Secret of the Wolf (18 page)

Johanna naked beside him, under him, her full breasts pushing against his chest, round

hips cradling him, strong thighs clasped about his waist as he entered her.

Aching with unrequited lust, he forced physical longing into a more useful channel. He

gave himself up to the Change
.

It took no more than a few moments for his body to remember its other shape. He

melted into an ether of formlessness, floating between two realities, and when his feet

touched ground again they were four instead of two
.

He shook his coat to test its weight, sucked in a deep lungful of air that was sharper and

richer than any human could conceive. A mouse had passed this way an hour ago,

leaving tiny droppings. He could hear the distant cry of a hawk in search of the mouse's

unfortunate cousin. Wind soughed in the tops of the pines, carrying the scent of a bird's

nest and a pair of quarreling squirrels
.

Under his paws the earth spoke in a language known only to the beasts. It urged him to

run as only his kind could run, able to outpace the swiftest deer and outlast even the

ordinary wolves the loups-garous resembled
.

There were no wolves left here. They'd long since been killed off by hunters and

settlers, driven to more northerly climes. Quentin had the hills and the woods to himself
.

He gave in to the call and burst into a dead run from the very place he stood. He

plunged among the trees and raced west, higher into the hills. Hardly a branch stirred at

his passing. His paws were silent as they struck the ground, curved nails biting deep

and releasing. Muscles bunched and lengthened with the perfect efficiency of a

machine, and with far more grace. He let his tongue loll between his teeth in a grin of

sheer happiness
.

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This was the way he'd always lived before: for the present, driving away memory in the

pursuit of pleasure, whether it came in the form of sex or drink or games of chance

or

the Change itself. This was the only escape that held a trace of honor
.

He ran until he reached the crest of the summit dividing one valley from the next. Napa

lay behind him, and another cultivated land spread under his gaze from the foot of the

range to the silver ocean miles away. Beyond that ocean were other lands, India among

them

Suddenly cold, he crouched low and whined in his throat. Fear was back. And it seemed

that somewhere inside him a presence reached out, took him by the scruff of the neck,

and shook him furiously back and forth, this way and that, until he began to slip out of

his skin
.

No
.

He howled. He jumped to his feet, turned about, and fled as if that same dark presence

were a thing he could evade
.

Time lost its meaning. He only became sensible of it again when the last stain of sunset

bled away behind the western range. He found himself at the foot of the hill beside the

Haven's whitewashed fence
.

Instinct had carried him to the nearest thing to home he possessed
.

As a wolf he lacked the ability to laugh, but inwardly he roared. What was the use in

contemplating flight—from his lust, from Johanna, from facing the secrets she might

expose—if even his lupine self turned against him?

Exhausted, he circled the house to the back door, tail tucked and head low. He wouldn't

go to Johanna. He wasn't ready to face her yet
.

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What he needed was a good stiff drink. If anything resembling one could be had in this

place, he'd sniff it out
.

The door was open a crack; it was easy for him to nose his way in. No one saw him. He

crept down the hall until he reached Harper's room, and stopped at the sound of

weeping from within. The door swung in at the tap of his forefoot
.

Harper sat in his chair by the window, a tray of half-eaten food on the table beside him.

Quentin entered the room, keeping to the shadows along the wall
.

Harper didn't notice. Tears streaked his face and pooled in his beard. The rasping

noises he made were too soft to be heard by anyone outside the room, unless the

listener were more than human. Harper had sanity enough to wish to hide his shame
.

Driven by a sense of kinship and pity he didn't fully understand, Quentin padded to

Harper's side and touched his nose to the man's dangling fingers. Harper's hand

twitched. He shifted in the chair and felt blindly, touching Quentin's muzzle, his

forehead, his ears
.

"Here, boy," he said, his voice little more than a rattle. "That's a good dog." He stroked

Quentin's head with the utmost gentleness
.

Quentin stood still, his heart tight in his chest. Hadn't Johanna said something about

Harper responding to a dog she'd brought to visit? Harper thought that he was a dog. A

natural assumption for a man so detached from the world
.

But he'd spoken, to a creature he believed could not judge him. The contact was oddly

comforting to them both. Quentin closed his eyes and sighed
.

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"Don't worry, boy. I'll—" The stroking stopped. Quentin opened his eyes to find Harper

gazing down at him, the light from the lamp on the table picking out the gaunt features

of his face. His breath came faster, and his hand clenched in the fur of Quentin's mane
.

"You," he whispered. "What are you?" The empty, distant look in his eyes sloughed

away like a snake's skin, leaving them clear and almost sane
.

Quentin could have sworn that those eyes saw him for what he was—saw past the fur

and recognized the soul beneath
.

He slipped free of Harper's grip and backed away. Harper stared after him, hand poised

in midair
.

"Don't," he said
.

Voices sounded from the hallway. Quentin scrambled out of the room and ran for the

back door just ahead of them. He charged straight up the hill without stopping until he

reached the place where he'd left his clothes
.

Panting hard, he Changed. The air had grown cool, and his bare skin ran with

goosebumps as he snatched up his drawers
.

Harper knew. He wasn't gifted with a werewolf's powers, but there was something about

him

something that made him different, an outsider among his own kind
.

Perhaps they were kin, after all
.

He started back down the hill, skidding on the matted pine needles
.

"Are you running away?”

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He spun around at the whispered words. The unexpected intruder resolved into a girl,

slight as a doe, the usual book tucked under her arm. May
.

"What are you doing out so late?" he demanded. "It isn't safe—”

His words came out more harshly than he'd intended, and she recoiled. He recognized

that look. She was expecting to be berated, punished, struck, all because he'd raised

his voice to her
.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm a brute. Forgive me.”

Her tightly coiled muscles loosened. "Are you angry with me?”

Damnation. As little as he knew of the child, in spite of the very few insignificant words

they'd exchanged, he felt an unaccountably fierce desire to protect her. What had

Johanna said? "I have no objection to your speaking with her

if you are very careful.

It might help her to realize that not all men are—”

She hadn't finished the sentence, but he could fill in the rest. He'd seen his share of

cruelty in his wanderings. God help anyone who raised a hand to her in his presence
.

"Of course I'm not angry," he said, crouching to her level. "I was only worried about you.

Worried that you might be running away.”

"Not from this place. I like it here. I like—" She bit her lip. "You aren't leaving, are you?”

A few moments past he couldn't have answered that question. Johanna had said that

May's mother had left her at the Haven two years ago. Abandoned her, from the look of

it. Had this girl known anything but maltreatment and neglect in her former life?

Even his cowardice had its limits. He'd be damned before he added to her pain
.

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"No, May," he said, "I'm not leaving." He offered his hand. "I seem to have forgotten my

shoes. Will you help me find them?”

She smiled—a heartbreaking, elusive thing—and took his hand
.

They returned to the house together. A woman stood in the back doorway, lantern held

aloft, waiting to guide the errant strays back to safety
.

Quentin stopped before her. "You can douse the lamp, my dear doctor," he said,

grinning past the lump in his throat. "I'm here to stay.”

Johanna sat up in her bed, throwing off the covers with a jerk. She came to full

wakefulness a moment later. Only a dream. Odd; she so seldom remembered her

dreams, and nightmares like this were rarer still. Something about running

away from

a threat without solid shape, a creature that panted after her, never more than a step or

two behind
.

A wolf had run at her side. She had felt no fear of the beast, only a sense of

companionship and well-being. She remembered arguing with it, about whether to stand

and fight, or run; the wolf had won the argument. So they fled, to no avail. At the very

last instant, when the thing had almost caught up with them, the wolf whirled about and

crouched, a shield between her and their pursuer. And from the mouth of the

amorphous shadow came Quentin's baritone, strangely altered: "I'm here to stay.”

Considering the ridiculous nature of the dream, she ought not to have found it so

disturbing
.

She pushed her heavy hair away from her face and swung her legs over the side of the

bed. For the first time since adolescence she subjected her large, sturdy feet to a critical

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examination. Vanity was something she'd dispensed with long ago, as being of no use

to a female physician in a world of men, and quite pointless in her particular case. She

was not beautiful, nor of the dainty sort so many men preferred
.

"You pretend to be a man," Rolf had said, all those years past. He had not meant it as a

compliment. It was one of the last things Rolf ever said to her before they formally

ended their engagement
.

He had found her overwhelming, unwomanly. Quentin didn't. The fact that she was

comparing the two men troubled her
.

She went to the washbasin and bathed her face, neck, and arms with tepid water. A

bath would be welcome this evening, if there was time. Mrs. Daugherty was off today,

which meant that Johanna would be serving up the meals, conducting Irene and Lewis

through their sessions, visiting with May, looking after Papa—he was very much in need

of a walk outside in the fresh air—and supervising Oscar in his various activities and

chores. She would spend an hour with Harper, hoping to get some further response

from him. And then there was Quentin
.

She stared at her face in the mirror above the basin. A plain, somewhat ruddy face with

high cheekbones, full lips, a slightly snubbed nose—thoroughly Germanic. Serviceable.

Honest. All she needed for her work, where trust and compassion mattered far more

than beauty
.

Quentin had kissed those lips. She touched her mouth. It didn't throb anymore
.

Her threadbare cotton nightgown lay against her body like a second skin. She peeled it

off and studied her figure with severe objectivity
.

Broad shoulders—too broad for the current taste. Full breasts. They might be

considered by some to be an asset
.

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Her waist was small enough in proportion, but her hips more than made up for what her

waist lacked in inches. Child bearer’s hips, in a woman who would almost certainly

never bear a child
.

Long, strong legs. Arms more like a washerwoman's than a lady's. Large hands
.

They seemed small when she was with Quentin
.

"Ha," she scoffed, shaking her head. "Du kannst immer noch ein Dummkopf sein,

Johanna.”

She dressed as efficiently as always in austere under-drawers, chemise, a single