The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

He lay back staring at Laura. In the flashing lights, she appeared utterly calm, eyes fastened on the road.

"Reuben?" she said, not daring to take her eyes off the traffic. "Reuben, talk to me. Reuben, please."

"I,m all right, Laura," he said. He sighed. One shiver after another passed through him. His teeth were chattering. The fur was gone now from the chest wounds, and the wounds were gone too. The skin sang. The pleasure washed through him, exhausting him. The scent of death was still clinging to him, the death of the boy crumpled in the yard, scent of innocent death.

"I,ve done something terrible, unspeakable!" he whispered. He tried to say more but all he could hear from his own lips was another moan.

"What are you saying?" she asked. The traffic ripped and rattled ahead and behind them. They were already leaving the city of Santa Rosa.

He closed his eyes again. No pain now. Only a low fever pulsing in his face and in the palms of his hands, and in the smooth flesh where the pain had been.

"A terrible thing, Laura," he whispered, but she couldn,t hear him. He saw the boy again staggering towards him, a tall broad-chested child with a pale beseeching face, a torn and bleeding face, with a mop of blond hair around it, eyes wide with horror, lips moving, saying nothing. The darkness came. And he welcomed it, the leather bucket seat cradling him, the car rocking him as they drove on.

Chapter Thirty

THE LIGHTS of the big room dazzled him. The central heat pouring from the vents was too warm, the fragrances of the house dusty, close, intoxicating, even suffocating.

At once, he went into the library and made a call to the Clift Hotel in San Francisco. He had to speak to Felix. He was choked with shame. Only Felix could help him with what he had done, and ashamed as he was, as mortified and miserable, he could not rest until he had confessed this horror to Felix, that he,d bungled, that he,d passed the Chrism.

Felix was no longer there, said the clerk at the desk. Felix had checked out that afternoon. "May I ask who is calling?" He was about to hang up in despair, but identified himself in the faint hope there would be some message. There was.

"Yes, he said to tell you that he was called away. Urgent business he couldn,t ignore. But that he would return as soon as he could."

No number, no address.

He sank down in the chair with his head on the desk, forehead against the green blotter. After a moment, he picked up the phone and called Simon Oliver, leaving the desperate plea on voice mail that Oliver get in touch with Arthur Hammermill and find out if he had an emergency number for Felix Nideck. It was urgent, urgent, urgent. Simon could not imagine how urgent.

Nothing to be done; nothing to alleviate this unspeakable panic. Will this boy die? Will the Chrism kill him? Was that despicable Marrok telling the truth when he said the Chrism could kill?

He had to find Felix!

Again, he saw the boy collapsed in the dirt of that yard, his outstretched hand, and the wound.

Lord, God!

He stared at the smiling figure of Felix in the photograph. Dear God, please help me. Don,t let that poor kid die. Please. And don,t let - .

He couldn,t endure this panic.

Laura was there, watching him, waiting, sensing something was dreadfully wrong.

He grabbed Laura in his arms, and ran his hands over the thick gray sweater she wore, clutching at the high neck under her chin, then ran his hands down her long pants; warm enough.

I want to change, now, go back into the night. Now.

Holding tight to her, he felt the wolf-coat erupt again. He let go of her only long enough to take off his clothes. The fur was insulating him from the heat of the room, his nostrils as always picking up the heady scent of the forest that pressed against the windows. Ecstasy this, these jarring volcanic waves that almost swept him off his feet.

He lifted her and went out the back door of the house into the night, the transformation now complete, and with her secure against his left shoulder he sped through the forest, bent forward, springing on his powerful thighs, until he,d left the oak wood behind and was now among the giant redwoods.

"Wrap yourself around me," he breathed into her ear, guiding her arms around his neck, and her legs around his torso. "We,re going up, are you game for it?"

"Yes," she cried.

Up and up he climbed until he was in the high branches, beyond the ivy and the straggling vines, up and up, higher until the lower trees were lost, and he could see the sea now above the bluffs, the endless, sparkling sea under the ghostly white of the hidden moon, and finally he found a bed of twisted branches strong enough to hold them. He sat back, his left arm firmly locked around the branch above him, his right arm cradling her.

She was laughing under her breath, delirious with the joy of it. She kissed him all over his face where he could feel it, his eyelids, the tip of his nose, against the side of his mouth.

"Hang on tight," he cautioned her. Then he eased her just a little to the right, so that she sat on his right thigh and his right arm firmly held her. "Can you see the sea?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "But only as utter blackness, and because I know it,s there and I know what it is."

He was breathing easy against the trunk of the monstrous tree. He was listening to the chorus of the woodlands; the canopy seethed and sighed and whispered. Far to the south he could see the lights of the house winkling through the trees, as if they were so many tiny stars, snared in its many windows. Down there, way down there in the world, the house full of light, waiting for them.

She laid her head on his chest.

For the longest time, they remained that way, together, up there, and he looked out at the sea and saw nothing at all but the shimmering water and the inky sky above it and the faintest stars. The clouds gathered and broke over the moon, sustaining that illusion that the moon was again and again burning its way through the clouds. The damp salty wind whispered and blew in the tall trees around them.

Just for a moment, he sensed danger. Or was it merely the presence of some other creature near them? He wasn,t sure, but he was certain that he could not communicate this sudden alarm to Laura. She was totally dependent on him here. Quietly he listened.

Maybe it was only the inevitable rustling of the canopy, and possibly some fleet little beast he didn,t know wending its way nearby. The vesper bats were at these heights, the flying squirrels, the chickadee and the chipmunk could spend their lives in these upper branches. But why would such little things have awakened his protective spirit? Whatever it was, it was gone, and he thought to himself that it was because he had her here, her heart beating against his heart, that he had felt such a vague alarm at all.