Blackwood walked toward the cylinders, Odessa releasing his jacket. “They are compulsion—addicts to heightened emotion: The moment of death, of ejection, is a sensation such that they seek to repeat it again and again.”

“Dying?” said Odessa.

Blackwood nodded. “Oftentimes, if for whatever reason the death wasn’t satisfying enough, they will leap directly from one corpse into another nearby human, in the hope of intensifying the experience. They gain access most easily to the emotionally conflicted and the mentally unstable…though they can take advantage of any situation with the element of surprise. They are wily, cunning creatures who will exploit any opportunity.”

She watched them turning in circles, plagued by the roosters. Odessa said, “I don’t know if I can believe what I’m seeing.”

“Hollow Ones are mortally afraid of only one thing, and that is roosters—black capons—virgin capons. Interestingly, they love to eat boiled eggs. We have to keep them separated at all times. Together, they could achieve great destructive power, a mass casualty event.”

Odessa saw now that the fourth cylinder, the one farthest away from her, was empty. “Where’s the…?”

“Ah, yes. Over the years, I have caught and captured three. The fourth receptacle awaits the last of them. The last of the last—born at the end. The hungriest.”

Odessa watched the creatures jerk away from the small roosters, screeching. “And you think the fourth one is…?”

“Is free, raising havoc—yes. Rode the disgraced governor’s aide in the airplane trip over the island of Manhattan, crashing and slaying his own family. Rode the town supervisor in the office massacre on Long Island.”

Odessa realized now, having not put it together before: “Both political figures.”

“Yes, I thought of that. The Hollow Ones’ only weakness, other than their fear of the black capons, is their random nature. They embrace the thrill of death and all its chaos without any regard for the circumstances, careening from one tragic catastrophe to another. But if they were focused somehow…say, directed to inhabit persons in positions of power…you could imagine what would happen…”

Odessa shook her head. “How did you catch them?”

“Different situations, different eras. Their inconsistency of behavior has served them well in that regard. But now the fourth—the elusive fourth—appears to have established itself, of all places, in the New York–New Jersey region.”

Joachim wandered over to the cylinders, standing inside the implied diamond. He knocked on one of the hard, clear polymer containers, startling the Hollow One trapped inside. It immediately attacked, pressing its concentric-circled mouth against the Plexiglas. A fat, pale tongue rotated hungrily, slowly, streaking saliva all over it.

Blackwood said, “Joachim watches over them here—their jailer, you might say. If they ever get free, it would be, well—something mankind has not experienced for a while.”

“Then…why keep them here?” said Odessa. “Why keep them alive?”