The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

He made a quick call to Celeste. "Sunshine Boy," she said, "where the hell have you been? The town,s forgotten about the children. It,s Werewolf Fever. If one more person asks me, ,What does your boyfriend have to say about this?, I,m going to cut out of here and barricade myself in my apartment." She went on and on about the "crackpot" woman from North Beach who thought she,d been saved by a combination of Lon Chaney Jr. and the Abominable Snowman.

Billie was texting him, "Get in here."

He could hear the mingled voices of the city room before he got out of the elevator. He made straight for Billie,s office.

He recognized the woman sitting in front of Billie,s desk. But for a moment he couldn,t place her. At the same time there was a scent in the room that was distinctly familiar and connected to something out of the ordinary, but what? It was a good scent. The scent of the woman, of course. And he could detect Billie,s scent, too. Quite distinctive. In fact, he was picking up all kinds of scents. He could smell coffee and popcorn the way he,d never smelled them before. He was even picking up the scents from the nearby bathrooms, and they weren,t particularly unpleasant!

So it,s going to be like this, he figured. I,m going to pick up scents like a wolf, and sounds, too, no doubt.

The woman was petite, brunette, and crying. She was dressed in a light wool suit, with her neck covered by a tightly wound silk scarf. One eye was swollen shut.

"Thank God you,re here," she said the minute she saw Reuben. He smiled as he always did.

She immediately grabbed for his left hand, and almost pulled him down in the chair next to her. Her eyes welled with tears.

Good God, it,s the woman from the alleyway.

Billie,s words came as if from a blast furnace.

"Well, you took your sweet time getting in here, and Ms. Susan Larson here doesn,t want to talk to anyone else but you. Small wonder, isn,t it, with the entire city making fun of her."

She threw the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle at him. "That,s the extra that hit the streets while you were getting your beauty sleep, Reuben. ,Woman Saved by Wolf Man., CNN went with ,Mysterious Beast Attacks Rapist in San Francisco Alleyway., This went viral right after noon. We,re getting calls from Japan!"

"Can you start at the beginning?" Reuben said. But he understood only too well.

" ,The beginning,?" Billie demanded. "What,s with you, Reuben? We,ve got a busload of kids missing, and a blue-eyed beast creature stalking the back alleys of North Beach, and you ask me to start from the beginning?"

"I,m not insane," said the woman. "I saw what I saw. Just like you saw it up there in Mendocino County. I read your description of what happened to you!"

"But I didn,t see anything up there," said Reuben. He hated this. Was he going to try to make her think she was crazy?

"It was the way you described it!" the woman said. Her voice was thin and hysterical. "The panting, the snarls, the sound of the thing. But it wasn,t an animal. I saw it. It was a beast man, all right. I know what I saw." She moved to the edge of the chair, and stared into his eyes. "I,m not talking to anybody but you," she said. "I,m sick of being laughed at and made fun of. ,Woman Rescued by Yeti!, How dare they make this into a joke."

"Take her into the conference room and get the whole story," said Billie. "I want your view on this from start to finish. I want the details the rest of the press has been all too happy to miss."

"I,ve been offered money for this interview," broke in Ms. Larson. "I turned it down to come to you."

"Just hold it here, Billie," said Reuben. He held Ms. Larson,s hand as warmly as he could. "I,m not the person to do this story and you know perfectly well why. It,s been two weeks since that disaster in Mendocino, and you,re expecting me to cover another animal attack - ."

"You,re damn right I am," said Billie. "Who else? Look, everybody,s been calling you, Reuben. The networks, the cable news - the New York Times, for heaven,s sakes! They want your comment. Is this the beast from Mendocino? And if you don,t think the people from Mendocino have been calling, well, you have another think coming. Now you,re telling me you won,t cover this for us."

" ,Us, should have a little loyalty here, Billie," Reuben shot back. "I,m not ready to - ."

"Mr. Golding, please, I,m asking you to listen to me," said the woman. "Don,t you understand what this is like? I was nearly killed last night. This thing saved me, and now I,m an international joke for describing what I saw."

Reuben went speechless. The blood was pounding in his face. Where the hell are Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen? He was saved by Billie,s phone. She listened attentively for fifteen seconds, grunted, and clicked it off. He heard the words too.

"Well, the coroner,s office has confirmed it was an animal, all right, canine or lupine, but an animal. That much is out of the way."

"What about hair or fur?" Reuben asked.

"It wasn,t an animal," the woman protested. She was almost screaming. "I,m telling you, it had a face, a human face, and it spoke to me. It spoke words! It tried to help me. It touched me. It was gentling me! Stop saying it was an animal."

Billie got up and beckoned for them to follow.

The conference room was windowless, sterile, with an oval mahogany table and several scattered Chippendale chairs. The two television monitors near the ceiling were flashing CNN and Fox silently with flowing captions.

Suddenly a lurid painting of a werewolf, comic-book style, filled up one screen.

Reuben flinched.

In a flash he saw that hallway in Marchent,s house, this time illuminated by his imagination, and the beast man there, descending on those two men who,d been trying to kill him.

He covered his eyes, and Billie grabbed at his wrist, "Wake up, Reuben," she said. She turned to the young woman. "Sit down here and tell Reuben everything you remember." She was hollering at her assistant, Althea, to bring some coffee.

The woman put her face in her hands and cried.

Reuben felt a rising panic. He moved in closer to the woman and put his arm around her. One of the monitors was running a clip from the Lon Chaney Jr. Wolf Man. And there suddenly was the first panoramic shot of Nideck Point that he,d ever seen on the television screen - his house with its peaked gables and diamond-pane windows.

"No, no," said the woman, "not like that. Can you make them turn that thing off? He didn,t look like Lon Chaney and he didn,t look like Michael J. Fox!"