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The wrecked lab offers no TARGETS

Chameleon proceeds into the hallway Here it discovers nu more time to consider these cadavers than it did those in the lab, Cha

Interesting

This is not how Cha the debrained EXEMPTS, Chameleon detects a whiff of a TARGET One of the Old Race has been here recently

Chameleon follows the scent to the stairs

CHAPTER 41

RAIN HAD NOT YET REACHED the parishes above Lake Pontchartrain The hu but expectant, as if the low overcast and the dark land had compressed the air between thee would shock the heart of the stor

Deucalion stood on a deserted two-lane road, outside Crosswoods Waste Manageh chain-link fence was topped with coils of barbed wire and fitted with continuous nylon privacy panels RESTRICTED AREA signs every forty feet warned of the health hazards of a landfill

Outside the fence, a triple phalanx of loblolly pines encircled the property, the rows offset from one another Between ninety and a hundred feet tall, these trees for views into the duher slopes to the north and east

Deucalion walked off the road, aate that didn’t exist--a quantuht vision better than that of the Old Race, even better than that of the New His enhanced eyesight, not the work of Victor, was perhaps another gift delivered on the lightning that had anih his gray eyes

He walked a rah to accoht, well below the level of this elevated pathere huge lakes of trash heaped in uneven swells that would eventually be plowed level before being capped with eight feet of earth and as vent pipes

The stench offended, but he had encountered worse in the past two hundred years In his first two decades, after leaving Victor for dead in the arctic, Deucalion frequently had been seized by the urge to violence, raging at the injustice of having been stitched together and aniive his creation neithernor peace, nor any hope of fellowship and co hours, Deucalion prowled graveyards and broke into granite crypts, aze upon the deco aloud to himself, "Here is what you are, just dead flesh, dead flesh, the bones and guts of arsonists, of murderers, filled with false life, dead and alive, not fit for any other world but an abo at those open caskets, he’d known stenches that, by coarden

In those graveyard visits, during those long staring htless cadavers, he had yearned to die Although he tried, he was unable to sube, he could not take the final step So in those long nights when he kept coued with himself to embrace the necessity for self-destruction

The proscription against suicide had not coodhood, that vainglorious beast wasn’t able to prograrammed those he brewed up these days Victor had planted a device in Deucalion’s skull, which had cratered half the giant’s face when he tried to strike his maker But Victor had not in those days been able to forbid suicide

After years e, Deucalion had arrived at a hu realization The edict that so effectively stayed his hand fro himself came from a more powerful and infinitely more mysterious source than Victor He was denied felo-de-se because he had a purpose in life, even if he could not--at that tiht be, a vital ranted hiht hi wasteyard that was a trash du stor, wind, and rain, but also one of justice, judgment, execution, and damnation

To his left, far out in the west pit, flames flickered A dozen small fires moved one behind the other, as if they were torches held by people in a procession

CHAPTER 42

ERIKA STOOD over the body of Christine for ato understand why Victor had shot her to death

Although Christine seemed to have become convinced that she was so Quite the opposite: She had been confused and distraught, and in spite of her contention that she was not "as fragile a spirit" as she irl not yet a woman

Yet Victor shot her four times in her two hearts And kicked her head twice, after she was dead

Instead of wrapping the body for whoever would collect it and at once cleaning up the blood as instructed, Christine surprised herself by returning to the troll’s quarters in the north wing She knocked softly and said sotto voce, "It’s uy if he was sitting in a corner, sucking on his toes, his one away to the red place to rest

With a discretion that h for her to hear hi roo on the floor in front of the dark fireplace, as if fla beside hiunshots?"

"No Jocko heard nothing"

"I thought you htened"

"No And Jocko wasn’t juggling apples, either Not Jocko Not here in his roo you apples"

"You are very kind to Jocko"

"Would you like so you so else you would like?"

Although the troll’s unfortunate face could produce ht cause cardiac arrest in an entire pack of attacking wolves, Erika found him cute, if not most of the time, at least occasionally cute, like now

Soether in a sweet, yearning expression His enorht when he considered what else he es

He said, "Oh, there is a thing, a special thing, that I would like, but it’s too et it for you," she said, "I will So what is this special thing?"

"No, no What Jocko deserves is his nostrils pulled back to his eyebrows Jocko deserves to hit himself hard in the face, to spit on his own feet, to stick his head in a toilet and flush and flush and flush, to tie a ten-pound sledgeha, that’s what Jocko deserves"

"Nonsense," said Erika "You have some peculiar ideas, little friend You don’t deserve such treatment any more than you would like the taste of soap"

"I know better now about the soap," he assured her

"Good And I’ to teach you some self-esteeoing to teach you to like yourself"

"Jocko tolerates Jocko Jocko doesn’t like Jocko"

"That’s very sad"

"Jocko doesn’t trust Jocko"

"Why wouldn’t you trust yourself?"