sounds of Stuart or the scent of Stuart, or for whatever voices had called Stuart to wherever he,d gone.
It was futile to hope that Stuart had not been seduced by the scent of evil, as Reuben had been seduced by it, or that his newfound strength hadn,t carried him into realms where he might be discovered, even caught.
The night was alive with sirens, with crackling radio voices, with the pulse of the sweet city of Santa Rosa awakened to the shocking news of violence.
Bewildered, maddened, Reuben circled the hospital, then moved east. He caught the scent of terror, the scent of pleading, and desperation, a voice rising over the inevitable tide of petty prayers and garden-variety complaint.
Further to the east he bounded, when his instincts as well as his all-too-human brain told him: head for the boy,s home because where else can he go? Head for Plum Ranch Road.
Naked and alone in this peopled woods, he,ll hover there, frightened, seeking to make a lair of a basement or an attic known to him in that redwood mansion where he wasn,t welcome, the place that used to be his home. But as Reuben came within sight of the police cars and their swirling lights, of the big rumbling fire trucks and the ambulances, he caught the cacophony of those gathered on the knoll, and the stench of death.
The woman sobbing was Stuart,s mother. The dead man on the stretcher Herman Buckler, and the men fanning out to search the surrounding trees were goaded by the thrill of the hunt. The Man Wolf. There was a mixture of hysteria and glee amongst those gathered on foot for the spectacle.
Dogs barked. Dogs howled.
The boom of a gun echoed over the hillside. And there came the fierce blast of a bullhorn demanding caution. "Do not shoot. Report your position. Do not shoot."
Searchlights swept the trees, the grassland, the scattered rooftops - revealing cars in unlighted driveways, windows just flashing into life.
He could not get any closer. He was in greater danger now than he,d ever known.
But the night was dark, the rain thick and steady, and only he could see the terrain of twisted tree limbs that stretched before him as he circled and circled the blinking, crackling center of activity that was the family home.
He went as high as he could in the scrub oaks, lay still, paws over his eyes, making himself into darkness when the lights sought him out.
Ambulances were leaving the house. The cries of the mother were soft, broken, fading in the distance. Police cars crawled the dark roads in all directions. Porch lights and yard lights were snapped on, laying bare swimming pools and smooth shimmering lawns.
More vehicles were converging on the knoll.
He had to move out, make his circle wider again. And suddenly the obvious thought came to him: signal. The boy can hear what they cannot hear. In a low growing voice, he called Stuart,s name. "I,m searching for you," came his muffled, guttural words. "Stuart, come to me." The syllables rolled out of him, deep, throbbing, elongated so that for human ears they might sink beneath the rumble of tires and engines, the grind of domestic machines. "Stuart, come to me. Trust in me. I,m here to find you. Stuart, I am your brother. Come to me."
It seemed the backyard dogs were answering him, barking ever more fiercely, yelping, wailing, howling, and in that increasing din, he raised his own voice.
Slowly he moved eastward, out of the orbit of the search, certain the boy would have been clever enough to do the same. To the west lay the dense neighborhoods of Santa Rosa. To the east the forest.
"Stuart. Come to me."
At last, through the snarled web of branches before him, he saw the flicker of living eyes.
He pitched forward towards those glittering eyes, again sounding the name "Stuart!" like a deep-throated bell in the blackness.
And he heard the boy crying, "For the love of God, help me!"
His right arm flew out and caught the Boy Wolf around the shoulders, shocked to see he was as large as Reuben, and certainly as powerful, as they moved together rapidly through the high thick oak boughs.
Over yards of forest they ran. Finally, in a deep valley of unbroken darkness, they stopped. Reuben for the first time knew the heat of exhaustion in the wolf-coat, and lay back against the trunk of a tree, panting, and thirsting and scanning for the scent of water. The Boy Wolf lingered right