His bare legs felt weak, his bare feet unsure, his hands clutching for the door of the car as he lost his balance and fell down on one knee.
Laura was beside him, steadying him, helping him into the passenger seat. The patches of hair on his chest and forehead seemed infinitely more monstrous than the full transformation, but the blood had already coagulated into a thick flaking varnish. The skin positively burned over the wounds. Ripples of dizzying pleasure encircled his head as if two hands were massaging him.
As Laura drove for the freeway, he pulled his shirt on again, and his pants. And with his left hand over the throbbing chest wounds, he felt the wolf-hair shrinking, finally falling loose. Only the soft underfur remained. Both wolf-hair and fur were gone from his forehead.
There came the rolling darkness to drown him, take him away. He fought it, his head thumping against the window, a low moan coming from his lips.
Sirens; they were like banshees wailing, shrill, hideous. But the Porsche was moving north again, gaining the freeway, joining the thumping shuddering flow of winking, gleaming red taillights ahead, gliding from one lane to another, and finally moving at top speed.
He lay back staring at Laura. In the flashing lights, she appeared utterly calm, eyes fastened on the road.
"Reuben?" she said, not daring to take her eyes off the traffic. "Reuben, talk to me. Reuben, please."
"I,m all right, Laura," he said. He sighed. One shiver after another passed through him. His teeth were chattering. The fur was gone now from the chest wounds, and the wounds were gone too. The skin sang. The pleasure washed through him, exhausting him. The scent of death was still clinging to him, the death of the boy crumpled in the yard, scent of innocent death.
"I,ve done something terrible, unspeakable!" he whispered. He tried to say more but all he could hear from his own lips was another moan.
"What are you saying?" she asked. The traffic ripped and rattled ahead and behind them. They were already leaving the city of Santa Rosa.
He closed his eyes again. No pain now. Only a low fever pulsing in his face and in the palms of his hands, and in the smooth flesh where the pain had been.
"A terrible thing, Laura," he whispered, but she couldn,t hear him. He saw the boy again staggering towards him, a tall broad-chested child with a pale beseeching face, a torn and bleeding face, with a mop of blond hair around it, eyes wide with horror, lips moving, saying nothing. The darkness came. And he welcomed it, the leather bucket seat cradling him, the car rocking him as they drove on.
Chapter Thirty
THE LIGHTS of the big room dazzled him. The central heat pouring from the vents was too warm, the fragrances of the house dusty, close, intoxicating, even suffocating.
At once, he went into the library and made a call to the Clift Hotel in San Francisco. He had to speak to Felix. He was choked with shame. Only Felix could help him with what he had done, and ashamed as he was, as mortified and miserable, he could not rest until he had confessed this horror to Felix, that he,d bungled, that he,d passed the Chrism.
Felix was no longer there, said the clerk at the desk. Felix had checked out that afternoon. "May I ask who is calling?" He was about to hang up in despair, but identified himself in the faint hope there would be some message. There was.
"Yes, he said to tell you that he was called away. Urgent business he couldn,t ignore. But that he would return as soon as he could."
No number, no address.
He sank down in the chair with his head on the desk, forehead against the green blotter. After a moment, he picked up the phone and called Simon Oliver, leaving the desperate plea on voice mail that Oliver get in touch with Arthur Hammermill and find out if he had an emergency number for Felix Nideck. It was urgent, urgent, urgent. Simon could not imagine how urgent.
Nothing to be done; nothing to alleviate this unspeakable panic. Will this boy die? Will the Chrism kill him? Was that despicable Marrok telling the truth when he said the Chrism could kill?
He had to find Felix!
Again, he saw the boy collapsed in the dirt of that yard, his outstretched hand, and the wound.
Lord, God!
He stared at the smiling figure of Felix in the photograph. Dear God, please help