Frankenstein: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Dean Koontz
lightning … did it bring you one?”
Deucalion closed his hand, opened it an instant later, and the two missing pennies were on his palm. “All I know is … I suffer.”
Arnie had stopped working on the castle. He rose from his chair, mesmerized by the two pennies on Deucalion’s palm.
“I suffer guilt, remorse, contrition. I see mysteries everywhere in the weave of life … and I believe.”
He put the pennies in Arnie’s open hand.
“Victor was a man,” Deucalion continued, “but made a monster of himself. I was a monster … but feel so human now.”
Arnie closed his fist around the coins and at once opened it.
Carson’s breath caught. The pennies were gone from Arnie’s hand.
“Two hundred years,” Deucalion said, “I’ve lived as an outsider in your world. I’ve learned to treasure flawed humanity for its optimism in spite of its flaws, for its hope in the face of ceaseless struggle.”
Arnie closed his empty hand.
“Victor would murder all mankind,” Deucalion said, “and populate the world with his machines of blood and bone.”
Arnie stared at his clenched fist – and smiled.
“If you do not help me resist,” Deucalion said, “he is arrogant enough to succeed.”
Again Arnie opened his hand. The pennies had reappeared.
“Those who fight him,” Deucalion said, “will find themselves in the struggle of their lives.…”
From Arnie’s hand, Deucalion retrieved one of the two pennies.
“Leave it to blind fate?” he asked Michael. His gaze moved to Carson. “Heads, you fight beside me … tails, I fight alone.”
He flipped the penny, caught it, held out his fist.
Before he could reveal the penny, Carson put her hand on his, to keep his fist closed. She looked at Michael.
He sighed. “Well, I never did want to be a safety engineer,” he acknowledged, and placed his hand atop hers.
To Deucalion, Carson said, “Screw fate. We fight.”
DARK, DRY, QUIET, the crawl space under the house provides Randal Six with an ideal environment. The spiders do not bother him.
The journey from Mercy has been a triumph, but it has frayed his nerves and rubbed his courage raw. The storm had almost undone him. The rain, the sky afire with lightning and shadows leaping on the earth, the crashes of thunder, the trees shuddering in the wind, the gutters overflowing with dirty water awhirl with litter … Too much data. Too much input. Several times he almost shut down, almost fell to the ground and curled into a ball like a pill bug.
He needs time now to recover, to regain his confidence.
He closes his eyes in the dark, breathes slowly and deeply. The sweet smell of star jasmine threads to him through the crisscrossed lattice that screens the crawl space.
From directly overhead come three muffled voices in earnest conversation.
In the room above him is happiness. He can feel it, radiant. He has arrived at the source. The secret is within his grasp. This child of Mercy, in the spidery dark, smiles.
This is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
Originally published in paperback 2005
Copyright © Dean Koontz 2005
Dean Koontz asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007203130
Ebook Edition © JULY 2013 ISBN: 9780007375394
Version 2
DEAN KOONTZ’S FRANKENSTEIN
BOOK TWO
City of Night
DEAN KOONTZ
In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we removethe organ and demand the function. We makemen without chests and expect of them virtueand enterprise. We laugh at honour and areshocked to find traitors in our midst. Wecastrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
—C. S. LEWIS, The Abolition of Man
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