The Wolf Gift (30 page)

“Explain this to me,” said Reuben under his breath. “What is the Chrism?” He pressed closer, and the creature again stepped back, as if he couldn’t stop himself. His thighs were still flexed, and his arms were slightly curved at his sides.

“No,” said the beast coldly. “If only you’d been a little more reticent, a little more wise.”

“Oh, so I’m to blame for this, am I?” Reuben asked calmly. Again, he edged closer and the beast took two steps back. He was close to the paneled wall. “And where were you when the Chrism began to work? Where were you to guide me or advise me, to warn me what I might expect?”

“Long gone,” said the beast with the first touch of real impatience. “Your truly fabulous exploits caught up with me halfway around the world. And now you will die for them. Were they worth it? Do tell me. Has this been the pinnacle of your existence so far?”

Reuben said nothing. It was now, he thought, now that he should strike.

But the beast spoke again. “Don’t think it doesn’t rip at my heart,” he said, baring his fangs as if in an ugly smile. “Had I chosen you for the Chrism, you would have been magnificent, the finest of Morphenkinder, but I did not choose you. You’re no Morphenkind.” It was the German word for “child,” the way he said it, pronounced as if it were spelled
kint
. “You’re odious, loathsome, an offense, that’s what you are!” His voice was angry, but steady. “I would never have chosen you, never even noticed you. Now all the world notices you. Well, this will end now.”

Now he’s the one playing for time, Reuben thought. Why? Does he know he can’t win this?

“Who put you to guard this house?” said Reuben.

“One who won’t tolerate what’s happened,” he said. “Not here of all places, not here.” He sighed. “And you, you contemptible boy, having
your way with Marchent,
his
precious Marchent, and Marchent dead.” His eyes quivered and again he bared his teeth and his fangs without a sound.

“Who is he? How is he connected to Marchent?”

“You were the cause of her death,” said the creature in a small voice. A low rolling growl escaped him. “I turned my back because of you, not to spy on you and Marchent—you and your antics—and in that interval death came to Marchent! It was all you! Well, you will not remain while I draw breath.”

This infuriated Reuben, but he pressed on.

“Felix Nideck? Is that who told you to guard the house?”

The beast tensed, drew up his shoulders, and crooked his arms. Again, that rolling growl came out of him.

“You think these questions advance your case?” the creature snarled. A gnashing contemptuous sound came out of him, fully as eloquent as his words. “I’m done with you!” he roared.

Reuben rushed at him, claws out. He slammed the beast’s head into the dark paneling, and lunged for the beast’s throat.

In snarling outrage, the monster kicked at Reuben and drove frantically against Reuben’s face with his powerful paws. He held off Reuben with an iron strength.

Reuben yanked him forward by the hair of his mane and then hurled him against the stone mantel and the beast let out a strangled roar. He raked at Reuben’s arms with his fierce claws, and then brought up his knee and kicked Reuben again, this time in the lower gut, with tremendous force.

The wind went out of Reuben. He staggered backwards. Everything went dark. He felt the creature clutching his neck, the claws digging deeply into the fur trying to find the toughened flesh, the hot breath on his face.

In a roaring frenzy Reuben broke loose of him, slamming the creature’s inner arms with two monstrous blows from the backs of his paws and shattering the creature’s grip.

Again, Reuben hurled him backwards and his head again struck the wall. Instantly, he recovered and sprang at Reuben, those powerful thighs catapulting him forward, his paws driving Reuben back and down, scrambling, to the floor.

Reuben rose up under him, and with his right arm dealt him one fine
blow that stunned him. But he came down over Reuben again, his fangs snapping above Reuben and then sinking into Reuben’s throat.

Reuben felt the pain, felt it infinitely more intensely than he had that night. In a positive fury, his paws thrust the creature up and away. He felt the blood gushing, the heat of it. He was on his feet, and this time he slashed wildly at the creature, kicking the creature as the creature had kicked him, raking the creature’s face with his claws, gashing open the creature’s right eye. The creature bellowed, and thrashed at Reuben, and Reuben lunged again and clamped his teeth down on the side of the creature’s face. He drove his fangs deeper and deeper, his teeth grinding the creature’s jawbone, the creature screaming in pain.

I can’t overpower him, Reuben thought wildly, but he’s not able to overpower me. Again came the creature’s knee, his foot, and those iron arms held him back. They were dancing together away from the wall. Hang on, hang on!

With a fierce growl Reuben ripped with his teeth, ripped as he had at the flesh of the mountain lion, and he knew in that instant that he hadn’t dared to use that full savagery until this minute. And now he must use it or die.

Again and again his left claw tore at the creature, at the creature’s gushing eye socket, while he held fast to his head with his aching jaws.

The creature was bawling, cursing, cursing in a language Reuben could not understand.

Suddenly the creature went limp. The iron arms dropped. A loud gurgling cry came out of him.

Reuben saw the beast’s one good eye staring forward, as the beast slumped but did not fall.

Reuben released him, released his torn and bleeding face.

The thing stood helpless staring upwards with that one good eye while the other eye socket pumped blood. And Laura stood directly behind the beast, glaring at him.

As the monster doubled over, Reuben saw the ax embedded in the back of the creature’s skull.

“I knew it!” the beast roared. “I knew it! I knew it!” He wailed in rage. Frantically he sought to reach behind himself for the ax handle but he couldn’t command his arms, couldn’t make them stop shuddering, couldn’t bring his paws down on the ax handle. Blood and foam poured
from his gaping mouth. He turned round and round, staggering to stop himself from falling, maddened, howling, gnashing his teeth.

Reuben pulled out the ax blade by its long handle, and as the creature reeled, he struck at the creature’s neck with his full strength. The blade crashed through the mane and the fur and sank into the flesh, severing the neck halfway. The monster went silent, jaws loose, slobbering, giving only a low hissing sound.

Reuben yanked the ax free and swung it with all his might again. Mercifully the blade went through, and the creature’s head fell forwards and crashed to the floor.

Before he could stop himself, Reuben had grabbed it by its thick hair and flung it into the fire. The body, as if deflated, collapsed heavily on the Oriental rug.

Laura let out a series of gasping cries. He saw her in front of the flames, bent double, moaning, rocking, pointing at the fire, and then she fell backwards against the nearby chair and tumbled to the floor.

Hysterically she screamed, “Reuben, get it out of the fire, out of the fire! Please, for the love of God!”

The flames were licking at the thing, licking at its bleeding staring eye. Reuben couldn’t stop himself. He snatched it free of the blazing logs and dropped it on the floor. The smoke rose from it like dust. A few errant sparks flared in its writhing hair.

Then it was a swollen and bleeding thing, a ruined thing, tangled with blood, and blind. And dead.

Come poetry, come fantasy, come wild imagination, come dreams. The gleaming black hair began to fall away from the head and the body which lay only a few feet away. With no force to retract it, it fell away as the head appeared to shrink, and the body to shrink, and in a nest of hair, hair dissolving slowly around them and under them, body and head were the man again, naked, and slashed and seeping blood and dead.

R
EUBEN SANK DOWN
on his knees and sat back on his heels. All his muscles ached. His shoulders ached. The heat in his face was almost unbearable.

So I’m not a Morphenkind. So I’m odious, loathsome, an offense. Well, this offense to the species has just killed this Morphenkind with a little help, of course, from his beloved and her ax
.

Laura began to cry desperately, almost as if she was laughing, her sobs and cries erupting uncontrollably. She knelt down beside him and he took her in his arms. He saw the blood being smeared all over her white gown, all over her hair.

But he held her close, stroking her, trying to calm her. Her cries were heartbroken. Finally, she sobbed without making a sound.

Reuben gently kissed the top of her head, and her forehead. He brought up a knuckle of his paw and touched her lips. Smeared with blood. Too much blood. Unspeakable.

“Laura,” he whispered. She held fast to him as if she was drowning, as if some invisible wave might sweep her away.

The man’s remains were hairless now, as if there had never been any hair at all. Only a coarse and barely visible dust covered him and the surrounding carpet.

For a long moment, they remained still, Laura crying ever more softly, exhausting herself in her tears, and then finally growing quiet.

“I have to bury him now,” said Reuben. “There are shovels back there in that shed.”

“Bury him! Reuben, you can’t.” Laura looked up at him as if awakened from a nightmare. She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “Reuben, you can’t simply bury him. Surely you realize how valuable, how utterly priceless, this body is—to you!”

She climbed to her feet and looked down at the man from a little
ways off as if she was afraid to go closer. The head now lay on its side, the left eye half closed and yellowish. The flesh of the face and body was faintly yellowish too.

“In this body are all the cellular secrets of this power,” Laura said. “If ever you are to find out, if ever you are to know. Why, you can’t discard this thing. That’s unthinkable.”

“And who’s going to do the studying of this body, Laura?” asked Reuben. He was so exhausted that he feared the change would come, too soon. He needed his strength to dig a hole deep enough for this being’s grave. “Who’s going to biopsy the organs, remove the brain, do the autopsy? I can’t do those things. You can’t do those things. Who can?”

“But there has to be some way to preserve it, to save it so that someone eventually can.”

“What? Stow it in a freezer? Risk having somebody find it here, connect it to us? You are seriously suggesting we conceal this body on the premises of this house where we live?”

“I don’t know,” she said frantically. “But Reuben, you can’t simply take this thing, this mysterious thing, and consign it to the dirt, you can’t just bury it. My God, this is an unimaginable organism, of which the world knows nothing. It points the way to understanding—.” She broke off. She stood quiet for a moment, her hair tumbling down on either side of her face like a veil. “Could it be put somewhere … where someone else would find it? I mean miles from here.”

“Why, to what purpose?” Reuben asked.

“What if it were found, and analyzed and blamed for all the crimes that have occurred?” She looked at Reuben. “Just think about it for a minute. Don’t say no. This thing tried to kill us. Say, we left it somewhere off the highway, in plain sight, so to speak, and what if they found some strange mixture of human DNA and wolf fluids … the Chrism, as he called it—.”

“Laura, the mitochondrial component of the DNA would prove that this wasn’t the being who slaughtered the others,” Reuben said. “Even I know that much science.”

He stared at the head again. It seemed even more shriveled than before, and to be darkening slightly like a piece of fruit ripening into decay. The body too was shrinking and darkening, the trunk particularly, though the feet were shriveling to nubs. Just nubs.

“And do you realize what this creature told us?” said Reuben, patiently.
“He sentenced me to death for the trouble I caused, the ‘prodigious achievements,’ as he called them, the fact that I’d attracted notice. These things want secrecy; they depend on it. And how do you think the other Morphenkinder would respond if I dumped this body unceremoniously into the public domain?”

She nodded.

“There are others, Laura! This thing managed to tell us a great deal.”

“You’re right, on all counts,” she said. She too was watching the subtle changes in the body and the head. “I could swear it’s … disappearing,” she said.

“Well, shriveling, drying up.”

“Disappearing,” she said again.

She came back to him and sat down beside him. “Look at it,” she said. “The bones inside are disintegrating. It’s flattening out. I want to touch it, but I can’t.”

Reuben didn’t answer.

The body and the head were deflating, flattening; she was right. The flesh now looked powdery and porous.

“Look!” she said. “Look at the carpet. Look where the blood—.”

“I see it,” he whispered. The blood was a tissue-thin glaze on the surface of the rug. And the glaze was silently cracking into a million tiny bits and pieces. The blood was turning into infinitesimal flakes. And the flakes were dissolving. “Look, look at your gown.”

The blood was crusting, flaking off there as well. She crumpled the flannel, brushed at it. She reached up to grasp the flaky residue that still clung to her hair. It was all crumbling.

“I see now,” Reuben said. “I understand. I understand everything.” He was in awe.

“Understand what?” she asked.

“Why they keep saying the Man Wolf is human. Don’t you see? They’re lying. They don’t have proof of this or anything else. This is what happens to us, to all particles of us, to all fluids. Look. They don’t have any samples from the Man Wolf. They took samples of what they found at the crime scenes, and probably even before they’d completed their work, the samples were no good, dissolving, dissolving like this.”

He crawled forward and leaned down over the head. The face had fallen in. The head was a small puddle on the rug. He sniffed at it. Decomposition, human scent, animal scent—a mixture, subtle, very
subtle, so subtle. Was he himself scentless like this to others, or only to others of this species?