The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

Reuben stared aghast at its powerful hairy legs, the way it moved on the balls of its feet, heels high, knees flexed. He had felt all this, but never beheld it.

The monster dropped the body. With one great leap it vaulted through the assembly, pounding past Grace and Jim as it raced across the great room and into the library where it burst through the drapery and glass of the eastern window and vanished into the night. The shattered glass clattered down with the brass drapery rod and the crumpling fabric and the glittering rain swept in.

Reuben stood stock-still.

The spasms were running rampant inside him. But his skin was like an icy armor containing him.

He saw around him utter pandemonium - Dr. Cutler in hysterics being held by the desperate stammering Stuart, his mother climbing up from her knees and staring after the monster, and Jim down on his knees with his hands over his face, praying with his eyes shut.

Phil rushed to the aid of his wife. And Laura, who appeared now in the open door, and standing well to one side of the doctor,s dead body, stared at Reuben and Reuben stared at her. He reached out to welcome her into his arms.

Simon Oliver had fallen into a chair, and clutching at his chest, his face flushed and wet, was struggling to get back to his feet.

Only the three men - Felix, Margon, and Thibault - had not moved. Now Thibault collected himself and went to assist the sheriff. The sheriff took his arm gratefully and rushed past Laura and Reuben, shouting commands to his men.

The sirens of the patrol cars were now slicing up the night with their shrill pulsing wails.

Felix stood quite still, looking to his right at the severed head of Dr. Jaska that lay on its side, as heads apparently tend to do, staring blankly at nothing. And Margon went to put his arms round Dr. Cutler and assure her in the most tender voice that "the creature" had apparently fled. Dr. Cutler was plainly nauseated and about to be really sick.

The patrolmen were fanning out into the woods. More sirens were cutting up the night. Those hideous strobing lights were flashing across the great room, in one garish turn after another, and the crumpled body of Dr. Klopov lay on the top step, a sack of bloody clothes in the falling rain.

Men stumbled over it as they came into the house, guns raised.

Stuart,s face was utterly expressionless and white.

Poor Stuart. Reuben stood there, holding Laura in his arms. He was trembling. Stuart had seen what this monster could do twice, had he not? Reuben had never even seen it once. Never once seen the great hairy beast pick up a human being as if it were a weightless mannequin and decapitate it as though pulling a fat chunk of overripe fruit off a crackling stem. The sheriff burst back into the room, face wet and shining, with a highway patrolman beside him. "Nobody leaves this place, nobody leaves, nobody leaves!" he yelled. "Until we get a statement from everybody."

Grace, white-faced, shaking, her eyes grotesquely wide and glassy with tears, was being stroked and comforted by Phil, who spoke to her in a soft confidential voice. Felix also stood beside her, and Thibault drew close to Reuben and Laura.

Grace looked at her son.

Reuben looked at her.

He looked at Stuart. Stuart stood helpless by the fireplace merely looking at Reuben, his face now remarkably calm and with a dreamy remote perplexity.

Reuben watched Margon and Felix conferring with the sheriff, but he didn,t hear the words they spoke.

Then Grace did something Reuben had never seen before, or ever thought he would see. She passed out cold, slipping like a greased sack out of Phil,s arms, and hit the floor with a thud.

Chapter Thirty-Five

IT WAS THE STRANGEST PARTY that Reuben had ever seen in all his life. And it was a party.

The forensics teams were long gone, including men from San Francisco, Mendocino County, and the FBI.

So were most of the paramedics as they were needed elsewhere and had been questioned first.

Simon Oliver had been taken to the local emergency room, after suffering all the symptoms of heart failure which might have been only a panic attack.

The house was filled with the scent of the rain and the aroma of coffee, lemon tea, and red wine.

All the comfort cookies had been taken out of the pantry and piled upon trays. Dried salamis had been sliced and set out with crackers and mustard. The wife of one of the local sheriff,s deputies had come with platters of fresh sliced pumpkin bread.

At the breakfast table and in the kitchen, and in the dining room, people were gathered in little knots mulling over what had happened, giving their statements to the sheriff, the highway patrol, and the men from the attorney general,s office who,d been sent from Fort Bragg.

Galton and his cousins had done their best to board up the library window at least halfway, draping it with heavy plastic; and after an hour of hard work had managed to rehang the front door on serviceable hinges with a new dead-bolt lock.

Now they sipped coffee, chatted, milled around with everyone else.

Fires blazed in the big fireplaces. All the lamps had been lighted, from ornate wall sconces to old electric lights on corner tables or chests which Reuben had never even noticed before.

And the young armed patrolmen and paramedics moved through the rooms like singles at any party, eyeing one another and the "more important" guests who clung together in small cliques.

Dr. Cutler hunkered down deep in the big old couch by the great room fireplace, a blanket around her shoulders, shivering not from the cold but from the experience, explaining to the investigators, "Well, surely it was some species for which we have no present scientific label or definition; either that or a truly monstrous mutation, a victim of a combination of rampant bone development and hair growth. Why, the floorboards were shaking under the thing. It must have weighed three hundred pounds."

Grace, Phil, and Jim were gathered at the great dining table in the oddly cheerful light of the medieval fireplace, talking to Felix who explained amicably that Jaska and Klopov had been connected for years with unorthodox experiments and clandestine research, funded for decades by the Soviet government, and later by questionable private patrons for dubious ends.

"They were heavy into the occult, as I understood it," said Felix, "always insinuating that the Soviets knew secrets about the world of lore and legend that others had foolishly dismissed."

Grace studied Felix sympathetically as he went on.

"You mean they were interested in this thing, this man wolf, for private medicinal research?" asked Phil.

Jim,s face was solemn, remote, his eyes moving over Felix gently and unobtrusively as Felix spoke.

"Does it surprise you?" asked Felix. "There are scientists out there treating billionaire clients with unorthodox youth serums, human growth hormone, stem cells, sheep glands, cloned skin and bone, and cosmetic transplants of which the rest of us only dream. Who knows what they know, or where their research has led them? Of course they wanted to get their hands on the Man Wolf. Perhaps there are sub rosa laboratories under American auspices with the same aims."