Devoted(111)

“I’d love to watch them kill you,” she said. “Give me any excuse, and I’ll tell them to tear you apart.”

“I have a Taser and an aerosol can of chloroform,” Rodchenko revealed, as he dropped his weapon, eager to curry favor with this queen of canines. “So does each of the other guys.”





122



The Tiburon house. In the third and deepest of the panic rooms, the one Dorian now understood that he’d created with a subconscious desire to indulge in a level of sexual freedom that society was not yet advanced enough to permit, he had finished his chocolate vodka. He’d been sitting on the floor, in a corner of the windowless room, fantasizing about what desires could be fulfilled here, until the ice in the glass had melted and he had drunk that, too.



He wasn’t concerned about events in Springville or Pinehaven. Every crisis would be resolved, just as every past crisis had been extinguished. To ensure success, one had only to understand how the world worked: Nature set the only rules that mattered. There were predators and prey, and the losers were the weak, both the prey who could not or would not protect themselves and those predators who were incapable of fully embracing the fact that the only virtue was winning and the only vice was losing.

Some people said the arc of history led to justice, but that was foolishness. There was no justice, or very little. The word was too political to have an enduring meaning; the definition of justice was continuously changing. Those who fancied themselves champions of justice always had a price—money or prestige, or the adoration of crowds, or self-esteem—and when Dorian got them what they wanted, every one of them traded his or her cause for the price paid.

Truth was something else again. If ever a large number of people became hell-bent on knowing the truth of things, not merely a few stiff-necked crusaders but a majority of humanity, then he’d be in trouble. Never going to happen.

Because the purpose of the Tiburon house was self-indulgence, he decided to have another drink. This time he’d mix vanilla-and orange-flavored vodkas to make an adult Creamsicle.

He left the hidden room, swung shut the eight-hundred-pound door, departed the vestibule, closed the bookcase door, and climbed the stairs to the ground floor.



To his right, at the entrance to the hidden corridor behind the library, stood the door disguised as a wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling framed mirror on both sides. It was open. He was surprised, because his habit had always been to close every door behind him, even when it was in an already secret space like this.

He stepped into the corridor and clicked the big mirror into place and went to the door that was a bookcase on the farther side.

He said, “Ochus Bochus,” and it opened, and he went into his library, where the words “Hoc est corpus meum” caused the pivot-hinged section of shelves to arc back into place, making a seamless wall of books.

Cool. He would never tire of this house.

In the kitchen, as he stood at the white quartzite island with two bottles of vodka, pouring vanilla and orange in equal measure over ice, he smelled something different from either. Although it was an unpleasant odor, it was even stranger than it was offensive, not chemical in nature, neither suggestive of rot nor ordure. He was reminded somewhat of the peculiar smell in the library, although this was stronger.

He circled the immense kitchen, trying to locate the source, opening cabinets, but the scent proved elusive, coming and going. When he arrived at the walk-in pantry, he hesitated to open the door, wondering if he might find a dead rat.

No. Impossible. The house was too soundly built ever to be vulnerable to rodents.



He opened the door, and the pantry light came on automatically. At first, the malodor was stronger in this enclosed space. But it quickly dissipated, as though the cause was no longer present. He scanned the shelves of foodstuffs, but he could see nothing amiss.

Now the odor relented, and he could smell nothing unusual.

He shrugged and returned to the island and finished making his adult Creamsicle.





123



Lightning flared around the edges of the draperies. Thunder rolled and rain drummed.

It had been quite a day. Evening was coming.

Kipp was not jealous of the other dogs.

Woody remained in the living room, where three of the four killers were restrained with zip ties.

The boy wasn’t interested in the killers.

He was having fun with all the dogs.

Having fun with them and talking with them telepathically.

All the dogs loved Woody and were fascinated by him.

The first human on the Wire.

In a state of excitement and relief, the visiting Mysterians and their human companions were mingling throughout the downstairs.



Everywhere but here in the study.

In the study, Rodchenko was spilling his guts to Ben, Megan, Carson, and Rosa.

Kipp sat close to the thug, staring hard at him, now and then growling and baring his teeth.

Sweating as if the study were a sauna, Rodchenko was afraid that Kipp would bite off his man package.

Apparently, another dog had once tried to do this.

No doubt with good cause.

Rodchenko was willing to tell everything without the drugs.

However, Ben didn’t trust him.

Aware of the proper dosages of thiopental and the Russian drug cocktail, Ben administered them.