still hated her. For a few minutes he held her body against him,
feeling the heat drain from it. But the chilly advance of death through
her flesh was not as thrilling as it should have been. Because she had
died with an unbroken faith in life everlasting, she had cheated Vassago
of the satisfaction of seeing the awareness of death in her eyes. He
pushed her limp body aside in disgust.
Now, two weeks after Vassago had finished with her, Margaret Campion
knelt in perpetual prayer on the floor of that dismantled Hell, the most
recent addition to his collection. She remained upright because she was
lashed to a length of steel rebar which he had inserted into a hole he
had drilled in the concrete. Naked, she faced away from the giant,
funhouse devil. Though she had been Baptist, a crucifix was clasped in
her dead hands because Vassago liked the image of the crucifix better
than a simple cross; it was turned upside down, with Christ’s
thorn-prickled head toward the floor. Margaret’s own head had been cut
off then re-sewn to her neck with obsessive care. Even though her body
was turned away from Satan, she faced toward him in denial of the
crucifix held irreverently in her hands. Her posture was symbolic of
hypocrisy, mocking her pretense to faith, love, and life everlasting.
Although Vassago hadn’t received nearly as much pleasure from murdering
Margaret as from what he had done to her after she was dead, he was
still pleased to have made her acquaintance. Her stubbornness,
stupidity, and self-deception had made her death less satisfying for him
than it should have been, but at least the aura he had seen around her
in the bar was quenched. Her irritating vitality was drained away.
The only energy her body harbored was that of the multitudinous
carrionaters that teemed within her, consuming her flesh and bent on
reducing her to a dry husk like Jenny, the waitress, who rested at the
other end of the collection.
As he studied Margaret, a familiar need arose in him. Finally the need
became a compulsion. He turned away from his collection, retracing his
path across the huge room, heading for the ramp that led up to the
entrance tunnel. Ordinarily, selecting another acquisition, killing it,
and arranging it in the most aesthetically satisfying pose would have
left him quiescent and sated for as much as a month. But after less
than two weeks, he was compelled to find another worthy sacrifice.
Regretfully, he ascended the ramp, out of the purifying scent of death,
into air tainted with the odors of life, like a vampire driven to hunt
the living though preferring the company of the dead.
At ten-thirty, almost an hour after Harrison was resuscitated, he
remained unconscious. His body temperature was normal. His vital signs
were good.
And though the patterns of alpha and beta brain waves were those of a
man in a profound sleep, they were not obviously indicative of anything
as deep as a coma.
When Jonas finally declared the patient out of immediate danger and
ordered him moved to a private room on the fifth floor, Ken Nakamura and
Kari Dovell elected to go home. Leaving Helga and Gina with the
patient, Jonas accompanied the neurologist and the pediatrician to the
scrub sinks, and eventually as far as the door to the staff parking lot.
They discussed Harrison and what procedures might have to be performed
on him in the morning, but for the most part they shared inconsequential
small talk about hospital politics and gossip involving mutual
acquaintances, as if they had not just participated in a miracle that
should have made such banalities impossible.
Beyond the glass door, the night looked cold and inhospitable. Rain had
begun to fall. Puddles were filling every depression in the pavement,
and in the reflected glow of the parking-lot lamps, they looked like
shattered mirrors, collections of sharp silvery shards.
Kari leaned against Jonas, kissed his cheek, clung to him for a moment.
She seemed to want to say something but was unable to find the words.
Then she pulled back, turned up the collar of her coat, and went out