The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

“You’ve done it,” he whispered. “You’ve taken the Chrism.”

She didn’t answer. It was as if he hadn’t spoken at all.

Her eyes were darker, yes, and her hair was fuller, much fuller, and even her grayish-blond eyebrows had darkened, so that she looked like a sister of herself, almost identical yet wholly different, with even a darker glow to her cheeks.

Dear God, he whispered without words. And then his heart began tripping and he felt he was going to be sick. This is how he’d looked to others in those days before the transformation had come on him, when those around him knew something had “happened” to him and he’d felt so completely remote, and without fear.

Was she that remote from him now, as he’d been from all his family? No, that couldn’t be. This was Laura, Laura who’d just welcomed him, Laura who’d just taken him into her bed. He blushed. Why had he not known?

Nothing changed in her expression, nothing at all. That’s how it had been with him. He’d stared like that, knowing others wanted something from him, but unable to give it. But then, in his arms, she’d been soft and melting as always, giving, trusting, close.

“Felix didn’t tell you?” she asked. Even her voice seemed different, now that he knew. Just a richer timbre to it, and he could have sworn that the bones of her face were slightly larger, but that might have been his fear.

He couldn’t get the words out. He didn’t know what the words were. A flash of the heat of their lovemaking came back to him, and he felt an immediate arousal. He wanted her again, and yet he felt, what, sick? Was he sick with fear? He hated himself.

“How do you feel?” he managed. “Are you feeling bad at all, I mean are there any bad side effects?”

“I was a little sick in the beginning,” she said.

“And you were alone and no one—?”

“Thibault’s been here every night,” she said. “Sometimes Sergei. Sometimes Felix.”

“Those devils,” he whispered.

“Reuben, don’t,” she said in the most simple and sincere way. “You mustn’t for a moment think that anything bad has happened. You mustn’t.”

“I know,” he murmured. He felt a throbbing in his face and in his hands. Of all places, his hands. The blood was rushing in his veins. “But were you ever in any kind of danger?”

“No, none,” she said. “That simply doesn’t happen. They explained all that. Not when the Chrism’s passed and there are no real injuries to the person. Those who die, die when their injuries can’t be overtaken by the Chrism.”

“I figured as much,” he said. “But we don’t have a rule book to consult when we begin to worry, do we?”

She didn’t answer.

“When did you decide?”

“I decided almost immediately,” she said. “I couldn’t resist it. It was pointless to tell myself I was pondering it, giving it the consideration it deserved.” Her voice grew warmer and so did her expression. This was Laura, his Laura. “I wanted it, and I told Felix and I told Thibault.”

He studied her, ignoring the impulse to take her to the bed again. Her skin looked moist, youthful, and though she’d never looked old, she’d been powerfully enhanced, there was no doubt of it. He could hardly bear to look at her lips and not kiss them.

“I went to the cemetery,” she said. “I talked to my father.” She looked off, obviously not finding this easy. “Well, talked as if I could talk to my father,” she said. “They’re all buried there, you know, my sister, my mother, my father. I talked to them. Talked to them about all of it. But I’d made the decision before I ever left Nideck Point. I knew I was going to do it.”

“All this time, I was figuring you’d refuse, you’d say no.”

“Why?” she asked gently. “Why would you think such a thing?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Because you had lost so much and you might want so much more. Because you’d lost children, and you might want a child again, not a Morphenkind child, whatever that would be, but a child. Or because you believed in life, and thought life itself is worth what we give up for it.”

“It is worth dying for?” she asked.

He didn’t answer.

“You speak like you have regrets,” she said. “But I guess that’s bound to happen.”

“I don’t have regrets,” he said. “I don’t know what I feel, but I could imagine your saying no. I could imagine your wanting another chance at a family, a husband, a lover, and children.”

“Reuben, what you have never grasped … what you seem absolutely unable to grasp … is that this means we don’t die.” She said it without drama, but it was cutting to him and he knew it was true. “All my family have died,” she said, her voice low and a little scolding. “All my family! My father, my mother, yes, in due course; but my sister, murdered in a liquor store robbery, and my children gone, dead, taken in the most cruel ways. Oh, I’ve never spoken of these things to you before, really; I shouldn’t now. I hate when people tout their suffering and their losses.” Her face hardened suddenly. Then a faraway look took hold of her as if she’d been drawn back into the worst pain.

“I know what you’re saying,” he said. “I don’t know about death. Not anything. Until the night Marchent was killed, I only knew one person ever that had died, Celeste’s brother. Oh, my grandparents, yes, they’re dead, but they were so old. And then Marchent. I knew Marchent for less than twenty-four hours, and it was such a shock. I was numb. It wasn’t death, it was catastrophe.”

“Don’t be in a hurry to know all about it,” she said, a little defeated.

“Shouldn’t I?” He thought of the people whose lives he’d taken, the bad guys the Man Wolf had ripped right out of life, thoughtlessly. And it came down on him hard that very soon Laura too would have that brute power, to kill as he’d killed, while she herself would be invulnerable.

There were no words now for him.

Images were crowding his mind, filling him with an ominous sadness, and a near despair. He pictured her in a country cemetery talking with the dead. He thought of those pictures of her children that he’d glimpsed. He thought of his family, always there, and then he thought of his own power, of that limitless strength he enjoyed as he mounted the rooftops, as the voices summoned him out of humanity and into the single-minded Man Wolf who would kill without regret or compassion.