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as if they were men, and the boys ate it all up like hungry little piggies crowding at the trough. And when they were vomiting drunk, they paired off and staggered away to finish what they’d begun, graceless and bestial.
    He shook himself. Where they had chosen debasement, he had stayed pure.
    He thought about the day before, coming back to his factory, her dried blood crusted on his white skin like lichen, rust red over gooseflesh. He had smeared her blood right up to his neck, had walked home in the rain, head bowed into the scarf that concealed it, half delirious from the scent.
    Home and naked, he knelt on his mattress, holding the whip Precious Blood
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    to his nostrils, the blood in the braided leather of the coiled whip clotted, but glossy and still damp.
    He had knelt there, swaying slightly as he drew in her scent fully. The cold, the mortification of the cold, made it richer, intensified his sense of smell. The aroma of her suffering rose into his head in a vast crimson wave, filling him, expanding inside him. He was back there in the room, watching her flesh twitch with each stroke, watching her eyelids flutter, remembering how her life had ebbed away with one final convulsive gasp as she’d stopped breathing.
    He’d worried he’d given her too much Fentanyl, that she’d be dead before he really got to work. But she’d been alive, and when he drove the first bolt through her feet and her limbs had stirred feebly, he’d rejoiced.
    He’d taken the Polaroids from the box and set them neatly before him. Desire grew in him as he remembered the dry smoke of warming metal, the pop of each flash, that instant tungsten glare washing the girl’s skin white under the red, freezing her shuddering chest as she was dying. The later photographs were best, the ones after he’d realized that her mouth would look prettier open.
    Oh, God—how right he had been . . .
    As he approached Newtown Creek, fences and factory walls blocked the path along the waterfront. He cut back and forth, running inland in front of the factories, then a few blocks north until he could get back to the water, working toward Pulaski Bridge, a shadow in the mist ahead.
    Running helped him focus. While he ran, he made his plans. But today his concentration was poor. Because last night, he had been seen. Ana de Jong had seen him, hard and slick with blood, revealed in his true, exalted state. Had she felt the energy? It burned through him like a glowing halo, an intense white light radiating off his skin. When he’d looked down at her from the window, she’d seen him and gasped! He’d felt his body flooding the night with light.
    Ana had seen what no other living soul had witnessed, 58
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    seen his power manifested in its purest form. By now, she’d know what had happened to her friend, know how he had fed upon her, how he’d transformed her. And she’d seen his own transformation, the majestic spirit that rose inside him when he killed, its mighty arms stretched wide and grasping.
    Lost in his thoughts, he’d passed Pulaski Bridge. He had to concentrate; she was disturbing his focus, and he couldn’t let that happen. Wednesday night was fast approaching. Ana had interrupted him, stopped the Work before he had done much more than prepare the main elements. On Wednesday, he’d take his time. He was learning, getting better. On Wednesday, there’d be no interruptions, and he’d finish the Work properly. There were a few more elements he needed, a couple of errands to run, but he was almost ready to begin her transformation.
    And she would be very beautiful indeed.
    Roggetti had the radio in the Crown Vic on 1010 WINS; every twenty minutes the station was recycling its coverage of the murder. They were waiting while Rad and Ana met with Internal Affairs—it seemed kind of cloak-and-dagger to Jenner, the anonymous apartment in the nondescript housing projects on the edge of Chinatown, kept by the bureau for meetings