She hadn't time to do more with him. She took Lewis's gun from her office, kissed her father on the forehead, and asked for Oscar's help in saddling Daisy.
The mare carried her at a willing canter to the meeting place Bolkonsky's henchman had described, but it was deserted. If Bolkonsky had been waiting, he'd either given up or been told of his plan's failure. With any luck—more than she deserved—he knew no more of May's whereabouts than Johanna did.
Avoiding the roads that would take her close to Silverado Springs, Johanna returned to the Haven. Harper came running to meet her.
"I think you'd better come with me right away," he said grimly.
She dismounted and followed him to the vineyard. The tableau that greeted her froze her in her tracks.
Irene was on her knees in the dirt, weeping hysterically. Lewis stood over her, holding a kitchen knife between his shaking hands. His head jerked up at Johanna's approach.
"Stay away!" he warned. He pointed the knife at Irene.
Johanna held up her hands. "Lewis. Put the knife down."
"Evil!" Lewis shouted. "All is evil. Don't you see? First the devil wolf, and now this Jezebel, who has betrayed us all."
"No!" Irene shrieked. "Please—"
It was possible, in spite of the day's many disasters, for things to get worse. Johanna recognized that Lewis had reached the limits of his tolerance. He was on the verge of submitting to total madness, and there was nothing she could do to help him.
"You cannot hurt her, Lewis," she said urgently. "No more than you could hurt Quentin."
"I failed!" Lewis cried. "The beast is loose, because of me! I must rid the world of this whore of Babylon, who let them take the child—yes, I heard everything!" The knife began to dip, and he snapped it toward the sky. "She is like all the daughters of Eve, in league with Satan. Just like, like—"
"Irene is not the enemy," Johanna said. "Another man has taken May. We must find a way to get her back. That is all that matters."
"No! Evil must be wiped out, lest it swallow us all." He swung the knife in a wild arc. "I failed before—failed—but this time—"
" 'Let he who is without sin,'" Johanna quoted, " 'cast the first stone.' Are you without sin, Reverend?"
Lewis gasped, mouth working. "Without sin?" He fell to his knees. "She betrayed me. My Hetty. She lay with another man, and I sent her away. I sent her out to die." Water ran from his eyes and nose. " 'Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye!'" He pressed the point of the knife against his own chest.
Harper bolted toward him. Johanna dashed to Irene and dragged her away. With a cry, Lewis allowed Harper to wrench the knife from his hand. He fell prone upon the earth, his arms clasped over his head.
Johanna half-carried Irene back to the house and returned to the vineyard. Harper knelt beside Lewis, whose sobs had hushed to ordinary weeping. The madness was gone from his face.
"He'll be all right," Harper said. "I'll take care of him."
Johanna knew when she had run out of choices. "I will ask Mrs. Daugherty to take charge of Irene, but it will be up to you to keep Lewis quiet and hold things together while I am gone."
"To find May?"
"We will wait for Mrs. Daugherty's news," she said, "and then I shall decide what to do. But I need you here, Harper. I'll leave the gun with you, but I must go alone."
Harper touched the handle of the knife. "Me and Bridget will do what needs to be done."
Johanna had no doubt that he meant what he said. Fighting exhaustion, she tended Irene and went back to the kitchen to await Bridget's return. Everything within her screamed to ride out again, in any and all directions. She knew the utter futility of such a plan.
Three long hours later the buggy drew up in the yard and Mrs. Daugherty climbed out. Johanna met her at the front steps.
"I came back as quick as I could," she panted. "The town's abuzz with talk of the wolf. People who weren't here think the rest of 'em's crazy. No wolf's been seen in these parts in years." She shook her head, unable to believe it herself. "Some are saying the wolf must have kilt Ketchum, and they're gathering men to hunt it down."
No worse than Johanna had expected. "And Bolkonksy?"
"Well, it appears he and Ingram lit out of town this morning, just before the mob came. No one's seen 'em since."
So Bolkonsky must have left straight after "warning" Johanna about the mob. But he apparently hadn't summoned the authorities to search for May, which bought her a little time.
Time for what? She was no closer to being able to locate Quentin than she'd been before. And she had assumed that Quentin had May.
There was another explanation for those bare footprints intermingled with May's. Fenris. He arose from Quentin's mind when Quentin was threatened. What better time than after the mob's attack to seize Quentin's body?
And if he had, what did he want with May? Were Quentin's protective instincts enough to arouse like instincts from Fenris's dark, twisted heart? Or had he some unfathomable, fell purpose of his own?
Johanna sat down in a kitchen chair and bent her head low between her knees. This sickness and dread and terror were only the beginning of her punishment.
She had transgressed. She had sinned far worse than Lewis, with all his warnings of Biblical wrath, could imagine. Her deadly sin had been her arrogant presumption that she understood the human mind and its frailties, that she could cure illnesses that daunted far better doctors than she. She had ridden high and serene on the crest of her own wisdom, her own faith in the infallibility of science.
Above all, she had forgotten the sacred trust of every physician. She had allowed herself to fall in love, to become personally involved, with a patient. The very weakness she had deplored in other females had entrapped her. Had she remained pure, true to her calling, she would have kept a closer eye on Irene and Lewis, protected May, dealt effectively with Fenris, and found Quentin's cure. In her blind passion, she'd thrown all that away.
Love had not healed, but destroyed.
"You need rest, Doc Jo," Mrs. Daugherty said. "I'll see that everyone gets fed. You take care of yourself."
Hadn't she done too much of that already? The others, even Harper, were counting on her to remain strong. She had no right to indulge in hysterics or personal grief.
But she did need rest; she'd be useless without it. A little more patience might turn up the one piece of information she needed to make the next crucial decision.
After that, common sense be damned. She would find May and Quentin—or Fenris—if she had to search every inch of this Valley, and beyond.
"Thank you, Mrs. Daugherty," she said. She made her rounds like an automaton, went to her room, and fell facedown on the bed. And she wept. She wept until the pillowcase and the pillow beneath were soaked, so silently that no one came to inquire. Afterwards she washed her face, visited her father, and returned to her room to pace the floor through the long, excruciating night.
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 h
e 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.
And he, Fenris, was still in control. Quentin hadn't the strength to return. He'd been defeated by the knowledge that he'd lost Johanna—and that he was not alone in his own body. He reached out blindly as he sought a link to his other self, a means of recognition and communication. Fenris pushed him back with hardly an effort.
Eventually Quentin would give up. Johanna wouldn't, so long as she believed that she could reach him. Fenris would teach her the futility of that false hope.
Two days had passed since she'd have received his letter—time enough to arrange for her absence from the Haven. He expected her this very evening.
Then he'd have to decide what to do with May.
He finished buttoning his trousers, reached for the chipped plate on the table beside the boarded window, and tore off a chunk of the sourdough bread he'd stolen from the baker's that morning. May's hungry stare was like the annoying buzz of an insect.
"You want this?" he said, holding up the loaf. "Take it." He tossed it toward the couch. She scrambled up to catch it, too late, and it landed on the grimy floor. She sat on the edge of the sofa, the blanket still wrapped around her, and looked at the bread as if it were a million miles out of reach. He waited for her to burst into tears.
She didn't. She raised her head and gazed at him, her pale face set in resignation.
"You aren't Quentin, are you?" she said.
Ironic that she should ask that question first, when she must have wondered what he was.
"No," he said mockingly. "I'm not Quentin."
Her brow furrowed. "I don't understand."
"You don't have to." He picked up the bread, brushed it off with his fingers, and thrust it into her hands. "Eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"You're a liar."
She shrank back a little, as if she expected a beating for her defiance. He was tempted to give her what she asked for, but his muscles refused to lift his arm.
Quentin. Damn Quentin.
"Eat or starve. I don't care." He turned his back on her and went for the half-empty bottle of whiskey balanced atop a broken armoire.
"Who are you?"
Her rash persistence surprised him, given her ordeal. He took a swig from the bottle.
"Fenris," he said.
"Fenris." She wet her lips. "You're not… a regular person."
He laughed at the absurdity of her understatement. "You're right." He leered at her, showing all his teeth. "I'm a monster. Just like Quentin."
"Quentin isn't—" Her protest subsided into a long, fluttering breath. "You and Quentin… are the same, aren't you?"
She wasn't completely stupid. "Don't go crying after him. You won't find him here."
She absorbed that in silence. "But he's not really gone, is he?"
"Shut up."
"Quentin is my friend. He always tried to help me."
He slammed the bottle down on the armoire. "I told you to shut up."
"You helped me," she whispered. "You saved me from that man, the one who wanted to take me back to my father."
Pain exploded in his head. "I'm... not… Quentin." He strode toward her, hard and fast, bent on meting out swift punishment. She leaned back against the sofa, not so much as raising her arms to protect herself.
But in her eyes was the tiniest glint of spirit. It brought him up short.
"Will you hurt me, like my father?" she asked.
His headache worked to split his brain down the middle. "I'm not your father," he snarled.
"No," she said. "He pretended to love me."
He'd never heard such a voice, such aching acceptance and sorrow. The girl Quentin knew hadn't spoken of her past, not to him nor to Johanna. That girl had always been afraid.
Like the boy. The boy in the cellar, who'd cried out for help and found it.
Fenris clenched his teeth and fell to his knees beside the sofa. Something inside drove him to ask what he didn't want to know, didn't want to feel.
"What did he do to you?"
She closed her eyes. "He… he came to me when I was sleeping. He touched me."
Fingernails scraped against the bare floorboards, and Fenris realized they were his own.
"I don't want to go back," she said. "Please, don't make me go back."
He jumped to his feet. "You're not going anywhere."
"You don't have to take care of me. Quentin—"
"Quentin is a coward and a fool." He seized her chin in his hand, deliberately relaxed his fingers so that he would not damage her skin and bones. "He couldn't even take care of himself."
Her eyes filled with tears. "Someone hurt him? His… his father?"
Grandfather. Please no more…
Fenris roared. He saw Quentin—himself—May—bound and helpless while one who should have loved and protected gave torment instead.
Killing rage replaced all semblance of thought. Tiberius Forster was dead, but Chester Ingram was not. The man called Bo
lkonsky was not.
The girl had become a wraith to him, like a half-forgotten dream. He started toward the door.
"Quentin?"
He stopped.
"Quentin, please come back."
Quentin heard. Quentin stirred in his prison, struggling to respond. He groped in darkness for his voice and his being. A shaft of light burst from an opening door.
Fenris flung his weight against that door, but not before Quentin saw him.
"You," Quentin said. "You're real."
The moment in which they faced each other was infinitesimal, but it was enough for Quentin to understand. Understanding was a new and powerful weapon, but he didn't yet know how to use it. He was paralyzed by horror.
Fenris heard the girl's tread behind him. "Quentin—"
"I'm here," he whispered in Quentin's voice.
Fenris howled. He slammed the door inside his mind and sealed it with a hundred massive locks forged by his furious will.
He couldn't kill Quentin, no more than he could kill a man already dead, or the girl shivering within her enshrouding blanket.
But Quentin couldn't stop him from eliminating Ingram, because it was what they both wanted. It was the work for which Fenris had been born.
He turned to the girl, seeing her face as if through a sheer veil of bloodred silk.
"Wait here," he said with an icy smile. "I'm going to visit your father."
Johanna arrived at the San Francisco Ferry House on the evening's last boat and disembarked with the small group of passengers from Oakland. The others scattered to their various destinations, hailing hackney coaches or meeting friends, many chattering happily as if they looked forward to an enjoyable visit.
The sun was just setting, and already the night was damp and cold, lacking the Napa Valley's summer warmth. San Francisco's weather perfectly matched the chill in Johanna's heart. The coldness had settled in with the delivery of Fenris's letter, and hadn't left her since.
She'd done what needed doing in spite of her fears, arranging for Mrs. Daugherty and Harper to handle the running of the Haven and the most basic care of the other patients and her father. She hoped she would not be gone long enough to put a strain on Mrs. Daugherty's generosity, or compromise Harper's dramatic improvement. At least she had Mrs. Daugherty's assurance that the townspeople had lost their interest in revisiting the Haven… for the time being.
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