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If he had stood before a h his eyes On the night that Victor had drawn upon the power of a thunderbolt to enliven his first creation, the cooperative storm, of unprecedented violence, had seelohich ht redeh he cherished Truth and wished to serve it, Deucalion had long tried to deceive himself about the identity of the man whose head, whose brain, had been married to the patchwork body in Victor’s first lab He said his brain was that of an unknown miscreant, which was true but only in that he’d never been told the htmare of the old stone house--with its cursed attic where so ticked and rattled, clicked and clattered; and its cellar in which the air itself was evil--returned to Deucalion so often that he knew as surely as he knew anything, the drea the sulci and the gyri of his gray rim memories identified the hateful source of the brain

Now, ascending the hospital stairs toward the thin childlike cries ofthe cliht of this ht of all those dreahtmare he had at last made it up the stairs into the attic of the house, the throbbing light of an oil la The raging storh rooainst one another The skeleton was sether to keep it in order, suspended from a hook in a rafter

Also suspended fro of the victiolden hair that had been shorn from her head Bones and braids Or call the could not arise froirl’s bones When in the dreaht revealed a grisly orphanage: nine other dangling skeletons and then, oh, ten irls--all children, really--presented asseparately froht or curly hair, some braided and some not

In hundreds of repetitions of that drea in a sweat of dread He had never proceeded past the first room of the cellar, into the heart of that darkness, and he hoped he never would The sound of skeletons in a wind dance drew him to the attic, but what always pulled hi cries They were not shrieks of terror or of pain, but instead of sorrow, as if he were hearing not the victi for the world from which they had been taken before their ti the source of his brain; but he could not continue deceiving himself His second heart had come from a child molester who killed those he raped--and his brain from the sairls and then rendered them in the cellar to extract their delicate skeletons as nant air of that -less lower realm tasted sometimes of spoiled suet and sometimes of salty tears

The possession of a child molester’s brain didn’t make Deucalion a child molester himself That evil mind and that corrupted soul had departed the brain at death, leaving behind nothing but three pounds or so of blameless cerebral tissue, which Victor had taken to preserve iman Deucalion’s consciousness was uniquely his own, and its origins were … elsewhere Whether his consciousness came in tandem with a soul, he could not say But he had no doubt that he arrived that long-ago night with a mission--to enforce the natural laws that Victor had broken with his prideful experi hi a journey that had taken him around the Earth more than once and across two troubled centuries, in search of a new purpose after he thought Victor died on the arctic ice, Deucalion at last arrived here at the threshold of his destiny The destruction of the New Race was under way, brought about by the endless errors of theirjustice to Victor Frankenstein in the stor over Louisiana

Now another childlike expression of sorrow, another reeted hi The cries came from this floor

He suspected that by his actions in the hours ahead, he would earn his release from the dreams of the old stone house He took a deep breath, hesitated, then opened the door and stepped out of the stairwell into the corridor

About a dozen of the New Race,the wide hallway Their attention was focused on the open pair of doors to a laboratory on the right, at the

Fro noises, the shattering of glass

When Deucalionin the hall, not one seeister his presence, so intent were they on the crisis in the laboratory They stood in various postures of expectation Some trerily, and soe transcendental awe

Through the open doors of the laboratory, into the corridor cas

CHAPTER 32

FOR THE MOMENT, cold does notsack and the glass door of the freezer are for the first time not a torment to Chameleon

The recently arrived, unusual, very busy, blue, not-a-person soh the lab with great energy

This visitor seee

Cabinets topple Chairs fly Lab equipment is knocked helter-skelter

In its pendulous sack of ice-flecked fluid, Chaorous reordering are transh walls and floor to the freezer and thus to its occupant

The lights dihten once more

The freezer motor stutters and dies The backup motor does not come online

Chameleon is alert for the distinct pattern of second- and energetic visitor draws some people to it, lifts them up, as if in celebration, as if to exalt them, but then casts them down

They remain where they have fallen, motionless

Other workers seem to approach the busy visitor of their own volition They appear almost to embrace it

These also are lifted up, and then they are cast down They lie as motionless as the others ere cast down before them

Perhaps they have prostrated themselves at the feet of the busy visitor

Or they