Dean Koontz's Frankenstein 4-Book Bundle (72 page)

QUICK, QUICK, QUICK
, Jocko scurried east along the north hall. Stopped at the corner. Peeked around. Nobody in sight.

A bite of soap would be nice. Stay focused. Kill first. Soap later.

He knew where to find the master bedroom. Erika mentioned it when sneaking him up the back stairs. Main hall. Opposite the grand staircase.

Tippytoe, tippytoe, across soft rugs. Pretty rugs. Would be fun to twirl on rugs so soft and pretty.

No!
Don't think about twirling. Don't even
think
about it.

Grand staircase to the left. Double doors to the right. This was the place.

Standing at the doors, hand on a doorknob, Jocko heard a muffled voice. Harker's memory said,
Victor's voice
. Just beyond these doors.

“Perhaps you have the courage to call but not the courage to face me,” Victor Helios said.

A murderous fury gripped Jocko. As he tried to bare his teeth, the flaps of his mouth quivered against them.

Jocko knew what he would say. As he attacked Victor. Ferocious. Merciless. He would say,
I am the child of Jonathan Harker! He died to birth me! I am an outcast, a monster from a monster! Now you die!

That seemed like a mouthful. He had tried to edit it. But he really, really wanted to say it all.

He started to turn the doorknob. Almost threw the door open. Then realized. No weapon. Jocko didn't have a weapon.

Furious with himself, Jocko let the knob slip through his hand and, after all, did not burst into the master suite.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. He hooked two fingers in his nostrils. He pulled back toward his forehead. Pulled so hard tears streamed from his eyes. He deserved it.

Focus.
Stay
focused.

He needed a weapon. Knew where to get one. Kitchen. A knife.

Tippytoe, tippytoe, quick along the main hall. More soft rugs. To the south hall. Down the back stairs.

IN THE LIBRARY
, Erika said, “My name isn't Mrs. Danvers.”

Christine still spoke with a light English accent.
“Please, Mrs. Danvers, I quite want to avoid unpleasantness of any kind. We can co-exist. I am confident we can, and we should. I know
I
want to, for Maxim's sake.”

“Don't you recognize me?” Erika asked. “What is wrong with you? Don't you know where you are?”

Christine looked distressed, and her mouth trembled as if she might become emotional in a way precluded by her program. Clutching the book, regaining her composure, she said, “I am not as fragile a spirit as I might look, Mrs. Danvers.”

“Erika. I'm Erika.”

“Do not think you can convince me that my mind is going. I am weary of your wicked games.” She pushed past Erika and left the room in a rush.

SNEAK, PAUSE, RECONNOITER.
Sneak, pause, reconnoiter. Stairs to hall to kitchen.

Oh. On a counter in the kitchen was a large bowl of apples. Yellow apples. Red apples.

The apples drew Jocko. So colorful. Not too big. He wanted them. Had to have them.
Had
to have. Apples, apples, apples. Not to eat. Something better.

Jocko selected three apples. Two yellow, one red.

Beginning with two apples in his right hand, one in his left, he juggled. Loved to juggle.
Needed
to juggle.

He had juggled before. Stones. Walnuts. Two spoiled lemons and a package of rancid cheese. Three rat skulls.

Apples were the best yet. Colorful. Almost round. Jocko was good. He could even caper while juggling.

He capered around the kitchen. Juggling, juggling. He wished he had a funny hat. One with bells.

ON THE PHONE
, Erika Four said, “There is a legion in the dump, my darling psychopath. I need not come for you alone.”

“Only a legion of the dead,” Victor said. “And the dead don't rise again.”

“Like me, they were not fully dead. Mistaken for dead, but with a trace of life remaining … and after a while, more than a trace.”

The doorknob had turned one way, then the other. For almost a minute now, it had not moved.

“We will carry you by torchlight down into the bowels of the dump. And though we'll bury you alive, we'll have our fun with you before interment.”

The knob turned again.

FROM THE LIBRARY
, she hurried directly to the front stairs and ascended to the second floor. Enough was enough. Maxim would have to speak with Mrs. Danvers. The woman's loyalty to Rebecca exceeded that of a faithful servant, was nothing as innocent as honest sentiment. It was mean, perverse, and suggested an unbalanced mind.

She threw open the door, swept into the master suite, and was shot four times in the chest by her
beloved Maxim, whose treachery stunned her, though as she fell, she realized that he must have shot Rebecca, too.

JOCKO, CAPERING IN THE KITCHEN
, dropped the apples when the gunfire boomed.

Knife. He had forgotten the knife. Victor waited to be killed, and Jocko forgot the knife.

He hit himself in the face. Hit, hit, hit himself. He deserved to be smacked twice as often as he was. Three times.

One drawer, two drawers, three … In the fifth drawer, knives. He selected a big one. Very sharp.

Tippytoe, tippytoe, out of the kitchen, into the hall.

DUKE SLEPT
in the backseat of the Honda during the drive east-northeast on I-10 and then west on I-12.

The dog's snoring didn't induce drowsiness in Carson, though it ought to have, considering how little sack time she'd grabbed in the past couple of days.

The half liter of supercaffeinated cola from Acadiana helped. Before crossing the city line, they stopped at a combination service station and convenience store that was open 24/7, where they drained themselves of some of the first cola they had consumed, and then bought two more half-liter bottles. They also bought a package of caffeine tablets.

As they hit the road again, Michael said, “Too much caffeine ties the prostate in knots.”

“I don't have a prostate.”

“Carson, you know, everything isn't always about you.”

One thing keeping her awake and focused was the suspicion that the Helios-Frankenstein case might be as much about her as it was about anyone. Not merely because she happened to be one of the two detectives who stumbled on the case. And not because her path crossed Deucalion's just when she needed to meet him.

Of all the cops Carson knew, she and Michael had the deepest respect for individualism, especially when a particular individual was quirky and therefore amusing or even if he proved stubborn and frustrating. Consequently, they were more alarmed than some might have been by the prospect of a civilization with a single-minded purpose and a regimented population of obedient drones, whether that population was comprised of propagandized human beings or of pseudo-humans cultured in a lab.

But her respect for individualism and her love of freedom was not why this case was so powerfully, immediately, intimately about
her
. Early in this investigation, she began to suspect that her father, who had been a detective with the NOPD, might have been murdered by the New Race—and her mother with him—at the order of Victor Helios. Her dad could have encountered something exceedingly strange that had led him to Helios, just as his daughter would be led to the same suspect years later.

Her parents' murders had never been solved. And the evidence concocted to portray her father as a corrupt cop—who might have been executed by criminal elements with which he was involved—had always
been too pat, an insult to common sense, and an offense against the truth of her dad's character.

Over the past few days, her suspicion developed into conviction. As much as the caffeine, a hunger for justice and a determination to clear her father's name kept her awake, alert, and ready to rumble.

The vast lightless expanse of Pontchartrain lay to their left, and it seemed to have the irresistible gravity of a collapsed star, as if this night the world were rolling along its rim, at risk of spiraling down into oblivion.

Except in the headlights, the rain that came off the lake was black, insistently rapping against the driver's side of the car as they drove west on I-12, as if the night itself had fists of bony knuckles. And the wind seemed black, blowing down out of a moonless and starless sky.

HAVING BELIEVED
that Erika Four was bursting in upon him, Victor fired twice, intending to stop both of her hearts, before he realized that the intruder was Christine. As the designer of her kind, he knew precisely where to aim. And because he started the job with such expert marksmanship, he had no choice but to finish it with two more shots.

Christine dropped, although death did not at once take her. She spasmed on the floor of the master-bedroom vestibule, gasping for breath, futilely pressing her hands to her chest as if she might be able to plug the wounds from which her life bled.

During Christine's final throes, Erika appeared in the hall, just beyond the open door, and Victor raised the pistol from the dying housekeeper, to train it on whichever of his Erikas stood before him.