Prodigal Son

tourniquet around Jenna's right arm and found a suitable blood vessel. He inserted an intravenous cannula by which the glucose-saline would be infused into her bloodstream, and removed the tourniquet.
        The drip line between the solution bag and the cannula featured a drug port. He inserted a large, full syringe of a potent sedative, which he would be able to administer in multiple, measured doses, as required.
        To keep Jenna perfectly still during dissection, he must put her in deep sedation. When he wanted her awake to answer questions that he might have about what he found inside her, he could deny her the sedative.
        Because she might cry out even during sedation and alarm the residents in the apartment below, Jonathan now wadded a rag and stuffed it in her mouth. He sealed her lips with duct tape.
        When he pressed the tape in place, Jenna's eyes fluttered, opened. For a moment she was confused, disoriented-and then not.
        As her eyes widened with terror, Jonathan said, "I know that your kind can't turn off physical pain at will, as we can. So I'll wake you as seldom as possible to get your explanation of what I find inside you."

CHAPTER 65
        
        WITH A SUCTION-ADHERED emergency beacon on the roof above the driver's door, Carson cruised fast on surface streets.
        Struggling to absorb everything she had told him, Michael said, "The guy you saw in Allwine's apartment, he owns a movie theater?"
        "The Luxe."
        "The nutcase who says he's made from parts of criminals and brought alive by lightning-he owns a movie theater? I would have thought a hot-dog stand. A tire-repair shop."
        "Maybe he's not a nutcase."
        "A hamburger joint."
        "Maybe he's what he says he is."
        “A beauty salon."
        "You should've seen what he did with those quarters."
        "I can tie a knot in a cherry stem using my tongue," Michael said, "but that doesn't make me supernatural."
        "I didn't say he was supernatural. He says part of what the lightning brought him that night, in addition to life, was… an understanding of the quantum structure of the universe."
        "What the hell does that mean?"
        "I don't know," she admitted. "But somehow it explains how he makes the coins vanish."
        “Any half-good magician can make a coin vanish, and they're not all wizards of quantum physics."
        "This was more than cheap magic. Anyway, Deucalion said some of their kind are sure to have a strong death wish."
        "Carson-what kind?"
        Instead of answering his question, aware that she must lead him a careful step at a time toward her ultimate revelation, Carson said, “Allwine and his friend were in the library, poring through aberrant psychology texts, trying to understand their anguish."
        "Don't drive so fast."
        Accelerating, Carson said, "So the books weren't pulled off the shelves in a struggle. There wasn't a struggle. That's why the scene was so neat in spite of the apparent violence."
        "Apparent? Allwine's heart was cut out."
        "Hearts. Plural. But he probably asked his friend to kill him."
        '"Hey, pal, do me a favor and cut my heart out?' He couldn't just slit his own wrists, take poison, bore himself to death with multiple viewings of The English Patient?"
        "No. Deucalion said their kind are built to be incapable of suicide."
        With a sigh of frustration, Michael said, "Their kind. Here we go again."
        "The proscription against suicide-it's there in the original diary. I saw it. After the coins, after I started to accept… then Deucalion showed me."
        "Diary? Whose diary?"
        She hesitated.
        "Carson?"
        "This is going to be a real test."
        "What test?"
        "A test of you, me, our partnership here."
        "Don't drive so fast," he cautioned.
        This time, she didn't react to his admonition by accelerating. She didn't slow down, either, but she didn't pump up more speed. A little concession to help win him over.
        "This is weird stuff," she warned.
        "What-I don't have a capacity for weird? I have a fabulous capacity for weird. Whose diary?"
        She took a deep breath. "Victor's diary. Victor Frankenstein." When he stared at her in flabbergasted silence, she said, "Maybe this sounds crazy-"
        "Yeah. Maybe."
        "But I think the legend is true, like Deucalion says.