The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

But there was one burning matter which Reuben could not leave unresolved.

There was something he had to know, and he had to know it now.

He followed Felix, to whom he felt closest, into the library and caught up with him as he was lighting the fire.

"What is it, little brother?" asked Felix. "You look troubled. I thought the meeting went well."

"But Laura," Reuben whispered. "What about Laura? Will you give the Chrism to Laura? Must I ask you, or ask Margon or - ."

"She,s worthy," said Felix. "That was decided immediately. I didn,t know there was the slightest doubt. She knows this. There have been no secrets kept from Laura. When she,s ready, she has but to ask."

Reuben,s heart had started to skip. He couldn,t meet Felix,s gaze. He felt Felix clasp his shoulder. He felt the strong fingers on his arm.

"And if she wants it," asked Reuben, "you will do it? You?"

"Yes. If she wants it. Margon or I. We will."

Why was this so painful? Wasn,t this exactly what he,d wanted to know?

He saw her again in his mind,s eye, as he,d first seen her that night on the edge of Muir Woods, when he,d come singing into the grassy clearing behind her house, and she had appeared to him, as if out of nowhere, standing on the back porch of her little house, in her long white flannel gown.

"I must be the most selfish man in all creation," he whispered.

"No, you,re not," said Felix. "But it is her decision."

"I don,t understand myself," he said.

"I understand you," said Felix.

Moments passed.

Felix struck the long fireplace match and ignited the kindling. There came that familiar roar as the kindling caught and the flames danced up the bricks.

Felix stood there patiently, waiting. Then he said softly, "You are such remarkable children. I envy you your brand-new world. I don,t know that I would have the courage for it if you were not here with me."

Chapter Forty

IT WAS THE FORTNIGHT of many things.

Margon drove Stuart down to pick up his car in Santa Rosa, an old Jaguar convertible that had once belonged to his father. And they visited Stuart,s mother who was in a psychiatric facility but "bored to death" and "sick of all the crummy magazines" and ready to get a whole new wardrobe to help her cope. Her agent had called from Hollywood to say she was hot again. Well, that was an overstatement. But they had work for her if she could get herself on a plane. Maybe she,d go shopping on Rodeo Drive.

Grace, anointed as the most articulate and significant of the witnesses to the Man Wolf,s latest attack in Mendocino County, made the rounds of the talk shows, convincing the world in reasonable terms of her theory that this unfortunate creature was the victim of a congenital condition or a subsequent illness that had left it physically deformed and mentally challenged, but that it would soon blunder into the hands of authorities and get the confinement and treatment which it required.

Over and over again the investigators from the attorney general,s office, and from the FBI, and from the San Francisco Police Department came back to interview Stuart and Reuben, as they had been the mysterious focus of more than one Man Wolf attack.

This was difficult for Stuart and for Reuben, as neither was a skilled liar, but they soon learned the trick of minimal answers, murmurs, and mumbles as they went the distance and were finally left alone.

Reuben wrote a long comprehensive piece for the San Francisco Observer which essentially synthesized his earlier pieces, spiked with his own vivid descriptions of the Man Wolf attack, "the first" he,d seen with his own eyes. His conclusions were predictable. It was no superhero, and the adulation and fan worship should come to an end. Yet it had left us with many questions. Why had it been so easy for so many to embrace a creature so uncompromisingly cruel? Was the Man Wolf a throwback to a time when we had all been cruel and happy to be so?

Meanwhile the beast had made one last spectacular appearance deep in Mexico, slaying a murderer in Acapulco, and passed for the moment into oblivion.

Frank Vandover, tall, black-haired, with very fair skin and his handsome Cupid,s-bow mouth, had returned with the Nordic giant Sergei Gorlagon - filling the house with quasi-humorous tales as to how they had baited police and witnesses alike in their journey south. Frank was certainly the most contemporary of the distinguished gentlemen, a wisecracking American with a Hollywood sheen, and a penchant for teasing Reuben mercilessly about his early exploits and tousling Stuart,s hair. He called them the Wonder Puppies, and would have baited them into a race in the forest if Margon had not laid down the law.

Sergei was a brilliant scholar, with white hair, bushy white eyebrows, and clever, amused blue eyes. He had a voice somewhat like Thibault,s, deep and resonant, and even a bit crackling. And he went into a delightful tirade about the brilliant and prophetic Teilhard de Chardin with Laura and Reuben, having a love of abstract theology and philosophy that surpassed theirs.

It was impossible to guess the age of any of these men, really, Reuben felt; and it was clearly not polite to ask. "How long have you been roaming the planet?" just did not seem an acceptable question, especially from what Frank persisted in calling a pup or a cub.

Any number of times, over lunch or dinner, or whilst gathered just for talking at the breakfast room table, two or more of these men would lapse into another tongue, apparently forgetting themselves, and it was always exciting to Reuben to hear those rapid confidential riffs that Reuben couldn,t relate to any language he,d ever heard.

Margon and Felix frequently spoke a different tongue when they were alone. He,d overheard them without meaning to. And he had been tempted to ask if they all shared a common language, but that seemed - like asking their ages, or places of birth, or asking about the secret writing in Felix,s diaries and letters - to be intrusive, something that was not done.

Stuart and Reuben both wanted to know who had introduced the term "Morphenkinder," or "Morphengift," and what other terms there had been, or might be now. But they figured this information and a great deal more would come in time.

People broke into sometime pairs. Reuben spent most of his time either with Laura or with Felix. And Laura loved Felix as well. Stuart adored Margon and never wanted to be separated from him. In fact, Stuart seemed to have fallen in love with Margon. Frank often went off with Sergei. And only Thibault seemed a genuine loner, or a man equally at home with any of the group. There developed a sympathy between Thibault and Laura. They all adored Laura, but Thibault enjoyed her company especially, and went walking in the woods with her, or on errands, or sometimes watched a film with her in the afternoons.