The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

"She,s an awful woman, this mother," Grace confided. "She,s jealous of her son. She blames him for the stepfather,s rages. She treats him like a pesky little brother who,s ruining her life with her new boyfriend. And the boy doesn,t get how childish she really is, and it makes me sick."

"I remember her," Reuben murmured.

But Grace was as adamant as everyone else that Reuben couldn,t see Stuart. No visitors were allowed just now. It was all they could do to hold off the sheriff and the police, and the attorney general,s office. So how could she make an exception for Reuben?

"They upset him with their questions," she said.

Reuben understood.

They came to Nideck Point four times during the week, pressing for information, as Reuben sat patiently on the couch by the big fireplace explaining again and again that he had seen nothing of "the beast" that attacked him. Over and over again, he led them to the hallway where the attack had taken place. He showed them the windows that had been bashed out. They seemed satisfied. Then they came back twenty-four hours later.

He hated it, struggling to sound sincere, helpless in the face of their curiosity, eager to please, when inwardly he was trembling. They were honest enough, but they were a nuisance.

The press was camped on the Santa Rosa hospital door. A fan club had sprung up among Stuart,s old high school friends, and they picketed daily demanding that the murderer be brought to justice. Two radical nuns joined the group. They told the world that the San Francisco Man Wolf cared more about cruelty to g*y youth than the people of California.

In the early evenings, Reuben, in his hoodie and glasses, faithfully wandered the pavements outside the hospital, circling the block, listening, pondering, brooding. He could have sworn once that he saw Stuart at the window. Could Stuart hear him? He whispered that he was there, that he wasn,t leaving Stuart alone, that he was waiting.

"This kid is in no danger of death," Grace averred. "You can forget that. But I have to get to the root of these symptoms. I have to figure out what this syndrome signifies. And this is becoming a consuming passion."

Yeah, and a dangerous one too, thought Reuben, but he cared more than anything else that Stuart live, and he trusted Grace to care more about that than anything else.

Meantime there had been a falling-out between Grace and the mysterious Dr. Jaska, though Grace obviously didn,t want to tell Reuben why. Suffice it to say the doctor was making suggestions Grace didn,t like.

"Reuben, the guy believes in things, unusual things," Grace said. "It,s a veritable obsession. There are other red flags. If he contacts you, cut him off."

"Will do," said Reuben.

But Jaska was buzzing around Stuart and engaging his mother in long conversations as to the boy,s mysterious encounter with the Man Wolf, and Grace was leery of it. He was suggesting that mysterious hospital in Sausalito that had no documentation and was licensed only as a private rehabilitation center.

"He,s not getting anywhere for one good reason," said Grace. "That woman doesn,t give a damn."

Reuben was frantic with worry. He drove south and sought out Stuart,s mother at her sprawling modern redwood-and-glass palace east of Santa Rosa on Plum Ranch Road.

Yes, she remembered him from the hospital, he was the handsome one. Come on in. No, she wasn,t worried about Stuart. Seems like he had more doctors than she knew what to do with. Some weirdo from Russia, a Dr. Jaska, wanted to see him but Dr. Golding and Dr. Cutler said no. This Dr. Jaska thought he should go into some kind of sanitarium, but she couldn,t figure why.

Sometime during the interview, which wasn,t much of an interview, the stepfather, Herman Buckler, sauntered in. He was a short, wiry man with exaggerated features and dark eyes. He had crew-cut platinum hair and a dark tan. He didn,t want his wife talking to reporters. In fact, he was furious. Reuben eyed him coldly. He was picking up the scent of malice clearly, much more clearly than he,d picked it up from Dr. Jaska, and he remained in the man,s presence as long as he could, though he was being ordered ever more violently to leave, just so he could study the guy.

The guy was poisoned with resentment and rage. He,d had enough of Stuart turning his life upside down. His wife was terrified of him, doing everything she could to placate him, apologizing for what had happened, and asking Reuben to go ahead and go.

The spasms were churning in Reuben. And it was daylight, the first time they,d ever come to him in daylight except for a very mild visitation when he,d seen Dr. Jaska. He kept his eyes on the man even as he walked out of the big glass and redwood house.

For a long time, he sat in the Porsche, looking at the surrounding forest and hills, just letting the spasms wane. The sky was blue overhead. This had the beauty of the wine country here, this lovely sunny weather. What a great place for Stuart to have grown up.

The change hadn,t really threatened. Could Reuben bring it about in daylight? He wasn,t sure. Not at all. But he was sure that Herman Buckler was capable of trying to kill his stepson, Stuart. And the wife knew it but she didn,t know it. In the midst of all this she was involved in a choice between her husband and her son.

As for the nights, Reuben felt certain that he now had the Wolf Gift entirely under his control.

For the first three nights after he last saw Stuart, he held off the change altogether, and gratifying as this was, it soon resulted in a kind of agony. It was like fasting, when one finds out how much more food and drink are than mere sustenance.

After that, when the change came, he confined himself to the woods near Nideck Point, hunting, roaming, discovering the creeks of his property, and climbing the tallest of the old-growth trees to heights not attempted in the past. There was a bear hibernating in his little forest, some sixty feet up an old fire-scarred tree; and a big cat, most likely the male cub of the mother he,d killed, was roaming Reuben,s part of the woods as well. There were deer he did not want to slay. But the sleek plump furry squirrel, wood rat, beaver, shrew, shrew mole - he fed on them all, and on cold, surprisingly tender reptiles - salamanders, garter snakes, frogs. Fishing in the creek was heavenly, his giant paws soon capable of snaring any sleek darting prey he chose. High up in the canopy, he could snatch the hapless scrub jays and wrens right out of the air, and devour them feathers and all while their little hearts still pumped vainly against their tiny narrow br**sts. He feasted on the woodpecker and on junco and an endless supply of thrushes.

The utter "rightness" of devouring what one killed fascinated him, as did the desire to kill in the first place. He longed to wake the hibernating bear. He wanted to know if he could best it.