Quentin vanished. All she saw at first, as the mist cleared, was a flash of sharp white teeth and russet fur. Then she realized what had taken Quentin’s place.
A wolf. A wolf whose pelt was the shade of Quentin’s hair, thick and sleek. A wolf with great triangular ears and a plume of a tail, immense paws, and slitted golden-red eyes.
He grinned at her. Quentin’s grin.
She clutched at the back of her chair. His gaze was no beast’s. Those were Quentin’s eyes.
The wolf was Quentin.
His lycanthropy was real. His unconscious mind had told the truth. Lewis had seen him change into a wolf.
One less symptom of insanity to worry about. Or one more. Now he was three: wolf, Quentin, Fenris.
She laughed, muffling the sound behind her hand. The wolf—Quentin—no creature of fear but a beast as magnificent as the man—flowed toward her like liquid copper and nudged her other hand. His nose was warm and dry.
“The joke is on me,” she said, wondering if she was making any sense. “Did you think this would make matters simpler?”
He lay down at her feet and rested his jaw on her foot. It was a gesture of love and trust she could not mistake. He was tame as a dog, utterly loyal, adoring her with his lupine eyes and the rasp of his tongue across her fingers.
Consigning one more secret to her keeping.
She plunged her hand into the thick guard hairs about his great neck and felt him tremble. “Quentin—if you still understand me—I… don’t know what to say.”
He slipped away. The mist enveloped him again. She was unable to observe the actual change, try though she might; the scientist was never long absent from her nature. He stepped, naked, from the dispersing cloud, retrieved his clothes, and dressed in silence.
“You need say nothing,” he said. “I didn’t believe that showing you this would make matters simpler. But it should make clear why I cannot remain.”
“Because—” She tried to assemble words into proper sentences, drawing them into a line like a child’s scattered alphabet blocks. They remained hopelessly disordered.
“Because I am not human,” he completed for her. He sighed, and she felt his absolute weariness. “There are others like me throughout the world. We are stronger and faster than men, with senses a thousand times more keen. We are infinitely more dangerous if we choose to be.”
“The nature of the wolf—”
“Is not what men have made it. We are neither cursed nor the children of Satan. The vicious cruelty men attribute to wolves is the product of fear and ignorance. There has been evil among the loups-garous—I have seen it myself—but no more than is found among men.”
Question after question crowded Johanna’s mind. How many cases of insanity might have been attributed to this very real ability? How did these loups-garous fit into the evolution of life and the human race, creatures Darwin had not even imagined? How had they remained hidden so long?
Not one of those questions was important.
“You are not a killer, Quentin,” she said. She held out her hand. He brushed her fingertips with his own, fleeting as the mist that marked his transformation. “You are a wonder.”
“If I have killed”—he worked his hands open and closed—”the fault is in me, not my kind. I am an aberration. But my abilities make me deadly. I can’t trust my own body, and neither can you. If I don’t stop myself, no one can.”
“Then how can mere human law contain you?” she cried. “If you give yourself up to the authorities, what makes you believe that Fenris won’t do anything to get you free again?”
“That’s why he exists, isn’t it?” He lifted his head. “Tell me, Johanna. Where can I go? Does the place exist where Fenris can do no harm?”
“Yes. But only if we make that place together.”
“There is another option.”
“I will not let you take it.”
He laughed hoarsely. “I’ve never managed suicide thus far. Success is by no means assured.”
“Fenris would stop you. He wants to survive.”
“And there is only one who can match him, Johanna, whatever sort of creature he is.” He thumped his chest with his fist. “He is me.”