Well, if it ain't my persistent young friend. Welcome to my humble front porch. Surely a fine journalist such as yourself knows how to read that there No Trespassing sign? No? Then take a seat. You're just lucky I recognized your face before my hand recognized my revolver.
If you're that eager to know what happened back then, fine. I'll tell you. You won't believe it, but I'll tell you.
Some of this I saw, some I learned secondhand. Most Hunters would loosen their lips around me sooner or later. I was a familiar face, and they always wanted to talk. They'd have a few drinks, or they'd be dizzy on something else. Pride, glory, guilt. I never asked to hear their stories, but I never turned 'em down, neither. I always learned something.
Like the time the Corvids told me about their poison trip mine. The Doctor's Snare, they called it. They found me across a bar table one night and just about preened like real crows.
We'll start you there. See if you have the stomach to hear what Brood and Bile were up to in those days, and then maybe, if you're up to it, I'll tell you more.
---
It started when they found one of the Plague Doctor's assistants helping a test subject escape. They put the subject back in its cell. Then they brought the assistant out into the reeds, tied her to a beached log, and watched the Corruption take her. After she'd cried all her tears, they decided to experiment. They sliced her stomach open to see her curdle from the inside. That's when a small-town sheriff, Henry Rhode, caught wind of it. And that ain't a figure of speech. The breeze had blown south that day, carrying the screaming out of the bayou.
Rhode chased the pair for three days before they lost him. And once they did, they could've kept running.
But that's the thing about having a friend, especially while hunting. Someone you could trust was worth their weight in gold. Rhode had no right to end their scientific partnership, as they saw it. Not when it was already such a rare thing.
Once they'd drunk enough, they explained it to me. Or tried. How years ago, young Emma Davies had made a confession to her old colleague, Maxwell Creed. She had impulses that were getting harder to hide. She liked the way fever looked on people. She wanted to open their mouths and reach deep down for whatever festered in their guts. I don't know why she'd ever admit to that kind of thing. Maybe she thought to warn Maxwell away. Or maybe she just wanted him to know who she really was.
Either way, she hadn't expected his answer. He'd leaned in close and told her, “I completely understand."
Some time after that, the two of 'em came across the Plague Doctor. But that's a story for a different time.
When it came to Henry Rhode, any threat to the Corvids was like an infection. Before it spread, it had to be cut out clean.
They huddled up in their hiding hole and decided on their plan.
---
The Corvids knew how to gather the remedies for whatever—or whoever—ailed them.
A little poison oak sap snuck into Rhode's pantry was all it took. His skin broke out. His throat burned. When he started to vomit, he called for a doctor. Thing is, Brood had long since tied the doctor up in his own cellar. It was Emma Davies who arrived at Rhode's house instead, with her black leather medical bag. She said the usual physician was out with another patient. Rhode didn't even recognize her without her mask.
She diagnosed him with the scarlet fever. It was plain as day: he had all the big symptoms. He'd need to be quarantined.
Rhode was shocked. Nobody'd had the fever in those parts in years.
“Well," said Emma. “If you'd like a second opinion, I can refer you to another doctor."
---
Maxwell wasn't wearing his mask either when Rhode came by.
It'd been easy enough to lure out the second doctor and borrow his office. Maxwell just bought four seats on a day-long riverboat cruise, then sent the tickets to the doctor's house. Wrote up a note, too. We Invite YOU and YOUR CLOSE KIN to Enjoy Our PROMOTIONAL PRIZE!, or some such. Now Maxwell sat behind the man's desk.
He looked at Rhode's blistered skin and the rash in his throat. “The illness has progressed very quickly," he told him. “You need to see a specialist right away."
Rhode said he had no time to be sick. There were criminals running free. Madmen who experimented on other folks' bodies. But then he was sick all over Maxwell's borrowed white coat.
Bile smiled when he told me that part. Guess he thought it was fitting.
The Corvids could've killed Rhode then and there, sure. But the way they saw it, any kill without a good experiment attached was a waste of resources. And any threat of separate cells and separate nooses needed a slow course to treat.
“It would've been malpractice," Bile told me, “to show him mercy."
---
It was easy for the Corvids to rig a trip mine with a toxin. Turns out blowfish swim all up and down the coast of the Gulf. Their poison starts fast, finishes slow, and has no antidote. Even the finest sawbones couldn't have saved you from the Doctor's Snare.
The Corvids went to the empty warehouse outside town . Bile'd insisted to Rhode that it was being used as a hospital for fever victims. Surely any good, law-abiding man would go there. Surely he wouldn't want to spread plague across the place he'd sworn to protect. Brood and Bile set their new trap across the doorway and settled down further inside to wait.
The door creaked as Rhode arrived.
Then the explosion drowned his scream. When the flash faded, he was on the ground, leg gone to the knee. His wounds pooled with a mix of blood and the poison from the trap. Brood and Bile only watched. Then Bile pulled a pad of paper and fountain pen from his leather coat, dipped the pen in Rhode's blood, and wrote a chart note.
“The doctor!" Rhode was howling. “Get the doctor!"
“They're both in," said Brood, serene-like. She pulled out a pocket watch and checked the time.
Rhode tried to ask what was happening, but that's when his lips went numb. His words turned to drool. His muscles seized like a cat's hackles before he collapsed on his back.
“It's just a little anesthetic," said Brood. She's got this warm bedside manner when she talks, and I'm sure she used it then, too. “We need you to stay still. Your limbs will become paralyzed first, and then your throat…"
“Then your lungs and heart," said Bile. He bent over Rhode's injured leg to bind it. “That could take a few hours, however. And we don't want you bleeding out before then."
“That would ruin our samples," said Brood. “Our dear Plague Doctor taught us better than that."
Rhode's eyes darted between them. They shone brighter than the sweat on his brow.
“You're not a Hunter," Bile told him. “So forgive me, but your tongue holds no academic interest for us."
“What we do want to know," said Brood, “is what goes on in your little head. You really thought you could capture us?"
“Not while we work together." Bile's mask made no difference now. Through his voice alone, you could hear how big he was smiling. “Never while we work together."
They did quite a bit of research that night. They studied how a hand's tendons move after the flesh is stripped away. Sussed out which nerves to cut so that hand could never fire a gun again, even in the next life. And just before his heart stopped, they really did look at what went on in that head of his. Drilled a hole right into his skull and shined a light inside. I imagine they only found his regrets.
Now personally, I'd venture there wasn't one real medical qualification between them. They certainly didn't make any oath to “do no harm." But I'd say they got the other half of it right. The part where most doctors also swear to take no shit.
After that, they were free to fly back to their biggest experiment. I can't recall just how many tongues they cut from other Hunters' bodies, dead or alive. They were convinced they could use 'em to hear the Corruption's secrets. And once they knew enough, they were determined to find their old mentor. He had plans for that information.
Once they all reunited, there was hell to pay. But maybe you need a stiff drink before you hear that one.
-- Excerpt from A Lantern in the Dark - The True Stories of John Victor