Sarita almost gave up her search then to go out to the waiting boxes in the next room. But she'd been trained to be thorough in a search, so she continued on to the row of upper and lower cupboards along the wall opposite the door. She didn't expect to find anything of much interest in these cupboards either, though, so was startled to open the first door and find herself staring at several large liquid-filled jars with bizarre shapes floating in them.
Sarita eyed them briefly with bewilderment, and then stepped forward and picked up the center jar of three on the lower shelf. She then drew it closer to her face to examine the contents. For one whole minute she had no idea what she was looking at. Her mind simply couldn't make sense of what she was seeing.
Here was a tiny fist. Here a tiny foot attached to what could be a tiny, malformed leg. Here another tiny foot with a perfect leg, and between the two a tail of some sort. A fish tail, Sarita realized, turning the jar slowly until she could see the head of the bent figure. But instead of a baby's head, some kind of large insect head peered out at her through the clear glass. The sight so startled her that Sarita nearly lost her grip on the jar.
Tightening her fingers at the last moment, she caught the lid of the jar, then quickly set it on the counter and backed away, her instinct to get as far away as possible from the monstrosity.
Sarita stopped after just a couple steps, however, her gaze sliding to the other jars in the cupboard. There were two rows of three, or had been before she'd removed the one she'd just set on the counter. Now her gaze slid over the other jars with a sort of sick fascination. Each held a mutant fetus, what she presumed were partially human babies with atrocious deformities or mutations. There was a perfectly formed fetus with skin that made her think of a salamander. One with a misshapen head and what looked like fur running down its back. Another with no limbs, just a head and trunk, the skin so see-through the organs inside were visible, though those didn't appear to be quite right. Another fetus was almost perfectly formed, but with only four toes and fingers and those sporting long curved claws. The last was just a jellied mass with nothing human about it.
"Dear God," Sarita breathed. She stared at the jars on display for a moment, her stomach turning, and then moved almost without thinking to the next cupboard and opened that door as well, and then the next and the next and the next. Her gorge rose with each door she opened and each set of six jars revealed, until Sarita was gagging on her horror and disgust as she opened the last.
Covering her mouth, she backed away then and simply stared at the varied monstrosities on display, hardly aware of the silent tears spilling from her eyes and running down her cheeks.
These were not naturally occurring malformations. They couldn't be. She was sure they had been engineered. Human DNA spliced with various animal and fish DNA to create atrocities she'd never imagined could exist. It was horrifying. She couldn't imagine how it had been done. What kind of sick psycho could do something so monstrous?
Dressler seemed the obvious answer. It seemed immortals weren't the only thing he liked to experiment on. He liked to play with human DNA too. The real question was why? Why would he do this? What did he hope to get from it?
Footsteps coming down the stairs in the next room caught her ear, and Sarita quickly dashed her tears away. She wasn't a crier by nature. She'd only cried three times in her life; when her mother died, when her grandfather died, and when her father died. Her tears now were an aberration, and one she wasn't willing to share with anyone.
"Sarita?"
Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she turned to see Domitian crossing the room toward her.
"I woke up and you were not-" He paused halfway across the room, concern suddenly flooding his face. "What is wrong? Have you been crying?"
"No," Sarita snapped, and then rolled her eyes with irritation. So much for her attempt to look normal, she thought, but added in a calmer voice, "There is nothing wrong. I was just . . ." She turned, gesturing to the open cupboards and frowning at the jars.
"Ah . . ." Domitian continued forward to stand at her side, his face grim as he looked over the jars. "I saw them earlier."
"I didn't," Sarita responded, her voice hollow.
"Then this must have been a shock," he murmured, slipping a comforting arm around her shoulder.
Sarita didn't respond. She also remained stiff under his arm, unable to relax. It wasn't because of the jars, though. It was that damned letter and his not telling her about it, and her worry that Dressler already had contacted Domitian somehow.
"My uncle said that one of Dressler's men mentioned a host of creatures on the island," Domitian announced now. "Fish people and bird people, and a centaur I think."