abetting. You might even find yourself an accessory to murder if he kil s again while in your care. And have you thought of the possibility that you might be putting yourself in real physical danger by confronting him? The kid is huge.
How do you think you'd stop him if he decided to add you to his menu?'
'I don't think that wil happen, and just in case, I'l be armed.'
'This is starting to sound real sketchy, John. You're going to go out armed with a gun to confront a murder suspect whom you've already aided by deliberately misleading the police? I want no part of this.'
'Before you say that, think of what would happen if we were right. What happens if the inhibitors work and we cure him?
Think about offers of tenure from Ivy
League universities. Think about making history. Thousands of dol ars on the lecture circuit. Magazine articles. Think about the Nobel Prize.'
'The Nobel Prize? Real y?'
'It's that big. We would go down in history if we could find a cure for the pathology of serial murder. And think of how many lives we'd save. They estimate that more than three hundred people a year are kil ed by serial murderers. That's nothing compared to the thousands that are kil ed every year in this country by drug gangs and street violence, but consider that that's more than the murder rate for the entire country of Great Britain. Consider al those families who have to live with the image of their loved one spending their last minutes on earth being tortured and mutilated by some lunatic stricken with a mental disease that we could have cured. Think about Joseph Miles out there adding to the body count when we may have the power to stop him.'
'Okay, John. I'l keep my mouth shut.'
'I need more from you than that,
Douglas. I need your help in capturing
Joseph. I can't do it by myself. You've got some vacation time coming up, don't you? Let's go to Washington.'
'You're crazy. There's no way I'm going to actively participate in this.'
'I need you, Douglas. When was the last time you took a risk and did something daring? No guts, no glory. You lecture about the hero's journey in mythology every day, but you're unwil ing to take that journey yourself? We're not getting any younger. Soon the most heroic thing we'l be able to do is sign a `do not resuscitate' order so that our loved ones don't have to watch us waste away in a hospital bed for months on end. This might be it. Our last chance to make a mark on the world.'
'I don't know, John.'
'Come on. The Nobel Prize, man! No guts. No glory!'
'Al right, you got me. Where do we start?'
Chapter Thirty-eight
Alicia lay shivering atop the bloodstained mattress with Joe lapping the blood off her exposed rib cage. Her blood pressure was plummeting. She was going into shock.
'You said you wouldn't hurt me. You promised,' she gasped as she watched the big predator chew and swal ow the last of her once voluptuous bosom. His body shook with an orgasm. Some of his semen landed on her face and she licked it from her lips as it dribbled down her forehead onto her mouth. She stil relished the taste of him. She stil loved watching him cum. Despite her feelings watching him cum. Despite her feelings of betrayal, she loved the fact that it was her flesh that had given him this pleasure. Some twisted part of her stil loved him, even though she knew that she would be dead soon if she didn't get to a hospital. She was losing a ton of blood.
Her voice seemed to snap him out of his rapture. He looked down at the ruin he'd made of his beloved Alicia and his heart crashed to the floor like a stone.
'I-I… I didn't mean to. I didn't want to-to… I'm so sorry.'
His eyes fil ed with tears.
'I'm dying.'
'But you can't. You can't die!' Joe's eyes were wild with fear as he realized that he could see her exposed rib cage. No one could live in that condition.
'Get me to a hospital.' Her voice was weak, barely more than a whisper.
'Okay. Okay. I'l do it. Hold on. I'l take care of you.'
Alicia blacked out. Her eyelids slammed shut with the finality of a stage curtain at the end of the final act. Joe scooped her up in the blood-soaked blanket and carried her limp body out to the van. He knew exactly which hospital he would take her to.
Minutes later, Joe pul ed up outside the state hospital. He sprinted across the parking lot and into the emergency ward with Alicia cradled in his arms, shivering from the massive loss of blood and fading in and out of consciousness.
'Help! I need help!'
Two nurses came rushing from behind the desk and an orderly raced down the hal pushing a gurney.
'What happened to her?' asked a petite young Asian RN as she rushed to Joe's side.
'She was attacked by two pit bul s right outside our apartment. They almost tore her apart.'
'Get her into surgery! She's lost a lot of blood.'
'Is she going to be okay?' Joe asked, careful to keep his curiously sharpened, bloodstained teeth tucked behind his lips lest he immediately make himself a suspect. Alicia was now lying on the gurney with blood stil pumping steadily from the massive wounds in her chest.
The other nurse, a tal formidable-looking black woman with shoulder-length hair extensions and a wandering eye that made her look almost sinister, pressed two handfuls of gauze and a towel to
Alicia's chest in an effort to staunch the flow of blood. Alicia's eyes rol ed up in her head and she began to convulse as she went into hypovolemic shock. Saliva foamed from her lips and sweat bul eted down her face.
'Oh no! No!' Joe reached for her and the slight Asian nurse seized his wrist and managed to turn him completely around with almost no effort at al. She then placed an arm on his shoulder in a reassuring embrace as if to conceal the fact that she'd just used a very effective aikido move on him that had almost shattered his wrist.
'You just wait here. We'l take care of her. We need to contact the police and you're going to have to file a report.'
'Okay, just take care of her,' Joe replied, a look of genuine concern on his face even as he rubbed his wrist.
Joe backed away as they rushed Alicia down the hal and into surgery. He hadn't meant for it to happen like this. It wasn't supposed to be her.
His plan had been to tear into a stranger and to use her or him to gain access to the hospital, but seeing Alicia lying there looking so delicious, he had lost control and grievously injured, perhaps even kil ed, the one thing in this world he truly loved. He was completely out of control now and even more convinced that he didn't want to spend the rest of his life this way. He was becoming little more than an animal. Even now, with his heart col apsing beneath the weight of his guilt and sorrow over the harm he'd caused
Alicia, he was stil sizing up every nurse who passed, imagining how the meat of their triceps, the fat of their hips, the muscle and sinew on their thighs and buttocks would taste as he tore it from their quivering bones. Even as he mourned he could feel the monster awakening.
He hoped Damon had done his part and gotten himself admitted to the hospital as wel. The only thing left to do now was for Joseph to find him and get him out of the hospital where they could have their heart-to-heart and he could rid himself of the curse and love Alicia as a man was supposed to rather than as the monster he'd been since puberty.
There was only one elevator that went to the third floor. That's where Damon had told him that most of the in-house patients were treated. It sat at the end of the hal and you had to pass another reception desk to access it. Two overweight nurses sat behind the desk wearing hardened impassive expressions. As soon as the nurses took
