The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

"He was intrigued as to what we knew," Felix offered gently. "By what we,d seen of this world."

Reuben was fascinated as to what this might mean.

Thibault continued:

"He treated us as delicate specimens to be pampered as well as studied. Klopov was impatient and condescending and finally brutal - the kind of monster who pulls apart a butterfly the better to know how its wings work." He paused as though he did not like to remember the details now. "She was hell-bent on provoking the change in us, and when occasionally we did change, in the beginning, we learned quickly enough that we could not escape, that the bars were too strong and the numbers too overwhelming, and we then refused to manifest at all." He stopped.

Felix waited, then picked up the thread.

"Now the Chrism cannot be extracted from us by force," he explained, glancing from Laura to Reuben and back again to Laura. "It cannot be withdrawn with a hypodermic or a sponge biopsy from the tissue in our mouths. The crucial cells become inert and then disintegrate within seconds. I discovered this long ago in my own stumbling fashion in the early centuries of science, and only confirmed it in the secret laboratory in this house. The ancients knew this from trial and error. We were not the first Morphenkinder ever imprisoned by those who wanted the Chrism."

Reuben shuddered inwardly. Weeks ago, though it seemed like years, when he,d first gone to Confession to Jim, all of these possibilities - imprisonment, coercion - had come full blown into his mind.

"But to return to the moment," said Felix, "one cannot inject the serum into another. That simply will not work." He became a little more passionate as he continued.

"A critical combination of elements must be present to deliver an effective dose of the Chrism, which is why the bite of Morphenkinder more often than not produces no effect on victims at all. Now we understood full well what those elements were, and that we cannot be forced to give the Chrism, even if the change is induced, and the hand or arm of a victim is thrust into our very mouths."

"But that in itself is rather difficult to accomplish," Thibault interjected with a little laugh. "Shall we say that with any such attempt, casualties are high. If one is manipulated into changing, it is quite easy to rip the arm off any proffered laboratory specimen, or decapitate a man before he can get out of range. End of experiment right there."

"I understand," said Reuben, "of course. I can imagine it. In fact, I,ve thought it over. Oh, I mean, I can,t imagine what you suffered, what you endured. But I can well imagine how this might play out."

"Imagine years of being isolated," said Felix, "subjected to freezing holding cells and days and nights of pitch darkness, of being starved and bullied and threatened, of being systematically tormented by insinuations that your companions are dead. Oh, some night I,ll tell you the whole story if you want to hear it. But let,s cut to the point. We refused to manifest, or to cooperate in any way. Drugs couldn,t make us manifest. Neither could physical torture. We had long ago schooled ourselves to sink deep into an altered state of consciousness to defeat such efforts. Klopov became royally sick of it, and sick of Philippe,s long discourses on the mystery of the Morphenkinder and the great philosophical truths that we undoubtedly knew."

He glanced at Thibault and waited for him to take up the tale.

Thibault nodded, with a faint resigned gesture of his right hand. "Klopov had Reynolds Wagner, our beloved companion and fellow prisoner, bound to an operating table and she and her team started to dissect him alive."

"My God!" Reuben whispered.

"We were forced to witness, via video cameras from our cells, what took place," said Thibault. "We could recount the story to you blow by blow. It is enough to say Reynolds couldn,t endure the agony. He changed because he could not prevent it, becoming a ravening wolf, blind with rage. He managed to kill three of the doctors and almost killed Dr. Klopov before she and others disabled him with bullets to the brain. Even then he would not stop attacking. He was blind, on his knees. But he brought down one of the laboratory assistants. Klopov quite literally decapitated Reynolds with bullets, firing again and again at his throat until there was no more throat - or neck. She severed his spinal cord. Then Reynolds fell over dead." He paused, his eyes closing and his eyebrows coming together in a small frown.

"She,d been threatening us with death daily," said Felix. "Gloating as to the wealth of forensic discoveries she,d reap from our autopsies, if only Durrell had allowed her to proceed."

"I can imagine what happened."

"Oh yes," said Felix. "You,ve seen it." He sat back, his eyebrows raised, staring at the table. "As you know from your experience with Marrok, Wagner,s remains disintegrated before her very eyes."

"She and her team made frantic efforts to stop the disintegration," said Thibault. "But they could do nothing. That,s when they found out that dead we were worth nothing. And around that time Vandover tried to take his own life, or so it seemed to them, and they resolved to wear us down through Durrell,s methods again. Durrell ever after hated Klopov, but he could not do without her, or have her removed. She and Jaska together were too much for him. With the other doctors lost, Jaska became even more important. We survived as best we could."

"For ten years this went on," said Reuben in amazement. It was all too real to him, this horror. He could vividly imagine being enclosed in a sterile cell.

"Yes," said Felix. "We did everything we could to trick them into allowing us access to one another, but they were far too clever for that.

"Finally a crisis in Belgrade forced them to move. Sergei had discovered us. He put pressure. And then in their haste they made their fatal mistake. They brought us together, without heavily narcotizing us, for transport in one van."

"They thought we were quite thoroughly demoralized by that time," said Thibault, "that we were far weaker than we were."

"We worked the change simultaneously with one another," said Felix, "which is relatively simple for us to do. We broke the bonds and slaughtered the entire crew, including Durrell and all the other doctors, except, that is, for Klopov and her assistant Jaska who managed to escape. We burned the laboratory to the ground."

Both men went quiet for a moment, as though lost in their reminiscence. Then Thibault, with a dreamy faraway look in his eyes, smiled. "Well, we escaped into Belgrade where Sergei had everything waiting for us. We thought we,d take care of Klopov and Jaska in a matter of days."