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.
Chapter Twenty-Six
HE CAUGHT GRACE 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."