Dead and Alive

move.”
    —
People
    “The poet laureate of paranoid pop fiction … You’d be hard-pressed to find a writer so tailor-made for the strange, paranoid, black-and-white century we’ve just entered.”
    —
The Denver Post
    “Koontz drops readers into the middle of the action, then doubles back to provide the background for his characters, deftly making us care about them…. [He] keeps the action moving at a frenetic pace.”
    —
Chicago Sun Times

Novels by DEAN KOONTZ
    Relentless • Your Heart Belongs to Me • Odd Hours The Darkest Evening of the Year • The Good Guy • Brother Odd The Husband • Forever Odd • Velocity • Life Expectancy The Taking • Odd Thomas • The Face • By the Light of the Moon One Door Away From Heaven • From the Corner of His Eye False Memory • Seize the Night • Fear Nothing • Mr. Murder Dragon Tears • Hideaway • Cold Fire • The Bad Place Midnight • Lightning • Watchers • Strangers • Twilight Eyes Darkfall • Phantoms • Whispers • The Mask • The Vision The Face of Fear • Night Chills • Shattered The Voice of the Night • The Servants of Twilight The House of Thunder • The Key to Midnight The Eyes of Darkness • Shadowfires • Winter Moon The Door to December • Dark Rivers of the Heart • Icebound Strange Highways • Intensity • Sole Survivor • Ticktock The Funhouse • Demon Seed
    DEAN KOONTZ’S FRANKENSTEIN
Book One: Prodigal Son
Book Two: City of Night
Book Three: Dead and Alive



This trilogy is dedicated to the late
Mr. Lewis, who long ago realized that
science was being politicized, that its
primary goal was changing from knowledge
to power, that it was also becoming
scientism, and that in the
ism
is the
end of humanity.

I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently
.
    — C. S. LEWIS ,
The Abolition of Man

CHAPTER 1
    HALF PAST A WINDLESS MIDNIGHT , rain cantered out of the Gulf, across the shore and the levees: parades of phantom horses striking hoof rhythms from roofs of tarpaper, tin, tile, shingles, slate, counting cadence along the avenues.
    Usually a late-night town where restaurants and jazz clubs cooked almost until the breakfast hour, New Orleans was on this occasion unlike itself. Little traffic moved on the streets. Many restaurants closed early. For lack of customers, some of the clubs went dark and quiet.
    A hurricane was transiting the Gulf, well south of the Louisiana coast. The National Weather Service currently predicted landfall near Brownsville, Texas, but the storm track might change. Through hard experience, New Orleans had learned to respect the power of nature.
    Deucalion stepped out of the Luxe Theater without using a door, and stepped into a different district of the city, out of light and into the deep shadows under the boughs of moss-robed oak trees.
    In the glow of streetlamps, the skeins of rain glimmered like tarnished silver. But under the oaks, the precipitation seemed ink-black, as if it were not rain but were instead a product of the darkness, the very sweat of the night.
    Although an intricate tattoo distracted curious people from recognizing the extent of the damage to the ruined half of his face, Deucalion preferred to venture into public places between dusk and dawn. The sunless hours provided an additional layer of disguise.
    His formidable size and physical power could not be concealed. Having endured more than two hundred years, his body was unbent bone and undiminished muscle. Time seemed to have no power to weather him.
    As he followed the sidewalk, he passed through places where the glow of streetlamps penetrated the leafy canopy. The mercurial light chased from memory the torch-carrying mob that had harried Deucalion through a cold and rainless night on a continent far from this one, in an age before electricity.
    Across the street, occupying half a block, the Hands of Mercy stood on an oak-shaded property. Once a Catholic hospital, it closed long ago.
    A tall wrought-iron fence encircled the hospital grounds. The spear-point staves suggested that wheremercy had once been offered, none could now be found.
    A sign on the iron driveway gate warned PRIVATE WAREHOUSE / NO ADMITTANCE. The bricked-up windows emitted no light.
    Overlooking the main entrance stood a statue of the Holy Mother. The light once focused on her had been removed, and the robed figure