and saved her, who had threatened to kill her and seemed to think she should thank him for it.
“Is that truly all you have to say to me?” Sam asked.
Van Helsing considered the question for a moment. “If you must hit someone in the mouth, slap them. You won’t hurt yourself that way.”
“You’re impossible,” Sam huffed. It was a mystery why she even tried.
Only, she didn’t want to go back to bed, back to her grandfather’s numbers.
It wasn’t just that she hadn’t found him—she still had no idea how to even start.
She’d thought there’d be some clue, some Moriarty game .
. . But if there was a game, Sam hadn’t been invited to play.
For a moment, there was silence between them. Then, so soft Sam thought she might have been imagining things: “Why did you do it?”
“Do what?” Sam asked, afraid for a moment that he meant sneaking out with Hel to break into Mr. Enfield’s apartments.
“Save me,” Van Helsing said. It was the same question she’d asked him when he’d barged into her room to save her from the ghost—when he’d let slip her Christian name. We’re not friends. Sam had thought the acknowledgment would bring her pleasure, but somehow, it only made her tired.
Sam lolled her head against the door. “Must there be a reason?”
“Miss Shinagh wasn’t wrong. You would be freer without me.” Something about his intonation and the hitch in his breath made Sam think that he had been about to say something more, but had thought better of it.
Sam frowned. She hadn’t thought of Van Helsing as possessing anything as human as feelings—being more like the monsters he hunted ever since his father had forged him in the fire of his anger and expectations. But right then, he sounded . . . sad.
“Do you remember,” Sam said, in lieu of an answer, “you used to sketch the monsters from my grandfather’s stories? You’d memorize all the facts about them and write them in the margins, like a monk illuminating a bestiary.”
“I remember,” he said, more gravel in his voice than she was used to. “Is that why you spared me?”
“Why did you stop?” Sam asked.
For a time, as she watched the flickering flame of her gas lamp, Sam thought he wouldn’t answer. But then, softly, as if afraid someone would hear: “Do you know how much harder it makes it to know their names? When all you’re supposed to do is kill them?”
Sam’s brow furrowed. “You like killing things.”
“I like protecting people,” Van Helsing corrected. “I’m good at killing things.”
Sam was embarrassed to admit she’d thought the latter a requirement for the former. It was what made her own weakness so disheartening. She didn’t have the strength to protect others—she couldn’t even protect herself.
“Did I ever tell you about my first hunt?” Van Helsing asked, pulling her back.
“You know you didn’t,” Sam said. It had been five years ago, back when he’d been at his cruelest. Sam had kept her distance.
“A manticore was terrorizing a small village in Greece. My father and I tracked it to its den and slayed it, only to find it had whelped. I thought I was seeing things—I’d taken seven spines in my back and was half dizzy with venom.
But my father gathered up the mewling creatures and tied them in a sack with a bundle of rocks before throwing them in the ocean.
‘Better to kill them now than when they’ve done their damage,’ he said.
” Van Helsing paused, and Sam could hear his breath catch.
“Do you know what baby manticores look like? The fat-cheeked faces of human babies on the bodies of kittens.”
Sam could imagine it. Her heart twisted. “That’s awful.”
“I dove into the water when he left to deal with the manticore’s body,” Van Helsing went on.
“Rescued them. I don’t know how I survived—I could hardly tell up from down.
But somehow, I did. I didn’t think of it again for three years, until there was a massacre at that same village.
Five people, all from the same family. I was called back in to clean it up.
My father knew by then what I must have done, and he insisted upon it.
He knew it would teach me the price of my hesitation.
” He paused. “Those people’s deaths are on my head. ”
“Surely the manticores are the ones who did the murdering,” Sam objected.
“And I’m the one who failed to stop them,” Van Helsing said. “Worse, I saved them from their fate. They could not have murdered that town without my assistance.”
It was the same argument Sam had made for her responsibility for Cyprien and Lord Lusk’s deaths, that it was the carcolh, the Wild Hunt, the monster you failed to save them from, and not you, you didn’t hold the knife yourself.
And yet, despite her words to Van Helsing, her heart answered much as he had: No. It was because you were weak.
That, however, wasn’t what caught her attention.
“Am I meant to be the baby manticore in this metaphor?” she asked. How Sam had fallen from Hel’s queen to pigs and manticores. “Are you worried I’m going to grow up to eat a village?”
“That’s not—” Van Helsing blew out a breath, frustrated. “Anything you do, anything Miss Moriarty does, is on my head. You have no idea how hard it is, to be judged for something beyond your control.” Because he couldn’t control them, he meant.
“Oh, no, you’re right,” Sam said, breathless with anger.
“How could we possibly know what it’s like to be judged for things beyond our control?
It’s not as if that literally defines our existence.
And it’s Dr. Moriarty—if you can remember the names of all forty-seven wing dapple patterns of northern wyverns, you can remember that. ”
Van Helsing shifted outside. “You know what I meant.”
“Do I?” Sam said. “Because it sounds like you’re comparing being in charge to growing up being told that you are susceptible to the influence of evil, that one day you’ll turn monstrous and everyone you love will suffer for it.
Until they put you down, which everyone insists you should thank them for—all because you get visions that you did not ask for and cannot control. ”