The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

"And it didn,t happen," Laura affirmed.

"No, it didn,t," said Thibault. "We were never able to locate them again. I suspect they used other names. But when a doctor,s credentials depend upon the birth name, well, he or she is likely to return to it, for obvious advantages." His smile became faintly bitter. "And that is what inevitably happened. Of course the pair has found new backing, and we must eventually worry about that backing, but not just now."

He cleared his throat and went on.

"Then came the news from America that Felix,s beloved Marchent had been murdered by her own brothers and a Morphenkind had dispatched the killers in the age-old way of the beast."

For a long time they were silent.

"I was certain I would be united with Marchent someday," Felix said in a small defeated voice. "I was so foolish, not to have contacted her, not to have simply come home." He looked off, and then at the table in front of him, as though intrigued by the satin finish of the wood. But he was not seeing that at all. "I had come here often enough when she was traveling. And once or twice spied on her from the woods. You see - ." He broke off.

"You didn,t want to tell her who had betrayed you," suggested Laura.

"No, I didn,t," said Felix. His voice was low, tentative. "And I didn,t want to tell her that I had paid them both - her father and mother - in kind. How would she have ever understood unless I,d revealed everything to her, and that I did not want to do."

A silence fell over them all.

"When the news broke about the attacks in San Francisco ...," Felix started, then his voice just trailed away.

"You knew that Marrok had passed the Chrism," Laura suggested. "And you suspected that the good doctors would be unable to resist."

Felix nodded.

Another interval of silence fell. The only sounds were the rain pattering on the windowsills, and the fire spitting and crackling in the huge grate.

"Would you have come here," Reuben asked, "if there had been no question of Klopov or Jaska?"

"Yes," said Felix. "Most definitely yes. I would not have left you to face this alone. I wanted to come on account of Marchent. I wanted the things I,d left in the house. But I wanted to know you. I wanted to discover who you really were. I wasn,t going to abandon you to all this. We never do that. That,s why I arranged that awkward meeting at the lawyers, offices.

"And if I,d been unreachable for any reason, Thibault would have come to seek you out. Or Vandover or Sergei. As it was, we were together when the news broke. We knew it was Marrok. We knew that the assaults in San Francisco had been carried out by you."

"Then whenever the Chrism,s passed, you go to help that individual?" asked Reuben.

"My dear boy," said Felix. "It does not happen all that often, really, and seldom in such a spectacular way."

They were both looking fondly at Reuben now, and the old warmth came back into Felix,s face.

"So you were never angry," asked Reuben, "that I put the Man Wolf in the public eye."

Felix laughed under his breath, and so did Thibault, as they exchanged glances.

"Were we angry?" he asked Thibault with a sly smile, nudging him with his elbow. "What do you think?"

Thibault shook his head.

Reuben couldn,t figure out what this actually meant, only that it did seem the very opposite of anger, and that was more than he had a right to ask.

"Well, I was not so very delighted with it," said Felix, "but I would not say I was ever angry, no."

"There,s so much we can tell you," said Thibault, affectionately. "So many things we can explain - to you, and to Stuart, and to Laura."

And to Laura.

Felix looked at the dark window with its glittering sheet of sliding rain. His eyes moved over the elaborate ceiling with its varnished crisscross beams and those panels of painted sky with their gold stars.

And I know what he is feeling, thought Reuben, and he loves this house, loves it as he did when he built it, for surely he did build it, and he needs it, needs to come home to it now.

"And it would take years of nights such as this," Felix said, dreamily, "to tell you all we have to tell."

"I think it,s enough for now, for this first night, this remarkable night," said Thibault. "But remember, you were never in danger as we waited to play our hand."

"I understand that completely," said Reuben. There was more he wanted to say, especially now. So much more. But he was almost too dazzled to form words.

His many questions seemed insignificant as a vision of knowledge took form in his mind, vast, well beyond the arithmetical strictures of language, a great organic yet limitless vision that dissolved words. It was something infinitely more like music, expanding and rolling like the symphonic triumphs of Brahms. His heart was beating quietly to the mounting rhythm of his expectations, and a light was slowing breaking in on him, heated, incandescent, like the Shechinah, or the inevitable light of every dawn.

In his mind, he was back in the high forest canopy, a man wolf resting in the branches, seeing the stars again above him, and wondering once more if the great longing he felt was somehow a form of prayer. Why was that so important to him? Was that the only species of redemption he understood?

"It,s Margon who will counsel you," said Thibault. "It,s always best that Margon do the counseling. He is the very oldest of us all."

It sent a thrill through Reuben. And Margon, "the very oldest," was with the Boy Wolf right now. How different all this would be for Stuart who was so energetic and inquisitive by nature, how remarkably different from what it had been for Reuben stumbling from one discovery to another on his unlighted path.

"I,m tired now," said Felix, "and the sight of so much blood earlier has played upon my inveterate hunger."

"Oh, give it a rest!" said Thibault in a mock-scolding voice.

"You were born old," said Felix, gently nudging Thibault with his elbow again.

"Perhaps I was," said Thibault. "And it,s not a bad thing. I,ll take the offer of any bed in this house."

"I need the forest," said Felix. He looked at Laura. "My darling," he said, "would you allow me to take your young man away for just a little while, should he want to come?"

"Of course, go," she said earnestly. She clasped Reuben,s hand. "And what about Stuart?"

"They,re close," said Thibault. "I think Margon is deliberately exhausting him for his own good."