The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

Finally he began.

After passing over the cases to date in some choice detail, Reuben went on to write:

Our way - the Western Way - has always been a "work in progress." Questions of life and death, good and evil, justice and tragedy - these are never definitively settled, but must be addressed again and again as personal and public worlds shift and change. We hold our morals to be absolutes, but the context of our actions and decisions is forever changing. We are not relativists because we seek to re-evaluate again and again our most crucial moral positions.

So why do we romanticize the Man Wolf who seemingly punishes wrongdoing without hesitation in ways that we ourselves cannot countenance?

Why does a noisy public cheer him on in his nocturnal frenzy when in fact his cruelty and violence should repel all of us? Can a monster who embodies the most primal and detestable urge we know as humans - the urge to kill with utter abandon - be hailed as a superhero? Certainly not. And surely if we sleep soundly in our beds during these extraordinary times, it is because we are certain that those upon whom we depend for our daily safety are in fact on the trail of this most challenging of aberrations.

The social fabric no matter how resilient cannot subsume the Man Wolf. And no sustained embrace of the creature by the popular media can alter that fact.

It is perhaps worth remembering that we are all, as a species, prey to dreams and nightmares. Our art is built upon the irrepressible stream of images rising from a secret fulcrum that can never be trusted. And though these images can delight and amaze, they can also paralyze and terrify. There are times when we are shamed by the most fleeting savage fancy.

Surely the Man Wolf seems the stuff of nightmare. But a dream he most certainly is not. And therein lies our responsibility, not only to him, but to all that he seeks to undermine in his unconscionable rampages.

Reuben e-mailed this at once to Billie, and printed out a copy for Laura. She read it in silence, then slipped her arm around him and kissed him. They were side by side then. He was staring into the fire, his elbows on his knees, his fingers running through his hair, as if he could somehow get to the thoughts in his head that way.

"Tell me the truth, if you will," he had said. "Are you disappointed that I am not the Man of the Wild you imagined? I think you saw me as something pure, unburdened by moral constraint. Or maybe, maybe having to live up to an entirely different code because I was something not human."

"Disappointed ..." She pondered. "No, I,m in no way disappointed. I,m deeply in love." Her voice was quiet, steady. "Let me put it to you like this. Maybe you,ll understand. You,re a mystery the way a sacrament is a mystery."

He turned and looked at her.

He wanted desperately to kiss her, to make love to her, right here in the library, or anywhere for that matter, anywhere that she would permit. But it was firmly lodged in his mind that she didn,t want him the way he was now. How could she? She wanted the other. They were waiting for the other, for him to become her lover, not simply "one of the handsomest men" she,d ever seen.

Time can tick when there is no clock.

He started kissing her. The heat was immediate and she slipped her arms around him. He found her naked br**sts beneath the white flannel and laid claim with his left hand. He was ready, oh, too ready after waiting so long.

They moved down to the carpet together, and he heard her pulse quicken just as the scent of desire rose from her, something secretive and smoky and delicate. Her face was flushed under him, oh, so warm.

They removed their clothes, hurriedly, silently, and came together again, in a tangle of kisses that were almost tormenting for him.

Suddenly he felt the violent spasm in his belly and in his chest; the ecstasy moved over the surface of his entire body; the prickling pleasure paralyzed him. He fell to one side, and sat up, doubled over.

He heard her gasp.

His eyes were closed. Had it always happened that way before? Yes, at the very moment when he felt the hairs erupting from every pore, when the pleasure was one volcanic wave after another, he couldn,t actually see.

When he did open his eyes, he was standing, the mane thick and heavy over his shoulders, his hands transformed into claws. The fur was thickening into a ruff around his neck and between his legs. His muscles were singing with the power, his arms expanding, his legs pulled upwards as if by unseen hands.

He looked down at her from his new height.

She was on her knees staring up at him in obvious shock.

Shakily, she rose. She murmured some half-strangled prayer under her breath, and reached out cautiously and then quickly to touch him, to slide her fingers as she had done before into the thick outer coat that was growing denser and longer all over him.

"Like velvet!" she whispered, running her hands over his face. "So silken smooth."

He could scarcely hold back from lifting her off her feet so that he could put his lips on hers. He had all of her, naked and small and beating with passion, in his arms.

"Laura," he said in the new voice, the real voice. A divine relief coursed through him. She opened her mouth to his. That deep throbbing sound was coming from him, as if his body were a drum.

The forest crept to the windows. The rain was hissing and splashing in the gutters and in the downspouts, and rushing over the flags. The ocean wind drove at the rain and pushed against the walls.

He could hear a low vibration of the wind in the rafters, and in the softly groaning branches of the trees.

All the scents of the night had broken through the solid shell of the house, rising like steam from a thousand tiny whispering chinks and crannies. But central to all scents was the scent of her, and it went right into his brain.

Chapter Twenty

HE STOOD in the front door, the rain pelting him, and the wind whistling under the eaves.

Out there, south of here, in the redwoods that ran to the east and upwards, he heard the snorting, snuffling animal he wanted. Mountain lion slumbering. Oh, you are a worthy prey.

Laura hovered close to him, the loose collar of her nightgown held tight at her throat against the cold.

"You can,t go," she said. "You can,t risk it. You can,t bring them up here."

"No. It,s not the voices," he said. He knew he was staring glaze-eyed at the forest. He could hear the low almost guttural sound of his words. "No one will mourn this victim. She and I are creatures of the wild."

He wanted that animal, that huge hulking animal that had killed Galton,s dog, that powerful beast that was secreted deep in the brush so very close by with three of her grown cubs, big cats themselves, breathing deep in sleep, but ready to break from their mother into the savage world. The scents mingled in his nostrils.