Just after dawn an unfamiliar young man came to the front door. Johanna rushed out to meet him, indifferent to her ravaged appearance.
It was obvious that he, too, had been up all night. “You the lady they call Doc Johanna?” he asked, scratching his dirty hair.
“I am. Have you something for me?”
“Sure have.” He pulled out a sweat-stained, coarsely folded sheet of paper. “A man at the Bale depot gave me this an’ told me to deliver it to you soon as I could get here. Paid me well—not the kind of man you cross.” He shuddered. “Took me long enough to find this place.”
Johanna snatched the paper from his hand. The words had been scrawled almost illegibly on a sheet of lady’s stationery.
“You know that I have May,” the words said. “If you want her back, come to the corner of Jackson and Kearny in San Francisco tomorrow night. A man will be waiting to bring you to me.”
It was signed with a single letter: F.
Chapter 21
The place stank. That was the first thing he always noticed when he woke to another foggy San Francisco dusk.
All of the Barbary Coast reeked: of human sweat, rotting fish, stale saltwater, alcohol, cheap perfume, and broken dreams.
It was the closest place to home Fenris had ever found.
And so he ignored the offensive stench and established his territory here, in this boarded-up whorehouse in Devil’s Acre, jammed between Jackson’s bordello and a saloon where more than one unwary sailor had been known to suffer the loss of everything he owned—even his life.
He stretched out on the stained mattress and looked across the room with its peeling wallpaper and moth-eaten furniture. His wolf’s eyes needed no light to see the girl huddled on the decrepit sofa he’d made for her bed. A blanket—relatively clean, for he’d stolen it from one of the better whorehouses—swathed her fragile form from chin to toe. Stray light caught the motion of her pupils as she stared back at him.
What did she think she saw?
Quentin had become the wolf to save Johanna from the mob. Quentin had followed May’s kidnapper, set her free, and driven the man to his knees in fear.
But it was Fenris who took human shape again; Fenris who put the terror of damnation into the half-wit he’d chosen, on a whim, not to kill; Fenris who seized May and carried her off without any sort of plan, realizing only miles later what he had.
The means to bring Johanna to him.
Quentin would have taken May to protect her against those who’d harm her. Fenris had no such noble motives. But when he looked at the girl, as he did now, he did not wish her ill.
He almost pitied her. The mawkishness of it sickened him.
He arched his back to work stiff muscles and got up, reaching for his trousers. May watched him, unmoving. Afraid, with good cause. She’d seen him change from wolf to man; few humans witnessed such a transformation and remained unaltered.
Yet in all the time since he had caught her up outside the Haven and carried her away to the south—while he had stolen clothing and coins from unsuspecting farmers and bought tickets at the Bale depot for the next train to San Francisco—not once had she screamed or fainted or fallen into hysterics. She understood what he required of her. She became his meek companion, a mute little sister who wasn’t quite right in the head. Fenris discouraged the curiosity and sympathy of strangers.
He’d rifled a lady’s baggage at the depot and stole the materials to write his letter to Johanna. He’d paid a boy to deliver it to the Haven, promising retribution if the note didn’t reach its destination by morning. The boy took his meaning, just as May did.
He and May reached San Francisco by nightfall. Fenris could have found his way across the city blindfolded; he knew every gambling den and house of ill repute from Murderer’s Corner to Deadman’s Alley. He and Quentin had shared San Francisco, but here Fenris truly reigned. Especially at night.
May had clung to him, the lesser of two evils, as he led her to his old haunts on the Barbary Coast. His derelict house remained as he’d left it, for no intruder had dared trespass in his absence. The citizens of the Coast knew him too well.