Kieran retched until his stomach was empty. But still the Voice was there.
“How many others have you killed, boy, in all these years you’ve run from me?” The Voice beat him down as it had done a hundred times before. “And you think you can walk among men? You are a savage, a murderous butcher. You cannot control your evil. But if you obey me, if you come back, no one else will know what you’ve done. You may still be saved…”
Memory. It was real, Kieran came back to himself with a lurch, the taste of vomit in his mouth.
He had not killed Peter. He had known it. Alexandra had believed it. But he had threatened Peter, had hated what he’d had with Alexandra, what he still might take. And Lori—Lori had seen him change, had been unable to accept, had reviled him for what he was.
And the girl, from the reservation in Minnesota—
“No!” Kieran leaped up, shaking violently, Peter, that Ojibwe girl, Lori. All bound by the same unspeakable deaths. All had come within his path.
He backed away. Last night. This morning. He had roamed, and slept, and dreamed. He did not remember his dreams. He had awakened after dawn, cramped and stiff from a makeshift bed of dry grasses and old hay.
He stared at his hands. They carried no marks. His clothing was wrinkled but unstained by blood. But when he became a wolf, he discarded his clothes. No victim’s blood would return with his humanity,
No. He threw back his head and denied it, denied it until the muscles in his throat ached with the unvoiced cry. Until he heard the distant wail of sirens. Until the deepest needs of self-preservation brought him back to himself, and he remembered Alexandra.
Alexandra, who had been with Lori. And Kevin.
With a howl of despair he turned and ran. Back to the motel, away from the sirens that pursued him like baying hounds. And when only the road lay between him and the place where Alexandra waited, he stopped.
He had to know she was all right. He must know.
Her hair and face were covered, but he recognized her when she stepped out of the motel room door. She raised her hand to shield her eyes against the glare of sun on snow and looked to the north and east and west. Searching, for him. She turned toward the south, and he knew she would see him in a moment.
He crouched nearly to the ground. Her gaze passed over him, and her hand dropped. Her body sagged. She began to walk across the parking lot, toward the cafe beside the motel.
She was safe. And Kevin—where was the boy? Alexandra would never let the child come to any harm.
The sirens had stopped. A mile down the highway lights flashed, and Kieran knew the police had found Lori.
He watched Alexandra disappear into the cafe, his body yearning toward her; his heart compressed in a vise. He would not go near Alexandra again. He could not take that risk, because he did not know. He might be what the Voice had called him. He might have killed, unaware, the memory purged from his conscious mind.
No, he could never go back to Alexandra. He’d been deceiving himself, certain her faith in him was enough.
But it wasn’t. She trusted him, but he couldn’t trust himself. Not as long as there was any chance that the Voice was right. Nothing was more important than Alexandra’s safety, even if the cost was her faith in him. Even if he must abandon her forever, after last night, after she had given herself to him. He dared not even leave her a note. It was better this way—a severance quick and clean.
He looked east. If he went back, he could let the police take him. Let them do their tests. Then he would know. Then he would pay, if payment was required. And if he had killed, he would never kill again.
But he had no control over the wildness within him that would not let itself be confined by chains, by bars, by walls. It was no part of his humanity. It moved him to look northwest once again, as he had done so many times since Minnesota.