The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

"And did they really just beat her to death, poor little girl!"

He felt the tingling all over the surface of his skin, as sweet and pervasive as the revulsion.

"Well, we,re off now, we have to get back to San Francisco...." But that wasn,t where they were going!

He went to the edge of the little thicket in which he,d been hiding. He saw the two young men - Princeton haircuts, blue blazers - waving good-bye cheerily to their reporter comrades.

They were hurrying across the parking lot towards a waiting Land Rover with its lights on. Driver inside anxious, scared out of his wits, Will you come on!

It was all a matter of sharp ugly musical sounds to him, the snickering, boasting. The syllables were almost unimportant. How they were wallowing in the excitement, the intrigue, as they piled into the car. The driver was a sniveling coward without a particle of empathy for the victims. He could smell that too.

He sped around the periphery of the parking lot, easily picking up their trail as they headed towards the coast.

He had no need to see their taillights; he could hear every word of their ugly banter. No one knows shit!

The driver was near hysterical. He didn,t like this, he wished to God he,d never got into it. He was stammering that he wasn,t going back there, no matter what they said. That was just nuts, driving up there, and mingling with the reporters. The other two ignored him, congratulating each other on a triumph.

The scent was in the wind and the scent was strong.

On through the night Reuben followed them. The conversation had turned to technicalities. Should they dump the body now tonight on the Muir Woods Road or wait a few hours, maybe closer to dawn?

The body; Reuben caught the scent of it; they had it in the car with them. Another child. His vision sharpened; he saw them up ahead in the blackness, saw the silhouette of one laughing young man against the back window; caught the frantic curses of the driver who struggled to see through the rain.

"I,m telling you Muir Woods Road is too damn close," said the driver. "You,re pushing it, just pushing it."

"Hell, the closer the better. Don,t you see the perfection of it? We should dump it across the street from the house." Laughter.

Reuben brought the car up closer, caught the scent so thick he could scarce breathe. And the smell of decomposition. It made him gag.

His skin was crawling with sensation. He felt the spasms in his chest, the riot of pleasurable feeling in his scalp. The hair was coming slowly all over his body. It felt like loving hands were everywhere stroking him, coaxing the power.

The Land Rover picked up speed.

"Look, we,ll give them till five a.m. If they haven,t responded by then by e-mail, we dump the body. It will make it seem like we just killed him."

So it was a little boy.

"And if there,s nothing by noon, I say we dump the teacher with the long hair."

Good God, were they all already dead?

No, that wasn,t possible. They just weren,t making any distinction between the living and the dead because they were planning to kill all of them.

On he drove as his rage mounted.

He was sitting higher in the seat, and his hands were covered in hair. Hold on, hold on tight. His fingers were retaining their shape. But the mane had come down around his shoulders, and his vision was growing ever sharper, clearer. He felt he could hear every single sound for miles.

The car seemed to be driving itself.

The Land Rover made a sharp turn up ahead. They were cruising now into the deeply wooded town of Mill Valley, following a winding road.

Reuben dropped back.

Then another chorus of sounds flooded his ears.

It was the children, the children crying, and sobbing, and the women,s voices crooning to them, singing, comforting them. They were in an airless place. Some of them were coughing, others moaning. He had a sense of utter darkness. He was almost there!

The Land Rover again picked up speed and turned down a neglected dirt road. The trees swallowed the red taillights.

Reuben knew exactly where the children were. He could feel it.

He pulled the Porsche over into a thicket of oaks on a bluff quite high above the deep valley into which the Land Rover had gone.

He got out of the car, and stripped off the awkward uncomfortable clothes and boots. The change had now taken full possession of him, with the inevitable wash of ecstasy.

He had to force himself to hide the clothing inside the car, but he knew that was essential, just as it was to lock the car, and hide the key in the roots of the nearby tree.

The Land Rover was way down there, just turning into the grassy clearing before a large impressive house with sprawling decks off each of its three well-lighted stories. Beside the house, and to the rear of the property, shrouded by trees, stood an old vine-covered barn.

The children and the teachers were in the barn.

The mingled voices of the kidnappers rose like smoke to his nostrils.

Down the slope he bounded, covering the yards and yards between him and his victims, leaping from one tree after another, passing one small sleeping hillside house after another, until he landed in the clearing just as the young men were entering the house.

The place glowed like a wedding cake beyond them against the night.

A roar came out of Reuben before he willed it, ripping from his chest and his throat. That anything but a beast could roar like that was impossible.

All three of the young men turned in the vestibule of the house, and saw him plainly rush towards them. They were nineteen, maybe twenty years old. Their screams were lost in the sounds of his own growls. One man fell down but the other two - the crafty ones, the exultant ones - turned to run.

He caught the first man easily and ripped his neck open, watching the blood spurt. With all his soul, he wanted to devour the man, to close his jaws on his flesh, but there was no time. He lifted the broken body, squeezing it greedily in his paws, and then relinquished it, heaving it far away from him, out towards the distant road.

Oh, too little, too quick!

With a flying leap, he caught the other two struggling to get out of the back door which was apparently locked. One of them was clawing hysterically at the glass.

The other had a gun. Reuben caught it, clearly breaking the man,s wrist as he wrenched it from the man and cast it aside.

He was going to close his jaws on this one; he couldn,t stop himself, he had to do it. He was so hungry for it! And why not, because he would never never allow this man to live.

He couldn,t stop his ravening growls as his teeth sank into the man,s skull and throat. He clamped down as hard as he could, and felt the bones crack. He heard them crack. A whine came out of the dying man.