The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

"Let,s get on the road," he said.

The traffic had rumbled swiftly over the Golden Gate in the heavy winter darkness, but the rain had not started.

On they traveled. And he slept.

Somehow in his thin but delicious sleep, he knew they were just nearing Santa Rosa.

And when he heard the voices, they were like an ice pick to his brain.

He sat bolt upright.

Never had he heard sharper panic, pain.

"Pull over," he shouted.

The spasms had already begun. His skin was sizzling. The scent of cruelty suffocated him - evil at its most rank.

"Into the trees," he said as they rolled into the nearby park. He was out of his clothes and sprinting through the darkness within seconds, plunging headlong through the prickling transformation as he moved up and into the trees.

Again and again, the cries ignited his blood. These were two young boys, terrified boys, being beaten, in fear of being cruelly mutilated, in fear of dying, and the seething hatred of the executioners poured out in a riff of filthy curses, sexual denunciations, grinding taunts.

They weren,t in the park but in the dim long overgrown backyard just off it, behind a darkened ramshackle old house, a gang of four who,d brought the boys here for a slow ritualistic bludgeoning and bloodletting, and as Reuben closed in, he realized one of the two victims was on the edge of his last breath. Sharp scent of blood, of rage, of terror.

He couldn,t save the dying boy. He knew it. But he could save the defiant one who was still fighting for his life.

With a gnashing roar he descended on the two who were driving their fists into the belly of this victim who was still resisting them, cursing them, with his whole soul. Bullies, killers, I spit at you!

In a boiling tangle of limbs and shrieks, Reuben,s jaws champed down on the reeking head of one attacker as his right claw went for the other, snaring him by his hair. The first man, head yanked back, writhed and convulsed, as Reuben,s teeth pierced his skull, the man grabbing for the bleeding victim under him, seemingly trying to draw him up as a human shield. With his right paw dragging the other attacker underfoot, Reuben crushed his head into the packed dirt of the yard. Then he clenched with delicious force on the torso of the first attacker, feasting on the scraggling flesh. The struggling victim slipped from the dying attacker,s grip.

As always, there was no time to savor this repast. He ripped out the man,s throat and was done with it, as the other two members of the gang came on.

With raised knives, they flung themselves at Reuben, trying to rip the hairy "costume" from him, one boy stabbing Reuben twice, three times, with his long knife, as the other sought to cut the "mask" from Reuben,s head.

The blood poured out of Reuben. It poured out of his chest, and down into his eyes from the slashes to his head. He was maddened. He clawed the face off one of the men, slashing the carotid artery, and caught the other as he turned and made for the chain-link fence. In a second, the man was dead and Reuben stood still, feasting on the soft meat of his thigh before dropping him and staggering backwards, drunk with the struggle, drunk with the blood. The scent of evil was lifting, evaporating, giving way to the scents of humans swarming in the nearby dark, and the scent of death just behind him.

Lights had gone on in the surrounding houses. There was a jambling of voices - screams in the night. Lights went on in the house above the yard.

Reuben,s wounds were a hot palpitating mass of pain, but he could feel them healing, feel the intense tingling above his right eye as the gash healed. In the dimness, he saw the bleeding victim crawling across the filthy trash-strewn yard towards the other - the poor boy who was already dead. The victim knelt beside his friend, shaking him, trying to revive him, and then let out the most anguished howl.

He turned to Reuben, eyes glinting in the darkness, sobbing over and over, "He,s dead, they killed him, he,s dead, he,s dead, he,s dead."

Reuben stood there silently looking down at the limp half-naked body. They couldn,t have been more than sixteen, either of these boys. The grieving boy climbed to his feet. His face and clothes were covered in blood; he reached out for Reuben, actually reached out for him. Then he fell forward in a dead faint.

Only now as he lay there at Reuben,s feet did Reuben see the tiny wounds oozing blood on the back of the boy,s outstretched left hand. Puncture wounds! Puncture wounds in the hand, the wrist, and the lower arm. Bite marks.

Reuben was petrified.

The surrounding yards were alive with whispering, gasping spectators. The back door of the house had opened.

Sirens were approaching - again, those unfurling ribbons of sound, sharp as steel.

Reuben stepped backwards.

Flashing lights strobed the heavy damp clouds and broke around the borders of the house, luridly illuminating its hulking sagging shape against the sky, and the filth and ruin of the yard.

Reuben turned and leapt over the fence, and moved swiftly, silently, through the darkness, dropping to all fours as he cleared a mile of the woods and then another mile, spotting ahead of him the Porsche as he,d left it, under the trees. His arms flashing out before him felt like forelegs, and his speed astonished him.

Yet he had to call for the transformation.

Leave me now, you know what I need, give me back my former shape.

He crouched down beside the car, gasping for breath, working with the spasms, as the thick wolf-coat dropped away. His chest wounds burned, pulsed, and the hair stayed thick there, full of blood. Same over his right eye, a hank of thick wolf-hair. His claws were retracting, vanishing. With long gnarled fingers he reached for the wounds and tugged at the thick hair there which remained. His bare legs felt weak, his bare feet unsure, his hands clutching for the door of the car as he lost his balance and fell down on one knee.

Laura was beside him, steadying him, helping him into the passenger seat. The patches of hair on his chest and forehead seemed infinitely more monstrous than the full transformation, but the blood had already coagulated into a thick flaking varnish. The skin positively burned over the wounds. Ripples of dizzying pleasure encircled his head as if two hands were massaging him.

As Laura drove for the freeway, he pulled his shirt on again, and his pants. And with his left hand over the throbbing chest wounds, he felt the wolf-hair shrinking, finally falling loose. Only the soft underfur remained. Both wolf-hair and fur were gone from his forehead.

There came the rolling darkness to drown him, take him away. He fought it, his head thumping against the window, a low moan coming from his lips.

Sirens; they were like banshees wailing, shrill, hideous. But the Porsche was moving north again, gaining the freeway, joining the thumping shuddering flow of winking, gleaming red taillights ahead, gliding from one lane to another, and finally moving at top speed.