The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

The Man Wolf had been spotted in Walnut Creek and Sacramento. People reported seeing him in Los Angeles. And a woman in Fresno claimed to have taken his picture. A couple in San Diego claimed to have been rescued by the Man Wolf from an attempted assault, though they did not get a clear look at anyone involved. Police were investigating a number of sightings in the vicinity of Lake Tahoe.

The California attorney general had convened a special task force to deal with the Man Wolf, and a commission of scientists had been formed to study all forensic evidence.

Crime had not slacked off due to the Man Wolf. No, the authorities were not willing to say that at all; but the police said that it had. The streets of Northern California were relatively quiet just now.

"He could be anywhere," said a cop in Mill Valley.

Reuben went to the computer and tapped out his story on Stuart McIntyre for the Observer, again leaning heavily on Stuart,s own rich descriptions of what had happened in the attack. He included Stuart,s theories as to the mysterious illness of the monster; and as in the past he closed with heavy editorial emphasis on the impossible moral problem posed by the Man Wolf - that he was judge, jury, and executioner of those he massacred and that society could not embrace him as a superhero.

We cannot admire his brute intervention, or his savage cruelty. He is the enemy of all we hold sacred, and therefore he is our personal enemy, not our friend. That he has again rescued an innocent victim from almost certain annihilation is, tragically, incidental. He cannot be thanked for this any more than an erupting volcano or an earthquake can be thanked for whatever good may follow in its wake. Speculation as to his personality, his ambitions, or even his motives must remain just that, speculation, and nothing more. We celebrate what we can - that Stuart McIntyre is alive and safe.

It was not an original piece or an inspired piece, but it was solid. And what drove it was the personality of Stuart, the seemingly invincible freckle-faced teen star of Cyrano de Bergerac who had survived a near-fatal g*y bashing to talk to reporters personally from his hospital bed. Reuben only noted the "bite" in passing, because Stuart had only noted it in passing. No one was attaching significance to the fact that Reuben himself had been bitten. The drama of the bite was not playing out in the public eye.

Reuben and Laura went upstairs, got into the high-backed bed, and cuddled together watching a beautiful French film, Cocteau,s Beauty and the Beast, and Reuben,s eyes grew heavy with sleep. It disturbed him actually to see the Beast talking so eloquently in French to Beauty. The Beast wore velvet clothes and fine lace shirts, and had glistening eyes. Beauty was fair and gentle like Laura.

He began to dream, and in his dream he was running in full wolf-coat through an endless field of blowing grass, his forelegs bounding effortlessly before him. And beyond lay the forest, the great dark never-ending forest. There were cities mixed up in the forest, glass towers rising as high as the Douglas fir and the giant sequoia, buildings festooned with ivy and trailing vines, and the great oaks swarming over many-storied houses with peaked roofs and smoking chimneys. All the world had become the forest of trees and towers. Ah, this is paradise, he sang as he climbed higher and higher.

He wanted to wake and tell Laura about the dream, but he,d lose the dream if he woke, if he stirred at all, because the dream was as fragile as mist and yet utterly real to him. Night came, and the towers were covered in glowing lights, sparkling and winking amid the dark trunks of the trees and the immense branches.

"Paradise," he whispered.

He opened his eyes. She was leaning on her elbow looking down at him. The ghostly light from the television illuminated her face, her moist lips. Why would she want him the way he was now, just a young man, a very young man, with hands as delicate as his mother,s?

But she did. She began to kiss him roughly, her fingers closing on his left nipple, shocking him with immediate desire. She was playing with his skin as he,d played with hers. Her oval-tipped fingernails scratched playfully at his face, fingers finding his teeth, pinching a little at his lips. Her weight felt good to him, the tickle of her hair falling down. It felt good, naked flesh against naked flesh, and this soft moist slippery flesh, yes, against his flesh, yes. I love you, Laura.

He awoke just as the sun was rising.

This was the tenth night since the transformation had first happened, and this was the first night that he had not experienced the change. He was relieved, but he felt curiously unsettled, that he had missed something of vital importance, that he had been expected somewhere and he had failed to appear, that he was not being true to something inside him that felt like, but was not, conscience.

Chapter Thirty-Two

SEVEN NIGHTS PASSED before Reuben got in to see Stuart again.

Reuben was able to get his own final rabies shot from Dr. Cutler as agreed, but Dr. Cutler just couldn,t let anyone near Stuart until the fever was under control, among other things. She was in contact with Grace, and very grateful to Reuben for that connection.

If Grace had not been attending the boy from then on, even coming up to Santa Rosa to see him personally and confer with Reuben personally, Reuben would have gone mad from the suspense. Dr. Cutler took his calls, and was more than friendly, but she wasn,t going to chat freely. She did let slip that Stuart was experiencing a remarkable growth spurt and she couldn,t quite figure it out. Of course the boy was only sixteen. The epiphyseal plates hadn,t closed yet, but still, she,d never seen anyone physically grow the way this boy was growing. And the growth spurt was affecting his hair too.

Reuben was frantic to see him, but absolutely nothing he said could change Dr. Cutler,s mind.

Grace was infinitely more forthcoming as long as not a single word of what she confided saw print. Reuben swore absolute confidentiality. I just want him to be all right, to live, to survive, to be as if none of this happened to him.

Feverish, at times incoherent, Stuart was not only surviving but thriving, Grace said, exhibiting all the same symptoms Reuben had exhibited, bruises vanishing, ribs completely healed, skin glistening with health, and the boy,s body experiencing the baffling growth spurt, as Dr. Cutler had described.

"It,s all happening faster with him," Grace said. "Much faster. But then he,s so damned young. Just a few years makes such a remarkable difference."

Stuart had broken out in a terrible rash from the antibiotics and then the rash had simply vanished. Not to worry, Grace said. The fever and delirium were frightening but there was no infection and the boy came out of it for hours every day, long enough to demand to see people, to threaten to break out of the window if he didn,t get his cell phone and computer, and to fight with his mother who wanted him to exonerate his stepfather completely. He claimed to be hearing voices, to know things about what was going on in buildings surrounding the hospital, to be agitated, eager to get out of bed, uncooperative. He was afraid of his stepfather, afraid of him hurting his mother. Invariably the staff sedated him.