The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

"Jimmy, stop."

"You expect me to give you absolution for - ."

"I didn,t come for absolution. You know that. I came for this to be secret! You can,t share this with anyone, Jim. You,ve made that promise to God, not just to me."

"That,s true, but you must do as I tell you. You must go to Mom and explain all this. Look, let Mom run tests, let her figure out what the physical components of this thing are, how or why it,s happening. Mom,s been contacted by some specialist from Paris, some Russian doctor, really bizarre name, Jaska, I think, but this doctor claims to have seen other cases, cases in which strange things have happened. Reuben, this is not the first time - ."

"Not on your life."

"We don,t live in the Dark Ages, Reuben. We,re not roaming around nineteenth-century London! Mom is the perfect person to shed real light on - ."

"Are you serious? You think Mom is going to set up a Frankenstein-style lab with this Jaska guy and research this little project on her own? Will they get a humpbacked helper named Igor to run the MRIs and mix the chemicals? You think she,s going to strap me to an iron chair when the sun sets so I can froth and roar in a little prison cell? You,re dreaming. One word to Mom and I,m finished, Jim. She,ll have to call in the finest scientific minds of her generation, the Paris specialist be damned. That,s the way she,s made. That,s what the world would expect of her, that she,ll get on the phone to the NIH. And in the meantime, she,d seek with all her power to confine me so I couldn,t ,harm, anyone else and that would be the end, Jim. The end. Or the beginning of Reuben,s life as an experimental animal under lock and key and government supervision. How long do you think it would be before I disappeared completely into some government facility? She couldn,t stop that from happening.

"Let me tell you what happened to me when I entered that Buena Vista house two nights ago. The woman shot me. Jim, the wound had vanished by morning. There,s nothing wrong with my shoulder where the bullet passed through. Nothing.

"Jim, they,d be drawing my blood day in and day out for the rest of my life, trying to isolate what gave me that kind of recuperative power. They,d biopsy every organ I,ve got. They,d biopsy my brain, if nobody stopped them. They,d be studying me with every instrument known to man to figure out how and why I change into this thing, and what hormones or chemicals govern my increase in size, the descent of the fangs and the claws, the rapid production of wolf-hair, the increase in muscular strength and aggression. They,ll seek to trigger the change and control it. They,ll catch on soon enough that what,s happening to me has implications not only for longevity but for national defense - that if they can breed a corps of elite wolf soldiers they,ll have a powerful tool for guerrilla warfare in places around the globe where conventional weapons are useless."

"All right. Stop. You,ve thought this through."

"Oh, yes, absolutely," Reuben said. "I,ve been lying in a motel room all day, listening to the news, and thinking about nothing else. I,ve been thinking about the hostages in the jungles of Colombia, and how easy it might be for me to get to them. I,ve been thinking about - everything. But not as clearly as I,m thinking it through now." He hesitated. His voice broke. "You don,t know what it means to talk about it with you, Jim. But let,s really talk about it; I mean let,s really face what,s happening to me."

"There,s got to be somebody, somebody you can trust," said Jim. "Someone who can study this without jeopardizing you."

"Jimmy, there just isn,t. That,s why the werewolf movies end the way they do, with a silver bullet."

"Is that realistic? Can a silver bullet kill you?"

Reuben laughed under his breath.

"I have no idea," he said. "Probably not. I do know a knife or an ordinary bullet doesn,t work. I know that much. You know, there could be something very simple that could kill me. Some toxin. Who knows?"

"All right. I understand. I understand why you can,t trust Mom. I get it. Frankly, I think Mom could be persuaded to keep this secret because she loves you, Little Boy, and she,s your mom. But I could be wrong, very wrong. It would ... it would drive Mom right over the edge, that much is certain, no matter what she decided to do."

"That,s another thing, isn,t it?" Reuben said. "Protecting those I love from this secret because of what it will do to their minds and their lives."

That,s why I want to get out of here and find Laura in that Marin forest again. That,s why I want so much to be in her arms because for whatever reason, she just wasn,t afraid, wasn,t repelled. In fact, she held me, she let me hold her....

Some thoughts for the confessional.

"There,s this woman," he said. "I don,t really even know who she is. I did some Internet searching. I think I know who she is, but the point is, I came on her unexpectedly and I lay with her."

" ,Lay with her,, you sound like the Bible. You mean you had sex with her?"

"Yeah, only I like to think of it as ,lay, because it was, as they say, you know, the old cliche, beautiful."

"Oh, this is great. Look, you can,t handle this on your own. You can,t handle the power, and from what you,re telling me you can,t handle the loneliness."

"And who is going to handle it with me?"

"I,m trying," Jim said.

"I know."

"You have to get someplace safe for the night, now. They,re out everywhere searching for you. They think you,re a madman dressed like a wolf, that,s what they think."

"They don,t know anything."

"Oh, yeah, they do. They expedited the DNA evidence from the saliva left on your victims. What if they find out it,s human DNA and that it,s mutated? What if they find unusual sequences in the DNA?"

"I don,t understand those things," said Reuben.

"They,re having problems with the tests, problems they don,t want the public to know about. But that could mean they,re making more sophisticated tests. Celeste says they think the evidence is being manipulated in some way."

"What do you mean?"

"The Man Wolf,s playing tricks with them, planting bizarre evidence at the scenes of the crimes."

"That,s ridiculous. They should have been there!"

"And they are connecting these attacks with Mendocino. Mom,s connecting it to Mendocino. Mom,s pushing for more tests on those dead junkies. They,re going over everything."

"So you mean they,ll figure out that it,s different DNA up there, and that they have two man wolves roaming the world."