They went through a doorway on Forty-third Street, down a gray-painted hall disfigured with graffiti, up some low stairs to a damp-smelling lobby. A black man slumped in a broken chair. John put the ten dollars in his open hand.

They went up a steeper staircase. She stopped before a tall wooden door. The room was tiny: a dresser, a folding chair and a lamp with a melted plastic shade. The bed was a mattress on the floor with a wadded yellow sheet on it. “The laundry ain’t been in this early,” the girl muttered. “Get your clothes off, we got ten minutes for ten bucks, that’s house.”

Blaylock took off his hat. Even though the room was deep in shadow, its window overlooking an air-shaft, the girl could see enough of him to be startled.

“You got somethin’, man?”

“I’m well. Just thin.”

She moved slowly away. “What’s the matter with you?”

He took his scalpel out of his pocket. The girl was grimacing as if in pain, backing toward the window. “Come on, honey,” John said. “You belong to me.”

Her good eye widened, the good side of her mouth twisted. Her hands came fluttering up to her neck. From her mouth there was a sort of barking sound, midway between terror and madness. When her back touched the wall she crouched down, bark bark bark, like a whispering dog. The eye kept looking around and around, unable to focus on the face before her.

John raised his scalpel with swift expertise and plunged it in behind her collarbone. It popped through the viscera and just touched the artery. In an instant he was upon her.

At last. This.

He felt life filling him again, purple and rich. He knew he could now walk the streets without attracting attention, no more decayed than any other old man. In the past he had felt the hunger perhaps once a week. Since this—whatever it was—degenerative disease started, his need had risen and risen. When would he be hunting again? Six hours? One?

Now the Samsonite briefcase came into use. Inside was half a gallon of naphtha and some simple incendiary materials. He laid the girl—so light—on the bed and soaked her with naphtha. Then he put an ashtray full of butts beside her. Carefully, he poured potassium permanganate crystals into a matchbox and soaked them in glycerine. In three or four minutes spontaneous combustion would cause the potassium to catch fire and explode the naphtha.

After placing the matchbox in the ashtray, he left.

The fire would be a furious one. Ten minutes from now only bones would be left. If the fire went much beyond that everything would be destroyed.