Johanna filed that astonishing fact aside for further examination, one more among a hundred others. "So you used May to get at Quentin," she addressed Boroskov.
"I approached May's father in San Francisco and told him that I knew of his daughter's whereabouts, if he wished her back. He did. He trusted me as a learned doctor, who could restore his daughter to him without inconvenient fuss or awkwardness."
"It didn't quite work out that way," Quentin said.
"No, but it doesn't matter. I achieved what I intended. I diverted Johanna from her work with you, kept both of you off balance and worried about May while I perfected my plans. Irene DuBois was most useful in reporting on your actions, with very little persuasion from me—she was quick enough to believe me smitten. She also had scant love for either of you." He sighed. "But you, apparently, had become quite enamored of each other—an annoyance at first, but it proved to be a factor in my favor." He cocked a brow. "Did you really believe, Quentin, that Johanna could save you?"
"I always believed in her."
"But that wasn't enough, was it?" He turned to Johanna. "When it was obvious that you would not let May go, and Quentin was no further along in being detached from you and the Haven, I arranged for the death of the mine owner, and saw it blamed on Quentin. A simple thing to manipulate the ignorant humans in Silverado Springs."
"I didn't kill…" Quentin began.
"No. You may take credit for Ingram's beating, but not Ketchum's death. While the mob came to the Haven, I had one of my men abduct May. I knew, from Irene's reports, that you would inevitably follow to rescue her, and once you were out of Johanna's sphere of influence it would be easy enough to trap you. Though my man failed, you are here. You took May, and I followed." He addressed Johanna. "A pity you had to involve yourself further. I rather liked you, dear doctor."
"You won't hurt her," Quentin said. "Not her, or May, or anyone else." The change in him was subtle, but Johanna recognized it. He seemed to grow, gathering his strength, preparing for bedlam.
He was being threatened. Those he cared for were in peril. Inside him, Fenris was awakening. Fenris, who was the very thing his own grandfather had tried to create. Fenris, who might be a match for Stefan Boroskov.
"If you cooperate, I'll have no need," Boroskov said. "I do not worry that the doctor will expose us. No one will believe her—they will merely think her infected with her patients' madness. And May is merely a child."
"If I do as you tell me, you'll let them go," Quentin said.
Boroskov shrugged.
"And if I don't cooperate, you'll kill them."
"Johanna, perhaps. The girl I may simply return to her father."
Quentin lunged at the Russian. "You scum—"
"Yes." Boroskov's eyes lit. "Yes. Let it go, Quentin. Remember who you were meant to be." He held out his hand.
"Come, my brother. Take what I offer. You have no place in the human world, or in that of your brother. You are not the weakling you've believed yourself to be. You are one of the true, new blood of the werewolf race, the hope of our people. Your future is in my hands. Our future."
Johanna watched in horror as Quentin took Boroskov's hand.
Chapter 23
He'd forgotten who he was.
He hung, suspended, between two wills, two souls. One cried out for release, for a peace he had never known; the other screamed in triumph, sensing final liberation from all the chains that had bound him.
Only one anchor offered itself. He clutched the extended hand.
It anchored him to the present as memories crashed about him like a storm. The first time Grandfather had taken him to the cellar, a few months after Mother's death, and explained what he was to become. The years of beatings, starvation, promises of dire punishment he'd kept hidden from Braden and Rowena—yes, even from his twin, who thought she knew everything about him. How he'd fooled them, laughing his way through hell.
Sometime, in those years, Fenris had been born: to take the punishment, to endure the pain—and, in the end, to turn against his tormenter.
Alien, terrifying images spun in an endless loop through his mind. Grandfather's face, grim and merciless, leaning over to administer his brand of "discipline"… his expression dissolving into astonishment. And fear.
Victory. Grandfather never took him to the cellar again. The beatings didn't stop, not entirely. But the terror did. Eventually Grandfather died, and he'd thought himself free. The memories faded. His other self had little reason for existence, and went into dormancy. Whatever he had once known, or guessed, of Fenris was buried under layer upon layer of protective armor.
But he remained haunted still. He looked for escape in every sort of harmless debauchery available to a young man of good family who possessed a generous income. He gained a reputation as a rake and gamester, ever amiable and full of high spirits.
Those spirits had led him to join the Queen's Army as a subaltern on the northwestern frontier of India. He'd sought adventure, and found violence instead. And his other self, so long asleep, woke to kill when he could not. Details of the battle he hadn't remembered formed an explosion of bloodred, smoke gray, and smothering black behind his eyelids.
He'd awakened in the hospital and, after his swift recovery, was prompted to resign his commission. Boroskov was right; he'd been a hero who'd saved his troops, but what he had done was too terrible for his comrades and officers to accept. He'd never known why, until now.
Fenris was responsible.
So home he came, to take up the threads of his civilian life, running occasional errands for his brother the earl and otherwise losing himself in the pursuit of pleasure. Everyone knew that the honorable Quentin Forster hated any sort of conflict.
Then the year of the Convocation had arrived—that grand meeting of the world's werewolf families on Braden's Greyburn estates in the far north of England.
Boroskov had disrupted the proceedings with his challenge to Braden. And when Braden won the fight, Quentin ran. Ran all the way to America, and had never stopped running.
Because Fenris could no longer be forced back in his dark corner. Because the memory lapses had already begun, and the implacable urges, half recalled, could no longer be borne.
America offered no sanctuary. The Other was always with him. But he blocked the awareness that would have led him to recognize what he was becoming.
"You know, don't you?" Boroskov said. "You see that I speak the truth."
Quentin heard the voice as if he were under water, on the verge of drowning. It was seductive, commanding, and the coward within wanted nothing more than to give himself up to its master.
He disregarded the coward's whimpers and sought the one who would fight, no matter what the odds.
Fenris. Fenris, who was Boroskov's ideal killer, except that he would never obey any master. Who would turn on the one who tried to control him?
Fenris would save them both.
But something snapped inside. It was as if the restoration of Quentin's memories sapped Fenris's strength—as if their absence alone had been the foundation of Fenris's very existence. He stirred, roared, writhed in impotent fury.
And vanished.
"Quentin!"
Johanna. He pushed his way toward the lightless surface high above him, let go of Boroskov's hand, and grasped the other that plunged so fearlessly into the seething waters.
He opened his eyes and looked into hers. She smiled, warm and brave.
"How touching," Boroskov said.
Quentin realized that he'd made a crucial mistake. One glance at Boroskov's face told him that the Russian knew he'd won his internal straggle.
Quentin's only secret advantage, however dangerous, was Fenris. And Fenris was gone.
"I thought, for a moment, that you had come to your senses," Boroskov said. "But I see you will need further persuasion."
"Boroskov," Johanna said. "You said that you had been intended by your father to become one of these assassins, like Qu
entin."
He glanced at her through half-lidded eyes. "What of it?"
"You were tortured, as he was."
Quentin followed her line of thinking and despaired at her hopeful ignorance. Stefan Boroskov was not one to be reasoned with, drawn from past suffering to recognize the source of his own evil.
Boroskov laughed. "Ah, Johanna. Let me guess… you wish to persuade me that I, too, can be relieved of my sorrowful burdens. What will you do, place me under hypnosis and assure me that I can be cured of my madness?"
"You didn't choose who you were to be, did you, Stefan?" she said, her gaze locked on his. "Your father chose for you. He betrayed his own son."
"And he paid for this so-called betrayal," Boroskov said. "I killed him when I came of age, and took his title and all he owned. But he taught me much, and his goals were worthy. They are now mine."
"And so you have become what he was."
"I have become more than he ever was. And I will succeed where he did not."
Johanna shook her head. "No, Stefan. There can be no peace in such a victory. If you'd only let me help you—"
"Enough!" He swept out his hand, and Quentin barely had time to intercept the blow. It sent him stumbling, but he caught his balance and placed himself between Boroskov and Johanna.
"Never touch her again," he said.
"That is your choice." Boroskov smiled at Johanna. "My dear doctor, you have proven yourself a failure in rehabilitating your patient, and I suspect you know it. But you can save him yet." He negligently twirled his pistol. "I have the power to force Quentin to bend to my will. It is one of the superior skills the greatest among loups-garous possess, and I'll use it if I must. But I would prefer his cooperation, to spare myself a waste of time and resources.
"Convince him, Johanna. Convince him to do as I command, and you will be allowed to leave with the girl. I have no further interest in your affairs. But if you do not succeed—" He shrugged. "I don't think I need elaborate." He pushed past Quentin and seized May's arm before either Quentin or Johanna could react.
"Now," he said, gesturing toward a doorway at the rear of the room, "if you will kindly go through that door." He aimed the gun at Johanna until Quentin obeyed, and she followed, casting anxious glances at May.
The door led into a black hallway and to more closed doors, one of which Boroskov kicked open with his foot. The room was as lightless and dank as the rest of the house, its sole furnishing a soiled mattress scattered with a heap of blankets.
"I'll leave you two alone now, to make your tender farewells. You have two hours. The girl will come with me—in the off chance that you get the notion to take an unscheduled trip."
Quentin growled, stricken with the savage fury that should have summoned his other self. Fenris remained silent. "If you hurt her," he rasped, "so much as a hair on her head, you'd better kill me."
"As I said," Boroskov replied, dragging May toward the door, "that is entirely up to you." He bowed to Johanna and walked out. A lock clicked into place, and Boroskov's footsteps, accompanied by May's stumbling counterpoint, receded down the hall. A minute later Quentin heard hoofbeats, the jingle of harness, and the clatter of a carriage driving away.
Johanna went to the door and rested her hands against the scored wood and peeling paint. She had no hope of breaking the lock. Quentin might have the strength, but what good would come of that? Boroskov had them trapped as surely as if he'd barred them in a cage.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
Nothing.
"Where is he taking May?" she whispered.
"To his henchmen, no doubt, for safekeeping," Quentin said. His voice emerged from the darkness, somewhere in the vicinity of the mattress. "He won't harm her. He has no reason to."
She struck her forehead against the door once, and then again. Quentin was at her side before she could strike again.
"Johanna."
She turned. Quentin looked at her, such transparent compassion on his face that her body bowed under the weight of her emotions.
Shame. Fear. Anger. At herself most of all. Johanna Schell, the great and innovative doctor who would show the world how the insane could be healed. It had all become one vast joke.
Worst was the hopelessness that stripped her of even the desire to continue fighting.
"Well," she said, her voice cracking. "What now? I have not a single suggestion to make to you. Shall we draw lots to see who shall live and who shall die?"
He remained where he was, as if he feared to approach her. As one might fear to approach a lunatic. "Don't blame yourself," he said in a raw whisper. "You're not responsible."
"Am I not?"
"I brought all this down on your head, Johanna, and on May's. I. My own selfishness—"
"And my insufferable arrogance. Now we shall spend the time Boroskov has left us discussing which one of us is more contemptible." She walked to the mattress and sat down. "Perhaps that is his plan: divide and conquer. Not that I should ever be the least threat to him—"
"You heard him, Johanna. He'll use you as a way to get to me."
"And May as the means of forcing both of us to do his bidding." She rested her head in her hands and began to rock. "I am sorry. So sorry. So sorry—"
"Stop it." Quentin knelt before her and took her hands, pulling them away from her face. "Don't leave me now, Johanna."
Was he afraid that she was descending into madness? She wished it were possible. Possible to let go, dismiss reality, and resign every responsibility for her life. She felt like collapsing into Quentin's arms and wailing like a child, begging for him to make it all better.
Even May hadn't done that. May had kept her head and her courage, and look what she had received as a reward.
She, Johanna Schell, was supposed to be the strong one. No longer. All her illusions were cracked apart like the last of her mother's china figurines, destroyed by an angry patient. Like a mind that had borne too much.
"I never thought I'd see the day when you felt sorry for yourself." Quentin forced her chin up. "Look at me, Johanna."
She had no choice. He compelled her with his eyes, with his voice, with his will. Above all, with his heart.
His gentle, generous heart, warped into a monster by pain. Fenris was nowhere visible in his gaze, in spite of all that provoked him. Where had he gone?
"Johanna," he said, stroking her chin with his thumb. "I brought you and May into this. I was selfish—selfish in wanting the peace your Haven offered, though I knew my mere presence was a menace to everything I valued. I refused to consider the dangers once I had… grown to care for you. And I never dreamed that Boroskov was part of the danger. If I could only go back—"
"I was arrogant," she interrupted harshly. "I thought I had perfect mastery over the situation with May. I was so sure I could cure you, even share your bed without making a single compromise." Tears dripped onto her sleeves. She thought they must be hers. "I thought I had all the answers—and this is where they've led us both."
He rested his forehead against hers. "We are pitiful creatures, are we not?"
She looked for mockery in his eyes and found none. His smile was heartwrenchingly calm.
"You've… given me a chance at something I didn't have for most of my life, Johanna. Faith in myself and in my ability to rise above what I'd become. Hope."
And what worth has it now? she wanted to rail at him. What worth has anything?
"We can't fight him," he said. "He's too strong. He has skills I do not. And I… I can't kill." He kissed her lips with a feather-touch. "I won't allow you or May to pay for my debilities. When Boroskov returns, I will tell him that I'll go with him—after I've watched him release you and May."
She shook her head wildly.
"I assure you that I won't let him use me."
"You mean that you'll die before you become his assassin."
"Yes. You know it's right, Johanna. I can't be unleashed on the world, as unstable as I am." He
skimmed his knuckles across her cheek. "If I can stop Boroskov for good—any sacrifice is worth it. He's my kind. It's up to me. And if I succeed… I'll have redeemed myself."
"And escaped one more time," she lashed out. "Never having had to face life squarely. An easy end to all your suffering."
"You said you didn't have the answers." His voice grew distant, as if he were withdrawing into himself. "This is mine. You must be the one to go on living, so that you can help people as you were meant to."
"I can help no one."
"You can. I know you, Johanna. You're too strong to give up. Not even for me." He began to rise. "I'm sorry."
She grabbed his hands to stop him. "I am not strong!" she cried. "I want to do what I wish, only what I wish. The world can go to hell. I want to be happy—" She wrapped her arms around Quentin's neck and kissed him hard on the mouth.
The room disappeared. The stale scent of the mattress, the cold dampness of the floor and the walls, vanished.
Happiness was not hers to own. Perhaps even hope was beyond her reach. But she could snatch what small joys were to be had in this terrible place.
And when she left, she'd take a part of Quentin with her.
The part he had held back the first time.
Now she'd have all of him.
She tugged at the bottom of Quentin's rough shirt, barely glancing up to see his response. The pupils of his eyes had grown very large, engulfing the color.
"Johanna—"
"No talking. No words." She kissed him again. He responded ardently, recognizing, as she did, how little time they had left. He would not deny her.
She lay back upon the blankets, and he knelt over her. He stroked his hand from the top of her bodice to her skirts, cupping his fingers against her womanhood. Her body reacted instantly. He found the hem by touch alone, watching her face, and drew her skirts up around her thighs.
Hard and fast was how it must be. Johanna's breath grew short. She gripped Quentin's hands and met his questioning gaze.
"Yes, Quentin," she said. "Yes."
"I've wanted you, but not like this," he murmured. "I wanted to love you the way you deserve to be loved."
SECRET OF THE WOLF Page 33
