The Wolf Gift (35 page)

He moved to the windows. He was hot all over, anxious almost to the verge of panic. Yet he knew the change was not coming. And he did not even know whether he wanted it to come. He knew only that these physical sensations and these emotions were unendurable.

“I’ve got to search for a way into that space now,” he said.

“Is that going to help you with what you’re going through right now?”

“No,” he said. He shook his head.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

“Listen, Laura. We have to leave here for a little while. We have to drive.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know, but I’m not leaving you here alone. We have to go now.”

She knew what he meant, what he was planning to do. She didn’t question him.

The rain was coming down heavily as they left the house.

He drove south, picking up Highway 101 and pressing on at top speed towards the voices and the cities of the bay.

M
OUNTAIN
V
IEW
C
EMETERY
, Oakland: giant trees, scattered graves great and small, under the slow relentless rain. In the distance, the ghostly glitter of downtown.

A boy screaming in agony as two others tormented him with knives. Ringleader: just out of prison, wiry, naked arms covered in tattoos, T-shirt wet, transparent, body shivering, drugged up, choked with anger, savoring revenge now on the one who betrayed him, delivering up now to the gods of violence his enemy’s only son.

“What?” he taunted the boy. “You think the Man Wolf will save you?”

Out of the nearby grove of oaks, Reuben appeared, closing in on the leader like a dark bestial angel in plain view of the two acolytes who turned screaming and fled.

Slash of claws, jugular ripped, figure doubling, falling, jaws closing on his shoulder, splitting the tendons, the arm loose, no time to chew this irresistible flesh.

He bounded over the fields of the dead after those who were racing in panic ever deeper into the darkness. He caught the first and ripped out half of his throat, throwing him aside as he went after the remaining tormentor, catching him in both paws and lifting him to his waiting jaws. Luscious, this pulsing feast, this dripping meat.

On a patch of blood-soaked grass lay the boy victim, nut-brown skin, black hair, curled up now like a fetus in his leather jacket, face bleeding, belly bleeding, swooning, in and out, in and out, eyes struggling to focus. Boy of twelve. Reuben bit down and picked him up by the collar of his thick jacket as a cat would pick up a kitten by the nape of its neck, and carried him easily this way as he ran along faster and faster till he came to the lights of the street. Up over the iron gates. And then he left his small charge on the corner before the darkened windows of a small café. Silence here. No late-night traffic. Streetlamps shining on empty
shops. With his powerful right paw he shattered the glass of the café. The alarm shrieked. Yellow lights flashed on, garishly illuminating the wounded one on the pavement.

Reuben was gone. Back through the cemetery, he trotted, tracking the scent of those he’d slaughtered. But the kill was cold now, uninteresting. He wanted what was warm. And there were other voices in the night.

A young woman singing a low agonizing song.

He found her in the woods of the Berkeley campus, this old university landscape that, in a faraway lifetime as a human boy, he’d so loved.

Amid the towering eucalyptus trees, she’d set up a sanctuary for her final hour—treasured book, the wine bottle, an embroidered pillow against the thick bed of fragrant leaves that curled like peelings, the small sharp kitchen knife with which she’d cut both her wrists. The blood and the consciousness oozed from her as she moaned. “Wrong, wrong!” she said under her breath. “Help me, please.” She could no longer hold the wine bottle, no longer move her hands or her arms, her matted hair covering her wet face.

He hefted her over his shoulder and made for the lights of Telegraph Avenue, speeding through the dark groves of the campus, places long ago where he’d studied, argued, dreamed.

The densely packed buildings were throbbing with voices, heartbeats, the thud of drums, talk and the talk of amplified voices, the wail of a trumpet, the din of competing songs. Gently he deposited her at the open door of a busy tavern, indifferent laughter exploding inside like broken glass. As he moved upwards and away, he heard the cries of those who discovered her. “Call for help.”

The voices of downtown were calling to him. Big city. Choices. Life is a garden of pain. Who shall die? Who shall live? A horror took hold of him as he moved south.
I did what seemed natural for me to do.… 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
.

Liar, monster, killer, beast.
An abomination … this will end now
.

The sky was the color of soot when he came over the flat cluttered roof of the old gray brick hotel and down into the hatch roof of the fire stairs, slipping along the low dim hallway, silently opening the unlocked door.

Scent of Laura.

She had fallen asleep at the window, arms folded on the sill. Beyond, the leaden clouds were paling, growing shiny behind the featureless rain over a jumble of chalklike towers, freeways vibrating like bowstrings as they arched to the right and to the left. Layer after layer of cityscape between here and the great Pacific was dying to embers in the mist. Jangle and throb of the awakening streets. Garden of pain. Who will harvest all this pain?
Please, let the voices die away. No more
.

He lifted her and carried her to the bed, the white hair falling back from her face. She woke to his kisses, eyelids shuddering. What was it in her eyes as she looked up at him?
Beloved. Mine. You and me
. Her perfume flooded his senses. The voices went out as if someone had turned a dial. Tap tap came the rain against the window. In the icy light, he slowly peeled off her tight jeans, secret hair,
hair like the hair that covers me
, and folded back the flimsy blue fabric of her blouse. His tongue pressed against her neck, her breasts. Voice of the beast rattling deep in his chest. To have and to have not. Mothers’ milk.

H
E CAUGHT
G
RACE
when she came in the door of the house. No one had been home when he arrived, and he’d already packed up just about all of his clothes and books and loaded them into the Porsche. He had just gone back to check the alarm.

She almost screamed. She was in her green scrubs, but she’d let her red hair down and her face was as always starkly pale against her hair with those sharp reddish eyebrows emphasizing her distress.

At once, she threw her arms around him. “Where have you been?” she demanded. He kissed her on both cheeks. She held his face with two hands. “Why haven’t you called?”

“Mamma love, I’m all right,” he said. “I’m up at the house in Mendocino. I need to be there now. I just stopped in to tell you that I love you, and that you mustn’t worry—.”

“I need you to stay here now!” she demanded. She’d dropped her voice to a whisper, which she only did when she was near hysterical. “I’m not letting you leave here.”

“I’m leaving here, Mamma. I want you to know that I’m okay.”

“You’re not okay. Look at you. Listen to me, do you know what happened to every test they ran on you in the hospital?—everything, blood, urine, biopsies—it’s all gone, gone!” She mouthed the last word, but no sound came out. “Now, you are going to stay here, Reuben, and we are going to figure out how and why this is happening.…”

“Impossible, Mamma.”

“Reuben!” She was trembling. “I won’t let you go.”

“You have to, Mom,” he said. “Now, look into my eyes and listen to me. Listen to your son. I am doing the best I can. Yes, I know there have been psychological changes in me since this happened. And baffling hormonal changes as well. Yes. But you must trust me, Mother, that I am
handling all this in the best way that I can. Now I know you’ve been talking to this doctor from Paris—.”

“Dr. Jaska,” she said. She seemed just a little relieved that they were addressing the real questions. “Dr. Akim Jaska. The man’s an endocrinologist, a specialist in this very kind of thing.”

“Yes, well, I know that. And I know he’s suggested a private hospital, Mother, and I know you want me to go to this place.”

She didn’t commit herself. In fact, she seemed a little unsure.

“Well, you’ve been talking about it,” he said. “I know that.”

“Your father’s against it,” she said. She was plainly thinking out loud. “He doesn’t like Jaska. He doesn’t like the whole idea.”

She began to cry. It was just boiling over. She couldn’t help it. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Reuben, I am frightened,” she confessed.

“I know, Mom. So am I. But I want you to do what’s best for me, and what’s best for me is to leave me alone.”

She broke away from him and backed up against the front door. “I’m not letting you go.” Suddenly she bit into her lip. “Reuben, you’re writing rhapsodic prose about this werewolf, this monster that attacked you—and you don’t know what’s really going on!”

He couldn’t bear to see her like this. He moved towards her but she stiffened against the door as if she’d fight to the death before she’d let him go.

“Mom,” he said softly.

“Reuben, this Man Wolf, this thing that’s killing people,” she stammered. “The same thing is happening to every bit of forensic evidence they recover from the creature at the scene of every crime. Now, Reuben, this is the thing that attacked you, and it’s infected you with something powerful, something dangerous, something that’s working in your entire system.…”

“What, Mother, you think I’m becoming a werewolf?” he asked.

“No, of course not,” she said. “This lunatic isn’t a werewolf, that’s nonsense! But he’s insane, dangerously, hideously insane. And you are the only person attacked by this thing that has lived. And there’s something in your blood and tissues that can help them find this creature, but Reuben, we don’t know what this virus is doing to you.”

Ah, so this is what she actually believed was going on. Of course. It made perfect sense.

“Baby Boy, I want to take you to the hospital—not this suspect place in Sausalito, just back to San Francisco General—.”

“Mamma,” he said.

This was breaking his heart.

“I thought for a moment you thought I was the Man Wolf, Mamma,” he said. He hated it, testing her like this, lying to her, but he couldn’t stop himself. He wanted to just take her in his arms, protect her from the truth, from everything. If only she weren’t Dr. Grace Golding.

“No, Reuben, I do not think you’re capable of scaling brick walls and flying over rooftops, and rending people apart limb from limb.”

“That’s a relief,” he said under his breath.

“But this creature, whoever he is, may be in the grip of a communicable madness, don’t you see? Reuben, please try to follow what I’m saying. Rabies is a communicable madness, do you follow me? You’ve been infected by something infinitely more dangerous than rabies, and I want you to go with me to the hospital now. Jaska says there have been other cases, with the very same extraordinary details. He says there is a real possibility of a corrosive virus.”

“No, Mom, I can’t. I came here so you could see with your own eyes that I’m all right,” he said. He was being as gentle as he could. “And now you’ve seen it, and I’m going. Please, Mom, move away from the door.”

“All right, then stay here, in the house,” she said. “No dashing off to the woods!” She threw up her hands.

“Mom, I can’t.”

He moved her aside, handling her so roughly that he would never forgive himself for it, and was out the door before she could stop him, down the brick steps and down the street to his car.

She stood there in the doorway, and for the first time in his life he saw her as a tiny figure, a vulnerable figure, weak and frightened and overwhelmed—his beautiful mother who could save lives every day of her life.

Within a block of the house, he was in tears himself. By the time he reached the café where Laura was waiting, he was crying too hard to see. He gave the keys to her, and went around to the passenger seat.

“It’s over,” he said as they headed for the freeway. “I’ll never be able to be part of them again, any of them. It’s over. God! What am I going to do?”

“You mean she knows.”

“No. She knows things, and she can’t let go of those things. But no, she doesn’t really know. And I can’t tell her. I’d die before I’d tell her.”

At some point, before they were even across the Golden Gate Bridge, he fell asleep.

When he woke, it was late afternoon and they had just turned off Highway 101 for the junction where they would pick up Nideck Road.

S
IMON
O
LIVER’S E-MAIL WAS BRIEF
. “Bad news which may be good news. Call me ASAP.”

That had come yesterday evening.

He rang Oliver’s home phone, left a message—that he was back online and at his phone. Please call.

He and Laura had supper in the conservatory, at the new marble-top table. They were in a grove of banana palms and small ficus. And the sight of the orchid trees inclining towards each other, and dripping those gorgeous pinkish-purple blossoms, filled him with happiness.

Just today, Galton had added a number of potted ferns and some white bougainvillea, and the room was surprisingly warm from the dim afternoon sun. Laura knew all about the plants, and suggested others that Reuben might love. If Reuben wanted, she could order plants for this room, and large trees. She knew where to locate very large trees. That would be wonderful, he said, the greener, the more full of flowers, the better. And she should buy the things that she wanted, the things she most loved. What she would love he would love.