The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

A frightening sadness had come over him. He wanted her so much. But what right did he have to tell her these things? What right had he to seduce her with "stories" that made it all sound so meaningful when it was perhaps not meaningful - when it was violent and primitive and dark?

Just let me have these moments with her, he mused. Let me just hold her here by this fire, in this small house of simple things, and let this be all right for now.

He drifted off, feeling her heart next to his heart.

An hour must have passed, perhaps more time than that.

He opened his eyes. The forest was at peace, from one border to another.

But something was wrong out there. Something was very wrong. A voice pushed at the layers and layers of muffled sound that surrounded him. A voice rose thin and reedy and desperate.

It was a man screaming for help. Far beyond the forest. He knew the direction. He knew the scent would come.

He carried her to the back of the house and laid her gently in the bed. She woke with a start, rising up on her elbows.

"You,re going."

"I have to go, it,s calling me," he said.

"They,ll catch you. They,re everywhere!" she pleaded. She started to cry. "Listen to me!" she pleaded. "You,ve got to go back up north, to the forests, away from here."

He bent quickly to kiss her.

"You,ll see me again very soon."

She rushed after him but he was halfway across the clearing in a second and he leapt high up into the redwoods and began his swift journey towards the coast road.

Hours later, he stood in a small grove of trees looking out at the great cold Pacific under a lowering silver sky. The moon hung behind those rain clouds. The moon shone through to the tilting, shifting surface of the sea. Oh, if the moon only had a secret, if the moon only held a truth. But the moon was just the moon.

He,d tracked the car in which the man had been imprisoned, descended from the trees onto the roof of it, and when it slowed for a dangerous curve on Highway 1, he had torn the doors open, and dragged the ugly, hardened thieves out into the dark. They,d shot the man,s companion - but kept him alive, bound, gagged, suffocating in the trunk of the car. They,d meant to force him to an automatic teller window, for the few hundred dollars they could get from him, then kill him as they had the other man.

He,d feasted on both of the thieves before he freed the prisoner and left him on the cliff above the sea with the promise that help would soon come. After that, he had roamed the cliffs in the salt wind, letting the gusting rain wash away the blood from his paws, from his mouth, from his chest.

Now it was approaching dawn and he was exhausted and lonely as if he,d never held Laura in his arms.

We all need love, don,t we, even the worst killers, the worst animals! We all need love.

He traveled back fast to where he,d left his Porsche off the Panoramic Highway, and waited there in the glade until the change came on. Again, it surprised him, seemed more amenable to his will. He flexed and forced it to greater and greater speed.

He drove the car into Mill Valley and put up at the charming and beautiful little hotel called the Mill Valley Inn. Best place to hide right on Throckmorton Street in the very center of town. Because now they really would be looking for the Man Wolf in Marin County and he had to see Laura before he went north, perhaps for a long time.

Chapter Seventeen

AROUND NOON, he had just parked downhill from Laura,s house when she suddenly came out, got into an olive-green four-door Jeep, and drove down into the center of town, from which he,d only just come.

She went into a cheerful little cafe, and he saw her take her place at a table inside the front window alone.

He parked, and went inside.

She appeared wrapped in solitude as she sat there, snug in her corduroy coat, her face fresh and lovely as it had been last night. Her hair was tied back again with a black ribbon, and the symmetry of her face was flawless. It was the first time he,d seen her in the light of day.

He sat down opposite her without a word. He was dressed now more like his old self in a halfway-decent khaki jacket and a clean shirt and a tie - clothes he,d bought yesterday - and he,d scrubbed himself in the shower for an hour before checking out of the hotel. His hair was too thick and too long, but it was thoroughly combed.

"Who are you!" she demanded. She set the menu down and glanced angrily towards the back of the restaurant for the waiter.

Reuben didn,t answer. There was no waiter visible in the back of the restaurant just now. Only a couple of other tables were occupied.

"Look, I,m dining here alone," she said politely but firmly. "Now, please go."

Then her face changed. It went from anger and annoyance to thinly concealed alarm. At once her eyes hardened and so did her voice:

"You,re the reporter," she said accusingly. "The one from the Observer."

"Yes."

"What are you doing here?" She had become furious. "What do you want with me?" Her features were transformed into an obdurate mask. Inside, she was roiling with panic.

He leaned forward and he spoke in a warm intimate voice.

"I,m that boy from up north," he said.

"Yes, I know that," she said, not getting the connection. "I know just who you are. Now kindly explain: what do you want with me?"

He reflected for a moment. And again, she looked desperately for a waiter but none was in the main room. She started to get up. "Very well, I,ll have my lunch someplace else," she said. She was trembling.

"Laura, wait."

He reached out for her left hand.

Reluctantly, suspiciously, she sank back down in the chair.

"How do you know my name?"

"I was with you last night," he said softly, "most of the night. I was with you until early morning when I had to go."

He,d never in his life seen anyone so perfectly astonished. She was frozen, staring at him across the table. He could see the blood pounding in her pale cheeks. Her lower lip quivered but she didn,t speak a word.

"Reuben Golding is my name," he went on in a low trusting voice. "It started up there for me, in that house, up north. That,s how it began."

She took a deep ragged breath. The sweat broke out on her forehead and on her upper lip. He could hear her heart pounding. Her face softened and her lips were trembling. The tears rose in her eyes.

"Good heavens," she whispered. She looked at the hand with which he was clasping hers. She looked at his face. She was taking his full measure and he felt it keenly, and the tears almost sprang to his eyes, too. "But who - ? How - ?"