By the Light of the Moon by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online Page B

she hadn’t been able to bury in his bottom, but her gorge kept trying to rise.
    “Your only hope,” he said, “is to get out of the search area before you’re detained and forced to have a blood test.”
    The chicken sandwich struggled within her as though it retained some of its chicken consciousness, as though the fowl were attempting to take a first messy step toward reconstitution.
    Nevertheless, Jilly managed to speak, and she was at once embarrassed by the insult that escaped her, which would have been lame even if she had pronounced it without confusion: “Siss my kass.”
    In comedy clubs, she frequently dealt with hecklers, cracked their thick skulls, wrung their geek necks, stomped their malicious hearts till they cried for Mama—metaphorically speaking, of course—using a dazzle of words as effective as the fists of Muhammad Ali in his prime. In postanesthesia disorientation, however, she was about as witheringly funny as chipotle mayonnaise, which right now was the least amusing substance in the known universe.
    “As attractive as you are,” he said, “I’m sure someone’ll look after you.”
    “Pupid srick,” she said, further mortified by the utter collapse of her once formidable verbal war machine.
    “In the days ahead, you’d be best advised to keep your mouth shut about what happened here—”
    “Cupid strick,” she corrected herself, only to realize that she had found a new way to mangle the same insult.
    “—keep your head down—”
    “Stupid prick,” she said with clarity this time, although the epithet had actually sounded more withering when mispronounced.
    “—and never speak to anyone about what’s happened to you, because as soon as it’s known, you’ll be a target.”
    She almost spat the word at him,
“Hickdead,”
though such crude language, whether or not properly pronounced and clearly enunciated, was not her usual style.
    “Good luck,” he said, and then he left with his Coke and his peanuts and his evil dreamy smile.

Chapter Seven
    H AVING CUT HIMSELF LOOSE FROM THE CHAIR, having taken a quick piddle—deedle-doodle-diddle—Dylan returned from the bathroom and discovered that Shep had risen from the desk and had turned his back on the unfinished Shinto temple. Once he began to obsess on a puzzle, Shep could be lured from it neither with promises nor with rewards, nor by force, until he plugged in the final piece. Yet now, standing near the foot of the bed, staring intently at the empty air as though he perceived something of substance in it, he whispered not to Dylan, apparently not to himself, either, but as if to a phantom visible only to him:
“By the light of the moon.”
    During most of his waking hours, Shepherd radiated strangeness as reliably as a candle gave forth light. Dylan had grown accustomed to living in that aura of brotherly weirdness. He had been Shep’s legal guardian for more than a decade, since their mother’s untimely death when Shep was ten, two days before Dylan turned nineteen. After all this time, he could not easily be surprised by Shep’s words or actions, as once he had been. Likewise, in his youth he had sometimes found Shep’s behavior creepy rather than merely peculiar, but for many years, his afflicted brother had done nothing to chill the nape of Dylan’s neck—until now.
    “By the light of the moon.”
    Shepherd’s posture remained as stiff and awkward as always, but his current edginess wasn’t characteristic. Though usually as smooth as the serene brow of Buddha, his forehead furrowed. His face gave itself to a ferocity he’d never exhibited before. He squinted at the apparition that only he could see, chewing on his lower lip, looking angry and worried. His hands cramped into fists at his sides, and he seemed to want to punch someone, though never before had Shepherd O’Conner raised a hand in anger.
    “Shep, what’s wrong?”
    If the lunatic physician with a hypodermic syringe could be believed, they had to