The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

"No. We,ve been close to you ever since. Thibault arrived within hours; then Margon had to cross the Atlantic, and then Vandover and Gorlagon, too. But I,ve been in this house unbeknownst to you. You were quite clever in finding the Inner Sanctum, as we used to call it. But you did not discover the entrance in the cellar. The old obsolete furnace is a hollow aluminum dummy. I,ll show you later. Grasp the right side of the lower portion of it, bring it towards you, and you will open a door to which it is attached. There is a sanctuary of rooms there, all electrically lighted and heated, and then a stairs down to a narrow tunnel which runs to the west, opening just above the huge rocks at the base of the cliff at the end of the beach."

"I know the place," said Laura. "At least I think I do." She picked up one of the old lace-trimmed linen napkins that lay in a little fan-shaped display near her, near to a plate of fruit and candies, and she dabbed at her eyes with this, and then clenched it tightly in her hand. "I found it on my walks. I couldn,t quite get over those slippery rocks. But I bet I saw the place."

"Very likely you did," said Felix, "and it is very dangerous there, and the tide often pours into the tunnel, flooding it for a hundred yards or more. Best for Morphenkinder and their like, who can swim and climb like dragons."

"And you,ve been down there in the cement rooms behind the cellar," said Reuben.

"Yes, most of the time, or in the nearby woods. Of course we followed you into Santa Rosa to see Stuart. We knew at once what had happened. We followed you when you went in search of him. If you hadn,t rescued him, we would have intervened. But you were handling things beautifully, as we suspected you would."

"The man wolf," said Laura, "who broke into the house tonight, this is one of the men in the library picture?"

"It was Sergei," said Thibault with a smile in his deep flowing baritone voice. "We vied for the privilege, but Sergei was adamant. And Frank Vandover is with Sergei now, of course. Dr. Klopov held us prisoner for ten years. Klopov murdered one of us. This night provided considerable satisfaction for us all."

"They,ll be back tomorrow," said Felix. "What they are doing right now is establishing a path south for the Man Wolf. They,ll arrange an unimpeachable sighting in Mexico before morning. When they return, I,m hoping you,ll receive them, that we can all, with your permission, sleep under this roof."

"This is your house," said Reuben. "Think of me as a custodian."

"No, dear boy," said Felix, saying it exactly the way Marchent had so often said it, "it,s your house. Most definitely it is your house. But we will accept your invitation."

"Absolutely," said Reuben, "for now and forever and whenever and wherever you like."

"I,ll take my old rooms, if you don,t mind," said Felix, "and Margon has always been comfortable in one of the smaller rooms along the north side facing the woods. We will put Thibault in one of the southern rooms, just next to Stuart, if this is agreeable to you, and Frank and Sergei will sleep on the northeast end in those corner rooms above the oaks."

"I,ll go see to things," said Laura, who started to get up.

"My darling, you mustn,t," said Felix. "Please, do sit down. I know for a fact that everything is as comfortable as it ever was. Older, perhaps a little musty, but entirely comfortable. And I want you here, close to us. Surely you want to know what happened, too."

Reuben nodded and murmured his assent to that, holding Laura close again.

"I must say, Reuben," said Felix, "with a house of this size you must have a trusted servant or two, or this young woman completely out of her own generosity will become a drudge."

"Absolutely," said Reuben. He blushed. He didn,t want to think he,d been exploiting Laura, forcing her into any domestic role. He wanted to protest, but now was not the time for it.

He had a dream in his heart that these men would never leave.

He did not know how to bring them back to the subject of Dr. Klopov. But Laura did it for him.

"Was it in the Soviet Union that Klopov held you captive?" she asked.

"It began that way," said Felix. "We were betrayed into her hands in Paris. It was quite a maneuver. Of course she had help from a very dear member of my own family and his wife."

"Marchent,s parents," said Reuben.

"Correct," said Felix. His voice was even, without rancor or judgment. "It,s a long story. Suffice it to say we were sold to Klopov and her cohorts by my nephew, Abel, for a fantastic sum. We were lured to Paris, with a promise of archaeological secrets discovered by a Dr. Philippe Durrell who was supposed to be working on a dig in the Middle East on behalf of the Louvre." He sighed, then went on:

"This Durrell, he was a genius of a conversationalist, and dazzled us over the phone. We converged on Paris, accepting his invitation for accommodations in a small hotel on the Left Bank."

"The trap had to be sprung in a very crowded city, you see," said Thibault, clearing his throat, his voice deep as always, and his words coming with a little more emotional resonance. "We had to be where our senses would be overwhelmed with sounds and scents so that we wouldn,t detect the people who were closing in. We were narcotized individually except for Sergei, who managed to escape, and never after gave up the search for us." He glanced at Felix who gestured for him to go on.

"Almost immediately Durrell and Klopov,s team lost their government funding. We were smuggled out of Russia to a grim and ill-equipped concrete prison-laboratory near Belgrade, where the battle of wits and endurance began." He shook his head as he remembered. "Philippe Durrell was brilliant without doubt."

"They were all brilliant," said Felix. "Klopov, Jaska, all of them. They believed in us completely. They knew things about our history that astonished us, and they had immense scientific knowledge in areas where more conventional scientists refuse to speculate."

"Yes, my mother was confused by that brilliance," said Reuben. "But she became suspicious of Jaska early on."

"Your mother,s a remarkable woman," said Felix. "She seems utterly unconscious of her own physical beauty - oblivious as if she were a disembodied mind."

Reuben laughed. "She wants to be taken seriously," he said in a small voice.

"Well, yes," said Thibault, interrupting gently. "She would have found Philippe Durrell even more seductive. Philippe had immense respect for us, and for what we might willingly or unwillingly reveal. When we refused to manifest in the wolf state, he resolved to wait. When we confided nothing, he engaged us in long conversations and bided his time."