Frankenstein: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Dean Koontz

had not gotten to bed until well after dawn. She woke at 2:30, showered, and ate Hot Pockets while standing in Arnie’s room, watching the boy at work on the castle.

      At the foot of the bridge that crossed the moat, in front of the gate at the barbicon, at each of two entrances from the outer ward to the inner ward, and finally at the fortified entrance to the castle keep, Arnie had placed one of the shiny pennies that he had been given by Deucalion.

      She supposed the pennies were, in Arnie’s mind, talismans that embodied the power of the disfigured giant. Their mighty juju would prevent entrance by any enemy.

      Evidently Arnie trusted Deucalion.

      So did Carson.

      Considering the events of the past two days, Deucalion’s claim to be Frankenstein’s monster seemed no more impossible than other things that she had witnessed. Besides, he possessed a quality that she had never encountered before, a substantialness that eluded easy description. His calm was of an oceanic depth, his gaze so steady and so forthright that she sometimes had to look away, not because the occasional soft pulse of light in his eyes disturbed her, but because he seemed to see too deeply into her for comfort, through all her defenses.

      If Deucalion was the storied creation of Victor Frankenstein, then during the past two centuries, while the human doctor had become a monster, the monster had become human – and perhaps had become a man of unusual insight and caliber.

      She needed a day off. A month. There were others working on the case now, seeking Harker. She didn’t need to push herself seven days out of seven.

      Nevertheless, by prior arrangement, at 3:30 in the afternoon, Carson was waiting at the curb in front of her house.

      At 3:33, Michael arrived in the plainwrap sedan. Earlier in the day, Carson had experienced a moment of weakness. Michael had driven the car when they left Harker’s apartment building.

      Now, as she got in the passenger’s seat, Michael said, “I drove all the way here and never exceeded a speed limit.”

      “That’s why you’re three minutes late.”

      “Three whole minutes? Well, I guess I just blew every chance we have to find Harker.”

      “The only thing we can’t buy more of is time,” she said.

      “And dodo birds. We can’t buy any of them. They’re extinct. And dinosaurs.”

      “I called Deucalion at the Luxe. He’s expecting us at four o’clock.”

      “I can’t wait to enter this one in my interview log – ‘discussed case with Frankenstein monster. He says Igor was a creep, ate his own boogers.’”

      She sighed. “I was sort of hoping that the concentration needed to drive would mean less patter.”

      “Just the opposite. Driving keeps me mentally fluid. It’s cool being the wheel man.”

      “Don’t get used to it.”

      When they arrived at the Luxe Theater, after four o’clock, the sky had grown as dark as an iron skillet.

      Michael parked illegally at a red curb and hung a POLICE card on the rearview mirror. “Lives in a theater, huh? Is he buddies with the Phantom of the Opera?”

      “You’ll see,” she said, and got out of the car.

      Closing his door, looking at her across the roof, he said, “Do his palms grow hairy when the moon is full?”

      “No. He shaves them just like you do.”

       CHAPTER 82

      FOLLOWING A LONG NIGHT and longer day at Mercy, Victor ate what was either a late lunch or an early dinner of seafood gumbo with okra and rabbit étouffée at a Cajun restaurant in the Quarter. Although not as satisfyingly exotic as his Chinese meal the previous night, the food was good.

      For the first time in nearly thirty hours, he went home.

      Having enhanced his physiological systems to the extent that he needed little sleep and therefore could accomplish more in the lab, he sometimes wondered if he worked too much. Perhaps if he allowed himself more leisure, his mind would be clearer in the laboratory, and consequently he would do even better science.

      Periodically over the decades, he had engaged in this debate with himself. He always resolved it in favor of more work.

      Like it or not, he had given himself to a great cause. He was the kind of man who would work selflessly in the pursuit of a world ruled by reason, a world free of greed and peopled by a race united by a single goal.

      Arriving at his mansion in the Garden District, he chose work over leisure yet again. He went directly to his hidden studio behind the pantry.

      Karloff had perished. The life-support machines were not in operation.

      Stunned, he circled the central worktable, uncomprehending until he proceeded far enough to discover the hand on the floor. The thrown switches were directly above it. Furthermore, clutched in its fingers was a plug that it had pulled from a socket.

      Although disappointed by this setback, Victor was amazed that Karloff had been able to shut himself down.

      For one thing, the creature had been programmed to be incapable of self-destruction. On that issue there had been no wiggle room in the directives by which it had been governed.

      More important, the hand could not have functioned separate from its own life-support system. The moment it had broken free of its feed and drain lines, it had lost the low-voltage current needed to fire its nerves and operate its musculature. At that point, it should have at once fallen still, limp, dead – and should have begun to decompose.

      Only one explanation occurred to Victor. Apparently, Karloff’s telekinetic power had been strong enough to animate the hand as if it were alive.

      When controlling the hand at a distance, Karloff had shown the ability only to flex a thumb and to imitate an arpeggio by strumming an imaginary harp with those four fingers. Small, simple tasks.

      To make the hand tear loose of its connections, to cause it to drop to the floor and then to climb three feet up the face of these machines to throw the life-support switches, to cause it to pull the plug, as well … That required far greater telekinetic power and more precise control than he had previously exhibited.

      An incredible breakthrough.

      Although Karloff was gone, another Karloff could be engineered. The setback would be temporary.

      Excited, Victor sat at his desk and accessed the experiment file on his computer. He clicked the camera icon and called up the twenty-four-hour video record of events in the studio.

      Scanning backward from the present, he was surprised when Erika suddenly appeared.

       CHAPTER 83

      AS WHEN SHE had been to the Luxe the previous evening, Carson found one of the front doors unlocked. This time, no one waited in the lobby.

      A set of double doors stood open between the lobby and the theater.

      Surveying the refreshment stand as they passed it, Michael said, “When you buy popcorn here, I wonder if you can ask for it without the cockroaches.”

      The theater itself proved to be large, with both a balcony and a mezzanine. Age, grime, and chipped plaster diminished the Art Deco glamour but did not defeat it altogether.

      A fat man in white slacks, white shirt, and white Panama hat stood in front of the tattered red-velvet drapes that covered the giant screen. He looked like Sidney Greenstreet just stepped out of Casablanca.