The Wolves of Midwinter Page 7

The cold darkness was descending, the molten clouds lowering, and the woods turning into shadow all around. The invisible rain sighed like a living thing in the trees.

  He got in his Porsche and he drove. He didn’t know where he was headed, only that he had to be away from Nideck Point, away from fear, from helplessness, from grief. Grief is like a fist against your throat, he thought. Grief strangles you. Grief was more awful than anything he’d ever known.

  He kept to the back roads, vaguely aware that he was moving inland and the forest was on either side of him wherever he went. He wasn’t thinking, so much as feeling, stifling the powerful transformation, again and again feeling the tiny needlelike growth of the hair all over him as he forced it back. He was listening for the voices, voices from the Garden of Pain, listening, listening for the inevitable sound of someone crying out frantically, someone who could speak, someone who was yet alive, someone who was crying for him though he or she couldn’t know it, someone he could reach.

  Pain somewhere, like a scent on the wind. A little child threatening, kicking, sobbing.

  He pulled off the road and into a grove of trees and, folding his arms defensively over his chest, he listened as the voices came clear. Again the wolf hair pushed at him like needles. His skin was alive with it. His scalp was tingling and his hands were shuddering as he struggled to hold it back.

  “And where would you be without me?” the man snarled. “You think they wouldn’t put you in jail? Sure, they’d put you in jail.”

  “I hate you,” sobbed the child. “You’re hurting me. You always hurt me. I wanna go home.”

  And the man’s voice rolled over her voice, in guttural curses and threats—ah, the grim, predictable sound of evil, the greed of utter selfishness! Give me the scent!

  He felt himself breaking through his clothes, every inch of his scalp and face burning as the hair broke out, his claws extended, his thick hairy feet pushing out of the shoes. He tore off his jacket, shredding the shirt and pants with his claws. The mane came down to his shoulders. Who I truly am, what I truly am. How quickly the fur covered all of him, and how powerful he felt to be alone with it, alone and hunting as he had hunted on those first thrilling nights before the elder Morphenkinder had come, when he’d been on the very edge of all that he could comprehend, imagine, define—reaching for this luscious power.

  He took to the forest in full wolf coat, running on all fours towards the child, his muscles singing, his eyes finding the jagged and broken ways through the forest without a single mishap. And I belong to this, I am this.

  They were in an old decrepit trailer home half concealed by a thicket of broken oaks and giant firs. Small ghostly windows flashing with bluish television light gleamed before him in a cramped wet yard of butane tanks, trash cans, and old tires, with a rusted and dented truck parked to one side.

  He hovered, uncertain, determined not to blunder as he’d done in the past. But he was ravenously hungry for the evil man only inches away from his grasp. Television voices chattered inside. The child was choking now and the man was beating her. He heard the thwack of the leather belt. The scent of the child rose sweet and penetrating. And there came the rank foul smell of the man, in wave after wave, the stench mingling with the man’s voice and the reek of the dried sweat in his filthy clothing.

  The rage rose in his throat as he let out a long, low growl.

  The door came off too easily when he yanked it, and he threw it aside. A rush of hot fetid air assaulted his nostrils. Into the small narrow space, he forced himself like a giant, head bowed under the low ceiling, the whole trailer rocking under his weight, the jabbering television crashing to the floor as he caught the scrawny screaming red-faced bully by his flannel shirt and drew him back and out into the clattering cans and breaking bottles of the yard.

  How calm Reuben was as he picked the man up—Bless us, O Lord, for these are Thy gifts!—how very natural he felt. The man kicked at him and pounded at him, face savage with terror, like the terror Reuben had felt when Marchent embraced him, and then slowly and deliberately Reuben bit into the man’s throat. Feed the beast in me!

  Oh, too rich, this, too rich in salt and rupturing blood and relentless heartbeat, too sweet the very viscid life of the evil one, too beyond what memory could ever record. It had been too long since he’d hunted alone, feasting on his chosen victim, his chosen prey, his chosen enemies.

  He swallowed great mouthfuls of the man’s flesh, his tongue sweeping the man’s throat and the side of his face.

  He liked the bones of the jaw, liked biting into them, liked feeling his teeth hook onto the jawbone as he bit down on what was left of the man’s face.

  There was no sound in the whole world now except the sound of his chewing and swallowing this warm, bloody flesh.

  Only the leftover rain sang in the gleaming forest around him as if it were now bereft of all the small eyes that had seen this unholy Eucharist and fled. He abandoned himself to the meal, devouring the man’s entire head, his shoulders, and his arms. Now the rib cage was his, and he went on delighting in the crackling sound of thin hollow bones, until suddenly he could eat no more.

  He licked his paws, licked the pads of his palms, wiped at his face, and licked his paw again as he cleaned himself with it as a cat might have done. What was left of the man, a pelvis and two legs? He hurled the remains deep into the forest, hearing a soft shuffling collection of sounds as they fell to the earth.

  Then he thought the better of this. He moved swiftly through the trees until he’d recovered the body, or what was left of it, and he carried it with him farther away from the trailer until he came to a small muddy clearing by a little stream. There he dug quickly down into the damp earth, and buried the corpse there, covering it as best he could. Here the world might never find it.

  Then he started to wash his paws in the stream, splashing the icy water over his hairy face, but he heard the child calling him. Her voice was a shrill piping sound: “Man Wolf, Man Wolf.” She called it over and over again.

  “Man Wolf!” he whispered.

  He hurried back to find her, near hysterical, in the door of the trailer.

  Painfully thin, a child of seven or eight at most, with tangled blond hair, she begged him not to leave her. She wore jeans and a filthy T-shirt. She was turning blue from the cold. Her little face was streaked with tears and dirt.

  “I prayed for you to come!” she sobbed. “I prayed for you to save me and you did.”

  “Yes, darling dear,” he said, in his low gruff wolfish voice. “I came.”

  “He stole me from my mommy,” she sobbed. She held out her wrists, scarred from the ropes with which he’d tied her. “He said my mommy was dead. I know she’s not.”

  “He’s gone now, precious darling,” he said. “He’ll never hurt you again. Now stay here until I find a blanket in there to cover you. And I’ll take you to where you’ll be safe.” He stroked her little head as gently as he could. How impossibly frail she seemed, yet so unaccountably strong.

  There was an army blanket on the stale bed inside the trailer.

  He wrapped her in this tightly, as if she were a newborn, her large eyes settling on him with total trust. Then he took her up with his left arm, and plunged fast through the trees.

  How long they traveled, he didn’t know. It was thrilling to him to have her safe in his arms. She was silent, folded against him, a treasure.

  On he moved until he saw the lights of a town.

  “They’ll shoot you!” she cried out when she saw the lights. “Man Wolf,” she pleaded. “They will!”

  “Would I let anyone harm you?” he asked. “Be quiet, little darling.”

  She snuggled against him.

  On the edges of the town, he crept slowly, safe in the underbrush and the scattered trees, until he saw a brick church with its back to the forest. There were lights in a small rectory-style building beside it, and an old metal swing set in a paved yard. The big rectangular wood-framed sign on the roa
d said in giant black movable letters: GOOD SHEPHERD CHURCH. PASTOR CORRIE GEORGE. SERVICE: SUNDAY AT NOON. There was a phone number in squarish numerals.

  He cradled the child in both arms as he approached the window, comforting her because she was afraid again. “Man Wolf, don’t let them see you,” she cried.

  Inside the rectory, he could see a heavyset woman, alone, at a brown kitchen table, in dark blue pants and a simple blouse, with a paperback book propped up to read as she ate her lonely meal. Her wavy gray hair was cropped short, and she had a simple no-nonsense face. For a long moment, he watched her as the scent of her came to him, clean and good. He had no doubt of it.

  He set the child down, carefully removing the bloodstained blanket, and gestured to the kitchen door. “Do you know your name, darling?” he asked.

  “Susie,” she said. “Susie Blakely. And I live in Eureka. I know my phone number too.”

  He nodded. “You go to that lady, Susie, and you bring her to me. Go on.”

  “No, Man Wolf, go, please!” she said. “She’ll call the police and they’ll kill you.”

  But when he wouldn’t go, she turned and did as she was told.

  When the woman came out, Reuben stood there gazing at her, wondering what it was she really saw in the dim light of the window—this tall hairy monster that he was, more beast than man, but with a man’s bestial face. The rain was just a mist now. He scarcely felt it. The woman was fearless.

  “Well, it is you!” she said. An agreeable voice. And the little child beside her, clinging to her, pointed and nodded.

  “Help her,” Reuben said to the woman, conscious of how deep and rough his voice sounded. “The man’s gone who was hurting her. They’ll never find him. Not hair nor hide of him. Help her. She’s been through terrible things, but she knows her name and where she belongs.”

  “I know who she is,” the woman said under her breath. She came a little closer to him, looking up at him with small, pale eyes. “She’s the Blakely kid. She’s been missing since summer.”

  “You’ll see to it then—.”

  “You have to get out of here,” she said with a wagging finger as though talking to a giant child. “They’ll kill you if they see you. These woods were crawling with every harebrained backwoods gun-toting crazy in the country after you last appeared. People came from out of state to hunt you. Get the hell out of here.”

  He started to laugh, ruefully aware of how very strange that must have seemed to both of them, this hulking dark-haired beast chuckling under his breath like a man.

  “Please go, Man Wolf,” said the little girl, her pale cheeks coloring. “I won’t tell anybody I saw you. I’ll tell them I ran away. Go, please, run.”

  “You tell them what you have to tell them,” he said. “You tell what sets you free.”

  He turned to go.

  “You saved my life, Man Wolf!” she cried.

  He turned back to her. For a long moment he gazed at her, her strong upturned face, the quiet steady fire in her eyes. “You’re going to be all right, Susie,” he said. “I love you, darling dear.”

  And then he was gone.

  Racing into the rich, fragrant thickness of the forest, the bloody blanket thrown over his shoulder, tunneling at incalculable speed through the brambles and the broken branches, and the crackling wet leaves, his soul soaring as he put the miles between himself and the little church.

  An hour and a half later, he fell down exhausted on his bed. He was sure that he’d slipped in without anyone being aware. He felt guilty, guilty for going out without the permission of Felix or Margon and doing the very thing that the Distinguished Gentlemen didn’t want for him and Stuart to do. But he felt exultant, and he felt exhausted. And guilty or not, for the moment, he didn’t care. And he was almost asleep when he heard a mournful howling somewhere outside in the night.

  Perhaps he was already dreaming but then he heard the howling again.

  To all the world, it might have been the howling of a wolf, but he knew otherwise. He could hear the Morphenkind in the howling, and it had a deep plaintive note to it that no animal could make.

  He sat up. He couldn’t conceivably figure which of the Morphenkinder was making such a sound or why.

  It came again, a long, low howl that made the hair come again to the backs of his hands and his arms.

  Wolves in the wild howl to signal one another, do they not? But we are not really wolves, are we? We are something neither human nor animal. And who among us would make such a strange, sad sound?

  He lay back on the pillow, forcing the hair all over his body to recede, and leave him alone.

  It came again, almost sorrowful, this howling—full of pain and pleading, it seemed.

  He was more than half asleep, and tumbling into dreams, when he heard it for the last time.

  A dream came to him. It was confused even in the dreaming. Marchent was there, in a house in the forest, an old house full of people and lighted rooms, and figures coming and going. Marchent cried and cried as she talked to the people around her. She cried and cried and he couldn’t bear the agonized sound of her voice, the sight of her upturned face as she gestured and argued with these people. The people did not appear to hear her, to heed her, or to answer. He couldn’t clearly see the people. He couldn’t clearly see anything. At one point Marchent rose and ran out of the house and, in her bare feet and torn clothes, she ran through the cold wet forest. The bristling saplings scraped her bare legs. There were indistinct figures in the darkness around her, shadowy figures that appeared to reach out for her as she ran. He couldn’t stand the sight of it. He was terrified as he ran after her. The scene shifted. She sat on the side of Felix’s bed, the bed they’d shared, and she was crying again and he said things to her, but what they were, he didn’t know—it was all happening so swiftly, so confusedly—and she said, “I know, I know, but I don’t know how!” And he felt he couldn’t stand the pain of it.

  He woke in the icy-gray morning light. The dream fell apart as if it were made of melting frost on the panes. The image of the little girl came back to him, little Susie Blakely, and with it the miserable realization that he was going to have to answer to the Distinguished Gentlemen for doing what he had done. Was it on the news already? “Man Wolf Strikes Again.” He roused himself uneasily and was thinking about Marchent as he stepped into the shower.

  7

  HE DIDN’T CHECK his phone until he was on his way down the stairs. He had text messages from his mother, his father, and his brother all saying essentially “Call Celeste.”

  What in the world could she possibly want?

  An amazing sound greeted him when he headed for the kitchen, that of Felix and Margon obviously arguing. They were speaking that ancient tongue of theirs, and the argument was heated.

  Reuben hesitated in the kitchen door long enough to confirm that they were really going at it, with Margon actually red in the face as he thundered under his breath at a plainly infuriated Felix.

  Frightening. He had no idea what it meant, but he turned around and left. He’d never been able to bear it when Phil and Grace actually fought or, frankly, when any two people had a violent argument in his presence.

  He went into the library, sat down at the desk, and punched in Celeste’s number, thinking angrily that she was the very last person in the world whose voice he wanted to hear. Maybe if he hadn’t been so damned afraid of arguments and raised voices, he would have rid himself of Celeste a long time ago and once and for all.

  When the call went straight to voice mail, he said, “Reuben here. You want to talk?” and clicked off.

  He looked up to see Felix standing there with a mug of coffee in his hand. Felix looked completely calm and collected now.

  “For you,” he said, setting down the coffee. “Did you call your old ladylove?”

  “Good heavens, she’s even reached out to you? What’s happening?”

  “It’s important,” said Felix. “Critically important.”
/>   “Someone’s died?”

  “Exactly the opposite,” said Felix. He winked, and seemed unable to suppress a smile.

  He was formally dressed as always, in a tailored wool coat and wool pants, with his dark hair neatly combed, as though ready for whatever the day would bring.

  “This isn’t what you and Margon were arguing about, was it?” Reuben asked tentatively.

  “Oh, no, not at all. Put that out of your mind. Let me deal with the inimitable Margon. Call Celeste, please.”

  The phone rang and Reuben answered at once. As soon as Celeste spoke his name, he realized she’d been crying.

  “What’s happened?” he asked, making it as sympathetic and kind as he could. “Celeste, tell me!”

  “Well, you might have answered your phone, you know, Sunshine Boy,” she said. “I’ve been calling you for days.”

  More and more people said this to him, and more and more he had to make guilty excuses, which just now he did not wish to do.

  “I’m sorry, Celeste, what is it?”

  “Well, in a way the crisis is over because I’ve made up my mind.”

  “As to what especially?”

  “As to marrying Mort,” she said. “Because no matter what you do, Sunshine Boy, in the ivory tower in which you live, your mother’s going to take the baby. That has pretty much settled it, that and my refusal to abort my firstborn even if it is the son of an airhead ne’er-do-well.”

  He was too shocked to say a word. Something kindled in him, something so near to pure happiness he scarcely knew what it was, but he didn’t dare to hope, not yet.

  She went on talking.

  “I thought I was out of the woods. That’s why I didn’t even bother to tell you. Well, that was a false alarm. I wasn’t out of the woods. Fact is, I’m four months along now. And it is a boy, and he’s perfectly healthy.” She went on talking, about the wedding, and about how Mort was fine with it all, and how Grace was already applying to take off a year from the hospital to take care of the child. Grace was the most wonderful woman in the entire world to stop everything to do this, and Grace a brilliant surgeon, and Reuben would never really know how lucky he was to have a mother like Grace. Reuben didn’t appreciate anything, in fact, and he never had. That’s how he could ignore people’s phone messages and e-mails, and isolate himself in Northern California in a “mansion” as if the real world didn’t exist.… “You’re the most selfish, spoiled person I ever knew,” she said, her voice rising, “and frankly, you make me sick, the way everything just falls into your lap, the way this mansion up there just fell into your lap, the way no matter what happens somebody does your dirty work and cleans up your messes.…”