Shadow on the Moon (14 page)

"Morgan," she called,
frightened even by the echo of her own voice.

 
When a few seconds passed and he didn't answer,
she paused, then rapped a second time. No response.

She knew that, despite the metal
plate, sound traveled in and out of there. Morgan's music always came through
clearly enough, and she'd also caught unintelligible snippets of his quarrel
with Lily. She leaned against the cool metal, straining to hear signs that he
was up and moving around.

"Morgan?" she called,
louder.

She heard a shuffle on the other
side, a noise that hinted of something scratching. A guttural rasp slid beneath
the door. Dana's heart skipped a beat and she jerked back.

"Morgan!"

Still he did not answer, but the
sounds subsided.

Dana wanted to dash back to the
illusionary safety of the daybed, but her fear and irrational suspicions
angered her. She felt sure that as soon as she talked to Morgan, she'd receive
the explanations she needed. Then she heard a latch click. Moving back in
relief, she waited for Morgan to come out.

Her wait went unrewarded.

She raised her hand and knocked
again, this time hard and long, but still he didn't answer. Soon her eyes began
to burn with team and her throat thickened. She continued to pound ever more
frantically.

"Morgan! Morgan! Where are
you? Come out!"

The storm outside intensified; the
wind hammered at the panes and eaves, nearly drowning out her calls. She fought
back by pounding harder, screaming louder. Finally, she could barely lift her
arm and her voice gave out. Stumbling to the bed, she collapsed into a huddle
and stared blankly at the flames. She hadn't felt so lost, alone, or helpless since

Since just before she'd found her
first wolf cub in that vale in Montana. Now her pack was hundreds of miles away
and she was alone, all alone, on the brink of hell.

* *
*

Oh, the smells of the forest, the
bite of the fierce wind, the softness of fresh snow beneath his pads. Morgan
ran and ran and ran through a swirl of gray and white, devouring miles with his
long, powerful legs.

He was running from it all. Lily's
ceaseless demands. His guilt over deceiving Dana. His grim half-world
existence. He wanted to keep running till he dropped from exhaustion, panting,
gasping, dying, leaving every ounce of pain behind.

Which, he knew, was not possible.
He was tireless, inexhaustible, invincible. And hungry, always hungry. The need
curled in his belly like a snake waiting to strike.

Yet even as he ran, he felt a
familiar glory in his mutant state. The subtle variety of colors, the vivid
contrasts of light and dark, so intense they were unknown to both humans and
wolves. He inhaled the scents, so many, each gloriously different from the
next. Sounds of all vibrations caressed his ears. He could actually hear and
feel the thrum of Earth turning on its axis, the thrust of plants, growing,
reaching up.

New York had emitted different
sensations. Myriad lights that assailed his pupils, blurred his vision. The
whine of tires on wet pavement, the coos of pigeons perching high, the
cacophony of voices, laughing, crying, wailing, cheering. Life's blood,
throbbing through veins, emitting a coppery scent that lured him to stalk, to .
. .

Kill.

The sheer glut of feeling had
almost overwhelmed him. He'd fled the city in terror of his own emotions, his
own horrible urges.

As a mortal, he'd hardly noticed
the city's activity. He'd grown numb in his plush Fifth Avenue office, listening
to privileged people grouse about petty problems, viewing them with a contempt
he concealed even from himself.

His mother had died when he was a
child, and though he'd always sensed his investment-banker father loved him,
the man had been so harried and preoccupied, Morgan never really knew him. His
only sister was ten years older than he and had left home before Morgan entered
high school. He hadn't seen her since their father's funeral several years
before.

After that, Morgan had felt
strangely adrift in the world. His personal relationships became distant,
ritualistic, mechanical. At night he amused himself with plays and sporting
events, parties and unfulfilling sex, and when that paled he'd stare at the
city below from the balcony of his luxurious, professionally decorated Central
Park apartment and wonder what had happened to the young psychiatrist who'd
wanted to eliminate mankind's woes. At these times, he studied books about the
awesome possibilities of the human mind and asked himself why no one had
reliably tapped into it. He'd dream of one day doing so, then the next morning
he'd return to his lackluster practice.

Then a colleague invited him to
interview an unusual patient: a Balkan immigrant who'd fled Romania during the
breakup of the Soviet Union. The man actually believed he was a werewolf and
had rushed into the colleague's office, alarmed at the impending fill moon,
begging to be locked up for everyone’s protection.

Morgan had, of course, been
incredulous, but the man's sincere conviction was fascinating, so he'd agreed
to take the case. During one late-day appointment, as the city lights began
reflecting in the window of Morgan's high-rise office, his attention began to
wander. Nearly an hour of hearing about Transylvania and enchanted mountains
was stretching his patience.

Lucid
, he scribbled onto a
yellow legal pad.
Obsessive need for attention.
By this point, he was
certain the patient was an unmitigated fake.

"She was a woman of few
years," the man was saying. "Her skin still fresh and dewy, tender to
the teeth. When she saw me, I could smell the very fear in her. Ah, it was so
tantalizing. I could not resist."

"Where was this again,
Boris?" Morgan asked, not really caring, but wanting his notes to be
correct.

"In Bucharest,
in the rotten heart of the city." The man paused for a moment. "I
stalked her for many blocks and she began walking faster, faster, until she
nearly stumbled over her own feet. Finally she turned a dark corner. A key was
in her hand. I saw my chance. . . ."

Morgan fought back a grimace of
disbelief as tears gathered in the corner of his patient's eyes.

"She was at her door . . . .
safety near, so near. . . . I saw terror . . . terror in her face when she
turned to fight me. Then she looked into my eyes and I had her in my will. She
fought no more. I said a small prayer for her soul." Another dramatic
pause, a poignant hitch in the voice. "I tore out her throat before the
scream had left it."

Morgan involuntarily cleared his
own throat. "Umm . . . This is a good time to, uh, address control of the
imagination. Can you tell me what occurred before you had this delusion?"

"Delusion?" This was
stated sharply. "Are you a fool like the rest, Doctor? A skeptic who will
not admit the existence of what you cannot understand?"

"Your anger is understandable;
let's start with that." Leaning back in his chair, Morgan nibbled on the
tip of his pen. "What angered you that day?"

"I was not angry!" Boris
gave an awkward jerk of his head. "Why can you not believe? It is truth I
tell you."

He jerked his head again. His arms
and legs began to twitch. Spasms ran through his jaw. Clearly fighting the
movements, he arched his neck backward. His mouth snapped opened. A high
keening sound arose from his throat, reverberated off the window glass, and
filled the room. With a moan, he lurched to the floor and curled up.

Morgan made a quick call for
emergency assistance, then rushed to kneel beside the fallen man, whose joints
had already swelled to twice their normal size. The man's moans sounded more
like whimpers and snarls than human cries of pain, and his wide eyes contained
a plea.

Unable to believe what he was
seeing, Morgan watched Boris's cranium plate shift. Bones and joints twitched,
wobbled, reassembled themselves into larger, sturdier structures. The patient's
skin thickened; hair appeared on his gnarled knuckles. His eyes glazed and
Morgan sensed he was no longer aware of his surroundings.

Morgan stared in denial and terror
as Boris clenched his eyes shut, wrapped himself into a fetal position, and
rocked onto his side. His groans grew increasingly agonized, his respiration
rapid and shallow. Morgan reached to check his pulse, snatching his hand back
when Boris snapped at it.

He called the man's name, but the
patient was lost in his own agonized world and didn't hear. His vital signs
were getting weak.

Morgan sprang to his feet and
yanked open a desk drawer that held a small first-aid kit he'd never had to
use. No longer sure what it contained, he fought to still his trembling fingers
and scattered the contents of the kit, searching for a paper vial he hoped was
there.

While he hunted, he asked himself
if Boris's tale might be true. Although the man's body retained human
proportions, the changes were irrefutably wolflike.

He refused to believe in such
superstitious nonsense, and his studies came back to him. What was at work
inside this man that could cause such physical manifestations? Shape-shifting,
shamanism, werewolves, and vampires were all nonsense. But who knew what the
human mind could do?

Nineteenth-century psychiatric
papers suggested that hysterical psychosomatic reactions were once quite
common, although few modern psychiatrists had ever witnessed one. Yet even now,
people frequently died from psychosomatic illnesses. Could man also use his
will to change his body? By harnessing this power, might man finally defeat
illness and the inevitable decline of old age? Learn to control thought,
thereby eliminating mental and behavioral disorders?

Morgan's fear vanished, but now his
heart raced with excitement. The possibilities were limitless.

At that moment, his hand touched
the ammonia inhalant. He rushed back and cracked it open beneath Boris's nose,
recoiling himself as the heavy, acrid odor filled the room.

When the inhalant reached Boris's
lungs, he gasped and choked. A cough rattled in his chest. Tension subsided. He
relaxed his arms. Soon his breathing slowed and he straightened his rigidly
drawn up legs.

"Boris?"

With a heavy sigh, Boris rolled
onto his back and opened his eyes, which were now bloodshot.

"They say the process is
easier if you don't fight it," he said, so softly Morgan had to strain to
hear the words.

"Who says?"

"The alphas," came the
whispered reply. "Do they tell you to do things, these alphas?"

"No one tells me. It's my
nature now. And, oh, sweet God, I despise it."

Morgan's mind whirred as he tried
to categorize Boris's experience. A disassociative disorder? Schizophrenia,
perhaps? He had to know what had brought about these physical changes. But the
psychiatrist in him knew he shouldn't probe at this time. Boris needed
stabilizing first.

"What thoughts preceded these
symptoms?" he asked, ignoring professional protocol to satisfy personal
curiosity.

"I told you. The moon is
waxing." Then he laughed so bitterly, with such despair, it sent a chill
down Morgan's spine. "You had a lucky escape, Doctor. Now lock me up. If I
cannot persuade you to do it for your own protection, then do it for
mine."

Morgan continued with questions for
a while, but got no reasonable answers. When the paramedics arrived, he did as
Boris requested and had him committed. For several days he visited the patient,
reading reports of physical manifestations similar to those that occurred in
his office. Always Boris exhibited extreme pain; always the ammonia inhalant
relieved the symptoms; and always he failed to give Morgan a rational
explanation.

Late on the night of the full moon,
a phone call disturbed Morgan's sleep. Boris had been found hanging by his neck
in his room, apparently preferring death to the miserable existence he'd
created.

The next morning, Morgan cleared
his appointments and booked a flight to Europe, where he hoped to find answers
to Boris's anomalous manifestations and disprove his claims of a werewolf
curse. A scientific reason existed, and Morgan felt certain it lay in
uncovering the power of thought. Perhaps the tragedy of poor Boris's life would
help unlock those secrets and provide everlasting benefit.

In Paris, he found the beautiful
Lily. Sultry and fey — or so he'd thought at the time — she'd offered to take
him to remote villages in the various Balkan mountain ranges where the
inhabitants still defended themselves against evil night creatures. Although
retaining his skepticism about their beliefs, Morgan hoped to gain insight into
the social paradigms that could influence a man's mind enough to cause rapid
and profound body changes. The fervor of youthful idealism returned.

Lily assured him he'd find his
answers. They met with gypsies and shamans, with village mayors and natural
healers, whose fantastic stories disappointed Morgan and failed to give him the
desired insight. He asked Lily for more.

Finally, atop a stony mountain
bordering the fabled Transylvania Basin, Lily gave him more than he'd asked
for. Much more.

Now, as he raced through the
thickening forest above Ebony Canyon, the extent of Lily's betrayal fueled his
rage to volcanic proportions. He hated her, hated Boris for precipitating his
trip to Europe. Even hated the colleague who'd introduced them. Finally, he
hated Dana for putting her life in his untrustworthy hands.

Tightening his flanks, he skidded
to a stop, scattering powder with the weight of his enormous body. He sniffed,
hoping to catch the scent of some creature cut off from its burrow by the
storm. None would be out willingly. Nature's beasts retreated from inhospitable
weather, even the ones that were distant kin to him.