Frankenstein: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Dean Koontz

The waiter – in a ruffled white tuxedo shirt, bow tie, and black tuxedo pants – brought a wine list.

      As he finished his soup and waited for a salad of hearts of palms and peppers, Victor studied the list. He wavered between a wine suitable for pork and one better matched with seafood.

      He would be eating neither pork nor seafood. The entrée, which he’d had before, was such a rare delicacy that any connoisseur of wine must be of several minds about the most compatible selection.

      Finally he chose a superb Pinot Grigio and enjoyed the first glass with his salad.

      Much ceremony accompanied the presentation of the main course, beginning with the chef himself, a Buddha-plump man named Lee Ling. He sprinkled red rose petals across the white table-cloth.

      Two waiters appeared with an ornately engraved red-bronze tray on which stood a legged, one-quart copper pot filled with boiling oil. A Sterno burner under the pot kept the oil bubbling.

      They put the tray on the table, and Victor breathed deeply of the aroma rising from the pot. This peanut oil, twice clarified, had been infused with a blend of pepper oils. The fragrance was divine.

      A third waiter put a plain white plate before him. Beside the plate, red chopsticks. So gently as to avoid the slightest clink, the waiter placed a pair of stainless-steel tongs on the plate.

      The handles of the tongs were rubberized to insulate against the heat that the steel would draw from the boiling oil. The pincer ends were shaped like the petals of lotus blossoms.

      The pot of oil stood to Victor’s right. Now a bowl of saffron rice was placed at the head of his plate.

      Lee Ling, having retreated to the kitchen, returned with the entrée, which he put to the left of Victor’s plate. The delicacy waited in a silver serving dish with a lid.

      The waiters bowed and retreated. Lee Ling waited, smiling.

      Victor removed the lid from the silver server. The dish had been lined with cabbage leaves briefly steamed to wilt them and make them pliable.

      This rare delicacy did not appear on the menu. It was not available at all times or on short notice.

      In any event, Lee Ling would prepare it only for that one-in-a-thousand customer whom he’d known for years, whom he trusted, whom he knew to be a true gourmet. The customer must also be one so familiar with regional Chinese cuisine that he knew to request this very item.

      Restaurant-licensing officials would not have approved of this offering, not even here in libertine New Orleans. No health risk was involved, but some things are too exotic even for the most tolerant of people.

      In the dish, nestled in the cabbage, squirmed a double litter of live baby rats, so recently born that they were still pink, hairless, and blind.

      In Chinese, Victor expressed his approval and gratitude to Lee Ling. Smiling, bowing, the chef retreated, leaving his guest alone.

      Perhaps the excellent wine had restored Victor’s good mood or perhaps his own extraordinary sophistication so pleased him that he could not for long remain glum. One of the secrets to leading a life full of great accomplishment was to like oneself, and Victor Helios, alias Frankenstein, liked himself more than he could express.

      He dined.

       CHAPTER 50

      THE SECOND FLOOR of the Hands of Mercy is quiet.

      Here the men and women of the New Race, fresh from the tanks, are undergoing the final stages of direct-to-brain data downloading. Soon they will be ready to go into the world and take their places among doomed humanity.

      Randal Six will leave Mercy before any of them, before this night is over. He is terrified, but he is ready.

      The computer maps and virtual reality tours of New Orleans have unnerved him as much as they have prepared him. But if he is to avoid the spinning rack and survive, he can wait no longer.

      To make his way in the dangerous world beyond these walls, he should be armed. But he has no weapon and cannot see anything in his room that might serve as one.

      If the journey is longer than he hopes, he will need provisions. He has no food in his room, only what is brought to him at mealtimes.

      Somewhere in this building is a kitchen of considerable size. A pantry. There he would find the food he needs.

      The prospect of searching for a kitchen, gathering food from among an overwhelming number of choices, and packing supplies is so daunting that he cannot begin. If he must provision himself, he will never leave Mercy.

      So he will set out with nothing more than the clothes he wears, a fresh book of crossword puzzles, and a pen.

      At the threshold between his room and the hallway, paralysis seizes him. He cannot proceed.

      He knows that the floors of these two spaces are on the same plane, yet he feels certain that he will drop a killing distance if he dares cross into the corridor. What he knows is usually not as powerful as what he feels, which is the curse of his condition.

      Although he reminds himself that perhaps an encounter with Arnie O’Connor is his destiny, he remains unmoved, unmoving.

      His emotional weather worsens as he stands paralyzed. Agitation stirs his thoughts into confusion, like a whirl of wind sweeps autumn leaves into a colorful spiral.

      He is acutely aware of how this agitation can quickly develop into a deeper disturbance, then a storm, then a tempest. He wants desperately to open the book of puzzles and put his pen to the empty boxes.

      If he succumbs to the crossword desire, he will finish not one puzzle, not two, but the entire book. Night will pass. Morning will come. He will have lost forever the courage to escape.

      Threshold. Hallway. With one step, he can cross the former and be in the latter. He has done this before, but this time it seems like a thousand-mile journey.

      The difference, of course, is that previously he had intended to go no farther than the hallway. This time, he wants the world.

      Threshold, hallway.

      Suddenly threshold and hallway appear in his mind as hand-inked black letters in rows of white boxes, two entries in a crossword puzzle, sharing the letter h.

      When he sees the two words intersecting in this manner, he more clearly recognizes that the threshold and the hallway in reality also intersect on the same plane. Crossing the first into the latter is no more difficult than filling the boxes with letters.

      He steps out of his room.

       CHAPTER 51

      THE GEOMETRIC DESIGNS on the Art Deco facade of the Luxe Theater were given greater depth and drama by the honing glow of a streetlamp and the shadows that it sharpened.

      The marquee was dark, and the theater appeared to be closed if not abandoned until Carson peered through one of the doors. She saw soft light at the refreshment counter and someone at work there.

      When she tried the door, it swung inward. She stepped into the lobby.

      The glass candy cases were lighted to display their wares. On the wall behind the counter, an illuminated Art Deco-style Coca-Cola clock, frost white and crimson, was a surprisingly poignant reminder of a more innocent time.

      The man working behind the counter was the giant she had met in Allwine’s apartment. His physique identified him before he turned and revealed his face.

      She snapped the movie pass against the glass top of the counter. “Who are you?”

      “I told you once.”