The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

So this is one of the big secrets of life, is it?—you cope with loss sooner or later, and then one loss after another most likely, and it probably never gets any easier than this, and each time you’re looking at what is going to happen to you, only this won’t happen to me. It won’t. And I can’t quite make that real.

He stared dully ahead of him and was only vaguely aware that a man was coming across the graveyard from a truck parked on the road, and that he was carrying a large bouquet of white roses, arranged in green ferns, that was fitted into what appeared to be a stone vase.

He thought of the roses he’d sent to Celeste. He felt like crying. He saw Marchent’s tormented face again right near him, so near. He felt he was going to go crazy here.

He moved away as the man approached the little mausoleum but he could still hear Felix thanking the man and telling him that the flowers should be placed outside. He heard the rasp of the key in the lock. Then the man was gone, and Reuben was staring at a long row of yew trees, grown far too tall to be picturesque anymore, that divided the graveyard from the quaint and pretty houses across the way. Such pretty bay windows, outlined with red and green lights. Such pretty gingerbread trim. A mass of dark pines rose behind the houses. Indeed the dark woods encroached on all sides, and the houses in all directions looked small and bold against the giant fir trees. The trees were so horribly out of scale with the little streetscape and the community of small graves that slumbered here amid the velvet green grass.

He wanted to turn back, find Felix, say something comforting, but he was so deeply immersed now in the vision of last night, in seeing Marchent’s face, feeling her cold hand on his hand, that he couldn’t move or speak.

When Felix came up beside him, Felix said, “She’s not here, is she? You don’t sense any presence of her here.”

“No,” said Reuben. She is not here. Her suffering face is imprinted on my soul forever. But she is not in this place, and cannot be comforted here.

But where is she? Where is she herself now?

They headed for home, trolling the main street of Nideck, where the official town Christmas trimmings were going up with amazing speed. What a transformation, to see the three-story Nideck Inn already decked with tiny red lights to the rooftop, and to see the green wreaths on the shop doors, and the green garland wound around the quaint old lampposts. There were workmen busy on more than one site. They wore yellow rain slickers and boots. People stopped and waved. Galton and his wife, Bess, were just going into the Inn, probably for lunch, and they both stopped and waved.

All this cheered Felix, obviously. “Reuben,” he said, “I think this little Winterfest is truly going to work!”

Only after they hit the narrow country road again did Felix say in a low, very gentle voice, his most protective voice,

“Reuben, do you want to tell me where you went last night?”

Reuben swallowed. He wanted to answer, but he couldn’t think what to say.

“Look, I understand,” said Felix. “You saw Marchent again. This was profoundly unsettling, of course. And you went out after that, but I so wish you had not.”

Silence. Reuben felt like a bad schoolboy, but he didn’t know the reason himself why he’d gone. Yes, he’d seen Marchent, and obviously it did have to do with that. But why had this triggered the need to hunt? All he could think of was the bloody triumph of the kill and that plunge through the forest afterwards, after he’d left little Susie Blakely and it seemed he’d been flying like Goodman Brown through the world’s darkest wilderness. He knew he was blushing now, blushing with shame.

The car was following the narrow Nideck Road uphill through phalanxes of towering trees.

“Reuben, you know perfectly well what we’re trying to do,” Felix said, his patience as reliable as ever. “We’re trying to take you and Stuart to places where you can hunt unknown and unnoticed. But if you go out on your own, if you venture into the surrounding towns, the press will be on top of us all again. Reporters will be swarming all over the house, asking for some statement from you on the Man Wolf. You’re the go-to guy when it comes to the Man Wolf, the one who’s been bitten by the Man Wolf, the one who’s seen the Man Wolf, not once but twice, the reporter who writes about the Man Wolf. Look, dear boy, it’s a matter of surviving at Nideck Point, for all of us.”

“I know, Felix, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I haven’t even checked the news.”

“Well, I haven’t either, but the fact is you left your torn and bloody clothes, and a bloodstained blanket, of all things, in the furnace room, Reuben, and any Morphenkind can smell human blood. You’ve had a meal of somebody for certain, and this won’t go unnoticed.”

Reuben felt his face grow hot. Too many images of the hunt were crowding in on him. He thought of little Susie’s tiny candle-flame face against his chest. He was disoriented, as if this normal body of his now was some sort of illusion. He longed for the other body, the other muscles, the other eyes.

“What stops us, Felix, from living in the forest always, encased in fur, living like the beasts that we are?”

“You know what stops us,” said Felix. “We’re human beings, Reuben. Human beings. And you will soon have a son.”

“I felt like I had to go,” Reuben said under his breath. “I just did. I don’t know. I had to push back and I know it was foolish. And I wanted to go, that’s the God’s truth. I wanted to go alone.” He blurted out in fits and starts the little story of the child in the trailer. He told how he’d buried the remains of the corpse. “Felix, I’m caught between two worlds, and I had to blunder into that other world, I had to.”

Felix was quiet for a while, and then ventured, “I know it’s all very seductive, Reuben, these people treating us like God’s anointed.”

“Felix, how many people are out there, suffering like that? That little girl wasn’t fifty miles from here. They’re all around us, aren’t they?”

“This is part of the burden, Reuben. It’s part of the Chrism. We cannot save all of them. And any attempt to do so will end in failure and in our own ruin. We can’t make our territory into our kingdom. The time is long past for that. And I don’t want to lose Nideck Point again so soon, dear boy. I don’t want you to leave, or Laura, or any of us! Reuben, don’t burn up your mortal life just yet, don’t extinguish all ties with it. Look, this is all my fault and Margon’s fault. We haven’t let you boys hunt enough. We’re not remembering what the early years were like. This will change, Reuben, I promise you.”