Skin of the Wolf (11 page)

S
pencer was rested, showered, dressed, and scrambling eggs when Michael came into the kitchen. “Well.” Spencer turned. “You look much better, I must say.”

“Better than what? I feel like hell.” Michael dropped into a chair and looked Spencer over. “You, on the other hand, are completely healed, aren’t you?”

Spencer shrugged modestly. “I’m pleased to say I’m suffering few ill effects, it’s true.” As he met Michael’s eyes Spencer found himself hesitating. By nature both men were reserved, even in private; still, Michael had been through a lot last night, and a show of affection—a kiss, a brief embrace—would not be out of place. Spencer’s situation, though, was new to him. Spencer believed the Noantri Law forbidding the revelation of one’s true nature, although enacted for the protection of the Community, was a wise safeguard to one’s personal relations, also. Few indeed were the Unchanged who could accept the truth. What Michael had learned last night could not help but alter his view of Spencer. Perhaps Spencer’s touch was no longer welcome. He berated himself for his cowardice as he turned back to the stove, not yet ready to find out.

“I assume you’re hungry?” He poured Michael coffee and carried it to the table.

“Starving.” Michael tried to lift the mug with his left hand, tentatively, testing his arm. He got it an inch off the table, drew a sharp breath, and changed hands.

“How is it?” Spencer asked.

“The coffee? Delicious.”

“The arm.”

“Not even capable of handling a cup of coffee.”

“I’m sorry. Is there something I can do?”

“You can answer this: last night. I wasn’t hallucinating, right? Drunk? Delirious? Edward, your friends, what you told me—I didn’t dream that?”

Spencer placed a platter of eggs and bacon on the table and pulled out a chair. “I might ask you the same thing. Now, we could be coy all through breakfast, neither saying what he thought the other told him, but each trying to maneuver the other into revealing what he thought he was told. It seems a lot of bother, though. Let me just say that you and I had an extraordinary encounter in the park, Livia Pietro and Father Thomas Kelly were indeed here, a young woman was reported killed at Sotheby’s auction house, and I accompanied you to an intriguing tavern in Washington Heights. Also, I’m fairly certain you told me you and your brother are shapeshifters, and I know I told you I’m Noantri, which in your language—or at least, in English—makes me a vampire.”

“Ah.” Michael nodded slowly, as though considering a scientific theorem advanced by a colleague. “Yes, that’s pretty much what I remember. And the fact that we’re sitting here in sunlight? That I can swear from experience you can be seen in a mirror?”

Spencer smiled, remembering the evening with the mirror.
“Myths. The more outlandish, the more useful to us. We don’t make any attempt to correct misapprehensions about our nature.”

“I see.” Michael raised his coffee and Spencer did the same. They clinked mugs and drank. Michael put his coffee down and loaded his plate with bacon and eggs.

Spencer let Michael eat in peace. He even had a strip of bacon and a portion of scrambled eggs himself. In Rome, of course, he wouldn’t have taken any breakfast beyond a cappuccino and a
cornetto
or some other small, sweet pastry, but that had only been the fashion for a hundred years or so. In China he’d breakfasted on the rice porridge called
congee
, a tasty dish if one added pickled vegetables or salt fish. He’d had morning meals of flatbread with white cheese in Syria, herring in Scandinavia, and on his estate in Sussex he’d been partial to smoked pheasant.

“Michael? What do your people eat for breakfast?”

“Berries. Pancakes. Cornmeal pudding with maple syrup. It’s good. If I could cook I’d make you some.”

“Give me a recipe and I’ll make you some.”

Michael laughed. “That’s one of the reasons I can’t cook. We don’t use recipes. Kids stand and watch and chop. I went to boarding school when I was eleven, so after that I wasn’t around to watch.”

“You went, but your brother did not. Why?”

“Edward hated school. He felt confined, choked.”

“You didn’t share that feeling?”

“I was a science whiz. Give me a rock and a microscope, or a beaker of something that stank and turned blue, and I was happy. It got so the reservation schools couldn’t keep up with me.”

“Was it difficult, leaving home?”

Looking into his coffee, Michael said, “We don’t like to leave the land we’re raised on. My father didn’t want to send me off the rez
but Grandmother said it was important that I go and that I wouldn’t be any less of an Indian for going.”

“Do you feel that was true?”

Michael looked up. “Do I feel like an Indian? Yes.”

“But your brother faults you.”

“He quit school as soon as he could, and when he did go he spent as little time and paid as little attention as possible. Since we were small he followed the traditional ways, learned from the traditional people. To him, every step I took into the white world twisted me, turned me away from our people. Because of . . . what we are, he feels doubly betrayed.”

“It must be hard for you.”

Michael didn’t answer.

Spencer said, “When we find him, what will happen then?”

A long pause. “I don’t know. I need to know why he’s here. Whether I’m right about the mask, and why he wants it. But if he really killed that woman—God, I think he did.”

“Is it his first?”

Michael stared. “His first what?
Human kill
? What are you talking about? He’s not a murderer, Spencer. What the hell—you think he’s on a crusade to single-handedly wipe out the white race?”

Evenly, Spencer said, “I didn’t mean that.”

“But it occurred to you. And now you’re wondering about me, too. Whether I’ve ever killed anyone.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You would have.”

Spencer nodded. “As you will eventually begin to wonder about me.” From the reluctant doubt behind the anger in Michael’s eyes, Spencer could tell that he already had. “Michael, we have a lot to
learn about each other. I suggest we accept that fact, look forward to our mutual education, try not to lose sight of our mutual affection, and concentrate on the matter at hand. To relieve your mind: I have never, to my knowledge, killed a fellow human. Though in my Unchanged state I did have the opportunity twice, in duels.” He added, “Both opponents walked away, wounded but not mortally so. Under the right circumstances I’m quite the swordsman.”

Michael stared, then laughed.

Spencer gave an answering smile. Michael’s anger drained away, a process Spencer could discern in his falling adrenaline level and slowing heartbeat.

Michael finished his coffee and said, “I’m sorry. This is . . . Oh, shit, Spencer. You asked what happens next. I don’t know. I don’t
know
. This is my responsibility. It’s down to me. Grandmother, my grandfathers, the elders, they’re all gone.”

“Surely,” Spencer said, “there are elders among the traditional people? Not your relatives, perhaps, but some to whom you might appeal?”

“Elders, yes, but not Shifters. On our rez, no one who can do the ceremony, even. No one who knows about Edward and me. Or knows for sure that it’s even possible. That knowledge—the identity of a Shifter—that’s a tremendous weight for someone to carry. I can’t ask any of the elders to take this on.” He paused. “Or maybe, I’m supposed to. Spencer, Jesus, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Spencer regarded him. “I’m afraid I have nothing to offer but sympathy. And whatever help I’m capable of providing, once your direction is clear.”

“And coffee.”

Spencer did have that, so he poured Michael another cup.
Michael drank in brooding silence. He’d almost finished when he set the mug abruptly down and asked, “What would your people do?”

“I’m sorry?”

“If a—Noantri—were dangerous. To others. Outsiders. What would you do?”

“Ah, I see. I’m afraid we’re in a rather different position, though. There are, for one thing, a good many of us. We have laws and a ruling body. The laws are not many, but infractions are not well tolerated.”

“How are they dealt with?”

Spencer took a moment to ponder. The working of the Noantri Community was not something he’d ever considered explaining to an Unchanged. For one thing, it was against the Law. But the most critical Noantri Law—not betraying their existence—Spencer had already broken. And Michael had broken the same law about himself.

He poured Michael more coffee and filled his own cup also. “It’s the case with us,” he began, “that the physical proximity of other Noantri is, it turns out, of immense importance. Emotionally, psychologically.” He smiled. “I say this as one who has spent decades on end as a recluse. But hear me out. Until, in historical terms, relatively recently, few individual Noantri knew of the existence of another. If one’s interactions with a mortal brought about that person’s Change, possibly the two might be aware of each other. But perhaps not. A Noantri’s life in those times was furtive and frightening. After satisfying what must have been an inexplicable, tormenting, but uncontrollable craving for human blood . . .” Spencer paused and regarded Michael, his calm exterior belying a pounding heart and a hope that felt to him absurd: that Michael would not blanch, shift his position to gain distance, or smile to hide disgust on
hearing those words aloud. Last night they’d been said while Michael was in a whirlwind of exhaustion, shock, and physical pain; but now that they’d sunk in and here in the light of day, would his reaction alter?

For a moment Michael appeared to have no reaction at all. Then he reached across the table and touched Spencer’s hand. Just briefly, just lightly; but Spencer wondered when the sun had learned to come bursting through his north-facing kitchen window.
You’ll be hearing bluebirds next, you silly man!
he told himself, and listened for them.

Michael sat back and waited. Spencer exhaled. “After—there is no other way to say this—feeding, a Noantri in those times would have moved on. Staying in one place would have been sure to bring suspicion. Also, it’s possible to feed without causing the Change. Thus for most Noantri, either another of their nature was not created, or one was, but they never knew.” He paused, collecting his thoughts. “These times I’m describing were not years I lived through. By the time of my Change the agreement Father Kelly told you about had been in effect for a century. Noantri had begun to gather, to live in communities; in a larger sense, in Community.

“Imagine, Michael, if you came upon a community of Shifters. People who shared your knowledge, your fears, your outlook on the world. The odd quirks, the amusing moments, the difficulties that come about not because you’re Michael Bonnard, but because Michael Bonnard is a Shifter. Would you not feel immediately . . . at home?”

“God. I can’t even think what that might be like.”

“For us, it’s that, and much more. The alteration in our DNA causes our bodies to respond to the bodies of other Noantri in a way
that’s similar—few Noantri like it when I say this, but it’s true—similar to the reactions of pack animals to each other. Dogs will gather into packs. As, I imagine, will wolves.”

Michael nodded.

“Camels will form herds, and sheep, flocks. These animals are miserable if kept isolated. Cats, on the other hand, try to avoid groups of other cats. Throughout the animal kingdom you find examples of both kinds of behavior. Noantri, it turns out, need one another.”

“But you said you were a recluse.”

“Yes—but in Rome. The center of Noantri life. My home was in Trastevere, where perhaps three percent of the population is Noantri. For years I interacted with very few people, but I was comfortably surrounded by my own.”

“Three percent of the population of Trastevere? Spencer, seriously?”

“Indeed. We can discuss that, and many other facts which will interest you, I’m sure, at a later date. Let me answer your original question, though, to which all this is relevant. You asked how infractions are punished and how dangerous Noantri are dealt with. From what I’ve said, you can understand, perhaps, what exile would mean to us.”

“Exile.”

“In a practice similar to the Amish ‘shunning,’ violators of the Law are sent away. Those whose infractions are relatively minor but who are thought to require discipline nevertheless, are ordered from their homelands to some distant place. They may dwell among other Noantri but may not return home until their sentences are lifted. Serious lawbreakers are required to dwell at a distance from other Noantri. They are supplied with the blood they
require for nourishment but forbidden other interaction for a prescribed period.”

“What if someone violates his exile?”

“At first, it is reimposed to a farther place and a longer time. If that fails, there are two further steps. Our leadership operates a prison. Small, but effective. And I imagine, quite boring. You can understand how tedious being locked in a cell might be, when your life is eternal. Very few exiled Noantri commit the additional transgression of violating that sentence for fear of what comes next.”

“And after that?”

“There is only one step possible, after that.”

Again, Michael didn’t speak.

“Some Noantri are deemed so dangerous to the Community that they cannot be allowed to continue. When one’s life is eternal, even a prison must be seen as temporary. An earthquake, the failing of a bolt: nothing built lasts as long as we do. Rarely—very, very rarely—a death sentence is imposed.”

“But you don’t die.”

“There are two causes from which we do.”

“I’d guess one would be lack of a blood supply.”

“In fact, no. A long-term deprivation would cause what you might call suspended animation. Such a state might last for centuries, but Noantri in this state can be revived.”

“Then what? Silver bullets? Stakes through the heart?”

Spencer rolled his eyes. “Certainly not. Those are fictions useful for misdirection, but they have nothing to do with us. The facts are these: once a Noantri has made another, the two become reciprocally lethal. It has to do with an autoimmune response of the blood. Should either attempt to feed on the other it will be a fatal mistake for the one fed upon. An execution is rarely carried out in this
fashion, however, as it forces another Noantri, who may be innocent of the crime, to become the executioner. The other cause is fire.”