The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

He saw the forest die again, and the rooms shrink and vanish; every visible thing collapsed - and all life winked out for Marchent.

He saw the ra**st,s victim again, running, running towards her life. He saw the entire city take shape around her with myriad scents and sounds and exploding lights; he saw it expand in all directions from her running figure. He saw it tumbling and boiling towards the dark waters of the bay, the distant invisible ocean, the faraway mountains, the rolling clouds. The woman was screaming and reaching for life.

No, he didn,t regret it. Not one bit. Ah, the hubris, the greed of that man as he,d clutched at her throat, as he,d sought to take her life. Ah, the gluttonous arrogance of those two crazed brothers as they sank the knife over and over again into that magnificent living being that had been their sister.

"No, not at all," he whispered.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he was aware that he had never thought of such things before. But observing himself just now was not the point. He was observing them, the others. And he had no regrets at all, only a marvelous calm.

Finally, he got up. He went to wash his face and comb his hair.

Only absently did he glance at his own reflection. But it shocked him. He was Reuben, of course, not the man wolf, but he wasn,t the Reuben he used to be. His hair was fuller, and longer. And he was slightly bigger all over. Whatever he,d become, a factory of alchemical changes, he was different now externally. He housed a crucible that required a more durable body, didn,t he?

Grace had talked about hormones, his body being flooded with hormones. Well, hormones make you grow, don,t they? They lengthen your vocal cords, add inches to your legs, increase the growth of your hair. This involved hormones, all right, but secret hormones, hormones infinitely more complex than the hospital tests had been able to measure. Something had happened to his entire body that was very much like what happens to the erectile tissue of his organ when a man is sexually aroused. It increases marvelously in size, no matter what the man wants to happen. It goes from something flaccid and secret to becoming a kind of weapon.

That,s what had happened to him; he,d increased all over, and all the processes that govern any hormonal change in a man had been greatly accelerated.

Well, Reuben never really understood science. And maybe now he was trying to understand magic. But he sensed the science behind the apparent magic. And this capacity to change, how had he acquired it? Through the saliva of the beast that had bitten him, the creature who might have given him the fatal virus, rabies. The beast had given him this. And was the beast a man wolf such as Reuben had become?

Had the beast heard Marchent,s screams just as Reuben had heard the screams of the rape victim in the alley? Had the beast smelled the evil of Marchent,s brothers?

Of course, it had to be. And he understood for the first time why the beast had released him. The beast had known suddenly that Reuben was no part of the evil that had ended Marchent,s life. The beast knew the scent of innocence as well as evil.

But had the beast meant to pass on its obvious power?

Something in the beast,s saliva had traveled into Reuben,s bloodstream, just as a virus might travel, sought a pathway to his brain, perhaps, to the mysterious pineal gland, perhaps, or the pituitary gland, that little pea-sized thing we all have in our brain that controls what? Hormones?

Hell.

He didn,t really know. These were guesses. If ever in his life he wanted to talk to Grace about "science," it was now, but not a chance. Not a chance!

Grace was not to know about this! Grace must never know. And no one like her must ever know.

Grace had done too many damned tests already.

No one was to know about this.

He had a vivid memory of being strapped to that gurney in Mendocino County as he shouted at those doctors, "Tell me what happened!" No. No one must know because not a single person in this world could be trusted not to incarcerate the thing he,d become, and he had to know infinitely more about what had happened and whether it would happen again and when and how. This was his journey! His darkness.

And up there, somewhere in that redwood forest, was another creature like himself, surely, a beast man who was responsible for what was happening to him. But what if it wasn,t a beast man? What if it was more nearly a beast, and Reuben himself was some hybrid creature?

This was maddening.

He pictured that creature now moving through the darkness of Marchent,s hallway, ravaging those evil brothers with its fangs and claws. And then lifting Reuben in its jaws, ready to do away with him in the same fashion. Then something had stopped it. Reuben wasn,t guilty. No, and the beast had let him go.

But had the beast known what would happen to Reuben?

Again, his own reflection in the mirror startled him, brought him back to the moment.

His skin had this unmistakable luster. Yeah, that was it, it was a luster, as if he,d been rubbed with a tiny bit of oil all over, and the hands that had anointed him with it had polished his cheekbones and jawline and his forehead.

No wonder they,d all been staring at him.

And they didn,t even begin to guess what was happening. How could they? It hit him that all he was doing was guessing himself, that he didn,t know a particle of it, truly. There was so much to find out, so much - .

There was a loud knocking at the door. Someone tried the knob. He heard Phil calling him.

He put on his robe, and went to answer.

"Reuben, son, it,s two o,clock in the afternoon. The Observer,s been calling you for hours."

"Yeah, Dad, I,m sorry," he said. "I,ll go in. Just got to take a shower."

The Observer. That was the last place he wanted to go, damn it. He locked himself in the bathroom, and turned on the hot water.

There was so much else he wanted to do, so much thinking, pondering, and delving.

But he knew it was extremely important to go to work, to get out of this room and out of himself and at least show up for Billie Kale, and for his mother and his father.

But never had he wanted so much to be alone, to be studying, thinking, searching for answers to the mystery that was engulfing him.

Chapter Six

REUBEN DROVE THE PORSCHE too fast on the way to work. The car was always a chained lion in the city. With all his heart, he wanted to be on the road to the Mendocino forest behind Marchent,s house, but he knew it was way too soon for that. There was much more he had to know before he went searching for the monster who had done this to him.

Meanwhile the radio news was filling him in on the Goldenwood school bus kidnapping. No ransom call had been received, and there were still no leads as to who had taken the busload of children or where.