Free By the Light of the Moon by Dean Koontz Page B

Jack the Ripper?”
    “Where’s the proof you aren’t?”
    “And a rapist?”
    “Unlike me, you
could
be,” she observed.
    “So I’m a raping, killing itinerant artist.”
    “Is that a confession?”
    “What do you do—drum up business for psychiatrists? You go around all the time making people crazy so the shrinks will always have business?”
    “I’m a comedian,” she declared.
    “You’re amazingly unfunny for a comedian.”
    She bristled as obviously as a porcupine. “You’ve never seen me perform.”
    “I’d rather eat nails.”
    “Judging by your teeth, you’ve eaten enough to build a house.”
    He flinched from the insult. “That’s unfair. I’ve got nice teeth.”
    “You’re a heckler. Anything’s fair with hecklers. Hecklers are lower than worms.”
    “Get out of my truck,” he demanded.
    “I’m not in your truck.”
    “Then get into it so I can drag you out.”
    Scorn as dry as old bones and as thick as blood lent a dangerous new texture to her voice: “Do you have issues with people like me?”
    “People like you? What is that—crazy people? Unfunny comedians? Women who have unnatural relationships with plants?”
    Her scowl was storm-cloud dark. “I want my bags back.”
    “Delighted,” he assured her, at once heading for the back of the Expedition. “And how fitting—bags for the bag.”
    Following him, carrying Fred, she said, “I’ve been hanging out with grown men too long. I’ve forgotten how delectable the wit of twelve-year-old boys can be.”
    That stung. Raising the tailgate, he glared at her. “You can’t begin to imagine how much I wish right now I
was
a serial killer.”
    “Were,” she said.
    “What?”
    “You wish you
were
a serial killer. In English grammar, when a statement is in obvious contradiction to reality, the subjunctive mood requires a plural verb after a singular noun or pronoun in conditional clauses beginning with
if,
but also in subordinate clauses following verbs like
wish
.”
    Working up a mouthful of sarcasm, Dylan spat out his reply: “No shit?”
    “None whatsoever,” she assured him.
    “Yeah, well, I’m a semiarticulate, visually oriented artist,” he reminded her as he removed her suitcase from the Expedition and put it down hard on the pavement. “I’m no more than half a step above a barbarian, one step above a monkey.”
    “Another thing—”
    “I knew there would be.”
    “If you put your mind to it, I’m sure you’ll be able to think of plenty of acceptable synonyms for
feces.
I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t use crude language around me.”
    Plucking her train case out of the cargo space, Dylan said, “I don’t intend to use much more language of any kind around you, lady. Thirty seconds from now, you’ll be a dwindling speck in my rearview mirror, and the instant you’re out of sight, I’ll forget you ever existed.”
    “Fat chance. Men don’t forget me easily.”
    He dropped her train case, not actually aiming for her foot, but characteristically hopeful. “Hey, you know, I stand corrected. You’re absolutely right. You are every bit as unforgettable as a bullet in the chest.”
    An explosion shook the night. Motel windows rattled, and the aluminum awning over the walkway thrummed softly as pressure waves traveled through it.
    Dylan felt the shock of the blast in the blacktop under his feet, as if a fossilized
Tyrannosaurus rex
in deep rock strata were stirring in its eternal sleep, and he saw the dragon’s breath of fire in the east-southeast, toward the front of the motel.
    “Show time,” said Jillian Jackson.

Chapter Ten
    E VEN AS THE DRAGON TURNED OVER DEEP IN THE earth and as the echo of its roar continued to wake motel guests, Dylan returned Jillian Jackson’s two pieces of luggage to the cargo space in the Expedition. Before he quite realized what he was doing, he’d closed the tailgate.
    By the time he climbed in behind the steering wheel, his feisty passenger was in the seat beside