steady stream of low explanations as to why her life had to be forfeit much as he disliked to shed innocent blood. He,d said that he loathed killing women, he,d wanted her to know that, that he wasn,t "insensible" to her beauty. He,d compared her to a flower that had to be crushed underfoot.
The cruelty of it made Reuben wince.
Perhaps he had come in through an upper window. Such was conceivable.
Reuben went through all the rooms, even the smaller northern bedrooms that faced the forest behind the house. He could find no window that was not securely latched.
For the first time, he searched all the linen closets, and extra coat closets and bathrooms off the inside walls of the four hallways, and found no openings or secret staircases to the roof.
He went through the gable attic rooms on all four sides of the house and could find only locked windows there as well. None contained a rear stairway. In fact he could not quite figure how anyone could get to the roof of this house.
Tomorrow, he vowed, he,d walk the property and search for some vehicle that the creature had driven to the house, or some hiding place in the forest where he might have left a backpack or duffel bag hidden in the trees.
It was growing light.
The change had still not come.
Laura was in the master bedroom when he found her. She,d bathed and dressed in a fresh nightgown and brushed her long hair. She was pale with exhaustion but looked as fresh and tender to him as she always had.
For fifteen minutes or more he argued with her furiously, that she should leave here, take his car, go south back to her home in the Marin woods. If Felix Nideck was coming, if he was the primary other, who knew what strength and cunning he possessed? It was all in vain. Laura wasn,t leaving him. She never raised her voice; she never became agitated. But she never budged.
"My only chance with Felix is to appeal to him, to talk to him, to somehow - ." He gave off, too tired to go on.
"You don,t know that it is Felix."
"Oh, it has to be one of the Nidecks," he said. "It has to be. This creature knew Marchent, had protective feelings for Marchent, was told to guard this house. How could it not be a Nideck?"
But there were so many unanswered questions.
He went into the master shower and let the water stream over him for a long time. It washed the blood of the mountain lion in pale reddish rivulets down the copper drain. But he barely felt this water. His hairy body craved the icy water of a forest stream.
The morning was brightening. The view from the window wall of the shower was marvelously clear. He could see the sea to the far left, pale and colorless and glittering under the white sky.
Just opposite and to his right, the cliffs rose, blotting out the view of the ocean and its winds, as they extended further north.
Something could be up there on the cliffs, Felix Nideck, up there watching, waiting to avenge the dead Marrok.
But no. If Felix was near at hand, why would Marrok have come? Marrok had clearly indicated that he feared the eventual meeting with the one who,d appointed him as guardian, that he meant to annihilate his "mistake" before that meeting came to pass.
And if Felix Nideck was living, why did he allow his death to be made official, and his property passed on?
Too many possibilities.
Think about the good news. You,ve left nothing at the site of any kill. Absolutely nothing. Your fears on that score are over; there is no threat now from "the world" to you or Laura. Well, almost. There was the matter of Marchent,s autopsy, wasn,t there? - and their intimate contact before his DNA had begun to change. But what did that matter if they had nothing, absolutely nothing, from the kills? He wasn,t thinking clearly anymore at all.
Reuben folded his arms around himself and willed the change to come. He willed it with all his strength, feeling the heat teem in his temples, and feeling his heart beat faster in his ears. Change now, leave me, dissolve into me and outside me.
It was happening, as if his body had obeyed him, as if the power had acknowledged him. He was almost weeping at this small progress. The pleasure crawled over him, subduing him, making him groggy, the hair dropping