Becker rose from bed at t, o a.m., moving silently as he gathered his clothes in his hand and eased toward the bedroom door. Karen lay on her side, facing away from him. She had not moved but he could tell by her breathing that she had awakened. 'Be careful,' she said, her voice still hoarse with sleep. 'Yes. Go back to sleep.'
'You're sure you have to go?' Becker stood for a long moment in the dark, his shirt and pants in his hand. 'I have to,' he said finally.
She rolled over to face him. Her face was a pale shape without features in the darkness. 'I knew you would tonight,' she said.
'How did you know?'
'You're different when you're fighting it,' she said, meaning the urge that she knew was driving him now. 'You make love differently.'
'Do I?'
'You're even more gentle than usual-and even more intense, somehow. I can't explain it, but I can feel it.'
'There was nothing in my mind but making love to you-I don't want you to think it was tainted.'
'I don't think that. But it's like… I don't know.' She thought it was like making love with a wolf with a human heart, the beast holding its strength and instinct in check, aware what it could do with those powerful jaws, the vicious teeth, the instrument of death caressing her as gently as it would pick up a pup in that mouth. It was frightening and exciting and Karen had come over the years to want it most of all-but she did not tell him that, or any of it. 'It's just different,' she said.
Becker waited a moment more for her to complete the thought if she would; then he slipped out the door. She scarcely heard him leave.
He wheeled his bicycle from the garage, mounted it, and pedaled swiftly into the night. The moon was more than half full and a strong breeze pushed clouds past it, causing it to wink conspiratorially. He rode the first mile with the headlight on, keeping one eye closed so that it would not adjust to the light. When he was a few minutes away from his destination he turned off the headlight and opened the other eye.
The bike moved almost silently through the Clamden night. The whizzing of the wind in his ears was far more hear of his passage. A low, du]] than anyone else wo hiss of the tires on the asphalt was the only sound, the only sign that he had been and gone. The houses moved quickly past, some dimly lighted, some dark, but mostly he saw trees, upright stalks rushing past like pickets in a fence.
The deeper into the night he rode, the more his civilized self fell away and he became the thing he feared. It was the part he loathed most about himself-the part that gave him the greatest satisfaction. The part of him that Karen knew and didn't want to know. The part he spent his life trying to control-the part that controlled him. The part he tried to deny but could n(-ver refuse.
In his mind the houses that had seemed warm and secure now looked vulnerable and deluded in their sense of security, little more than eggshells, pathetic, contemptible defenses against the creatures of the night that dwelled both within and without them. The veneer of civilization was so thin, so useless against a real assault.
In the clearing in the trees made by the road, a shape was silhouetted against the sky at the top of a rise. Becker was approaching it, pedaling up the hill, and he saw it turn and look at him, the long, canine head turned in threequarter profile. The animal stared at Becker, watched his strange form coming at it, half wheels, half human.
It gauged his speed, his threat, sniffed the air to reaffirm what it thought it saw. Finally, with a casualness born of craft and confidence, the coyote trotted off the road, unhurried, into the surrounding darkness. Becker sped past it, glancing in the direction it had gone. There was nothing to see.
In the far distance he could see a car's headlights brightening the sky as it rounded a curve. Becker waited until he was close to the turn in the road, then pulled softly onto the shoulder on the inside of the bend so the lights would not pick him out, and walked the bike into the cover of the trees, where he watched as the car came around the corner, its lights cutting a fleeting swath through the blackness, illuminating a house, a car in a driveway, toys in a yard, then, squaring itself on the road, the pavement in front of it, a yellow line down the center gleaming dully. He did not recognize the driver, caught just a glimpse of a man, looking tired, driving by rote on the familiar way home. When the car had passed, Becker looked afterit, watching the trees and fences and stone walls being illuminated in turn, a flash of porch rail, the glint of a second-story window, and the distant canopy of leaves all taking brief turns in the spotlight before fading once more into the surrounding black.
He pedaled on until he was within a mile of his destination. He pulled off the road once more and covered the reflectors in the spokes and on the pedals and the front and back of the bike with black electrician's tape before continuing. He would not be betrayed by light now, not picked out by any headlights or flashlight beams or random lights from windows. To be seen he would have to be seen, and that by someone who was looking not only for him but directly at him. His only danger now was being silhouetted as the coyote had been, but from this point on it was all downhill, he would be below a crest all the way. Becker pushed off once more, the wind of his passing sounding to his ears like a scythe through the air.
Becker did not anticipate that anyone was watching for him. He did not even expect to encounter anyone. Nor was it caution or training. He moved silent and all but invisible because he liked it, liked the feeling of cutting through the night like a blade, needed the deeply furtive and threatening sensation of being in the dark while others slept, of living with danger. Of being dangerous. Of being deadly.
There was something lupine in his nature, a heavy, uncivilizable part of himself that could be wrapped in the disguises demanded by his culture, trained to sing and dance and wear lace if the occasion required, but never truly tamed. A part of him that needed to be alone in the dark to mirror the black, unexamined corner of his soul. Becker did not know if all men shared this part of themselves, but he knew that some did. The ones who worked at night, the ones he hunted, the ones he understood far too well for his own peace of mind.
He entered the woods at the base of the hill, close to where the other car had been parked on the night of Kiwasee's death. Pulling the bike out of sight and laying it on the ground, Becker began the climb toward the grave, moving quietly, pausing every few yards to listen without the distraction of his own movement.
He had not gone far before he realized that he was not alone. He crouched instinctively, lowering his silhouette, his eyes scanning the darkness in front of him.
The gibbous moon was partially obscured by scudding clouds, and shapes within the forest leapt suddenly into high relief when the moon was clear, vanished into the general gloom when it was hidden. Becker crouched, waiting. He had not seen anything, or if he had, it had not registered consciously. He was aware only of a sensation, as real and undirected as the rising of hair on the back of his neck. Something was there, and close. And whatever it was, it was watching him, standing as motionless as he, and as patient.
The clouds parted, the breeze shifted the leaves into a slightly different pattern, the moonlight shone through where it had been dark before, and suddenly Becker saw it. A pair of points, gleaming green, directed straight at him. Already still, Becker froze, his muscles locked with a primal fear that took several seconds to drain away. The coyote was less than ten yards away, its head again cocked in three-quarter profile. Its mouth was open, the lips curled back to show long teeth glowing dimly. An owl lay motionless between the coyote's paws, the reason the coyote had not fled on Becker's approach, and, still gripped in the owl's talons, a rabbit, its body twitching. Becker imagined the lightning-fast chain of events that must have taken place in silence as he walked up the hill, the swooping lunge of the owl intent on its prey, the almost simultaneous leap of the coyote upon the owl. A double murder in the night, he thought ironically, in silence, close by, and he was unaware of either. If he had happened along half a minute later there would be only a feather or two, some drops of blood, a torn tuft of rabbit hair, and later, elsewhere, fieshiess bones working slowly into the soil. Men or beasts, it's all around us, Becker thought, but only a few of us know it, only a few of us acknowledge the need for blood and the quivering body of the prey within our grasp. Only a few of us pursue it while the rest of the world slumbers in false security, as helpless as the rabbit. Only a few of us like Johnny. Like me. The coyote was only following its nature. Like Johnny. Like me.
Becker stared squarely at the small wolf and the animal returned his gaze unflinchingly. These were not the eyes of a dog, there was no mistaking them for anything belonging to man. There was a wild quality to them-not anger, not ferocity, but a cool, unapologetic, matter-of-fact murderousness. The coyote killed for a living and the toll of so much death showed in his eyes as an indifference to anything of less than mortal consequence. Becker
