No answer.
“Why was it so important to you to protect May, Quentin?”
He turned his head sharply on the chaise’s pillow, but still said nothing.
Obviously the ordinary method of questioning wasn’t going to work, and she didn’t have the leisure to experiment over days or weeks. Time for an entirely new, and potentially dangerous, tack.
“Quentin,” she said slowly, “you once told me that you could change into a wolf.”
He seemed to stop breathing.
“I’d like to see you do that now. Change for me, Quentin.”
She had no idea what would happen, or even if he’d try to obey. She waited, knowing what she might have unleashed but prepared to face whatever might come.
Quentin opened his eyes. He looked across the ceiling, rose on his elbows, and lowered his gaze to hers.
“You called, Doctor Schell?” he said, smiling around bared teeth. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Oh, yes, he had changed. It was in the slight thickening of his features: the cruelty in them, the harshness, the narrow satisfaction in his eyes. They had lost every trace of warmth, their color like nothing so much as that of dried blood.
Complete antipathy. Utter loathing. Pure hate.
She knew this Quentin. She had encountered him before without even realizing it.
“Cat got your tongue?” he mocked. He swung his legs over the chaise. “I like you better this way, Johanna. Speechless.”
“Quentin?”
“He’s gone. You wanted him to change, didn’t you?” He stood up, looming over her with curled fingers. “Well, he’s changed. Now I’m here.”
The moment had come. Fenris tested the feel of his body, slipping into it as easily as if he put on a coat. He’d worn it not so long ago, and had almost tasted Johanna’s lips. He’d nearly gained control last night, and that evening when Johanna had so wantonly displayed herself. But Quentin had held on, pushing him back each time
Now he was in command. Never had he felt so liberated: in full daylight, his mind clear, and in the presence of one who could see him for what he was. No drunken haze inherited from Quentin’s weakness. No waiting until the precise combination of emotion and drink and circumstance gave him the strength to escape.
The unwitting, luscious, naive Johanna Schell had let him out of his cage.
He looked her up and down, giving free rein to his lust. Quentin’s lust as well, if that milksop would ever admit it. But Quentin was far away, helpless, as he was helpless during so much of their bitterly shared existence.
Quentin wouldn’t be alive if not for him. But Quentin was afraid of living.
He wasn’t.
“Surprised to see me?” he asked, walking slowly toward Johanna. “You shouldn’t be. We’ve met before.”
She held her ground, bracing one hand against the back of her chair. “Who are you?”
At least she wasn’t so stupid as to believe he wasn’t real. Not that her mind mattered to him in the slightest. Her body was what he wanted. He stripped her to nakedness with a thought, and in another had her panting beneath him, begging for mercy. Turning thought to action would take but a few minutes more.
“Who are you?” she repeated, more firmly. Her jaw was set, her gaze steady in an excellent approximation of courage. He laughed.
“Fenris,” he said. He reached out and casually snapped off the uppermost button of her collar with a flick of a finger.
“Fenris,” she echoed. “The monster Wolf, offspring of Loki and enemy of the gods, who remains chained in Asgard until Ragnarok.”
“Not always,” he said, licking his lips and watching her face as she realized his intentions. “Not today.” He ran his finger down the center of her bodice, pressing between her breasts.
Her deep breath defied him. “Where is Quentin?”
“I told you.” He grasped her elbow and jerked her toward him. “He’s gone.”
“Where?”
He tilted her head back, yanking the pins from her hair. “Where he can’t stop me.”
“You share his body.”
“He squanders it.” He tore off the second and third buttons of her bodice. “I use it. As I’ll use yours.”
Her pupils narrowed to pinpricks, swallowed in a sea of blue. “I understand,” she said. “All the strange things Quentin has done, the behavior that made no sense—it was you.”