said no. This Dr. Jaska thought he should go into some kind of sanitarium, but she couldn,t figure why.
Sometime during the interview, which wasn,t much of an interview, the stepfather, Herman Buckler, sauntered in. He was a short, wiry man with exaggerated features and dark eyes. He had crew-cut platinum hair and a dark tan. He didn,t want his wife talking to reporters. In fact, he was furious. Reuben eyed him coldly. He was picking up the scent of malice clearly, much more clearly than he,d picked it up from Dr. Jaska, and he remained in the man,s presence as long as he could, though he was being ordered ever more violently to leave, just so he could study the guy.
The guy was poisoned with resentment and rage. He,d had enough of Stuart turning his life upside down. His wife was terrified of him, doing everything she could to placate him, apologizing for what had happened, and asking Reuben to go ahead and go.
The spasms were churning in Reuben. And it was daylight, the first time they,d ever come to him in daylight except for a very mild visitation when he,d seen Dr. Jaska. He kept his eyes on the man even as he walked out of the big glass and redwood house.
For a long time, he sat in the Porsche, looking at the surrounding forest and hills, just letting the spasms wane. The sky was blue overhead. This had the beauty of the wine country here, this lovely sunny weather. What a great place for Stuart to have grown up.
The change hadn,t really threatened. Could Reuben bring it about in daylight? He wasn,t sure. Not at all. But he was sure that Herman Buckler was capable of trying to kill his stepson, Stuart. And the wife knew it but she didn,t know it. In the midst of all this she was involved in a choice between her husband and her son.
As for the nights, Reuben felt certain that he now had the Wolf Gift entirely under his control.
For the first three nights after he last saw Stuart, he held off the change altogether, and gratifying as this was, it soon resulted in a kind of agony. It was like fasting, when one finds out how much more food and drink are than mere sustenance.
After that, when the change came, he confined himself to the woods near Nideck Point, hunting, roaming, discovering the creeks of his property, and climbing the tallest of the old-growth trees to heights not attempted in the past. There was a bear hibernating in his little forest, some sixty feet up an old fire-scarred tree; and a big cat, most likely the male cub of the mother he,d killed, was roaming Reuben,s part of the woods as well. There were deer he did not want to slay. But the sleek plump furry squirrel, wood rat, beaver, shrew, shrew mole - he fed on them all, and on cold, surprisingly tender reptiles - salamanders, garter snakes, frogs. Fishing in the creek was heavenly, his giant paws soon capable of snaring any sleek darting prey he chose. High up in the canopy, he could snatch the hapless scrub jays and wrens right out of the air, and devour them feathers and all while their little hearts still pumped vainly against their tiny narrow breasts. He feasted on the woodpecker and on junco and an endless supply of thrushes.
The utter "rightness" of devouring what one killed fascinated him, as did the desire to kill in the first place. He longed to wake the hibernating bear. He wanted to know if he could best it.
Far to the north where the forest grew as thick as it did on his own land, he caught the scent of the bull elk and longed for it, but didn,t go after it. He dreamed of fields of sheep, of scattering them with a roar, and chasing down the biggest to rip into its woolly neck with his fangs, and gorge himself on the hot breathing mutton.
But he wanted to remain unseen, unnoticed in his own territory, and was never too far away from Laura, in her bower of white lace and flannel in the big master bed, whom he would awaken on his return with beast paws and beast kisses.
But was it enough, these blissful nights in the enchanted woodland that was his own? It was the pale shadow of the raucous urban wilderness that lay to the south, beckoning with its promises of