The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice Page A

backwards. His head cracked into wall. The guy was strangling him. The flashlight was rolling on the floor. In sheer rage, he rammed his knee into the attacker, while reaching with both hands for the man’s face. He caught a hank of hair in his left hand and rammed his fist into the man’s eye. The man yelled and gave up the grip on Reuben’s throat. But another figure was bearing down on him with another light. Reuben saw the flash of metal, and felt the sharp stab of the blade going into his stomach. He had never felt rage like he was feeling it now, but as the two men beat him and kicked at him, he felt the blood pumping out of his stomach. Again, he saw the flash of the knife raised. He struck out with all the force he could muster, thrusting his shoulder behind the blow, and threw one of his attackers backwards and away.
    Again he felt the blade, this time slicing into his left arm.
    A sudden torrent of sounds exploded in the shadowy hallway. It had to be the deep roaring growls of a fierce dog. His attackers were screaming, the animal was snapping, roaring, and Reuben himself had slid down in what was surely his own blood.
    Once a long time ago, Reuben had seen a dogfight, and what he remembered was not the sight—because it happened too fast and too furiously for anyone to see anything—but the noise.
    That’s how it was now. He couldn’t see the dog. He couldn’t see his attackers. He felt the weight of the beast on top of him, pinning him to the floor, and then the bellowing of the two men stopped.
    With a savage snarl, the animal grabbed Reuben by his head, the teeth sinking into the side of his face. He felt himself being lifted as his arms flailed. The pain was worse than the wound in his stomach.
    Then suddenly the powerful jaws let him go.
    He fell back down on top of one of the attackers, and the only sound in the whole world suddenly was the animal’s panting breath.
    He tried to move but he couldn’t feel his legs. Something heavy, the paw of the beast, was resting on his back. “Dear God, help me!” he said. “Dear God, please.”
    His eyes closed and he went down and down into rolling darkness; but he forced himself back to the surface. “Marchent!” he shouted. Then the darkness rolled over him again.
    Utter quiet surrounded him. He knew the two men were dead. He knew that Marchent was dead.
    He rolled over on his back, and struggled to reach into the right pocket of his robe. His fingers closed on the cell phone, but he waited, waited in the silence until he was certain that he was truly alone. Then he drew the phone out and up to his face, and punched the button to turn on the small screen.
    The darkness rose again, like waves coming up to wash him off the safe white beach. He forced himself to open his eyes. But the phone had slipped from his hand. His hand had been wet and he’d lost it, and as he turned his head, the darkness came again.
    With all his strength he fought it. “I’m dying,” he whispered. “They’re dead, all of them. Marchent’s dead. And I’m dying here, and I have to get help.”
    He reached out, groping for the cell phone, and felt only the wet boards. With his left hand he covered the pain burning in his gut and felt the blood coming through his fingers. A person cannot live with bleeding like this.
    Turning on his side he struggled to right himself and climb up on his knees. But when the swoon came this time it took him down at once.
    There was a sound somewhere.
    A thin winding sound.
    It was like a ribbon of light in the darkness, this sound.
    Imagining this? Dreaming? Dying.
    He had never expected death to be this quiet, this secretive, this easy. “Marchent,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, so sorry!”
    But there was a second siren, yes, he could hear it, a second shining ribbon in the dark. The two luminous ribbons of sound were weaving in and out, weaving and coming closer and closer. And there was a third siren, yes.
    Imagine that.
    The sirens were