The Wolfman (17 page)

A couple of times he saw men in the room. Sir John, standing by the window, hands clasped behind his back, his body rigid with tension as other men spoke words that Lawrence was unable to process. He saw Singh once or twice, and he had the vague memory of a damp cloth being pressed to his forehead. Was it Singh who did that? Or his father? Or Gwen? Or was it a dream?

After a while he stopped trying to figure it out. He liked the darkness. It was better down there, swimming in the sea of nothingness, and so he stayed there as often as he could. There was no pain down there. There were no memories down there. And nothing hunted him through those shadows.

Lawrence swam through dreams as the hours melted into days and the days melted into weeks.

S
IR JOHN TALBOT
sipped whiskey from a glass and set it on the stone railing of his observation deck. He had stopped the pretense of going inside to covertly refill the glass from the decanter and the bottle stood next to the glass with barely an inch of golden liquid left at the bottom.

It was a cold morning with the ozone bite of coming frost in the air, but if the cold was somehow able to bite him through the whiskey burn in his system, then none of it showed on his face.

As he stood there, looking out over the fields and the roads of the estate, watching waves of leaves pushed by the wind, he saw something dark moving in the distance. He turned his telescope and bent to the lens. A line of
Gypsy vardos stood in silhouette on the far horizon, diminishing in size and clarity as they rolled away from Blackmoor.

Sir John stood, eyes narrowed and lip curled in a hard sneer. He picked up his glass, splashed the last of the whiskey into it, and stood sipping the scotch as the cold wind blew past him.

T
HE DRIVER OF
the carriage reined the horses to a stop at the edge of the village of Blackmoor and twisted in his seat as the door opened and a passenger stepped out.

“You sure this is where you want to get out, sir?”

The man straightened and placed his bowler hat on his head. He was tall, with a heavy mustache and sideburns, a nose that had been broken at least twice, a stern mouth, and the look of a man who had spent more than a little time on the hard streets of London. He brushed the wrinkles out of his long tan coat and looked around slowly, taking in the gray sadness of the village and the dreary vista of the landscape.

“Sir? . . .”

“This’ll do fine,” said the tall man. He reached into the carriage and removed a heavy valise.

The driver gave him a doubtful look and cast a cautious eye at the village. He’d heard of this place. The London papers had been filled with strange stories of mass killings barely a month ago. Some kind of wild animal. He glanced at the sky, judging the number of hours left in the day, and wasted no further time clicking his tongue for the horses who immediately started forward as if they, too, were happy to be quit of this place.

The tall man stood by the side of the road and watched them go. He put his hands in his coat pockets, strolled to the far side of the road, and then mounted a slight rise so that he could have a better view of the land beyond the village. With the autumn trees stripped of most of their leaves he could see for miles. He could see all the way across the valley to the weed-choked fields that surrounded Talbot Hall.

He removed a cigar from his inner pocket, lit it, and stood smoking on the hill as he studied the Hall. His blue eyes were as sharp and cold as diamonds.

He smiled to himself, then turned and walked without haste toward the town.

S
INGH CREPT QUIETLY
along the hallway. Silence had become a habit over the last few weeks. Both the doctor from town and the specialists Sir John had brought in had insisted that rest and quiet were crucial to any chance of recovery. No noise, no shocks, no surprises. Just rest so that Lawrence’s ruined body would have some hope of recovering.

Singh balanced a tray with a pitcher of water and a fresh towel on one hand while with the other he gently turned the handle of the bedroom. After the first day, he had made sure to oil the tumblers so that the lock turned soundlessly. He eased the door open, first seeing Miss Conliffe in her usual post, asleep in the chair by the window, a book open on her lap. Poor lass had been here every day since the Gypsies brought Lawrence home. She’d stayed up until all hours of the night, watching over Lawrence, wracked with guilt because it had been she who had sent a letter to London to obtain his help in finding Ben. And she had approved of
Lawrence’s decision to hunt the monster who had slaughtered him.

It made Singh’s heart hurt to think of these things. He had known Benjamin and Lawrence as children. He’d wept when Sir John had committed Lawrence to the asylum and then shipped him off to America. He and Sir John had fought bitterly about it, but in the end Singh was the servant and Sir John the master of this house. But Ben . . . he’d seen that poor lad grow up, had loved him like his own son. The heartache and bitterness over Ben’s death was as strong in him now as it had been when he’d been killed. And now it looked like Lawrence would die as well. Three weeks in a coma, no sign of comprehension, no sign of recovery.

This was a cursed place, he told himself for the ten thousandth time.

He entered the room and crossed to the side table used for the supplies necessary to maintain a comatose patient. Light streamed into the room through the sheers and Singh cut a quick glance at the bed to see if the bandages were still—

Singh jolted to a stop and stared wide-eyed at what he saw on the bed. The tray toppled from his hand and struck the floor, the metal pitcher ringing like a bell and water splashing everywhere.

The sudden din startled Gwen Conliffe, who snapped awake and leaped to her feet, equally shocked and confused. She and Singh stood gaping.

“Lawrence? . . .” she murmured.

Lawrence Talbot sat on the side of the bed. Gray, sweating, terribly drawn and haggard. But very much awake and alive.

G
wen flew across the room to Lawrence’s side. “I’ll fetch the doctor,” Singh said and bolted from the room.

Lawrence felt more than half dead. His eyes were sunken into dark pits, his hair greasy and pasted to his skull, his lips rubbery and slack. There was a foul taste in his mouth and an ache that was sunken deep into the core of every muscle and bone in his entire body. He hung his head and shook it slowly back and forth like a sick bear, trying to clear his brain of the layers of fog and cobwebs.

He heard the rustle of cloth, felt cool hands touch his, and he raised his head and turned to see Gwen seated next to him on the bed. Gwen? That made no sense. And she was no longer wearing her black funeral dress.

“I . . . thought you were leaving,” he mumbled. “You’ll miss your train.”

Gwen laughed and sniffed and wiped tears from her blue eyes. “It seems this place is impossible to escape.”

Lawrence frowned, not catching her meaning. He looked out of the window. The trees were mostly bare.

“Was there a storm?”

“Yes,” she said with a hitch in her voice. “Yes . . . there was a very bad storm.”

But Lawrence was asleep again.

D
R. LLOYD ARRIVED
within the half hour. He arrived to find Sir John standing at the foot of the sick bed and Gwen hovering solicitously by Lawrence’s side. The doctor had become used to the strained silence between Sir John and the young woman from London, and privately he was happy for her that she hadn’t married into the Talbot family. Not as long as Sir John was the master of the house. Cold, stiff-backed old bastard, Lloyd thought. Never got over his wife’s suicide, as if his own heart had stopped beating when Solana’s had, and Sir John had not been the warmest of men before that. Now with one son dead and the other polishing the hinges on death’s door . . . well, he thought, Miss Conliffe must have the patience of a saint to have put up with Sir John all this time.

These thoughts ran through his head but he wisely kept them off his face.

He pulled a chair close and carefully unwound the blood-encrusted bandages. Lawrence Talbot’s shoulder, chest and back looked like a map of a train yard. Lines of black sutures crossed and crisscrossed the bruised flesh. The doctor grunted and sat back for a moment, staring at the wounds. The wounds were remarkably well knitted, the lips of each laceration showing tight seals with almost no swelling. He bent to sniff the dressing and found nothing amiss. The wounds had been infected for a while but there was no telltale smell of suppuration. He held the back of his hand over the gashes—no heat, either.

“How is the pain?” he asked.

“It’s . . . ,” Lawrence began and trailed off. His face wore a quizzical expression. “It barely hurts at all. More of a dull ache. You’re too good a doctor for a small town like this.”

Dr. Lloyd grunted again. “Make a fist.” Lawrence slowly curled his fingers into a fist. Lloyd’s eyebrows rose. He held out a finger. “Squeeze my finger.”

“I feel weak as a baby,” Lawrence protested, but he grasped the doctor’s finger and squeezed. His efforts brought a wince, but it was on the doctor’s face.

Sir John shifted closer, watching with great interest. Lawrence noticed him and looked up.

“Father, what did the Gypsies say?”

A small smile curled the edges of the old man’s lips. “That the Devil has come to Blackmoor.”