Intensity

as casually as he might crush a scorpion underfoot, with no greater moral offense though with considerably more pleasure.
        But he worships nothing.
        As he rounds a curve into a straightaway flanked by redwoods of even greater girth than any he has previously seen, stark white bones of lightning crack through the black skin of the sky. A roar of thunder like a bellow of rage shudders the air.
        Rain washes the smell of lightning down through the night. Two scents of power, lightning and redwoods-electricity and time, fierce heat and stolid endurance-are offered to him now, and he inhales deeply with pleasure.
        Taking this county road through the redwoods, along the coast, and reconnecting with Highway 101 south of Eureka will add between half an hour and an hour to his travel time, depending on the pace he sets and the strength of the storm. But as eager as he is to get home to Ariel, he could not have resisted the power of the redwoods.
        Headlights appear behind him, visible in the angled side mirror. A car. For nearly an hour, one followed him on the freeway, hanging at a distance. This must be a different vehicle, because this driver is more aggressive than the one on the freeway, closing the distance between them at high speed.
        Recklessly, the car-a Honda-pulls around the motor home, into the lane reserved for oncoming traffic, though this is not a passing zone.
        There is no other traffic, and they are on a straightaway, but the Honda has insufficient distance to complete the maneuver before the next blind turn in the road, especially on the treacherous rain-slick blacktop.
        Vess reduces speed.
        The racing Honda pulls alongside him.
        Looking down through the windshield of the car, Vess has barely a glimpse of the person behind the steering wheel, because the rain and the high-speed windshield wipers inhibit his view. Nothing more than a suggestion of a deep-red shirt or sweater. A pale hand on the wheel. The wrist is slender enough to indicate that the driver is most likely a woman. She appears to be alone. Then the car moves far enough forward so that Vess is looking down on the roof, and the windshield is out of sight.
        They are rapidly approaching the curve.
        Vess further reduces his speed. Through his open window, he listens to the shriek of the Honda as the driver accelerates. All the formidable power of that engine seems pathetically weak in these majestic groves, like the angry buzz of a gnat among a herd of elephants.
        With so little effort that he would not increase his heartbeat, Vess could pull the wheel to the left, slam the motor home into the Honda, and force the car off the road. It would either roll and then explode or shatter head-on into one of the twenty-foot-diameter redwood trunks.
        He is tempted.
        The spectacle would be gratifying.
        He spares the woman in the Honda only because he's in a mood for subtle-rather than explosive-sensation. This gratifying expedition has brought him not merely the Napa Valley family that he originally set out to destroy, but the hitchhiker now hanging in the bedroom closet like Poe's lover of Amontillado in the stone wall of a wine cellar, as well as the two clerks at the service station. This is already a satiating richness. The reef of the soul is built from varied experience, not from repetitive sensation. Right now he doesn't need the somber music of blood and the spurting warmth of screams; instead, he needs to smell the wetness of the rain, feel the towering mass of the trees, and listen to the cool pendulousness of the night-hidden ferns.
        He applies the brakes, cutting his speed.
        The Honda streaks past him, kicking up a high spray of dirty water. It enters the curve ahead with a flash of brake lights: red in the black storm, red glimmering off the damp gray bark of the big conifers, apocalyptic tracers of red rippling across the pavement. Then gone.
        Edgler Vess is alone again, behind the wheel of his ark, in a colorless world of gray rain, black shadows, and sparkling white headlight beams, at peace to commune with the redwoods and draw from them a measure of their power.
        He thinks of Christ on the vertical bed of dogwood, and the idea of the meek inheriting the earth makes him smile. He doesn't wish to inherit anything. He is a raging fire, powerful and hot; he will burn all the color out of