Page 11 (1/2)

"The stupid Curly ring, and now this"

She put the car in gear, hung a U-turn without driving over the Bucky replicant, switched the headlights to low bea not to puncture a tire, and turned right onto St Charles Avenue

"So … I’et the silent treatment, am I?" Michael asked

"You should be so lucky"

"Another prayer unanswered"

"Here’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question"

"I can’t afford it," he said

"Do you think I eat too much?"

"It’s none of et a fat ass, don’t you?"

"Uh-oh"

In the backseat, the shepherd panted but not with anxiety He sounded happy Maybe he’d heard so hted in real huet a fat ass"

"I don’t sit around thinking about the future of your ass"

"You were so hot for the Janet ht butt"

"I wasn’t hot for it I just noticed it, you know, as a nice work of nature, like you’d coreat wisteria vine if you saw one"

"Wisteria? That is so lame Besides, Victor’s people aren’t works of nature"

"I don’t have a chance here if you’re gonna parse my every word"

"Just so you know, hter"

"I’ll take your word for it"

"You’ll have to taketo be any exhibition If you dropped a quarter on "

"That sounds like a challenge"

"Let et a chance to bounce a quarter offto be sure I’ve always got a quarter in et back two die"

"What does that mean?"

"I have no idea"

He said, "Two dihter

His laughter was contagious, and when the dog heard theht

After a minute, Carson settled to serious once more and said, "Thanks, pal You saved "

"De nada You’ve saved h"

"Each time we have to thron on one of these New Race," she said, "seems like we squeak by with less room to spare than before"

"Yeah But at least we do keep on squeakin’ by"

CHAPTER 28

AT 2:15 AM, at Victor’s stylish workstation in the main lab at the Hands of Mercy, as Deucalion co and backed out of the coht he heard in the distance a scream as thin as the plaint of a lost child

Given so, screams were not likely to be infrequent No doubt the s had been bricked up not solely to foil prying eyes but also to ensure that disturbing sounds would fail to reach passersby in the street

The staff here, the subjects of the experi in the creation tanks ithout exception victiod, and Deucalion pitied theuish and despair, not one at a time as he had freed Annunciata and Lester, but soht noever, and as soon as he heard fro the Hands of Mercy in a quantu the detectives He could not be distracted by whatever horrors

When the sound caer than before but still distant, Deucalion recognized that it conveyed neither terror nor physical pain, and therefore was not a scream at all, but instead a shriek He could not tell what the crier of this cry --and only realized after the fact that he had risen fro the wail had an expectant quality, like thethe second or two between a violent flash of lightning and the crash of thunder Here, the sound caed to be as terrible as the loudest thunderclap

He waited for the equivalent of the flash, cause after effect But what followed a half , the sound had significance, not because he could identify its source but because it recalled to him cries he heard in certain dreams that for two hundred years had haunted hiht he came alive in Victor’s first lab, but of other and more dreadful events, perhaps of events that preceded his existence

After his first hundred years, decade by decade, he needed less sleep This meant, thankfully, fewer opportunities to dream

Deucalion crossed the main lab, opened a door, stepped across the threshold, and found the hallway deserted

The cry caain, twice in quick succession Louder here than in the laboratory, the sound was still distant

Sometimes Deucalion dreamed of an old stone house with interior walls of cracked and yellowed plaster, illuminated by oil lamps and candle sconces When the worst stor click-and-clatter, like the fleshless body of Death rattling in his cowled robe as he walked the night Worse than whatof stone stairs descended to an ironbound door, and beyond the door were the roonant air sometimes had the acrid taste of spoiled suet and at other times the salty taste of tears

Here in the old hospital, the latest two shrieks had come from another floor, whether from above or below, he could not tell He walked to the stairs at the end of the corridor, opened the fire door, and waited, feeling al that well-known scenario but in a new setting

In the fa into the attic or the desire not to go into the cellar was always the suh the rooms that lay between those two poles of terror, as he strove to avoid both the highest and lowest chah the hospital stairwell fro and mournful

Like the miserable cries that sometimes haunted his infrequent sleep