“Come closer,” Sirhan’s voice beckoned from inside the limo.
I walked slowly but deliberately toward the open window. The first thing I noticed was that the hand I’d seen earlier indeed didn’t look human. It was dark gray and leathery, mottled with short grayish-black hairs. No, it was fur. The fingers were unhumanly long, and looked even longer tipped with sharp, wolflike black claws. The hand was a freakish mix of beast and human.
“Look at me, child,” Sirhan said.
My vision snapped from the beastly hand to the face that glared at me through the open window. I stifled a gasp, but let my eyes grow wide—dilating enough in the dark to really see what was in front of me: a face that was also a grotesque mixture of animal and human. He had yellow eyes and a snout instead of a normal nose and jaw. His ears, on the sides of his head, came to mutant-looking points at the top.
“Are you afraid of me, child?” he asked. His blackened gums held pointed teeth—like I was staring into the mouth of a wolf.
“No,” I said.
“Then tell me, what is it that you think I want. What could you give me to ensure the safety of the ones you love?”
I looked him over—not only was he a mixture of man and beast, his body also looked decrepit and fragile. A thin plastic tube with two little nodules hung around his neck. I recognized what it was from the hospital—an oxygen feed. He must have pulled it from his animal-like nostrils just to speak to me.
“You’re dying,” I said. “And you want to be cured so your soul will be free from the wolf before you pass. Healing people isn’t the only thing I can do, as I’m sure you’ve heard or you wouldn’t be here. If you meet my demands, I will provide the cure for you.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
WOLVES AT THE GATE
TEN MINUTES LATER, INSIDE SIRHAN’S CAR
The smell of decay and wolf assaulted my senses with every breath I took as I rode in the back of Sirhan’s limousine with the ancient Urbat. Sirhan’s car wasn’t a limo in the traditional prom-night sense of the word. It could hold only four people: the driver, a spearman who sat up front, Sirhan, and me. The leather of my seat was so soft I finally understood why some people compared the feel of fine leather to butter. I’d never been in any vehicle nearly as nice as this one, but I couldn’t find comfort inside of it. Not only was the smell of Sirhan almost too much to handle, but the dark-tinted windows made it impossible to see if Daniel and the others were truly following us like they were supposed to.
My nails dug into my skin as I held my arms crossed in front of my chest. It didn’t help my nerves that Sirhan’s labored breaths as he sucked in air from his oxygen tank reminded me of Darth Vader. He didn’t speak to me again, just kept looking occasionally in my direction and laughing until his mirth turned into fits of hacking coughs.
At Dad’s insistence, Sirhan had agreed to move our negotiations to a new location—away from our curious neighbors, who kept peering out their windows at the spectacle in our front yard. My parents were going to have a devil of a time explaining what exactly had been going on. No doubt Dad would tell them we’d been rehearsing for a Christmas pageant or something. The only problem with that was then Dad would actually insist on our putting on a Christmas pageant this year just so he wouldn’t be caught in a lie.
Great, I thought. Just the thing to look forward to.
An aching gripped my heart, and suddenly I was looking forward to something like that. Anything, really. Because looking forward, making plans, feeling like there would be anything beyond this night, was what I needed to keep my nerves at bay.
I didn’t know if Sirhan or anyone else would go for my plan—or if he could be trusted actually to meet my demands in the end. Only time would tell.