The Wolf Gift (29 page)

The cat would not give up. Its long powerful body convulsed, its hind legs kicking. It gave a deep whining and furious cry. Only as he came round on top of it, forcing its head back with his left claw, was he able to kill it, piercing the softer underside of its neck, fangs closing deep on its spine.

The flesh and the blood were his now. But the cubs had come. They
had surrounded him and they moved in. Firmly holding the carcass of the mother in his teeth, he sprang up the thick bark of an old redwood, easily climbing higher than the cats could climb. It felt good to his aching jaws to carry the kill ever upwards, the cat’s heavy body bouncing against his chest.

He settled high above against a thick lattice of branches and rough splintery leaves. Creatures of the heights fled from him. The upper reaches rustled and sang with the swift retreat of winged things.

He feasted on the salty meat of the cat slowly, devouring great pieces of dripping flesh.

For a long moment, after he was satisfied, he watched the angry, menacing cubs below, their yellow eyes flashing and glinting in the dark. He heard their low growls.

He shifted the thick body of the mother against his left arm so that he could feast on her belly, and rip into the soft juicy tissue inside.

He was in a kind of delirium again, because he was able to eat until his hunger was gone. Simply gone. He lay back against the crunching branches and half shut his eyes. The rain was a soft sweet veil of silver around him. As he glanced upwards the heavens opened as if for a laser beam, and he saw the moon, the full moon, the meaningless and irrelevant full moon in all its blessed glory, floating in a wreath of clouds, against the distant stars.

A deep love of all he saw settled over him—love for the splendor of the moon and the sparkling fragments of light that drifted beyond it—for the enfolding forest that sheltered him so completely, for the rain that carried the dazzling light of the skies to this shimmering bower in which he lay.

A flame burned in him, a faith that a comprehending Power existed, animating all this that it had created, and sustaining it with a love beyond anything that he, Reuben, could imagine. He prayed for this to be so. He wondered if, somehow, the whole forest was not praying for this, and it seemed to him then that all the biological world was alive with prayer, with reaching, with hope. What if the drive to survive was a form of faith, a form of prayer?

He felt no pity for the cats circling restively below in the darkness. He had thought of pity, yes, but he did not feel it; he seemed deeply part of a world where such an emotion made little or no sense. After all, what would the cats have thought of pity? The cats would have torn him apart
if they could. The mother would have feasted on him at any opportunity. The mother had brought the long happy life of Galton’s cherished dog to a violent close. How easy a prey to her Reuben must have seemed.

The horror was that he was worse than anything known in the realm of the cat, wasn’t he? Even the bear could not have outfought him, he figured. But then he would have to see about that, wouldn’t he, and the thrill of the possibility made him laugh.

How wrong people were about the werewolf, imagining him to devolve into a mindless frenzy. The werewolf was not a wolf, no, nor a man, but an obscene combination of the two, exponentially more powerful than either one.

But right now, it did not matter. The language of thought was … just the language of thought. Who could trust language? Words like “monster,” “horror,” “obscene.” The words he’d written so recently to Billie, what were these words but weightless tissuelike membranes too weak to support the essence of any fragrant or pulsing thing.

Big cat, dead cat, cat who killed the warm and loving thing that was Galton’s dog. Dead. I loved every second of it!

He was half dreaming. He lapped at the great gash in the cat’s stomach, and sucked up the blood as if it were syrup. “Good-bye, sister cat,” he whispered, nuzzling its grinning mouth, running his tongue along its dead teeth. “Good-bye, sister cat; you fought well.”

And then he let go of her, his trophy, and she went down, down, down through the net of branches and fell to the soft hungry earth amongst her brood.

His mind wandered. If only he could bring Laura with him up into this shining realm, enfolding her safely in his arms. He dreamed that she was with him, safe against him, dozing as he dozed—as the wet breeze stirred the wilderness around them, and a universe of tiny creatures lisped and fluttered, lulling him to half sleep.

What of the distant voices that he could not hear? Was anyone calling to him from the cities to the north or the south? Was anyone running from danger, screaming for his help? A sense of his ever-growing power filled him with a dark pride; how many nights could he ignore the voices? How many nights could he flee “the most dangerous game”?

But he was hearing something now!

Something had pierced the leafy portals of this sanctuary.

Somebody
was
in danger, terrible danger—and he knew this voice! “Reuben!” came the ragged scream. “Reuben!” It was Laura calling for him. “—I am warning you,” she was sobbing, “don’t you come a step closer!” Laughter—low vicious laughter, and the voice of another: “Oh, come now, little woman, are you going to kill me with that ax?”

H
E SPED
through the forest on all fours, darting in and out of the trees, hitting speeds he’d never achieved before.

“—My dear, you’re making this all too easy for me. You don’t know how it distresses me to shed innocent blood.”

“—Get away from me. Get away from me!”

It wasn’t the scent of evil that guided him because there was no discernible scent. What was a voice so menacing without a scent?

In two leaps he crossed the broad stone terrace and pitched his weight against the door, tearing the locks out of the wood.

He landed on the floorboards, and slammed the door behind him without looking back.

Laura, trembling, terrified, stood to the left of the huge stone fireplace, clutching the long wooden handle of the ax as she held it up with both hands.

“He’s come here to kill you, Reuben!” she said, her voice thick.

Across from her, to the right, stood a small slender and composed figure, a dark-skinned man. His features had a slightly Asian cast. He appeared to be perhaps fifty years old and he had short insignificant black hair and small black eyes. He wore a simple gray jacket and pants, and a white shirt open at his neck.

Reuben moved in front of him, coming between him and Laura.

The small man very gracefully gave way.

He was taking the measure of Reuben. He appeared as detached as a man taking the measure of a stranger on a street corner.

“He says he has to kill you,” Laura was saying, her words ragged and choked. “He says he has no choice. He says he has to kill me too.”

“Go upstairs,” said Reuben. He moved closer to the man. “Lock yourself in the bedroom.”

“No, I don’t think we have time for that at all,” said the man. “I see the descriptions of you were not at all exaggerated. You are a remarkable example of the breed.”

“And what breed is that?” asked Reuben. He stood a couple of feet from the man now, peering down at him, confounded by the utter absence of scent. Oh, there was a human scent that came from him, yes, but no scent of hostility or evil intent.

“I regret what’s happened to you,” said the man. His voice was even and eloquent. “I should never have wounded you. This was an unforgivable mistake on my part. But it’s done and I have no choice now but to undo it.”

“And you are the one behind it all,” said Reuben.

“Most definitely, though it was never my intention.”

He seemed entirely reasonable, and certainly far too slight of build to be of any danger to Reuben, but Reuben knew this was not the final form, no, not by any means, that the man would take. Would it be better to kill him now before the change started? When he was weak and defenseless? Or to drag out of him whatever precious information he might give up? Think of the secrets he might possess.

“I’ve been guarding the place for so long,” said the man, taking another step backwards as Reuben advanced. “It just went on for so very long. And I was never a very good guard, really, and sometimes not here at all. Yet it is unforgivable and if I’m to be shown the slightest mercy I must correct what I’ve done. I’m afraid my poor young ‘Man Wolf,’ as you call yourself, you should never have been born.”

Only now did a sinister smile come over his face, and with it the transformation coming on so rapidly that Reuben could scarce measure the changes before his eyes. The man’s clothes were ripped apart as his chest expanded and his arms and legs began to lengthen and swell. He ripped off his gold wristwatch and dropped it at his side. Fine shiny black hair sprouted all over him, thickening like foam. His shoes were torn into tatters by his clawed feet. He reached up and stripped the remnants of his shirt and jacket away, and brushed off the ragged fragments of his pants. The inevitable deep growl came out of his chest.

Reuben’s eyes narrowed: smaller, shorter arms, but who can calculate the power or the skill? And what huge paws he had and huge feet. His lower limbs were thicker than Reuben’s or so it seemed.

Laura drew closer to Reuben. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her against the fireplace with the ax still held high against her right shoulder.

Reuben held steady; he drew in his breath and reached for the quiet strength he knew he possessed. You’re fighting not just for your life but for Laura’s life, he thought.

The man was now a foot taller than he had been, his black mane like a mantle, but nowhere near as tall as Reuben in Reuben’s lupine form. His face had lost all recognizable sympathetic expression, eyes small and porcine and the mouth a muzzle with long curving fangs.

A pink tongue flashed behind his white teeth as he flexed his powerful thighs. All of his hair was black, even the undercoat of fur; and his ears had a hideous peaked lupine appearance that sickened Reuben because he feared that his own ears looked the same.

Hold steady, that was Reuben’s only thought. Hold steady. He was in a rage, but not a shuddering, trembling rage that causes one’s legs to turn to water or one’s hands to flail. No, not at all.

Something is causing this being to hesitate; something is not as this being would have it. Take another step forward.

He did and the dark wolfen creature stepped back.

“And so, what now? You think you’re going to dispose of me?” asked Reuben. “You think you can destroy me because of your mistake?”

“I have no choice,” said the creature, his voice a deep resonant baritone. “I told you. It should never have happened. I would have killed you with the others, the guilty ones, if I had known. But surely you know how utterly distasteful it is to shed innocent blood. When I saw my error, I released you. There’s always the chance, you see, that the Chrism won’t be passed, that the victim will simply recover; or that the victim will shortly die. That’s what so often happens. The victim simply dies.”

“The Chrism? That’s what you call it?” asked Reuben.

“Yes, the Chrism—that’s what we’ve called it for ages. The gift, the power—there are a hundred ancient words for it—what does it matter?”

“ ‘We’?” asked Reuben. “You said ‘we.’ How many are there of creatures like us?”

“Oh, I know you’re burning with curiosity for what I might tell you,” said the creature with subtle contempt. His voice went on with a maddening restraint. “I remember that curiosity more clearly than I remember
anything else. But why should I tell you anything—when I can’t let you live? Am I indulging myself now, or you? It’s easier for me to be kind as I kill you, believe me. It’s not my intent to make either of you suffer. Not at all.”

It was grotesque, the cultured, polished voice coming from such a bestial face. And so this is how I look to them, Reuben thought—just this hideous and monstrous.

“You’ll let the woman go now,” said Reuben. “She can take my car. She can get clear of this place—.”

“No, I will not let the woman go, now or ever,” said the beast. He went on with perfect equanimity. “You sealed the woman’s fate, not I, when you gave her the secret of who and what you are.”

“I don’t know the secret of who and what I am,” Reuben said. He was buying time. He was calculating. How do I best attack him? Where is he most vulnerable? Is he vulnerable at all! He took a step closer to the beast, and to his surprise the beast reflexively stepped back.

“None of it matters now, does it?” asked the beast. “That’s the horror.”

“It matters to me,” said Reuben.

What a macabre spectacle this must make for Laura, two such monsters sparring with words. Reuben took another step and the beast again gave ground.

“You’re young, hungry for life,” said the beast, words coming just a little more rapidly, “hungry for power too.”

“We’re all of us hungry for life,” said Reuben. He kept his voice low. “That is what life demands of us. If we aren’t hungry for life, we don’t deserve to live.”

“Oh, but you’re especially hungry, aren’t you?” said the beast spitefully. “Believe me, it gives me no pleasure to execute one so strong.” His small dark eyes flashed malevolently in the light of the fire.

“And if you don’t execute me, what happens then?”

“I’m held accountable for you, for your prodigious achievements,” he said contemptuously, “which have all the world clamoring to take you captive, cage you, narcotize you, laboratize you, and put you under the glass.”

Again, Reuben advanced, but the creature stood firm, raising one paw as if to fend Reuben off, a weak defensive gesture. How many other small cues was Reuben receiving?

“I did what seemed natural for me to do,” said Reuben. “I heard the voices; the voices called me; I caught the scent of evil and I tracked it. It was as natural as breathing to do what I did.”

“Oh, believe me,” said the other thoughtfully. “I am deeply impressed. You cannot imagine how many stumble, sicken, die in the first few weeks. It’s so unpredictable. All aspects of it are unpredictable. No one can conceivably know what will happen when the Chrism hits the pluripotent progenitor cells.”