The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

Chapter Thirty-Three

A WILD BOAR HAD COME into his woods - a lone male. He heard the boar about two in the morning. He was reading, fighting the change. Then came the scent and the sound of the male, hunting on its own, the family left behind somewhere in a makeshift den of broken branches and leaves.

How his senses told him these things he could not quite grasp. He stripped, heart pounding, spasms rolling, and entered the forest in full wolf-coat - taking to the heights and then plummeting to the forest floor to track the thing on foot as it was on foot, gaining on it, and at last bringing it down, powerful hairy brute, fangs chomping deep into its back, and finally into its throat.

This was a feast, all right, a feast he,d been hungering for. He took his time, feasting on the boar,s belly, and other soft innards, and devouring the dripping heart. The great white tusks gleamed in the dimness. What a fierce thing it had been. He glutted himself with the juicy and fragrant flesh.

A sleepiness came over him as he devoured more and more, chewing the meat now more slowly, draining the blood juice out of it, and feeling an immense satisfying warmth throughout his chest and stomach and even his limbs.

This was heaven, the soundless rain all around him, the scents of the fallen leaves rising, the boar,s scent intoxicating him, the flesh more than he could possibly consume.

A scream shocked him. It was Laura, screaming for him in the darkness.

He raced towards the sound of her voice.

She stood in the clearing behind the house, in the glare of the yellow floodlights. She was calling and calling, and then she bent her knees and let out another scream.

He bounded out of the forest towards her.

"Reuben, it,s Dr. Cutler," she cried. "She can,t reach your mother. Stuart,s broken out of the hospital, broken out of the second-story window, and disappeared!"

So it had happened. It had happened to Stuart in half the time. And the change was on Stuart and Stuart was alone.

"My clothes, the big clothes," he said. "And clothes for the boy. Put them in the Jeep and drive south. I,ll find you around the hospital or wherever I can."

He took off for the forest, determined to follow it all the way to Santa Rosa, heedless of whether he had to cross busy roads or freeways, or grasslands - soon certain that he was traveling infinitely faster towards Stuart than he might in any other way - praying to the gods of the forest, or the God of his heart, to please help him reach the boy before anyone else might.

By the highways of the world, the distance was about ninety miles.

But there was no accounting for the way that he traveled, taking to the canopy of the forest when he could or racing by foot when he had to, traversing any fence, road, or obstacle in his path.

Only one thought governed him, and that was to find Stuart, and the abandon he knew in the name of that cause was sublime. His senses had never been so acute, his muscles as powerful, or his direction so certain.

The forest never failed him, though at times he smashed branches in his path, leapt huge distances, and crashed noisily through the underbrush or risked exposure as he bounded over open fields.

The voices of the populated south rose to meet him, the mingled scents of humankind deepening the spell of the woodland, and at last he knew he was now traveling through the parklands of forested yards of the city, the wolf-mind and the human-mind scanning for Stuart, for the sounds of Stuart or the scent of Stuart, or for whatever voices had called Stuart to wherever he,d gone.

It was futile to hope that Stuart had not been seduced by the scent of evil, as Reuben had been seduced by it, or that his newfound strength hadn,t carried him into realms where he might be discovered, even caught.

The night was alive with sirens, with crackling radio voices, with the pulse of the sweet city of Santa Rosa awakened to the shocking news of violence.

Bewildered, maddened, Reuben circled the hospital, then moved east. He caught the scent of terror, the scent of pleading, and desperation, a voice rising over the inevitable tide of petty prayers and garden-variety complaint.

Further to the east he bounded, when his instincts as well as his all-too-human brain told him: head for the boy,s home because where else can he go? Head for Plum Ranch Road.

Naked and alone in this peopled woods, he,ll hover there, frightened, seeking to make a lair of a basement or an attic known to him in that redwood mansion where he wasn,t welcome, the place that used to be his home. But as Reuben came within sight of the police cars and their swirling lights, of the big rumbling fire trucks and the ambulances, he caught the cacophony of those gathered on the knoll, and the stench of death.

The woman sobbing was Stuart,s mother. The dead man on the stretcher Herman Buckler, and the men fanning out to search the surrounding trees were goaded by the thrill of the hunt. The Man Wolf. There was a mixture of hysteria and glee amongst those gathered on foot for the spectacle.

Dogs barked. Dogs howled.

The boom of a gun echoed over the hillside. And there came the fierce blast of a bullhorn demanding caution. "Do not shoot. Report your position. Do not shoot."

Searchlights swept the trees, the grassland, the scattered rooftops - revealing cars in unlighted driveways, windows just flashing into life.

He could not get any closer. He was in greater danger now than he,d ever known.

But the night was dark, the rain thick and steady, and only he could see the terrain of twisted tree limbs that stretched before him as he circled and circled the blinking, crackling center of activity that was the family home.

He went as high as he could in the scrub oaks, lay still, paws over his eyes, making himself into darkness when the lights sought him out.

Ambulances were leaving the house. The cries of the mother were soft, broken, fading in the distance. Police cars crawled the dark roads in all directions. Porch lights and yard lights were snapped on, laying bare swimming pools and smooth shimmering lawns.

More vehicles were converging on the knoll.

He had to move out, make his circle wider again. And suddenly the obvious thought came to him: signal. The boy can hear what they cannot hear. In a low growing voice, he called Stuart,s name. "I,m searching for you," came his muffled, guttural words. "Stuart, come to me." The syllables rolled out of him, deep, throbbing, elongated so that for human ears they might sink beneath the rumble of tires and engines, the grind of domestic machines. "Stuart, come to me. Trust in me. I,m here to find you. Stuart, I am your brother. Come to me."

It seemed the backyard dogs were answering him, barking ever more fiercely, yelping, wailing, howling, and in that increasing din, he raised his own voice.