The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

Jim,s eyes were moist, and his face sort of broken with sadness, with worry. But he only nodded, waiting patiently, every time Reuben paused, for him to go on.

"Every other form of experience is paling in the face of it," Reuben said. "Oh, I miss you and Mom and Phil so much, so much! But everything is paling."

He described feasting on the mountain lion, and what it had been like up there in that haven of branches when the lethal cubs had been circling beneath, how he had wanted to take Laura up there in that sanctuary. How could he convey this to Jim, the seduction of this new existence? How could he break through the tragic expression on Jim,s face with some flash of how dazzling and even sublime this was?

"Is this impossible for you to grasp?"

"I don,t know that I need to grasp it," said Jim. "Let,s go back now to this Marrok and what you,ve learned."

"But you can,t forgive me if you don,t grasp it," said Reuben.

"I,m not the one who has to forgive, am I?" asked Jim.

Reuben looked off again, beyond the gravel driveway, at the oak forest, so close, so dense, so filled with shadow and light.

"So what you know now is this," said Jim. "There are ,others, and these others may include Felix Nideck, though you can,t be sure. This man, Margon Sperver, he too may be a Morphenkind, with the names being deliberate clues, that,s what you suspect. These creatures have a terminology - Chrism, Morphenkinder - and that indicates tradition, that they,ve been around for a long time. The creature hinted they,d been around for a long time. You know that the Chrism that made you into this can sicken and can kill, yet you survived. You know that your cells have been altered so that once severed from the life force in you they disintegrate. And once that life force is extinguished, the corpse disintegrates. And that,s why the authorities have no indication of who you are."

"Yes, that,s it, so far."

"Well, not quite. This Marrok gave you the impression that you,d been brash, destructive, courting publicity that threatens the species, right?"

"Yes."

"And so you think the ,other, or ,others, may come to harm you, even kill you, and kill Laura as well. You,ve killed one of them, and they may want to kill you for that as well as everything else."

"I know what you,re going to say," said Reuben. "I know what you,re going to tell me. But there is no one who can help us with this. No one. And don,t tell me to call this or that authority! Or to confide in this or that doctor. Because any such move would spell the complete end of my freedom and Laura,s freedom, and the complete end of our lives!"

"But what is your alternative, Reuben? Live here and fight this power? Fight the lure of the voices? Fight the urge to go into the woods and kill? And when will you be tempted to bring Laura into this, and what if the Chrism or the serum or whatever it is kills her exactly as this Marrok indicated it could?"

"I,ve thought of that, of course," he said, "I,ve thought of that." And he had.

He,d always thought it a stupid cliche of horror films that "the monster" wants a mate, or spends eternity chasing a lost love. Now he understood that completely. He understood the isolation and the alienation and the fear. "I will bring no harm to Laura," he said. "Laura isn,t asking for the gift."

"The gift, you call this a gift? Look, I,m a man of imagination. I always have been. I can imagine the freedom, the power - ."

"No, you can,t. You won,t. You refuse."

"Okay, then I know I can,t imagine the freedom and the power and they must be seductive beyond my most feverish dreams."

"Now you,re getting it. Feverish dreams. Have you ever wanted to bring agony to someone who hurt you, ever wanted them to feel pain for what they did? I brought that agony to those kidnappers, to others."

"You killed them, Reuben. You killed them in their sins! You terminated their destiny on this earth. You snatched from them any chance for repentance, for redemption. You took that from them. You took it all, Reuben. You snuffed out forever the years of reparation they might have lived! You took life itself from them and you took it from their descendants, and yes, even from their victims, you took what their amends might have been."

He stopped. Reuben had closed his eyes, and was holding his forehead in his hands. He was angry. Took from their victims? They had been slaughtering their victims! There would have been no "amends" for their victims. There would have been death if Reuben had not intervened. Even all the children of the kidnap had been in mortal peril. But that was not the point, was it? He was guilty of killing. He could not deny it and he could not feel remorse.

"Look, I want to help you!" Jim pleaded. "I don,t want to condemn you, or drive you away from me."

"You won,t do that, Jimmy." It is I who am moving inexorably away from you.

"You can,t keep going with this alone. And this woman, Laura, she,s beautiful and she,s devoted to you. And she,s no child or fool, I can see that. But she doesn,t know any more about this than you do."

"She knows what I know. And she knows that I love her. If she hadn,t struck Marrok with the ax when she did, I might not have been able to defeat him...."

Jim clearly didn,t know how to answer.

"So what are you saying?" Reuben asked. "What then do you want me to do?"

"I don,t know. Let me think. Let me try to figure who could be trusted, who could study this, analyze, figure some way perhaps to reverse it - ."

"Reverse it? Jim, Marrok evaporated! Ashes to ashes. He disappeared. You think something this powerful can be reversed?"

"You don,t know how long this creature had had the power."

"That,s another thing, Jim. A knife or a gun can,t hurt me. If that creature had had a few more seconds, he could have removed that ax from the back of his skull, and his skull, even his skull, and his brain might have healed. I decapitated him. Nothing can survive that. Remember, I healed from a bullet wound, Jim."

"Yes, I know that, Reuben, I remember. I didn,t believe you when you told me this before, about being shot. I have to say, I didn,t believe you." He shook his head. "But they found the bullet in the wall of that Buena Vista house. Celeste told me. They found the bullet and the trajectory indicated the bullet had been deflected somehow. The bullet had passed through something before it lodged in the plaster of the wall. And there was no tissue on that bullet, not even the tiniest particle of any tissue."

"And what does that mean, Jim? What does that mean about ... my body and about time?"