Dead and Alive

we’ll tear together will be the flesh of the oldest living member of the Old Race.”
    “The Beekeeper.”
    “Yes. Victor. And then when the Hands of Mercy staff is all alive in me, we’ll leave this place as one, and we’ll kill and kill and kill.”
    “When you put it that way …”
    “Yes?”
    Ripley said, “What do I have to lose?”
    “Nothing,” said Werner.
    “Well,” said Ripley.
    “Do you want to be free in me?”
    “How much will it hurt?”
    “I’ll be gentle.”
    Ripley said, “Okay then.”
    Suddenly all insect, Werner seized Ripley’s head in chitinous claws and cracked his skull open as if it were a pistachio shell.

CHAPTER 14
    NEXT DOOR TO THE BENNETS lived Antoine and Evangeline Arceneaux, in a house encircled by a ground-floor veranda with ironwork almost as frilly as that of the LaBranche House in the French Quarter, and by a second-story balcony where much of the equally frilly iron was concealed by cascades of purple bougainvillea that grew up the back of the structure and across the roof.
    When Janet Guitreau, nude, and Bucky Guitreau, fully clothed, stepped through a neighborly gate between the two properties, most of the windows at the Arceneaux house were dark. The only light came from the rear of the residence.
    As they moved toward the back of the house to reconnoiter, Bucky said, “This time I’ll have to be the one who says something terrible has happened, and you’ll stand aside where they can’t see you.”
    “What does it matter if they see me?”
    “They might be put off because you’re naked.”
    “Why would that put them off? I’m hot, aren’t I?”
    “You’re definitely hot, but hot and something-terrible-has-happened don’t seem to go together.”
    “You think it would make them suspicious,” Janet said.
    “That’s exactly what I think.”
    “Well, I’m not going to go back and get my clothes. I feel so
alive
, and I just know that killing in the nude is going to be the best thing ever.”
    “I’m not going to dispute that.”
    Step by step, as they moved through the rain, he envied Janet her freedom. She looked lithe and strong and healthy and
real
. She radiated power, confidence, and a thrilling animal ferocity that made his blood race.
    By contrast, his clothes were heavy with rain, hanging on him like sacking, weighing him down, and his sodden shoes were binding the bridges of his feet. Even though he was losing his law education, he felt imprisoned by his creation-tank program, as much by what it required of him as by what it restricted him from doing. He had been given superhuman strength, almost supernatural durability, yet he remained condemned to a life of meekness and subservience, promised that his kind would one day rule the universe but at the same time assigned the tedious duty of pretending to be Bucky Guitreau, a political hack and uninspired prosecutor with a circle of friends as tiresomeas a ward full of bores who had received chemical lobotomies.
    At the back of the house, light brightened two ground-floor windows, beyond both of which lay the Arceneauxs’ family room.
    Boldly, shoulders back and head high, body glistening, Janet strode onto the veranda as if she were a Valkyrie that had just flown down out of the storm.
    “Stay back,” Bucky murmured as he moved past her to the nearest of the lighted windows.
    Antoine and Evangeline Arceneaux had two children. Neither son was a candidate for Young American of the Year.
    According to Yancy and Helene Bennet, who were dead now but had been truthful when they were alive, sixteen-year-old Preston bullied younger kids in the neighborhood. And just a year ago, he tortured to death the cat belonging to the family across the street, after he had agreed to take care of it while they were away on a week’s vacation.
    Twenty-year-old Charles still lived at home, though he neither worked nor attended college. This evening, Janet had started to find herself, but Charles Arceneaux was still looking. He thought that he wanted to be an Internet entrepreneur. He had a trust fund from his paternal grandfather, and he was using that money to research a few areas of online merchandising, seeking the most promising field in which to bring his innovative thinking to bear. According to Yancy, the field that Charles researched as much as ten hours a day was Internet pornography.
    The curtains were not closed at the window, and Bucky had an unobstructed view of the family room. Charles was