Deucalion stood halfway down the center aisle, facing the screen. Head tipped back, he slowly scanned the ornate architecture overhead.
The strangeness of the moment was shattered with the silence when a sudden flapping of wings revealed a trapped bird swooping through the vaults above, from one roost in the cornice to another.
As Carson and Michael approached Deucalion, she heard him say, 'Come to me, little one. No fear.'
The bird flew again, swooped wildly, swooped? and alighted on Deucalion's extended arm. Seen close and still, it proved to be a dove.
With a laugh of delight, the fat man came forward from the screen. 'I'll be damned. We ever get a lion in here, you're my man.'
Gently stroking the bird, Deucalion turned as Carson and Michael approached him.
Carson said, 'I thought only St. Francis and Dr. Doolittle talked to animals.'
'Just a little trick.'
'You seem to be full of tricks, little and big,' she said.
The fat man proved to have a sweet voice. 'The poor thing's been trapped here a couple days, living off stale popcorn. Couldn't get it to go for the exit doors when I opened them.'
Deucalion cupped the bird in one immense hand, and it appeared to be without fear, almost in a trance.
With both pudgy hands, the man in white accepted the dove from Deucalion and moved away, toward the front of the theater. 'I'll set it free.'
'This is my partner, Detective Maddison,' Carson told Deucalion. 'Michael Maddison.'
They nodded to each other, and Michael-pretending not to be impressed by the size and appearance of Deucalion-said, 'I've gotta be straight with you. I'll be the first to admit we're in weird woods on this one, but I still don't buy the Transylvania thing.'
'That's movies. In real life,' Deucalion said, 'it was Austria.'
'We need your help,' Carson told him. ?As it turns out, there were two killers.'
'Yes. It's on the news.'
'Yeah. Well, only one of them seems to have been? the kind that you warned me about.'
'And he's a detective,' Deucalion said.
'Right. He's still loose. But we've found his? playroom. If he's really one of Victor's people, you'll be able to read his place better than we can.'
Michael shook his head. 'Carson, he's not a psychologist. He's not a profiler.'
In a matter-of-fact tone, arresting precisely because of its lack of drama, Deucalion said, 'I understand murderers. I am one.'
Those words and an accompanying throb of light through the giant's eyes left Michael briefly speechless.
'In my early days,' Deucalion said, 'I was a different beast. Uncivilized. Full of rage. I murdered a few men? and a woman. The woman was my maker's wife. On their wedding day.'
Obviously sensing the same convincing gravitas in Deucalion that had impressed Carson, Michael searched for words and found these: 'I know that story, too.'
'But I lived it,' said Deucalion. He turned to Carson. 'I don't choose to go out in daylight.'
'We'll take you. It's an unmarked car. Inconspicuous.'
'I know the place. I saw it on the news. I'd rather meet you there.'
'When?' she asked.
'Go now,' he said. 'I'll be there when you are.'
'Not the way she drives,' said Michael.
'I'll be there.'
Toward the front of the theater, the fat man shouldered open an emergency-exit door to the waning afternoon. He released the dove, and it flew to freedom in the somber pre-storm light.
CHAPTER 84
Victor found Erika in the library. She nestled in an armchair, legs tucked under her, reading a novel.
In retrospect, he should have forbidden her to spend so much time with poetry and fiction. Emily Dickinson, indeed.
The authors of such work imagined that they addressed not merely the mind but the heart, even the soul. By their very nature, fiction and poetry encouraged an emotional response.
He should have insisted that Erika devote most of her reading time to science. Mathematics. Economic theory Psychology History.
Some history books might be dangerous, as well. In general, however, nonfiction would educate her with little risk of instilling in her a corrupting sentimentality.
Too late.
Infected with pity, she was no longer useful to him. She fancied that she had a conscience and the capacity for caring.
Pleased with herself for the discovery of these tender feelings, she had betrayed her master. She would betray him again.
Worse, drunk with book-learned compassion, she might in her ignorant fulsomeness dare to pity
Wise men had long warned that books corrupted. Here was the unassailable proof.
As he approached, she looked up from the novel, the poisonous damn novel, and smiled.
He struck her so hard that he broke her nose. Blood flew, and he thrilled at the sight of it.
She endured three blows. She would have endured as many as he wished to rain on her.
Victor was not sufficiently satisfied merely to strike her. He tore the book out of her hands, threw it across the room, seized her by her thick bronze hair, dragged her from the chair, and threw her onto the floor.
Denied the choice of turning off the pain, she suffered. He knew precisely how to maximize that suffering. He kicked, kicked.
Although he had enhanced his body, Victor was not the physical equal of one of the New Race. In time he exhausted himself and stood sweat-soaked, gasping for breath.
Every injury she sustained, of course, would heal without scar. Already, her lacerations were healing, her broken bones knitting together.
If he wished to let her live, she would be as good as new in just a day or two. She would smile for him again. She would serve him as before.
That was not his wish.
Pulling a straightbacked chair away from a reading desk, he said, 'Get up. Sit here.'
She was a mess, but she managed to get to her knees and then to the chair. She sat with her head bowed for a moment. Then she raised it and straightened her back.
His people were amazing. Tough. Resilient. In their way, proud.
Leaving her in the chair, he went to the library bar and poured cognac from a decanter into a snifter.
He wanted to be calmer when he killed her. In his current state of agitation, he would not be able fully to enjoy the moment.
At a window, with his back to her, he sipped the cognac and watched the contusive sky as its bruises grew darker, darker. Rain would come with nightfall, if not before.
They said that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. They were lying.
First, there was no God. Only brutal nature.
Second, Victor knew from hard experience that the creation of a new world was a frustrating, often a tedious, and a time-consuming endeavor.
Eventually, calm and prepared, he returned to Erika. She sat in the chair as he had left her.
Taking off his sport jacket and draping it over the back of an armchair, he said, 'This can be a perfect city. One day? a perfect world. Ordinary flawed humanity-they resist perfection. One day they will be? replaced. All of
