The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

Slowly he moved eastward, out of the orbit of the search, certain the boy would have been clever enough to do the same. To the west lay the dense neighborhoods of Santa Rosa. To the east the forest.

"Stuart. Come to me."

At last, through the snarled web of branches before him, he saw the flicker of living eyes.

He pitched forward towards those glittering eyes, again sounding the name "Stuart!" like a deep-throated bell in the blackness.

And he heard the boy crying, "For the love of God, help me!"

His right arm flew out and caught the Boy Wolf around the shoulders, shocked to see he was as large as Reuben, and certainly as powerful, as they moved together rapidly through the high thick oak boughs.

Over yards of forest they ran. Finally, in a deep valley of unbroken darkness, they stopped. Reuben for the first time knew the heat of exhaustion in the wolf-coat, and lay back against the trunk of a tree, panting, and thirsting and scanning for the scent of water. The Boy Wolf lingered right beside him as if afraid to move away even an inch.

The eyes were blue, large, peering from a wolf-face of dark brown hair like his own. The Boy Wolf,s ruff was streaked with white. In silence he gazed at Reuben, asking nothing, demanding nothing, trusting completely.

"I,m going to get you away from here," Reuben said, his voice pitched so deep a human being might not have understood it, as though he knew instinctively what the boy would hear that no one else could hear.

The response came in the same dark low rumbling timbre. "I,m with you." Just the faint catch of human pain in that, of human angst. Do animals know how to cry - that is, really cry? What animal breaks into sobs or into laughter?

They moved swiftly down a hillside and into a dark gulley, coming together in the bracken, till Reuben held the Boy Wolf close to him again.

"This is safe." He breathed the words into the boy,s ear. "We wait."

How completely natural the Boy Wolf felt to him, these immense hairy shoulders, the soft silken wolf-coat of his arms, the voluminous mane that was glinting now in the pellucid light of the veiled moon. Indeed the light of the moon seemed to slip into the clouds and spread out in them, and then slide into a billion tiny splinters of rain.

Reuben opened his mouth, and let the rain hit his parched tongue. Again, he scanned for the scent of water, collected water, and found it in a small natural pool formed some yards away in the hollowed-out roots of a rotting tree. He scrambled on his paws and knees towards it and drank greedily, lapping the delicious sweet water as fast as he could. Then he sat back and let Stuart do the same.

There were only the smallest safest sounds around them in the dark.

The sky was slowly lightening.

"What happens now?" asked Stuart desperately.

"In an hour or less, you,ll change back."

"Out here? In this place?"

"We have help coming. Depend on me. Let me listen now, let me see if I can pick up the scent or the sound of the person who,s coming. This may take time."

For the first time in all his life, Reuben really didn,t want to see the sun rise.

He lay back against the old rotted tree and listened, urging the boy again to be silent with the firm grip of his paw.

He knew where she was!

Not close, no, but he had caught her scent and her voice. Oh, Laura, you are so clever. She was singing that song he,d been singing the night they met:

" ,Tis the gift to be simple ... ,Tis the gift to be free ..., "

"Follow me," he said to Stuart and he headed back towards the search parties, yes, and the probing lights, yes, but towards Laura, gaining speed as she gained speed, gradually closing in until he saw the pale streak of road she was traveling.

They raced along the border of the road together, finally pulling up beside her, and then Reuben dropped down on the hood of the Jeep, his paws clutching at the driver,s window and the windshield, and she brought the car to a sharp halt.

Stuart stood paralyzed. Reuben had to force him into the backseat.

"Hunker down," he said. To Laura he said, "Drive for home."

The Jeep rattled as it took off. Laura told the boy there were blankets back there, and he should cover up as best he could.

Reuben commanded himself to change. He lay back exhausted in the passenger seat, letting the waves of transformation pass through him. And never had it been so hard to give up the wolf-coat, to give up the power, to give up the smell of the dangerous woodland.

The sky was suddenly marbled with smoke and silver, the rain drenching the dark green fields on either side of them, and he felt that he might fall into a deep sleep. But there was no time for that. He pulled on his polo shirt and his flannel pants, his loafers, and rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. His skin didn,t want to let it all go. His skin was singing. He felt he was still running through the woods. It was like when you get off a bicycle after an all-day ride, and you walk and you feel like you,re pedaling and still going up and down, up and down.

He turned and looked into the backseat of the car.

The Boy Wolf lay there, a coarse army blanket pulled up over him, his large blue eyes peering up at Reuben, from the sleek shining brown hair of his wolf-face.

"You!" the Boy Wolf said. "It,s you!"

"Yes. I,m the one who did it to you," Reuben said. "I,m the one who passed the Chrism to you. I didn,t mean to. I meant to kill the men who were trying to kill you. But I did it."

The eyes continued to fasten on him.

"I killed my stepfather," said Stuart, his voice deep and rough and vibrant. "He was beating my mother, dragging her through the rooms by her hair. He said he would kill her if she didn,t sign the papers to commit me. She was saying no, no, no. Her hair was full of blood. I killed him. I tore him apart."

"Figures," said Reuben. "Did you identify yourself to your mother?"

"God, no!"

The Jeep bumped and jogged along the freeway, swerving to pass a car, and then gained speed again as it sailed into the left lane.

"Where can I go? Where can I hide?"

"You leave that to me."

They were still speeding along Highway 101 north under the heavy iron sky when Stuart began to change.

It took perhaps five minutes. Reuben timed it. Not even that much.

The boy shuddered, and bowed his head, elbows on his naked knees. His long blond curly hair covered his face. He was gasping in syllables but the syllables didn,t add up to words. Finally, he managed to say:

"I thought I wouldn,t change back. I thought I would be that way forever."