SECRET OF THE WOLF Read online

  "Quentin," she half-protested.

  "Johanna," he paused to answer, resuming his kisses on the soft skin under her jaw. "I want you."

  His weight came down beside her on the chaise. His erection—quite considerable in size, her dazed mind calculated—pressed into her hip. She generally wore a minimum of petticoats; they hampered her movements and were unhealthily restrictive. What she did wear was hardly a barrier for a determined male.

  She was the only barrier. Her will. Her sense of professional ethics. Her reliable common sense, which had somehow fled.

  It was definitely time to call it back.

  "I will now count backward," she repeated breathlessly. "You will forget all that has happened since we began this hypnotic session. When I reach one, you will wake, alert and refreshed."

  He licked the tip of her ear. "Hmmmm."

  "Five."

  He drew her earlobe into his mouth and suckled it.

  "F-four."

  His hand settled on the skirts bunched around her calves and began to push up.

  "Th…" She gulped. "Three."

  He searched out the buttons at the top of her high collar.

  "Two—"

  The first three buttons came undone in swift succession.

  "One."

  She held her breath. His fingers paused in their relentless work. His lips released her earlobe. He drew back.

  The glazed look fell away from his eyes, replaced by complete awareness… and confusion. He jumped from the chaise and shook his head like a dog casting water from its coat.

  "What happened?" he demanded.

  She sat up and unobtrusively rearranged her skirts. "You don't remember?"

  "You were about to hypnotize me, weren't you?"

  She rose unsteadily from the chaise, leaving the buttons at her collar undone. She was sure she didn't have the fine manual control necessary to do the job.

  "I did hypnotize you," she said. "The session went very well."

  "I'll be damned—your pardon." He gave her the by-now familiar wry grin. "We're already finished?"

  "We are, for today." She had recovered enough to hide her relief. "Have you any idea at all of what took place?"

  He frowned. "Was I talking? I seem to remember talking. The subject quite escapes me. I hope I wasn't too much of a bore?"

  "Not at all. You were an excellent subject. Limited amnesia is not rare in such cases." She noted that her words emerged without the quaver she'd feared. If he wondered how he had wakened in such a compromising position, he was too much the gentleman to say so. He showed no indication of repeating his previous behavior, or any consciousness of his most amazing claims.

  "Yes," she said, smoothing her bodice. "The groundwork has been laid. I understand more clearly how I might help you."

  Unease appeared briefly in his eyes. "Just what did I say?"

  "I am your doctor. All you said is held in confidence. I shall not judge you, Quentin."

  "Then there was something to judge." He sighed. "I know my life has hardly been a model of rectitude…"

  She was on firm ground again. "Sit down, Quentin. There is one thing I do wish to discuss. You must tell me if the subject distresses you."

  He braced himself with his hands on the edge of the chaise. "Go on. I'm ready."

  "Have you ever heard the word… lycanthropy?"

  He burst into a laugh, and kept laughing for a full half-minute.

  "Forgive me," he said, wiping tears from his eyes. "What exactly did I tell you?"

  "You told me that you are a loup-garou. A werewolf."

  He caught his laugh before it could break free again. "How very amusing. I appear to be quite imaginative while hypnotized. Do you think I missed my calling as a writer of Gothic tales for hot-blooded young ladies?"

  Johanna stood and paced to her desk, as if movement alone could calm her racing thoughts. In her experience, subjects under hypnosis could not easily lie. Whatever her doubts about his state after Harper's interruption, she knew he'd been deeply entranced during the first period of questioning. His admission had been real… then.

  Was this the delusion that led him to drink—one that consumed his unconscious but did not reach his waking mind? How had such a thing come about? What had brought so strange a belief into existence?

  "What do you know of lycanthropy?" she asked, swinging to face him.

  "As much as anyone, I suppose." He shrugged. "Tales of Gypsy curses and witches donning wolf skins." His eyes twinkled. "Do you wish to search my person for a wolf skin, Johanna?"

  No, he certainly was not aware of what he'd said while hypnotized. The issue must be explored in future sessions. She felt sure it was important. Most important.

  Legends of werewolves were filled with blood and death. Quentin was incapable of violence, but the image of the beast must have great symbolic meaning, the root of everything that troubled him.

  "That will not be necessary," she said. "I believe our meeting is over for today, and I wish to consider the results of this session." Including my own behavior. "I did not deal directly with your desire for alcohol. Do you feel any need to drink?"

  "Not unless it be from your sweet lips."

  Was this simply more trifling gallantry, or had he some memory of his recent advances? She was not prepared to face the consequences of confronting him on the subject. Not while she was still so rattled by the experience. And so ashamed.

  "Well, then," she said, ignoring his comment. "You may do as you like until luncheon. Harper requires my attention—"

  "Is something wrong with him?"

  "His illness may have entered a new phase, and I have neglected him." Because of you.

  "Then I won't keep you."

  The moment he was out of the room, Johanna let her rubbery legs give way and sat down, hard. She touched her lips. They still throbbed from Quentin's kisses. Her whole body throbbed. In spite of her thorough knowledge of the biological processes involved, she wouldn't soon be able to dismiss the experience as a mere consequence of her profession.

  All the theorizing in the world, all the calm admissions of physical attraction, were no match for the reality.

  She had violated the unwritten rules pronouncing that a physician must not become involved with a patient. She could easily have taken control by pushing him away and ending the session—making him understand that such contact between them was entirely inappropriate.

  Instead, she'd learned something about herself that was difficult to face, a sign of personal weakness she couldn't afford.

  Her disciplined mind had failed her. She'd given in to the desires of her body, as witless as any callow girl.

  She rested her head in her hands. How ironic. For Quentin, who must find this sort of thing so easy, the dalliance was forgotten in posthypnotic amnesia. While she, who had abandoned all thought of courtship or love, found herself plunged into the maelstrom all over again.

  She picked up her pen with a shaking hand and realized it was the one Quentin had broken. One edge was sharp enough to cut. She swept the pieces to the side of her desk, located another pen in a drawer, and laid out Quentin's casebook.

  Initial observations after first hypnotic session: Patient suffers from delusions of lycanthropy: consequence of former experience in army and childhood? Prognosis:

  Her fingers ached from her fierce grip on the pen. She let it fall. No amount of staring at what she'd written could make Quentin Forster fit neatly between the lines.

  Only curing him would bring an end to this… this madness. But cure him she must, no matter how long it took.

  Only then could she cure herself.

  Quentin slipped out of the house on silent feet, bound for the forest on the hill.

  He passed through the garden and jumped the low whitewashed fence without meeting any of the other patients. For that he was grateful; his mouth felt as empty of words as a spring gone dry of water. The only thing it was good for now was kissing Johanna.


  And that had been a mistake.

  The land rose abruptly from the Haven's little niche of the Napa Valley. Live oaks and pines marched up the hills and into low mountains, another kind of haven for the wild creatures that made this sylvan paradise their home.

  Quentin removed his shoes and stockings a few yards into the woods. He sighed as his feet sank into the soil, made up of the memories of countless autumns and the richly scented dust of pine. He smelled some small animal nearby, a rabbit frozen in fear of a potential hunter. At the base of a massive, red-barked conifer, a larger animal had left its clawed mark.

  Life was all around him—life other than human. A life he'd all but left behind. He needed to be reminded of it now.

  He started up the steep hillside, drinking in the forest through his feet and with every breath. This country wasn't like Northumberland, with its bare, broad moors and patches of ancient woodland. But it would do. It would more than suffice.

  If he could find the courage to Change.

  A faint path stretched out before him, worn into the prosperous, sun-dappled earth. Deliberately he left it, breaking into a lope that was as natural to him as superhuman senses. He leaped a small, deep ravine that carried the scent of recent moisture. The steep incline beyond challenged him to a faster pace, and he went up and up until his muscles burned and his clothing was damp with perspiration.

  At the top of the hill he paused. The Valley spread out below, a patchwork of vineyards and fields with another range of hills on the opposite side, dominated by the crag-topped Mount St. Helena. Civilization held in the arms of the wilderness.

  The image made him groan. His mind was full of similar comparisons, every one having to do with tangled bodies and naked flesh.

  His flesh. Johanna's body. A body made for loving. And a mouth…

  Bloody hell. He still wasn't sure what had made him do it. The decision to kiss Johanna had been spur of the moment, sprung fully grown from a source unbound by reason. He tried to remember his chain of thought beforehand: had he meant it as a joke on the too-serious doctor, a pleasant experiment to test the full extent of his interest in her… and hers in him? To see just how far the Valkyrie would melt when she thought she was safe?

  That he'd been in a trance for some time he had no doubt. But something had snapped him out of it, and he'd wakened to find Johanna gone. That was when the compulsion struck him, as if he'd temporarily become someone else. Someone who didn't let moral compunction stand in the way of his desires.

  The mere recollection of what followed made him ache with wanting. She hadn't pushed him away. She'd responded. God, how she'd responded. And he might have pursued the encounter to its inevitable conclusion if his sense, and hers, hadn't returned just in time.

  So he'd grabbed the way out she offered, pretending to be unaware of what he'd done. And she'd acted the same… except for the flush in her cheeks, the hesitation in her speech. And the ambrosial scent of a woman aroused.

  Quentin pulled his hand through his hair. He'd never been one for celibacy, but getting close to a woman—to anyone—was dangerous the way his life was now. He felt it; he knew it, with all the instincts nature had provided his kind.

  He'd gotten himself hopelessly tangled up in Johanna's world. No matter how readily she responded to him, she wouldn't take physical involvement lightly, even if her morals permitted it. She'd buried her own desires so that she could cater, undistracted, to the needs of others. For all her intellect, she was half-blind to the power of her femininity.

  And that made her vulnerable.

  He knew he could seduce her, awaken the sensual woman under the Valkyrie's armor. He was very good at seduction. She didn't have werewolf senses to give her a fighting chance—only the frank, unwavering gaze that so clearly saw everyone but herself.

  But these fantasies that passed through his mind were constructions of air. He still clung to the shredded facade of a gentleman. There could be no passing relationship with Doctor Johanna Schell: Either she remained his doctor, or she became something more. Something no one, human or werewolf, had ever been to him. Could never be, as long as he didn't remember.

  You got yourself into this, he thought. You chose to stay and accept her help. You can just as easily get yourself out again.

  By moving on.

  He closed his eyes and fought for a sliver of fortitude. He hadn't Changed in many months, at least not that he remembered. Even the thought of Changing awakened vague fears of those blank periods that sent him scurrying from one saloon to another, one town to the next. Always wondering what he might have done. Carrying with him only a foul taste of menace, and violence, and darkness.

  He'd told Johanna, under hypnosis, that he was a werewolf. She, logical creature that she was, would safely assume that the outlandish claim was just another symptom of his illness.

  She wouldn't believe that he was more than human.

  Had he ceased to believe it himself?

  Time to find out.

  He unbuttoned his borrowed shirt and stripped it off, placing it neatly on a flat rock where it would remain unsoiled. A warm summer breeze caressed his skin, teasing the short hairs on his chest. Already he felt the old sense of blessed freedom that came with the Change.

  His trousers were next, folded and laid atop the shirt, and then his drawers. Naked, he stretched until his spine cracked and his hands extended toward the sun as if to borrow its vast energy.

  But a different kind of energy filled him, and he imagined Johanna there on the hill. Watching him. Waiting for evidence that he was not entirely mad.

  His manhood leapt to life again, stirring with sexual hunger. It was all too easy to picture Johanna naked beside him, under him, her full breasts pushing against his chest, round hips cradling him, strong thighs clasped about his waist as he entered her.

  Aching with unrequited lust, he forced physical longing into a more useful channel. He gave himself up to the Change.

  It took no more than a few moments for his body to remember its other shape. He melted into an ether of formlessness, floating between two realities, and when his feet touched ground again they were four instead of two.

  He shook his coat to test its weight, sucked in a deep lungful of air that was sharper and richer than any human could conceive. A mouse had passed this way an hour ago, leaving tiny droppings. He could hear the distant cry of a hawk in search of the mouse's unfortunate cousin. Wind soughed in the tops of the pines, carrying the scent of a bird's nest and a pair of quarreling squirrels.

  Under his paws the earth spoke in a language known only to the beasts. It urged him to run as only his kind could run, able to outpace the swiftest deer and outlast even the ordinary wolves the loups-garous resembled.

  There were no wolves left here. They'd long since been killed off by hunters and settlers, driven to more northerly climes. Quentin had the hills and the woods to himself.

  He gave in to the call and burst into a dead run from the very place he stood. He plunged among the trees and raced west, higher into the hills. Hardly a branch stirred at his passing. His paws were silent as they struck the ground, curved nails biting deep and releasing. Muscles bunched and lengthened with the perfect efficiency of a machine, and with far more grace. He let his tongue loll between his teeth in a grin of sheer happiness.

  This was the way he'd always lived before: for the present, driving away memory in the pursuit of pleasure, whether it came in the form of sex or drink or games of chance… or the Change itself. This was the only escape that held a trace of honor.

  He ran until he reached the crest of the summit dividing one valley from the next. Napa lay behind him, and another cultivated land spread under his gaze from the foot of the range to the silver ocean miles away. Beyond that ocean were other lands, India among them…

  Suddenly cold, he crouched low and whined in his throat. Fear was back. And it seemed that somewhere inside him a presence reached out, took him by the scruff of the neck, and shook him f
uriously back and forth, this way and that, until he began to slip out of his skin.

  No.

  He howled. He jumped to his feet, turned about, and fled as if that same dark presence were a thing he could evade.

  Time lost its meaning. He only became sensible of it again when the last stain of sunset bled away behind the western range. He found himself at the foot of the hill beside the Haven's whitewashed fence.

  Instinct had carried him to the nearest thing to home he possessed.

  As a wolf he lacked the ability to laugh, but inwardly he roared. What was the use in contemplating flight—from his lust, from Johanna, from facing the secrets she might expose—if even his lupine self turned against him?

  Exhausted, he circled the house to the back door, tail tucked and head low. He wouldn't go to Johanna. He wasn't ready to face her yet.

  What he needed was a good stiff drink. If anything resembling one could be had in this place, he'd sniff it out.

  The door was open a crack; it was easy for him to nose his way in. No one saw him. He crept down the hall until he reached Harper's room, and stopped at the sound of weeping from within. The door swung in at the tap of his forefoot.

  Harper sat in his chair by the window, a tray of half-eaten food on the table beside him. Quentin entered the room, keeping to the shadows along the wall.

  Harper didn't notice. Tears streaked his face and pooled in his beard. The rasping noises he made were too soft to be heard by anyone outside the room, unless the listener were more than human. Harper had sanity enough to wish to hide his shame.

  Driven by a sense of kinship and pity he didn't fully understand, Quentin padded to Harper's side and touched his nose to the man's dangling fingers. Harper's hand twitched. He shifted in the chair and felt blindly, touching Quentin's muzzle, his forehead, his ears.

  "Here, boy," he said, his voice little more than a rattle. "That's a good dog." He stroked Quentin's head with the utmost gentleness.

  Quentin stood still, his heart tight in his chest. Hadn't Johanna said something about Harper responding to a dog she'd brought to visit? Harper thought that he was a dog. A natural assumption for a man so detached from the world.