SECRET OF THE WOLF
By
Susan Krinard
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SECRET OF THE WOLF
Susan Krinard
BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK
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CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Author's Notes
Partial Bibliography
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
SECRET OF THE WOLF
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley edition / October 2001
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2001 by Susan Krinard.
Cover art by Franco Accornero.
For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
Visit our website at
www.penguinputnam.com
ISBN: 0-425-18199-5
BERKLEY® Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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"Susan Krinard returns to her werewolf roots to spin an absolutely thrilling tale… A compelling, unforgettable romance of two lonely people who finally discover that love holds all the answers."
—Romantic Times
"Touch of the Wolf is Susan Krinard at her best. [It is] a fascinating tale of beasts and beauties, love and betrayal, werewolves and humans, men and women… Touch of the Wolf is full of wonderful surprises."
—Anne Stuart
"Touch of the Wolf a mystical, enthralling read, brimming with lyrical prose, powerful emotions, dark secrets, and shattering sensuality. Susan Krinard brings the world of the werewolf to life in a riveting and believable way."
—Eugenia Riley
"Ms. Krinard has gifted us with a masterpiece of writing."
—Rendezvous
"Two thumbs-up to the stratosphere for the dazzling second romantic fantasy from the pen of one of the genre's next superstars… Krinard takes a giant leap forward in what promises to be a spectacular career. Brava!"
—Romantic Times
This book is dedicated to every man, woman, and child who has ever suffered the devastating effects of mental illness—those who have faced its challenges and have never given up hope of ultimate victory. It is also dedicated to the courageous men and women who have never ceased to search for cures, and to understand the mysteries of the human heart, mind, and soul.
—Susan Krinard, 2001
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Fred Larimore for his assistance with information about nineteenth-century Indian Army regiments, officers, and campaigns. His Web page on this subject is http://pobox.upenn.edu/~fbl/. Any mistakes regarding the British Army are my own.
I am also grateful for the ongoing encouragement, support, and feedback from my friend Eugenia Riley.
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Chapter 1
South Vallejo, California, 1880
"Stop!"
The vicious drunkard who bent over the cringing boy paused, his fist in midair, as if he had heard the voice of God Himself. Or, at the very least, a policeman with a club.
But if any policeman was to be found in this shabby excuse for a town, he was otherwise engaged. Johanna Schell had no faith in police.
Nor did she have any delusions of divinity. But she trusted in the air of authority she'd cultivated for so many years, and in the strength of her voice.
She crossed the muddy road to the haphazard line of shacks crouched along the docks near the railway station. In the gathering dusk, she could just make out the man's unshaven face, the scar slashing his chin, the filthy clothing. He reeked of cheap liquor. The boy was pitifully thin, bruised, with the hollow, haunted eyes of one who had endured many such beatings. Johanna had seen that look before.
The man squinted at Johanna and produced an expression somewhere between a leer and a smirk. She saw the way he appraised her, judged her, dismissed her with the dubious aid of his diseased brain.
"You talkin' to me?" he demanded, swinging toward her.
"I am." She set down her doctor's bag, took a firmer grip on her valise, and drew up to her full height, almost the equal of his. "You will cease beating that boy, immediately, or I shall summon the authorities."
"The… ath-or…" He laughed. His young victim shrank in on himself, as if the laughter were only another sign of worse to come. "Who the hell you thin' you are, Miss High-'n'-Mighty Bitch?"
"I am a doctor. I've seen what you're doing to that boy."
"Boy?" He grabbed a handful of the boy's frayed collar and jerked him up. "This boy's m'son. I c'n do whatever I want wi' him. No ath-or-tee's gonna stop me. No woman, neither." He spat. "Doctor, huh. How good're you at healin' yerself?"
Johanna ignored his threat. "What has your son done to deserve this?"
The man's dull eyes grew confused. He couldn't answer, of course. There was no reason for the punishment, save for his drunkenness and a natural depravity. But his confusion quickly gave way to resentment. He yanked the boy this way and that, until the lad squeezed his eyes shut and went limp.
"You ha' no right to question me!" he snarled. "He's useless! Should throw 'im in the Straits and be done with'm!" He dropped the boy and grinned at Johanna. "You, too. Throw you in the Straits—af'er I have a bit o' fun."
"I doubt that very much," she said. She tested the weight of the valise, grateful for the heavy books that had made carrying it so inconvenient during her visit to San Francisco. She turned to the boy. "Don't be afraid, mein Junge. I will help you."
A large, dirty fist thrust itself into the air before Johanna's face. "You better help yerself."
"I generally do," she said. "I've dealt with worse than you."
He stared at her, as if she'd gone quite mad. Most of the denizens of the surrounding neighborhood must run in terror of this bully; he wouldn't be used to defiance. He had surely never faced those cursed by true madness. She had. And though her heart was beating hard and her hands were sweaty inside her gloves, neither madman nor bully would see anything but calm competence in the visage of Dr. Johanna Schell.
Calm competence was usually enough. It reduced hostility in the vast majority of the patients she'd dealt with in her father's private asylum. Even the most unruly of the residents had learned she was no frail girl to be intimidated.
This man was not one of the majority. He stepped close enough that his breath washed over her face in a nauseating cloud. "Looks like I'm gonna have to
teach you a lesson… Doctor," he sneered.
The weight of the books in the valise was much less comforting than it had been a few moments ago. Johanna calculated the best angle of attack. Striking at his face was out of the question. His genitals, however…
"Run, boy," she urged the cowering child. "Run for help."
"Run, an' I'll kill you," the man said. "You hear me, boy? Ye're gonna stay and watch." His attention turned to his son just long enough. Johanna swung the valise. It connected. The ruffian grunted in pain and shock. He staggered and flung out his arm, hitting Johanna across the temple. She fell, dazed, as he pulled a knife from the waistband of his trousers and lunged for her.
The knife never reached its goal. Out of the shadows of the nearest alleyway, a dark shape flashed in front of Johanna and seized the bully's wrist. Johanna pushed up onto her elbows, struggling to make sense of what she witnessed.
She couldn't. The shape—the man, whose face remained only a blur—moved too quickly. He flexed the drunkard's arm back at an impossible angle. The knife spun into the dirt.
Now it was the bully who crouched, mewling in fear. The boy had already fled. Johanna's deliverer bestowed as little mercy as the bully had shown his own son. His fist struck like a piston, driving the drunkard onto his back. A second blow followed, and then another.
"You'll kill him!" Johanna shouted, finding her voice. "Bitte—"
The avenging angel stopped. Johanna caught a glimpse of gentleman's clothing that had seen better days, a body lean and tall… and eyes, their color indistinguishable behind a glare of absolute hatred.
The bully had met his match. This phantom would kill him, without remorse. He reached down to finish the job.
Johanna scrambled to her feet. "Please," she repeated. "Don't kill him, not on my behalf. The boy is safe. Let him go."
She had no way of knowing why the phantom had attacked, if it were for her sake, or the boy's, or some unknown motive of his own. But he paused again, and in that moment Johanna heard the choked sobs of the child she'd thought safely gone. He watched from the corner of a shack, his fist in his mouth, his bruised face white as a beacon.
"For the boy's sake," Johanna said, holding out her hand in supplication. She backed away until she stood beside the boy, reached out to gather him against her side. "Please. Go."
The man straightened. Again she glimpsed his eyes, enough of his face under a stubble of beard to recognize what might have been a kind of coarse handsomeness. Then he hunched over, blending into the shadows. His prey gave one last squeak of terror, a mouse left half-alive by the cat. And the avenger leaped back into the alley from which he'd come.
Johanna took the boy by his shoulders and held him steady. "Are you all right?" she asked, sweeping him with her experienced gaze. Nothing broken. The bruises would mend… if his spirit did. "What is your name?"
"Peter," the boy whispered. A tear tracked its way through the dirt on his face, but he straightened under her scrutiny. He looked toward the place where his father lay. "My pa—"
"Peter, I want you to stay right here," she said firmly. "I am a doctor. I'll see to him."
"Is he dead?"
She swallowed, wondering whether it was sadness or relief she heard in his voice. "I don't think he is. But I will not let him hurt you again."
Peter nodded and did as she asked. She returned to the site of the unequal battle and found the bully lying where her rescuer had left him. She knelt to count his pulse and feel for broken bones. The right wrist was fractured, at the very least; he would have swelling in his face and two black eyes in the morning. But he still lived, and she saw no signs of internal bleeding.
She rose and wiped off her skirts, as if she could so easily rid herself of this man's barbarous taint. Odd; she couldn't quite bring herself to apply the same judgment to her phantom, in spite of the harsh punishment he'd dealt out. Hadn't he given the bully a taste of his own medicine?
She shook her head, bemused by her own primitive response. Her phantom. He was nothing of the sort—merely another disturbed resident of this fetid dockside warren. He, like the man he'd attacked, undoubtedly had a history of violence dating back to his own childhood. He was likely beyond saving.
But Peter was not. She left his father where he lay, collected the boy, and went in search of a local doctor who could take charge of the case. She had to ask in several disreputable saloons before she got intelligible directions to the home of South Vallejo's physician. He was none too pleased to be called out at dinnertime, but Johanna convinced him that she had the boy's care to consider. Quite naturally, that was a woman's job.
She wasn't above using male prejudices when it suited her purpose.
Peter, it turned out, had no living mother; but an elder, married sister lived in the town of Napa City, a major stop on the Napa Valley Railroad's route north to Silverado Springs. Johanna had no intention of leaving him in his father's "care" another night. She doubted the father would pursue the lad once he was out of reach, and any life would be better than this.
By the time she and Peter reached the Frisby House, a ramshackle two-story frame building that passed for South Vallejo's best hotel, the night was dark and damp with fog. She bought Peter the hotel's plain dinner, which he ate with great appetite, and secured them a small, musty room with two narrow beds. She treated his bruises, checked under his dirty clothes for cuts or abrasions, and did her best to make him wash up with the use of the cracked bowl and pitcher the hotel's housekeeper provided. His youthful reluctance to obey was heartening, if bothersome; his spirit hadn't been broken. There was hope for him yet.
Afterward, he fell into an exhausted sleep. Johanna was left to make the best of her lumpy bed and threadbare blankets, listening to the constant din of frogs in the marshes about the town and remembering, again and again, the burning eyes of the phantom.
Gott in Himmel help any local scoundrel who ran afoul of him without a passerby to interfere. She was not much given to prayer, but she offered up a sincere plea that none of his future victims would be any less deserving than young Peter's father.
And that she, personally, should never see him again. .
He knew exactly which room was hers.
As he watched from the ill-lit street across from the Frisby House, he could smell her scent, carried by the cool, wet winds from the Strait and the ocean thirty miles to the west. He'd memorized the smell instantly when he went to work on that cowardly piece of filth among the dockside shacks.
He knew the boy was with her—but now that the whelp was safe, he was of no further interest. The woman was. He could not have said why, for she wasn't the kind of female he sought when sexual hunger came upon him. She wasn't beautiful, though her figure, full of hip and breast, was enough to rouse him.
Maybe it was because she'd stood there, so calm, when the bully attacked her. Remained calm when he appeared. He wasn't used to such composure when he was around. He preferred to provoke different emotions.
Maybe he was curious. She was a doctor. A female doctor. Because of her, the bastard would live… at least for today. She'd robbed him of his vengeance. She owed him for that.
But it wasn't his way to ponder what could not be explained. He existed by instinct, and emotion, and whim. Now his whim said that he wanted this woman, in a way no weak human soul could understand.
He could go after her, of course. He moved like the fog itself, all but invisible to human senses. He could steal her from that room with no one the wiser. Satisfy himself with her, and be done with it.
No one would stop him, least of all the Other—the one he wouldn't name. To name the Other gave him power. And he wasn't ready to surrender himself.
Someday, he would keep what was his, and damn the Other to darkness and silence forever.
He dug his bare toes into the earth of the street, indifferent to the loss of his shoes. He didn't need them. He shifted from foot to foot, staring at the darkened window.
A bellow of
raucous laughter burst from the nearest saloon, distracting him. The smell of liquor and beer drowned out the woman's scent. His mouth felt dry, ready for another drink. That took far less effort than climbing into the woman's room. It was the swiftest escape from the memories, the burden the Other had given him.
And in the saloon there were men who would cross him. Ruffians who would see only a lean, oddly dressed tenderfoot with too much money, ripe for the plucking.
He loped to the entrance of the saloon, whose doors spilled light like pale blood into the street, and went in. The room was full of carousers, with a couple of whores for good measure. He sat at the bar, pulled a handful of coins from his pocket, and ordered a whiskey straight. Ten drinks later, even the bartender was staring in amazement. Still it wasn't enough. Not enough to drown the memories.
Someone kicked at his bare foot. He ignored the first blow. The second came harder, accompanied by a loud guffaw.
"Hey, boy. Someone steal yer shoes?"
Still he waited, taking another sip of his whiskey.
"You hear me, you scrawny li'l pissant? I'm talkin' to you." A blunt, dirty hand snatched at the coins. "Where'd ja get all that chickenfeed, eh? You gotta share it with the rest of us. Right, boys?"
He ordered another drink and downed it in one swallow.
"Wha' 'r' you… some kind o' freak? Or is that water y'er drinkin'?" The glass was plucked from his hand.
He turned slowly to the man leaning on the nicked wooden bar beside him. Another drunk, of the belligerent variety. A brute, no longer young but massive from hard physical labor, the kind who found a little extra incentive for a quarrel in the contents of a bottle. Just like the one who'd been beating on the boy.
Just what he'd been waiting for.
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