The Howling II

4

IN THE SAN JOAQUIN Valley of California a band of gypsies made their camp in a clearing at the edge of a forest. Their camp was not much like the romantic fiction of operettas and the movies. Instead of colorful horse-drawn wagons, their vehicles were vans, pickup trucks, travel trailers and campers. The music in the camp came from transistor radios and tape decks, not from the fabled wild violins and tambourines.

Some things, however, remained little changed over the centuries. Although many of them worked for daily wages in the neighboring fields, the gypsies remained wanderers. An entire camp might pack up and vanish one night, to appear next morning in another place miles away. And the gypsies still had their own methods of communication, which carried news between distant camps more swiftly than the mails.

In yet another way these modern gypsies resembled their forebears. They had a deep respect for the old beliefs. They still held that a man's future could be seen in the lines of his hand. The turn of a card could chill the blood like the whisper of Death. And the gypsies knew there were those who existed outside the laws of nature, creatures to be feared and never, never betrayed.

For this reason the gypsies stayed well away from a battered old trailer that rested on blocks at the periphery of the camp. By their heritage they were bound to protect those who dwelt there, but the wisdom of their ancestors kept them wary.

Inside the trailer was shadowed, the sun filtered by green cloth curtains across the two small windows. There was a tiny alcove for cooking, with a butane stove and refrigerator. There were a table and benches, which folded up out of the way when they were not being used. At the far end of the trailer, across its entire width, was a bed, covered with a profusion of pillows, silken scarves, soft blankets over a billowy mattress.

Amidst the pillows and scarves on the bed were the wet, naked bodies of a man and a woman. The man was blond, and broad through the chest and shoulders. The woman was dark and long-bodied, with compelling green eyes and hair of midnight black shot through with a streak of silver.

The body of the man strained over the woman. Her long, strong legs locked him between her knees. With a last powerful thrust the man buried himself deep inside the woman. With a sharp intake of breath, she clasped him tight against her. He groaned deep in his chest. Her teeth sank in and marked his shoulder. They cried out together, and it was finished.

Roy Beatty rolled over on his side. The woman rolled with him, still holding him tightly in the circle of her arms. Roy's breath came in ragged gasps. As always with Marcia, their climax had been a devastating experience, leaving him spent and drained as no other woman ever had. Since the first time he saw her in the hamlet of Drago — had it been only three years? — Roy Beatty had belonged to this woman. He had been hers even before she had claimed him in the ancient way. Now they shared the power and the curse, and he was hers forever.

"Are you at ease now, my Roy?" Marcia Lura let her fingers wander through the damp golden hair across his chest. "Did I please you?"

Roy pulled a breath deep into his lungs and exhaled slowly. "You please me like nothing else on earth."

"And you will never leave me?"

He pulled back his head to look at her. "Leave you, Marcia? Impossible."

"That is good." Her fingers massaged the corded muscles where his neck joined his shoulders. "We will leave this place soon."

Roy pulled away from her and sat up. He ran his hand over the smooth length of her body. "Are you sure you're well enough to travel?"

"I am as well now as I will ever be. I know these have been difficult months for you, my Roy, nursing a sick woman, but now it is over."

"All that matters is having you near me," he said.

"I will always be near you," she said. "I will be all the woman you will ever want. But now, you know what we have to do."

Roy's eyes shifted away. He reached down for his clothes where they had fallen beside the bed. "You mean — Karyn."

"Yes!" Green fire flashed in her eyes. "That woman."

He turned back to face her, feeling the impact of her hatred. "Do we have to go through with this?" he said. "So much time has passed."

Marcia ran her eyes over him slowly. When she spoke there was a chill in her voice. "You can't be saying you still have tender feelings for her. Can you?"

"She was my wife," Roy said.

"Your wife!" Marcia spat out the words. "What did that woman know about being a wife? If she had pleased you, you would not have come to me."

"But it all seems so long ago."

"Does it? Does it, Roy? To me, it seems like yesterday." Marcia touched the slash of silver that ran through her dark hair above the left eyebrow. "I think of that woman every time I look into a mirror and see how she marked me when she fired the silver bullet into my head."

"She was defending herself."

"And now you are defending her."

"Marcia, no, I am with you always. You know that."

"And yet you take the part of the woman who tried to kill me."

"She couldn't have known it was you. All she saw was a wolf."

"You underestimate her, Roy. She knew. Oh, well she knew. Yes, she saw the body of a wolf, but what she tried to kill was the spirit of the woman who had taken her man."

He reached out and stroked the satiny black hair. "My poor Marcia. You were so close to dying."

Marcia's mouth tightened. "But now I am well and strong. At least the woman part of me. As for the other — it might be better if the silver bullet had struck a fraction lower and done its work completely."

Roy looked away.

"You know, do you not, what that woman stole from me with her silver bullet? She stole the power of the wolf, the freedom of the night. Do you remember, Roy, those nights when we ran wild and free? Do you remember the times together? The pleasures we gave each other? The pleasures we took?"

"I remember," he said. Still he did not look at her.

"Never again will I know that wild joy," she said. "Now in the night you must walk alone."

Roy faced her. He looked deep into the green eyes. "Is there no way — "

"None. The thing that happens to me now is my curse for as long as I live. I must bear those nights alone."

"Let me stay with you," Roy said.

"No. The change — I would rather die than have you see the thing I become. Now that my strength has returned, I can control it on most nights, but sometimes, when the moon is low and full, as it is tonight — " Marcia left the sentence unfinished.

Roy stroked the smooth, naked curve of her waist where it flowed into the lean hip. "I love you, Marcia. I would share anything with you."

"Not this," she snapped. Then her tone softened. "But you can share with me the vengeance against the woman who has destroyed half of me."

Roy nodded slowly. He would do whatever he must to keep this green-eyed woman.

Marcia looked over at the darkening curtain across the window. Outside, the daylight was falling. "If it were possible, we would leave tonight," she said, "but I cannot travel when the moon is full."

"Are you — can we be sure Karyn is still in Seattle?"

"She is still there," Marcia said. "The gypsies watch her for us. She can make no move that the gypsies do not see."

"Why do the gypsies do this for us?" Roy asked.

"Because they fear us. They know the power we have, and what we could do to them and their children if we wished. We have, their help and their protection only because they fear the werewolf."

"I don't like to talk about it," Roy said.

Marcia's eyes were bright and mocking. "Oh, don't you? Tell me you don't like it when the night comes and you feel your body change. Tell me you don't like the taste of living flesh and raw hot blood."

Roy could not answer. The woman's words brought on an excitement that was almost sexual.

"Of course you like it," Marcia went on. "Out under the moon you glory in the power of the werewolf. You are unstoppable, invincible. No living thing can hurt you. Nothing can kill you. Nothing, save the fire…" In the dim light her teeth gleamed. "And silver."

It grew dark inside the trailer. Roy could barely make out the long, white shape of the woman lying among the cushions. Outside, the night had come. A pale glow beyond the green curtain signaled the rising moon. Roy felt its pull in the quickening of his senses and the uneasiness in his joints. His eyes were drawn toward the curtained window.

On the bed Marcia's body jerked in a sudden spasm. Her mouth twisted in pain.

"Leave me now," she said.

"Marcia, I — "

"Leave me!" The green eyes blazed with pain and pent-up fury.

Roy rose awkwardly to his feet. He stumbled to the door at the rear of the trailer. He pushed it open and stepped out into the cool night. As he closed the door he heard the rusty bolt scrape into place on the inside.

He turned toward the edge of the clearing where the moon was coming into view over the tops of the trees. To his sharpened senses the night held no secrets. He heard the scuttling of small creatures through the brush, and saw them darting among the shadows. The scents of the trees and the grasses and the night flowers were sharp in his nostrils.

The change from man to wolf, Roy had learned, could come on any night. He could will himself to change or, sometimes, prevent it. But on a night like this, with the moon at its full power, the call was impossible to resist.

Roy pulled at the collar of his shirt, letting the cool night air flow in at his throat. He began to walk toward the forest that rimmed the clearing. He tore his shirt open, heedless of the flying buttons, and pulled it free of his belt. The muscles jumped beneath his skin, his limbs twitched against the growing ache in his joints. He stripped the shirt from his back and let it fall to the grass. His breath came in short, hot bursts. He began to run.