Return of the Wolf Man by Jeff Rovin Read Free Book Online

hands together. “What he really wanted were samples of my blood for the military. He planned to make soldiers more ferocious and able to hunt at night.”
    “What’s wrong with that?” Joan asked.
    Talbot fired her a look. “What’s wrong—with spreading this curse?”
    “If you are what you say you are, your affliction could have saved American lives on the battlefield.”
    “To what end?” Talbot asked. “So that when they returned from the war they could endure night after night of torment, as I do? So they could butcher their wives and sweethearts? And what of the enemy soldiers they attacked? Those men would have become werewolves too.”
    “Not if the doctors had been able to work with your blood, find a cure.”
    “What if they couldn’t? What if other governments weren’t as charitable with their monster-soldiers? No, Miss Raymond,” Talbot said. “I couldn’t be a party to that. And I never will be. That’s why you must help me. My body must be destroyed or hidden. The curse of the werewolf must die with me.”
    Joan stopped moving and Talbot stood where he was. Joan was just a few steps from the closed front door. Talbot was in the center of the hall. Standing in the middle of that enormous chamber, blanketed in darkness, he sounded very much alone. But Joan was neither a defeatist nor a coward. Even if what he was telling her was true, she wouldn’t help him flee his troubles . . . or the responsibility for his crimes.
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Talbot,” she said, “but I can’t help you. I don’t know if I can live with helping a man kill himself.”
    “Even a man who murders?”
    “Yes, even a man who murders.”
    “And yet,” Talbot said, “I vaguely remember watching you earlier. You didn’t stop Professor Stevens from destroying the Frankenstein Monster.”
    “That was different,” she said. “You said it yourself, that poor creature was already dead. Every part of him, every cell. Besides, he was trying to kill those two baggage clerks.”
    “Won’t anything I say convince you?”
    “No,” she said. “I’ll help you seek counseling or medical care—that’s all.”
    Talbot’s shoulders sunk. Joan couldn’t believe that she actually felt compassion for this man who had just torn away Professor Stevens’s throat and drank his blood.
    But had it been this man? she asked herself.
    Talbot sighed. “Perhaps I am asking too much of you,” he said. “You’ve been through so much tonight.” He walked over to one of the candelabra. There was a wooden match in a dish beside it. He used it to light the candles. “Maleva once told me that if I tried to take my own life, the wolf in me would resist. She said that if I tried to kill myself he would emerge and fight me.”
    “Mr. Talbot, don’t talk like that.”
    “Why not? It’s the only way I know of ending the curse.” He looked at the candelabrum and shook his head. “Brass,” he muttered. He began looking around the room.
    “But there’s still hope!” Joan said.
    “Hope? Miss Raymond—forgive me, but I can still taste Professor Stevens’s blood in the back of my throat!”
    “He’s dead. You’re alive—”
    “Only until I find something made of silver.”
    That took her aback. “Silver?”
    “Its purity will break the curse of my immortality,” Talbot said. “Anything will work. A silver cross, a silver-tipped cane”—Talbot’s eyes locked on something—“or that.”
    Joan turned as Talbot ran to the right. He stopped by the wall where there was a long Louis XVI console table with more brass candlestick holders on either side. There was also a large mirror above it. Talbot looked into the mirror. He seemed startled by what he saw. He touched the deep lines along his nose, the loose flesh under his eyes, the creases and long scar on his forehead.
    “Hope.” Talbot snickered. “Do you know, Miss Raymond, I’m only forty-seven years old. Evil ages a man.”
    “You aren’t evil,” Joan said.