Dead and Alive

Only one way Jocko and Harker were alike. Hated Victor Helios. Hated him.

One thing Jocko wanted, Harker had wanted. Victor Helios dead.

Jocko was Jocko. But he was also vengeance.

Soap tasted better than rats. Almost as good as bugs. But so chewy. Not easy to swallow.

Jocko put down the half-eaten bar. Didn’t have time for so much chewing. Later.

Jocko wanted what Jocko wanted. Wanted it so bad. But couldn’t have what he wanted until he killed Victor Helios.

He dashed into the living room. Stood on his hands. Walked around the room on his hands. Around and around.

Such a waste of time. Jocko didn’t want to walk around on his hands. But he just had to.

Finally, enough. On his feet again. To the bathroom again. One more bite of soap. Good.

Time to kill Victor.

Quick, quick, quick through the bedroom. Through the living room. To the door.

As she turned away from the door to Jocko’s quarters, Erika knew that she should go to the master suite to see if Victor wanted her for any reason.

However, the prospect of her secret friend reading to her from a book so excited her that she didn’t want to wait until morning to select the volume for their initial session. She descended the back stairs at the west end of the north wing, eager to explore what titles the library offered.

The grand hall on the ground floor measured twelve feet across, a third more spacious than the upstairs hallways. It was furnished with sideboards, pairs of chairs separated by tables on which stood bowls of flowers, and pedestals supporting magnificent figurative bronzes. The walls were hung with priceless works by the European masters of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, which Victor had been clever enough to smuggle out of Germany shortly before his patron and dear friend, the much-misunderstood and delightfully witty Hitler, whom Victor called mein schatz, “my treasure,” was tragically brought to grief by the ignorant masses, by greedy capitalists, by voracious bankers, and by religious fanatics.

Victor suffered so much frustration and loss in his long life that Erika, who had been given everything from birth, might need twenty years, thirty, or longer to understand him. The problem was, thus far the Erikas tended to be short-lived.

Her best hope of understanding her husband, of learning how to be the kind of wife who never triggered his rage, seemed to be books. Books were dangerous, yes, but they were dangerous because they contained so much knowledge both of the helpful kind and the harmful kind. Perhaps Erika Four absorbed too much of the wrong information, things that would never be included in an education acquired by direct-to-brain data downloading, and was thereby corrupted. Erika Five intended to proceed cautiously with books, always alert for the harmful kind of knowledge.

She enjoyed an advantage over Erika Four: She had Jocko. She would instruct him to be always on the lookout for knowledge that was harmful in any way, to censor it as he read, so that she wouldn’t be contaminated by it. If a book contained too much harmful information to remain comprehensible when all of the bad stuff had been redacted, she would return it to the shelves and choose another.

Entering the library, Erika saw Christine getting up from the desk, holding a book and an envelope. She should have been in the staff dormitory.

“Why are you here at this hour?” Erika asked.

“Oh, goodness, you startled me.” Christine pushed the desk chair into the kneehole. “I’ve been selecting a book to send to a friend, and writing her a warm note of remembrance, with apologies for having been frightfully behind in my correspondence.”

Christine seemed to be speaking with a slight English accent.

“But these books don’t belong to you,” Erika reminded her.

Straightening her shoulders and lifting her head in what might have been defiance, Christine said, “I should think any books that belong to my husband also belong to me.”

“Your husband?” Erika said.

“Yes, Mrs. Danvers, quite mine. Rebecca is gone. I rather think you should get used to that.”

Erika didn’t need to learn anything from a book to know that Christine was suffering what Victor referred to as an interruption of function. The previous morning, the butler, William, had bitten off seven of his fingers during an interruption of function. For the moment, at least, Christine’s condition wasn’t as serious as William’s.

Approaching the maid, Erika reached out for the book. “I’ll take care of that for you.”

Pressing the volume and the letter to her bosom, Christine said, “No thank you, Mrs. Danvers. In the morning, I shall ask Christine to package and post it.”

In a superbly tailored blue suit, white silk shirt with spread collar, and sapphire-amber-emerald striped tie, with an amber display handkerchief, carrying the Springfield Armory Colt.45 in a concealed shoulder rig that did not interfere at all with the elegant drape of the coat, Victor studied his reflection, and the mirror presented to him a man who had the style and the bearing of a sovereign born to the throne.

Because there were mirrors also at the Hands of Mercy, he left the closet. As he crossed the bedroom, his cell phone rang.

He stopped at the door to the hall and, after a hesitation, took the call. “Yes?”

“My esteemed master, my glorious brute,” said Erika Four, “we have prepared a resting place for you at the dump.”

He was resolved not to lose his temper and determined not to let her dominate as she had in her previous call. “I thought you were coming home.”

“We have lined your grave with the rotting cadavers of some of your Old Race victims, and with the remains of those of your people who failed you and could not be resuscitated as I was.”

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

“Oh, darling, sublime megalomaniac, you are the emperor of self-delusion. I will face you soon enough. I will smile at you and blow a kiss as we bury you alive in the depths of the dump.”

Victor happened to be looking at the doorknob when it began to turn. He drew the.45 from his shoulder rig.

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