The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

"I can,t come with you," Reuben said to the doctor.

Jaska turned and opened the door on the icy wind. He called out to the men.

The sheriff at once protested. "I,ll take care of that, Doctor. You just leave those men outside." He immediately stepped up to the door. "You stay where you are!" he called out. A mild-mannered gray-haired man in his late sixties, he was plainly out of sorts with the whole predicament. He turned to Reuben now and appeared to rather theatrically take a good look at him. "If somebody could just explain to me in plain English why either of these two boys should be committed against their will, I would welcome that explanation because I don,t see the problem here, I really just don,t - ."

"Of course you don,t see it!" fired back Dr. Klopov, pacing in her thick black high heels, as though she needed the sound of them thonking on the oak parquet. "You have no sense of the volatile nature of the illness we,re dealing with, or our knowledge of these dangerous cases - ."

Simon Oliver raised his voice. "Sheriff, you should take those men and go home."

The door was still open. The voices outside were getting louder. The scent of coffee wafted on the wind. Galton,s voice was mingled with the others, and from what Reuben could see, Laura was out there too in the rain serving the coffee in mugs from a large tray.

And where the hell are Felix and Margon? And what the hell do they expect me to do?

"All right!" declared Reuben. Again, he held up his hands. "I,m not going anywhere." He closed the front door. "Sheriff, the last time I saw a paramedic was over a month ago. I don,t know who signed this paper. I picked up Stuart last night because the kid was lost and frightened. That,s Stuart,s doctor right there, Dr. Cutler. Granted, I should have called somebody, notified somebody last night, but Stuart,s fine."

With ugly patronizing facial expressions the doctors were shaking their heads, and pursing their lips, as though this was out of the question. "No, no, no," said Dr. Jaska. "You are most certainly coming, young man. We have gone to great trouble and expense to see to your care, and you will come. Will you come peacefully or must we - ."

He stopped dead, his face going blank.

Beside him, Dr. Klopov turned pale with shock.

Reuben turned around.

Margon and Felix had come back into the room. They stood to the right side of the great fireplace, and beside them stood yet another of the distinguished gentlemen from the photograph, the gray-haired older-appearing Baron Thibault, the man with the very large eyes and deeply wrinkled face.

The men moved naturally and almost casually closer, as Grace stepped back and out of the way.

"It,s been a long time, hasn,t it, Doctors," said Baron Thibault in a deep well-assured baritone. "What has it been, exactly, would you say? Almost ten years?"

Dr. Klopov was inching backwards towards the door, and Jaska, who stood beside it, reached out, groping, for the knob.

"Oh, surely you,re not leaving," Margon said. The voice was pleasant, polite. "But you,ve only just arrived, and as you said, Dr. Jaska, you,ve gone to so much trouble and expense."

"You know these men?" Grace asked Margon. She gestured to the doctors. "You know what this is about?"

"Stay out of it, Grace," said Phil.

Margon acknowledged both of them with small nods and an agreeable enough smile.

The doctors were petrified, and in a silent rage. The reek of evil was so seductive. The spasms were churning again in Reuben.

Felix merely watched, his face impassive and faintly sad.

Suddenly a riff of cries broke out beyond the door.

Jaska jumped back. And Klopov too was startled but recovered herself, firing a fierce malevolent look at Margon.

Something immense and heavy thundered against the door. Reuben saw it actually shuddering as the doctors scrambled to get clear of it, and the sheriff let out a shout.

People on the other side were screaming, men and women alike.

The door burst inward, falling off its screeching hinges, and was slammed violently to his left.

Reuben,s heart was in his throat.

It was a man wolf, emerging from the swirling rain as if from nothingness, a great seven-foot monster in full dark brown wolf-coat with blazing gray eyes, shining white fangs, and a deep gargling roar breaking from its throat.

The spasms made a fist inside of Reuben. He felt the blood drain from his face. At the same time he felt a wave of nausea and his knees went weak.

The man wolf,s great paws reached out for Dr. Klopov and caught her by her arms, lifting her off her feet.

"You will not, you will not!" she bellowed, squirming, feet thrashing, struggling to make her own groping fingers into claws, as the beast raised her up into the full glare of the outside lights.

Everyone in the room was in motion, Reuben himself stumbling backwards, and Dr. Cutler shrieking over and over again as if she couldn,t stop herself, and Jim scrambling to his mother,s side.

The men and women outside were in total panic, yelling, fighting with one another. Shots rang out and then came the inevitable, "Don,t shoot, don,t shoot."

"Rush it, take it alive!" roared Dr. Jaska, grabbing at the petrified sheriff. "Capture it, you fool!"

Reuben watched utterly astonished as the man wolf sank its gobbling fangs into the doctor,s throat, the blood spurting and pouring down over her rumpled clothes. Her arms went dead like broken branches. Dr. Jaska gave the loudest and most terrible wail. "Kill it, kill it!" he was now screaming, and the sheriff was struggling to get his gun out of the holster.

Shots came again from the screaming crowd on the outside.

Undeterred the beast closed its powerful jaws on the woman,s flopping head and tore it loose from her neck, snapping ribbons of rubbery bloody skin. Then swinging the head back and forth wildly, the beast sent the head flying out into the night.

The mangled bloody body of the doctor, it dropped to the steps - lunging into the room and knocking the sheriff flat on his back, as it caught the fleeing Dr. Jaska in the doors of the conservatory.

Crashing into the potted trees and flowers, the two figures merged as the doctor let loose a desperate boiling tirade in Russian before the man wolf ripped his head off as he had done to the woman doctor and threw the head back into the great room where it rolled across the floor before the open door.

The sheriff was struggling to get up and almost fell on the head, and then got his gun out and couldn,t get control of his right arm to aim.

The towering man wolf strode past him, pale eyes staring forward, dragging the headless broken body of Jaska by one hook of a claw.