She was reaching for the doors when a moanlike cry shocked her. He drove at the shed doors—at her—attacking from within. Only the staked chain jerked him back, strangling an animal roar in his throat. But as the doors burst open, she saw—before her own scream, before she slammed the doors on him like shutters on a ferocious hurricane—her husband crouched in the dirt, naked but for the dog collar tight around his straining neck, his mouth black and open. He had torn away most of his hair just as he had torn off his clothes, his pale, blue-veined body filthy from sleeping—hiding—beneath the dirt like a dead thing that had burrowed into its own grave. He bared his bloodstained teeth, eyes rolling back inside his head, recoiling from the sun. A demon. She wound the chain back through the handles with wildly fluttering hands and fastened the lock, then turned and fled back into her house.

Vestry Street, Tribeca

THE LIMOUSINE took Gabriel Bolivar straight to his personal physician’s office in a building with an underground garage. Dr. Ronald Box was the primary physician for many New York–based celebrities of film, television, and music. He was not a Rock Doc, or a Dr. Feelgood, a pure prescription-writing machine—although he was liberal with his electronic pen. He was a trained internist, and well versed in drug-rehabilitation centers, the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, hepatitis C, and other fame-related maladies.

Bolivar went up the elevator in a wheelchair, clad only in a black robe, sunk into himself like an old man. His long, silken black hair had gone dry and was falling out in patches. He covered his face with thin, arthriticlike hands so that none would recognize him. His throat was so swollen and raw that he could barely speak.

Dr. Box saw him right away. He was looking through images transferred electronically from the clinic. The images came with a note of apology from the head clinician, who saw only the results and not the patient, promising to repair their machines and suggesting another round of tests in a day or two. But, looking at Bolivar, Dr. Box didn’t think it was their equipment that was corrupt. He went over Bolivar with his stethoscope, listening to his heart, asking him to breathe. He tried to look into Bolivar’s throat, but the patient declined, wordlessly, his black-red eyes glaring in pain.

“How long have you had those contact lenses in?” asked Dr. Box.

Bolivar’s mouth curled into a jagged snarl and he shook his head.