The Wolves of Midwinter (47 page)

He stopped, and put his curled fingers against his mouth for a second, and then started again.

“When I got the call from the hotel, I went out the door immediately. And that’s when they came for me, and they got the priest staying in my apartment, a know-nothing innocent guy from Minneapolis on a layover on his way to Hawaii. A young innocent guy who wanted to see my parish, my ministry! A priest I hardly knew.”

“I see,” said Reuben. The heat in his face was unbearable and the pringling had become a fact of life. But he held the change at bay as he waited, marveling quietly that sheer rage and anticipation could bring it on as was happening now. He was marveling too at what was happening, at what this had done to his brother. His brother’s face, his brother’s tears were breaking his heart.

“There’s more,” said Jim, gesturing with one finger. “I’ve met the son of a bitch. I’ve been to that house. Right after the kid came to me, Blankenship’s lackeys forced me into a car and brought me there to meet with the man himself. They took me to the fourth floor of that house. That’s where he lives, this, this little tinhorn Scarface, this latter-day Pablo Escobar, this little rat-faced Al Capone with his big dreams. He’s so paranoid he’s backed himself into a fourth-floor apartment up there with one entrance and only a handful of lackeys admitted to the house. He sits there pouring cognac for me and offering me Cuban cigars. He offers me a million-dollar donation for my church, a million dollars, he has it right there in a suitcase, and he says we can be partners, him and me, just tell him where Jeff is. He wants to talk to Jeff, make up with him, bring Jeff back, get Jeff clean.” He broke off again, eyes dancing back and forth as he looked around the room, obviously struggling for calm.

“I didn’t challenge the little monster. I sat there listening, breathing that revolting cigar smoke as he talks about
Boardwalk Empire
and
Breaking Bad
and how he’s the new Nucky Thompson, and San Francisco is becoming again the Barbary Coast. San Francisco’s much more beautiful than Atlantic City ever was, he says. He’s wearing wingtip shoes like Nucky Thompson. He has a closet full of beautiful colored shirts with white collars. He gives twenty-five cents out of every dollar to charity, he says, right off the top. We have a future together, he says, him and me. He’d finance a rehab clinic and shelter at the church and I can run it any way I like. This million dollars is only the beginning. His heart goes out to his customers, he says. Someday soon they’ll make a movie about us, him and me, and this Delancey Street–style shelter that I’m opening with his money. If he didn’t sell to the rabble, somebody else would, he says. I know that, don’t I? he asks me. He doesn’t want anybody to be hurt, least of all Jeff. Where was Jeff? He wants to get Jeff clean, send him to an Eastern school. Jeff’s got artistic talent, I might not know. I got up and left.”

“I hear you.”

“I walked out of there and I walked all the way back home. And the next morning they tell me about an anonymous million-dollar donation to St. Francis at Gubbio earmarked for the rehab and shelter. It’s in the damned bank!”

He shook his head. The tears were thick in his eyes, a glaze.

“I didn’t dare go see Jeff after that. I called him, every day, twice a day. Lie low. Do not call anybody. Do not go out. And he verified just what I thought. There aren’t five people allowed in that Victorian house. Paranoia trumps greed and the desire for personal service. Three hardbitten henchmen do everything, and then there’s Fulton—except for the lab work in the basement. The Super Bo concentrate is thrown together down there by a team that works by day without a master formula; it’s whatever GHB, oxycontin, scopolamine they’ve got coming in. It’s poison! And they’re producing staggering quantities, everything going out on dollies to ‘perfume’ trucks. That’s the cover. A perfume company. The street distributers mix it with soda pop and sell out the same day they’re supplied.”

“I’m getting the picture,” said Reuben.

“You realize what might happen?” Jim asked. “If I were to go home? You realize what these monsters might do to anybody they found in the way if they came looking for me?”

“I realize,” said Reuben.

“And I can’t get a cop car to sit outside the house!”

Reuben nodded. “I’m getting the whole picture, as I said.”

“I warned Mom. I told her to hire a private security guard. I don’t know whether she listened to me or not.”

“I’m getting it, all right.”

“They’re crazy, suicidal, Blankenship and this bunch. They’re as dangerous as rabid dogs.”

“So it seems,” said Reuben under his breath.

Once more Jim gestured for attention with his finger.

“I Google-mapped the place,” said Jim. “There’s no vehicle access, not in front and not in back. The perfume trucks have to stop in the street. There’s a tiny backyard.”

Reuben nodded. “I understand.”

“I’m glad you do,” said Jim with a bitter smile. “But how can you do it, how can you get him without bringing the whole world out to hunt for the Man Wolf again?”

“Easily,” said Reuben. “But you leave that to me.”

“I don’t see how—?”

“Leave it to me,” said Reuben again, a little more firmly, yet quietly. “You don’t have to think about any of it a moment longer. I have others to help me think about it. Go in there and take a shower. I’ll order us some dinner. By the time you get out the food will be here, and we’ll have figured it out to the last detail.”

Jim sat there quietly reflecting for a moment and then he nodded. His eyes were like glass with their tears, flashing in the light. He looked at Reuben and he smiled bitterly, his mouth quivering just for an instant, and then he rose and left the room.

Reuben went to the windows.

The rain was coming down a little heavier now, but the view of the park below and the great pale mass of Grace Cathedral opposite was
impressive as always, though something about the neo-Gothic façade of the church deeply disturbed Reuben and caused a pain in his heart. It stirred memories in him unexpectedly, not memories of this church so much as so many others that were like it, churches in which he’d prayed all over the world. A deep sense of grief was taking hold of him. He swallowed it down as he’d swallowed the change that had so wanted to break loose.

When Felix answered the phone, Reuben discovered for a split second that he couldn’t talk. That pain deepened and then he heard his own voice, low, and unnatural to him, slowly unfolding the whole story to Felix, his eyes fixed firmly on the distant towers of the cathedral, so reminiscent of Reims, Noyon, Nantes.

“I was thinking I’d get you a couple of suites here,” said Reuben, “that is, if you’re willing …”

“You let me book them,” said Felix. “And of course we are willing. Don’t you realize this is Twelfth Night? This is the Carnival season now until Lent. It will be our Twelfth Night feast.”

“But secrecy, the question of secrecy.”

“Dear boy, there are ten of us,” said Felix. “And Phil and Laura have never tasted human flesh. There won’t be a morsel left.”

Reuben smiled in spite of himself, in spite of the pain in his heart, in spite of the great dark outline of the cathedral against the western sky. It was dusk now, and quite suddenly, unexpectedly, the decorative lights of the huge cathedral were switched on, gloriously illuminating the entire façade. It was startling, the ghost of the church now solid and wondrously alive with its twin towers and softly glowing rose window.

“Are you there?” asked Felix.

“Yes, I’m here,” said Reuben. “And that’s what I was thinking,” said Reuben. “Eat every last bite and lick the plates clean.”

Silence.

The room was dark. He ought to turn on a few lights, he thought. But he didn’t move. Distantly, he could hear a terrible sound, the sound of his brother Jim weeping.

The door of the bedroom was open.

There came the scent of innocence, the scent of innocent suffering.

He moved soundlessly to the door.

Jim, dressed in the soft white hotel terry-cloth robe, knelt beside the bed, his head bowed, his hands clasped in prayer, his shoulders shaking with his sobs.

Reuben moved away, and back to the window and the comforting sight of the beautifully illuminated cathedral.

I
T WAS PLANNED
in advance. They dressed in black sweatshirts and sweatpants, carrying the black ski masks in their pockets. Easy enough to slip out of the three vehicles and approach the Victorian house through the back alleys. Margon reminded the younger ones before it began: “You’re stronger in human form now than you ever were; climbing fences, breaking down doors, you’ll find that easy even before the change.” Who knew what the getaway might entail?

Frank, the ever impressive Frank, with his movie star looks and voice, was chosen to knock on the front door and charm his way in. Hurling aside a confused and protesting lackey, he’d gone straight to open the back door, and the wolves were inside within seconds.

Phil had morphed as soon as the others began morphing, emerging a powerful brown Man Wolf as eager to kill as Laura. The place reeked of evil. The stench had soaked into the very beams and boards. The horrified lackeys raved, snarled like animals themselves, the hatred lusciously seductive and finally irresistible.

Margon gave Laura and Phil each a desperate protesting victim—to dispatch on their own. A third inhabitant, a sleeper on the second floor, leapt from his bed with knife in hand. He slashed over and over at Stuart, who embraced him before crushing his skull.

Merciful kills these, swift. But the feasting had been slow, scrumptious. The flesh had been so warm, so salty, so delicious, with a playful jockeying for the choicest “cuts.” Reuben’s body felt like an engine, his paws and temples throbbing, his tongue lapping, of its own accord it seemed, at gushing blood.

There were only four in all, and the first three were devoured almost completely, with bloody garments and shoes pushed into garbage sacks
while the unsuspecting leader paced and ranted and sang along with his deafening music in the attic above.

Up the stairs they went to take the kingpin all together. “Man Wolves! And so many of you!” he screamed in frenzied delight.

He begged, pleaded, tried to buy his life. He raved about what he might do for this world if only they’d spare him. Out of a hole in the wall he produced bundles and bundles of cash. “Take it!” he cried. “And there’s more where that came from. Listen, I know you defend the innocent. I know who you are. I am innocent. You are looking at innocence! You are listening to innocence. We can work together, you and me! I’m no enemy of the innocent!” It was Phil who tore out his throat.

Reuben watched in silence as Phil and Laura fed on the remains. He felt a subtle pride in their perfect instincts, their easy power. A subtle peace descended on them.

He didn’t fear for them any longer as he had feared for them when they were human. It penetrated to him slowly and sweetly that Laura was now unassailable against the mortal enemies that lurked in the shadows for every female human. And Phil, Phil was no longer dying, no longer neglected, no longer alone. Morphenkinder. Newborn. And how harmless was the night around them, the foggy night pressing up against the glass; how transparent, how easily fathomed, how positively sweet. He was elated and curiously calm. Is this the calm the dog feels when he gives that rattling sigh and lies down by the fire?

What would it be like to remain in this body forever, to enjoy this brain which never hesitated, never doubted, never feared? He thought of Jim weeping alone in the bedroom at the Fairmont; he could not conceive of the agony Jim had been enduring. He knew what he knew, but he didn’t feel it now. He felt the singular instincts of the beast.

The entire pack enjoyed an easy equality. At one point—as they went back to consume every last bit of bone and flesh—Frank and Berenice had tangled together, obviously making love. What did it matter now? The others looked away respectfully or simply didn’t notice, Reuben couldn’t quite tell. But a powerful surge of passion consumed Reuben. He wanted to take Laura but could not bear to do this in front
of others. In a dark corner he embraced her roughly and tightly. The soft fleecy fur of her neck drove him half mad.

He watched Phil prowling the house by scent afterwards, finding even more money hidden in old armoires and in the plaster walls. His fur was brown but there were streaks of white in his mane. His eyes were large and pale and shining. How easy it was to recognize each Morphenkind, though to the crazed victims they had no doubt looked indistinguishable. Had the world ever registered particular descriptions? Probably not.

His mind ran to rampant humor suddenly, to the thought of a picture album of the pack. He felt himself laughing and he felt a little dizzy, yet certain of every step he took.

Surely Phil was feeling the sublime strength of the wolf body, so securely clothed in fur, and the bare pads of his feet moving over carpet or floorboard indifferently. Surely he was feeling the subtle warmth moving divinely through his veins.

A fortune was packed eventually into another garbage sack. Like pirates’ treasure, Reuben was thinking, all this filthy drug money—it’s like the chests of pearls and diamonds and gold in the Technicolor pirate movies—and these filthy drug dealers, are they not the pirates of our time? Who is likely to take it, this treasure, without asking a single question? St. Francis at Gubbio Church, of course.

Never before had Reuben seen victims devoured like these. Never had he known such a protracted feast. Easy to swallow hair and gristle. There had been time enough to suck marrow from bones. Never before had he tasted the soft mush of brains, the thick muscle of hearts. Consuming a human head was a bit like tackling a large and thick-skinned piece of fruit.

In luxurious silence, he had lain back on the bare boards of the living room floor finally, the music from the attic pulsing in his temples, letting his body continue to turn the flesh and blood of others into his own. Laura lay down beside him. As he turned his head, he saw the tall shaggy figure of his father staring out of the long narrow front window as if at the distant stars. Maybe he’ll write the poetry of it, Reuben thought, which so far I haven’t been able to do.