"Ahhhhhh, a rain dance to perhaps bring forth fruit?"
"Anything you like."
"Why wait?"
Stroud stood and took her by the hand, escorting her onto the floor, where they embraced, first awkwardly and soon naturally. Stroud filled his nostrils with the smell of Anna Laughing More. He found himself tightening his hold on her.
"Please," she said, "no trance while we dance?"
"Somehow, Anna," he whispered in her ear, "I think a trance is unavoidable with you here in my arms in that dress, in this light--"
"After much fire water, sure."
He brought his eyes around to hers, and without hesitation their lips met. The kiss was magical, firm and moist and full. Stroud found her tongue probing his mouth. After they separated, she said, "Perhaps we should continue this elsewhere."
Stroud's heart raced and he felt giddy. Smiling, nodding, he said, "I'll get your things."
They left the dining room feeling as if no one else in the room existed, and yet the eyes of almost everyone in the room were on the tall, handsome couple.
Stroud looked down at her and he felt as if he might fall into her dark, bottomless eyes. He remembered as a boy, lying along the Spoon River in Andover, the shock of life that spirited through his body when he tasted sex for the first time, and although that taste was little more than a petting party, the thrill of those first tentative steps had forever after escaped him. Here, now, the electrifying thrill of first love had been revived in him by Anna Laughing More. She'd dropped the gown, stepped from it, worked off her slip, and with his trembling help removed the bra and panties. Looking at her was giving him the strange sensation that there were no dimensions in the room, no up or down, no back or forth, no sky or air to breathe, no firm ground. Like a mad Chagall painting, his heart and body soared, rising weightless to the ceiling and the stars. No now and no then--only present life on the ceiling, with her floating below him.
Stroud's breath caught in his throat, making words impossible. She placed a finger over his lips to keep him from attempting to speak. Anna's breasts were large and firm, shrouding a cavern of mystery between them. When her nipples darkened as they came erect at his touch, her bronzed skin seemed lighter by comparison. Stroud thought her skin was the texture of warm red wine. She was as tall as he, opulent and until now so forbidden; now her curves and ravines, made the more wondrous by the half-light of the single bedside lamp, were his to explore.
Again he felt the sweet shock of young love when her hands went to his thigh, searching. He relaxed at her touch, and now, kneeling astride him, she began to rub his body with an oil she had earlier taken from her bag. The oil was warm and smelled of sweet herbs and witch hazel. She rubbed it into his chest and belly, following a trail to his groin, enticing him with her touch. As she leaned forward, working the oil in, he was touched by her breath, her cheek, her breasts as they swayed over him.
She was lying flat across him now, bringing her essence to merge with his. Her essence was bathing him now in the warmth of her. Stroud felt all the boyhood dreams of satisfied lust welling up in him as she pleased him, and pleased him and pleased him.
Astonishingly, she now took a mouthful of the warm oil, bent over Stroud and took him into the folds of her lips, holding the liquid there, whorling him around in it against her tongue. He watched, helpless, as she rose and fell on the eddies of his blood as it pumped through him. And all the while, her eyes, large and bottomless and loving, never left him.
-10-
It was three a.m. when the phone roused them both, making Stroud grab the phone to keep it from awakening Anna. He knocked over the oil she'd used on him that had been left open beside the phone. It was staining the carpet as he spoke into the receiver.
"Yeah, Stroud here."
"Ira Howe, Stroud ... We got another one."
"Oh, Christ."
"What is it?" asked Anna, getting up, dressing quickly, knowing what it was. "Where? God, don't let it be the Keracs."
"Unidentified male, young, maybe twenty, maybe younger..."
"Where?"
"Alleyway offa Kedzie near Washington."
Stroud told her it was far from the Kerac home. He then returned to Ira. "Same condition of the body?"
"Same M.O. down to the missing parts. Attack, rip and run with part of the kill, just like a freakin' leopard. Like he takes it to a den to feed in isolation and safety."
"No lack of prey for this guy, is there?"
"None."
"Who's on it?"
"McMasters and his strike force."
"Anything we can do?"
"Beyond getting your faces rubbed in it? No, not really. This guy is bad, Stroud ... very, very nasty. Newspapers've got it--guess you know. Quoted you in the a.m. edition of the Times."
"Hell they did?"
"Said you were honing in on the damned killer with a psychic rapier, or some such shit."
"Shit is about it. I didn't say a word to the press."
"Some guy overheard at the P.A. Talked to some other guys on the scene, pieced it together. Looked up your old records, ran the microfiche back to the days when you were on the payroll. Guy named Perry Gwinn; in newspaper circles they call him the Peregrine--you know, like falcon."
"And he drops shit like a buzzard, right?"
"Exactly, so heads up. McMasters is already pissed that you spoke to the press."
"I'm sure he is."
"So, you've got reasons aplenty for not coming out on this one."
Stroud looked over at Anna, who had finished dressing. "You don't know the half of it, Howe."
"What?"
"Never mind."
"Well, just wanted you to know. McMasters tried to contact More, but couldn't locate."
"I'll talk to you soon, Ira."
"Ciao."
He hung up. Stroud went to Anna. "There's nothing we can do tonight," he told her, taking her into his arms, covering her mouth with his own. "You know what you said, about seeing a future together?"
"Not now, Abe," she said, pulling away from him.
"Anna..."
"I'm determined to find Kerac, end it, Stroud. Now, if he has struck, I want to be standing in his last known position."
Stroud was feeling selfish. He'd wanted her all to himself a little longer. "All right, but I go with you."
"I'll go next door, change."
"Meet you in what, ten minutes?"
But she was gone, leaving a trail of coolness behind. She'd returned to being Chief More the instant Ira's call awakened her. Stroud realized that as long as Kerac was alive she was right: he and Anna had no future whatsoever together. At the same time, he could not help thinking of how incredibly serene she had made him feel, to the point that he had, for a time, been transported out of the mind-set of Abraham Stroud and into the mind of the boy he once was.
On the ride over to the Northwest Side toward Kedzie, Stroud asked her to tell him more about the mythical beast she'd called Wendigo.
She laughed and said, "That was for Phil McMasters' benefit. I knew it would get rid of him."
"Then you don't believe in the Wendigo?"
"I believe my ancestors used a term for an animal they did not know another name for, and they gave it supernatural traits, like most primitive people do for the bear, the fox, and goddamned crows and turtles ... why not? Your people did the same thing in Germany or Ireland, or wherever you're from, with the green little people, didn't they?"
"All right, just tell me about what these things were supposed to look and act like?"
"That changes, depending on whom you are talking to."
"Some idea, any idea."
"Wendigos have the characteristics and cunning of wolves."
"Wolves..."
"So, you want to draw any conclusions from that?"
"Cage's report ... you read it."
"I think Dr. Cage is reading too much into his own findings, maybe."
He looked across at her, trying
to read her expression, but it was too dark in the cabin of the LTD. "Tell me more about these Wendigos."
"Wind-swept howls ... they move with the wind, covering their own howls with those of the north wind. They come with the frost and cold down from Canada to wreak seasonal havoc on the Indians."
"Kerac's animals and the livestock of others around Merimac ... were the attacks seasonal in nature?"
"All of a single winter, but--"
"I see."
"Kerac planned it that way, knowing of the superstition."
"Could be."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"All possibilities must be considered."
She looked now across at him. "You don't believe for a moment that the Wendigo exists? That would be like saying Sasquatch exists."
"Bigfoot, you mean."
"Sasquatch is the Indian term."
"And the Indians were the first to describe bigfoot. Tell me, have there been a lot of bigfoot sightings in and around Merimac and Grand Rapids?"
"We've got our share, but so does every rural community in the nation! Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, for Christ's sake."
"So stories of Sasquatch and Wendigos circulate freely among your people."
"Don't make our people out to be fools, Stroud. Don't go turning into a goddamned scientific investigator of the paranormal on me."
"What do the old people in your tribe say about the Wendigo?"
She was silent a moment. "You're going to pursue this?"
"Humor me, damn it."
"Wolflike ... wolves, all right?"
"Wolflike?"
"Yes."
"Half man, half wolf?"
"Something like that," she said, clearly exasperated and apparently embarrassed by her people's folklore.
"Anna, I've learned one thing in archeology about folklore, myth and superstition--"
"And that is?"
"That in almost every superstition there is some truth, even if it is just a grain. Typically, science is light-years behind medicine men, for instance, in finding cures. Now, no one would argue with the fact there once were 'bear men.'"
"Cavemen, you mean?"
"Exactly, and they were huge and hairy and they wore animal skins."
"And you think these ancient ones are the root of the stories told about the race of Wendigos?"
"It's possible."
"And somehow Kerac has slipped a disc in his brain and has become one?"
"It may be more than mental. At least in my vision, I saw him as a beast of some sort, and I've always felt this from the outset."
"So, you're telepathically connected, and if he believes himself a beast, then of course you will perceive him as such. Don't you see?"
"Perhaps, but that doesn't explain his great power, or Cage's findings."
She sat in dull silence, the sodium vapor lamps of Chicago dyeing the windshield orange, spraying her first with light and then with dark as the car sped along. Stroud reached across for her hand and squeezed gently. She placed her hand in her lap, out of his reach. "Kerac is only a man, and he will die a man. He is no more a ... a werewolf than you or I."
Stroud wanted to tell her about the vampire monsters who looked human that he had encountered in Andover; he wanted to shake her into realizing that there was more between heaven and earth than meets the eye, and that appearances alone could seldom be trusted.
"Some sort of venom," he said.
"What?"
"Venom. Suppose Kerac was bitten by ... by something that filled his system with some sort of venom, like the bite of a rabid bat, or dog, and this altered him forever, sent him out of control of his own mind and body, sent his hormones into overdrive, created of him a hairy throwback to ... to what we once all were. Carnivorous--"
"That's crazy, Stroud, crazy. There are no Wendigos!"
"But the bite of one," he said calmly. "I mean in your folklore, did the bite of one of these beasts turn a human into one of them?"
She did not really answer. She didn't need to. He knew that he was right.
"Tell me this, Anna," he said to break her silence, "where would a Wendigo hide in a city the size of Chicago?"
She remained in her envelope of silence.
"And how do we take him alive?" he asked.
"What? What? Alive? There is no taking him alive, Stroud, you must see that."
Her tone was not that of anger but desperation. Something in her voice told him that she had come to Chicago to ensure that Kerac die.
"Why not, Anna?"
"Why? He will kill you if you try! Even in captivity, he will escape and kill again! You've seen that he lives for death, and to feed on your flesh, Stroud!"
"But taken alive--"
"To serve what purpose!"
"To serve many purposes."
"One--name one goddamned purpose Kerac can serve in this life other than bloodlust?"
"He can answer some goddamned questions, Anna, and tests can be run on him, and--"
"Like at Merimac? Sure!"
"--and we can determine something about how his mind works. Maybe prevent such occurrences in the future."
"You do that, Doc," she said angrily, "but as for myself, I shoot to kill."
"And that's why you came here, to kill him."
"To put him out of his misery, yes."
The police band crackled into life: "All units, all units! Suspect Kerac, armed and dangerous, sighted at Humboldt Park pavilion. All units respond!"
Stroud turned the car sharply at Western Avenue, heading south toward Grand and the expansive, lush park. "Looks like you're going to get your wish. Every cop in the city's going to put a slug into him."
She held fast to her weapon, readying to jump from the car at the first opportunity. Stroud sensed her catlike attitude.
"When we get there, stick close, Anna, do you hear me?"
"You'd better stick close," she told him. "You aren't even carrying a gun!"
In the distance sirens and gunshots could be heard. Stroud sped to a stop, the car careening up onto the curb and onto the lawn of the park beside a bench. Directly before them were bushes and a sloping hill that wound down to a small lagoon where a gleaming white pavilion stood. There were a few boulders strewn about, a walk path, a bicycle path and a horse path snaking through the park. Stroud knew the territory well, but there were so many cops beating the bushes and in and out of the trees that he felt unsafe.
Werewolf's Grief (Bloodscreams #2) Page 10