“Uh-huh.”
“We’re both adults; we’ve been in the company of the opposite sex before. There’s no excuse for mindless social chatter, is there?”
“None at all.”
“Whew. With that out of the way, would you like a drink before I throw on the steaks?”
“I’d love one.”
“I have vodka, Scotch, bourbon, and gin. I can make a pretty good martini.”
“Scotch will be fine.”
“Do you like anything in it?”
“Ice.”
She made his drink and a vodka and tonic for herself. They carried them into the living room and sat on the sofa with the drinks before them on a hatch-cover coffee table. Some easy cocktail jazz was playing on the stereo unit. Gavin could not tell if it was a record or the radio.
“Do you ever hear from your wife?” she asked suddenly.
For a moment he was startled into silence, then laughed. “Ex-wife,” he amended. “You sure know how to break the ice.”
“If we’re going to start dating, we ought to know about each other, don’t you think?”
“Are we going to start dating?”
“I think we have, don’t you?”
“Apparently.” He sipped at the Scotch. It was good, heavy stuff, not one of the lightweights with pretty labels and no flavor. “No, I never hear from Elise. Ours was not one of those friendly divorces you hear about. Now and then I hear about her from mutual friends. They mean well, but I’d just as soon they wouldn’t bother.”
“You sound bitter.”
He considered for a moment. “If I do, that’s something I’ve got to fix. Bitter people are no fun to have around, and I certainly don’t want to be one. They pollute the atmosphere like sour meat. I don’t hate Elise. I am not down on humanity or women, or even the institution of marriage. I got gouged in the divorce, but I guess that was mostly to soothe my wife’s pride. Elise never lost anything in her life, and if I was going to get away, she was going to be sure I didn’t take much with me.”
“I saw her several times when you both lived in Darnay. She’s a beautiful woman.”
“There’s no denying that,” he said. “She’s also intelligent and witty. And ambitious. Who invited her tonight, anyway?”
Holly colored, then smiled at him. “I have been asking a lot of questions, haven’t I? It’s only fair that you have a turn. Is there anything you want to know about me?”
“Plenty, but I’ll let it come out in the normal course of events.”
“I’ve never been married,” she volunteered. “That’s not the stigma for a woman in her late twenties that it used to be. Still, there were three whole years that it was always on my mind.”
“Not anymore?”
“Not the way it was. I had this relationship, you see. He was a doctor. Psychoanalyst, actually. Beautifully handsome, clever, and always in command. He was the only man I saw for those three years.”
“But no marriage?”
“There was a small hitch. Bob already had a wife. He was going to leave her, though, just as soon as the time was right. Sure he was. I wasn’t really so naive that I believed that, but I wanted it to be true so bad that I hung around three years.”
“All over now?”
“Yup. It just about killed me the first time I refused to see him. The second time was easier, and the third. After that he didn’t try anymore. I understand he now has a lady lawyer from San Francisco waiting for him to leave the missus.”
“Bob’s loss is the world’s gain.”
“Thanks. I wasn’t fishing, but a compliment is always welcome.”
Gavin pulled in a deep breath and let it out. “I hope the therapy session is over now so we can get on with acting silly.”
“Right. Do you want another drink, or should I start throwing dinner together?”
Gavin rattled the ice cubes in his glass. “I’m still working on this one. I hope you’re not going to ask for help. Pulling corks and opening cans is the extent of my kitchen talent.”
“Mister Macho,” she said. “I’ll bet you’re good at moving furniture.”
“Want to feel my biceps?”
“Maybe later. You can come out with me and watch if you want to.”
“Sure. I might even learn something.”
Gavin found a spot to stand where he was out of the way and watched with honest admiration as Holly moved efficiently about the kitchen. She tossed together a salad of fresh greens, checked the broccoli she had steaming, and switched the oven on to BROIL. She sprinkled some kind of seasoning on a pair of thick New York steaks.
“How do you like yours?” she asked.
“Rare.”
“Good. Me, too.”
Miraculously, she got everything on the table at the same time. Gavin poured the wine and they sat down.
The salad was crisp and not overdressed, the steak was beautifully rare, and even the broccoli, not Gavin’s favorite vegetable, was tender and tasty in a light cheese sauce. Conversation ranged over likes and dislikes in food, favorite television shows, the weather, local events, and came to rest finally on the boy who lay in room 108 at La Reina County Hospital.
“He’s a strange one,” Holly said. “I don’t think he even knows everything about himself.”
“Are you talking about the Drago business?”
“Partly that.” She studied Gavin’s face in the candlelight. “You don’t believe the stories they tell about Drago, do you?”
“Werewolves? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“You might be a little more open-minded.”
“Okay, I’ll try. Let’s see, when the moon is full they sprout hair and fangs and go around biting people.” He pretended to concentrate. “It’s no use. I keep seeing Little Red Riding Hood.”
Holly sighed. “The all-American skeptic. Where do you think the story of Little Red Riding Hood came from?”
“The Brothers Grimm?”
“It is based on old legends. Lots of fairy tales are. Ever hear of Peter Stumpp? Clauda Jamprost? Jacques Bocquet?”
“No, no, and no.”
“They were documented werewolves of the sixteenth century.”
“Documented, eh? By who, Walt Disney?” Holly’s eyes flashed a danger signal. “If you don’t mind, this isn’t something I feel like kidding about.”
“I’m sorry. You’ve been doing some homework, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have, and I’d like to be able to talk to somebody about it without a lot of cheap jokes.”
Gavin held up his hands. “Okay. No more wisecracks. If this is important to you, I’d like to understand and talk about it with some intelligence. But it will take a little time. Let me do some homework of my own, okay?”
“Okay.” After a moment Holly relaxed and sipped at her wine.
“Just one question before we drop it for the night,” he said.
“Ask away.”
“Do you think our boy Malcolm is a werewolf?”
She frowned. “I’m not ready to go that far. I think he may be afflicted with some form of lycanthropy. I want to know more about him.”
“I’ll do what I can to help if you want me on the team,” Gavin said.
She held up her wineglass in silent assent. They clinked in a toast and drank to the partnership.
* * *
It was past midnight when Gavin set his coffee cup gently down on the table. He cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together.
“I’d better be pushing off,” he said. “Work day tomorrow.”
“Right,” she said. “Me, too.”
He stood up.
She stood up.
“Dinner was terrific.”
“Glad you liked it.”
“Next time my treat.”
“You got it.”
They stood facing each other for a long moment, their weight shifting from foot to foot as though they were mirror images.
“I’d better tell you this,” he
said. “I would really like to go to bed with you. I mean it’s been on my mind from the minute I walked in. No, from the minute I put on my best sport coat to impress you.”
She watched him, her head tilted slightly to one side. “And if we don’t mess up somehow, I’m almost sure you and I are going to do it.”
She opened her mouth to speak, and he went on quickly. “But I have the feeling neither of us is ready for it right now.”
Holly let out a long-held breath. “You know, Sheriff, you’re a more perceptive man than you let on sometimes.”
“I just didn’t want you to think I was gay.”
“I detected that,” she said. “Those pants of yours fit quite well.”
“Why, you saucy little minx.”
“That’s me.”
Their goodnight kiss was long and warm and deep, and filled with promise.
Gavin drove back toward the Pinyon Inn, grinning foolishly in the dim glow of the instrument lights. He had to remind himself that there was still a whole lot he did not know about Dr. Holly Lang. Her preoccupation with the occult was one thing that disturbed him. His grin faded as he thought about the boy who lay in room 108. Gavin thought about him and about the tales of Drago, and he wondered…
* * *
Malcolm’s eyes snapped open and he sat suddenly upright in bed. He sniffed the air and turned toward the window to stare at the darkness outside.
Someone was there. Someone or something. Calling to him. The boy’s thin body tensed. His nerves tightened with a crazy desire to run out there and join whatever waited for him in the night. Beads of perspiration broke out along his hairline.
It was as though he belonged out there, in the night, not here in a comfortable bed. That was his place. And yet… and yet things were different now. He had a friend. He was no longer alone, running, always running. He thought of Holly. Made a picture of her face in his mind. The picture held him where he was. Still, the silent voice called to him from outside.
Another sound intruded. The barely audible pad of the night nurse’s rubber-soled shoes out in the corridor. Malcolm lay back quickly and closed his eyes, feigning sleep. The door opened. The night nurse looked in, listened to his regular breathing, and backed out again.
Malcolm did not rise. The call from the night was still there, but weaker now. He could block it out if he tried. By and by he fell into a shallow sleep that was troubled by strange urges and wild dreams.
* * *
Out on the hillside, yellow-green eyes glaring across at the many windows of the hospital building, the beast growled from deep in its massive chest. The one it sought was inside, that much the beast knew, but there were too many conflicting scents to tell which of the windows was the right one.
The beast made a complete circuit of the building, staying in the deepest shadows, going to a low, loping run when it had to cross the paved parking area. Instinct cried out for it to smash through the glass doors at the entrance and savage any human that crossed its path until the boy was found. Reason told the beast that this was not the way. It was a time for cunning. The killing would come later.
Effortlessly the beast climbed the hill behind the building and slipped down into the shallow valley beyond. There beneath a bush it found a neatly folded pile of clothing. The beast sniffed the air, judged it safe, then lay down next to the clothing and curled its powerful body in on itself as the painful transformation began.
10
Malcolm awoke sweating.
The gray rectangle of the window told him it was early morning. The sensations of last night jolted back into his consciousness. He remembered the terrible certainty that something out there in the woods had called to him. His own wild urge to answer that call. Then the quieting mind picture of Dr. Holly Lang, and the troubled dreams that followed.
He strained his senses now, and he could still feel the presence of something out there. It was much fainter now, but not completely gone. Malcolm was frightened, yet his blood surged with a strange exhilaration. He resolved to tell Holly all about it. She would understand. She would know how to help him.
A few minutes later the door opened and a nurse entered. She had orange hair and a lumpy potato nose. She was not one of the nurses Malcolm had seen before. She carried a small tray that was covered with a white cloth. When she set the tray down on the table across the room from his bed it made a little clinking sound.
“Well, already awake, are we?” the nurse said in that fake-cheerful voice they use. “And my, how chipper we look. Did we have a good sleep?”
Malcolm did not bother to answer. He knew the nurse wouldn’t pay any attention to what he said anyway.
“Are we ready for a surprise this morning?”
Malcolm turned his head away.
“Malcolm’s going on a little trip.”
He turned back to the nurse. She had a mole on the side of her neck with a single orange hair growing out of it.
“I thought that might interest you,” she said brightly.
“A trip where?”
“That’s going to be the surprise. I don’t want to spoil it for you.”
An oily-haired man in a white doctor’s coat came through the door. Malcolm remembered him. He was the nasty one who had given Holly a hard time when Malcolm was first brought in.
“This is Dr. Pastory,” the nurse said as if she were giving him a great big present. “He’s going to be your doctor now.”
“I don’t want a new doctor.”
“You don’t know how lucky you are,” Potato Nose told him. “A lot of people in your position don’t have any doctor at all.”
“Where’s Holly?” Malcolm said.
Pastory spoke for the first time. “Dr. Lang has other patients to attend to.” His voice was as oily as his hair.
“I’d rather have her.”
“You will find, Malcolm, that in this life we don’t always get what we want.” He turned to the orange-haired nurse and said in a low voice, as though Malcolm could not hear, “Give him fifty cc’s.”
The nurse lifted one edge of the white cloth and took something from the tray she had brought in with her. She held it down low, shielded by her body so Malcolm wouldn’t see it. He knew what it was, though.
“How about rolling over for me, big fella?” she said, all palsy again.
“What for?”
“We’ve got to poke a little medicine into you, that’s all. A tiny pinprick in the bottom. You’ve had them before.”
“But what is it?”
“It will make you feel better.”
“I feel fine.”
Dr. Pastory moved over closer to the bed and frowned down at Malcolm. His eyes were small and bright, and there was something in them Malcolm didn’t like.
“Do as the nurse says, Malcolm. We have some strong young fellows working here who can come in and flip you over if you won’t cooperate. Do you want me to call them?”
Malcolm looked at the nurse and saw he would get no help from her. Feeling trapped, he rolled over on his side, facing away from them. The nurse yanked the blanket and sheet down and pulled the short hospital gown up to expose his buttock. He felt the sharp sting of the needle and a tightening of the flesh down there as something was pumped into him.
He felt the needle slide out and smelled the tang of alcohol as the nurse swabbed him off. She gave him a familiar little pat and pulled the gown back into place. Malcolm rolled onto his back and looked up at the two of them.
“That wasn’t so bad now, was it?” the nurse recited.
“I want to see Holly,” Malcolm said. “Dr. Lang.”
Pastory showed his small, even teeth. “I’m your doctor now, Malcolm. You’d better get used to that.”
Malcolm felt a tingling sensation spread over his body. He braced his hands and tried to sit up but found he was dizzy and lay back down.
“Just relax,” Pastory told him. “Don’t try to fight the medicine. You can’t win, you know.” The words had a
funny echoing sound.
“I don’t want to relax. I don’t want you for my doctor.”
That was what Malcolm tried to say, but it came out all mush-mouth. His tongue felt thick and foreign, like a hunk of strange meat.
“The more you fight it, the more trouble it makes for everybody.” Pastory’s oily little face swam in and out of focus.
With a great effort Malcolm sat up. The doctor reached for him and Malcolm batted his hands away. “You’re not my doctor,” he mumbled.
Pastory bared his teeth, and for a moment Malcolm thought the doctor was going to strike him. But he got control of himself and turned to the nurse.
“Better give him another fifty cc’s.”
“But doctor, for a boy his age, that’s––”
Pastory’s little eyes flashed, though his voice remained calm. “Please do what I ask, Nurse.”
With her cheeks reddening, the nurse turned her back and did something with the things on the cloth-covered tray. Pastory stared impassively down at Malcolm.
The Howling Trilogy Page 44