The Wolves of Midwinter by Anne Rice Read Free Book Online Page A

Confessional, knowing such secrets which he could not mention to another living being? He missed Jim terribly. He wished he could call Jim now.
    Reuben began to doze. He shook himself awake and pulled the soft shapeless collar of his robe close around his neck. He had a sudden “awareness” that somebody was close to him, somebody, and it was as if he’d been talking to that person, but now he was violently awake and certain this could not possibly be so.
    He looked up and to his left. He expected the darkness of the night to be sealed up against the window as all the outside lights had long ago gone off.
    But he saw a figure standing there, looking down at him, and he realized he was looking at Marchent Nideck, and that she was peering at him from only inches beyond the glass.
    Marchent. Marchent, who had been savagely murdered in this house
.
    His terror was total. Yet he didn’t move. He felt the terror, like something breaking out all over his skin. He continued to stare at her, resisting with all his might the urge to move away.
    Her pale eyes were slightly narrow, rimmed in red, and fixing him as if she were speaking to him, imploring him in some desperate way. Her lips were slightly parted, very fresh and soft and natural. And her cheeks were reddened as if from the cold.
    The sound of Reuben’s heart was deafening in his ears, and so powerful in his arteries that he felt he couldn’t breathe.
    She wore the negligee she’d worn the night she was killed. Pearls, white silk, and the lace, how beautiful was the lace, so thick, heavy, ornate. But it was streaked with blood, caked with blood. One of her hands gripped the lace at the throat—and there was the bracelet on that wrist, the thin delicate pearl chain she’d worn that day—and with the other hand she reached towards him as if her fingers might penetrate the glass.
    He shot away, and found himself standing on the carpet staring at her. He had never known panic like this in all his life.
    She continued to stare at him, her eyes all the more desperate, her hair mussed but untouched by the rain. All of her was untouched by the rain. There was a glistening quality to her. Then the figure simply vanished as if it had never been there.
    He stood still, staring at the darkened glass, trying to find her face again, her eyes, her shape, anything of her, but there was nothing, and he had never felt so utterly alone in his life.
    His skin was electrified still, though he had begun to sweat. And very slowly he looked down at his hands to see they were covered in hair. His fingernails were elongated. And touching his face and hands, he felt the hair there as well.
    He’d begun to change, the fear had done that to him! But the transformation had been suspended, waiting, waiting perhaps for his personal signal as to whether it should resume. Terror had done that.
    He looked at the palms of his hands, unable to move.
    There were distinct sounds behind him—a familiar tread on the boards.
    Slowly he turned to see Felix there, in rumpled clothes, his dark hair tousled from bed.
    “What’s the matter?” Felix asked. “What’s happened?”
    Felix drew closer.
    Reuben couldn’t speak. The long wolf hair was not receding. And neither was his fear. Maybe “fear” wasn’t the word for this because he’d never feared anything natural in this way in his life.
    “What’s happened?” Felix asked again, drawing closer. He was so concerned, so obviously protective.
    “Marchent,” Reuben whispered. “I saw her, out there.”
    Now came the prickling sensations again. He looked down to see his fingers emerging from the disappearing hair.
    He could feel the hair receding on his scalp and on his chest.
    The expression on Felix’s face startled him. Never had Felix seemed so vulnerable, so almost hurt.
    “Marchent?” Felix said. His eyes narrowed. This was acutely painfulfor him. And there wasn’t the slightest doubt that he believed what Reuben was telling him.
    Reuben