Full Wolf Moon

41

“Father!” Laura cried. The shotgun dropped from her hands, clattering forgotten onto the stones, and she turned and began scrambling down the path along the edge of the cliff. Even in the dim light, Logan could see that she was dashing along the trail at an almost suicidal pace, taking desperate chances as she leapt over rocks and fissures in an attempt to get to the bottom of the waterfall as quickly as possible. He rose to his feet and — doing his best to ignore the sharp pain in his shoulder — followed. By the time he reached her, she was at the edge of a little pool at the base of the cliff, water cascading all around, cradling the battered body of her father in her arms. She bent her head over him, weeping more loudly now.

With the absence of moonlight, Chase Feverbridge had reverted to his normal self. Gone was the thick hair from his limbs; gone were the hoary, oversized nails. The battered form was once again the bemused, charismatic scientist he had first met in the secret lab, mere weeks before.

Looking on, he understood what had just happened. Feverbridge had seen the unmistakable pain in his daughter’s eyes. He must have realized he was a lost soul. What he was doing was unpardonable — but it was something he could not stop, a murderous obsession that was only growing worse. Whether his daughter would have managed to shoot him, nobody could now say — but rather than force her to live with doing so, and knowing he could no longer change, he’d saved her from the terrible choice by taking his own life, falling from the top of the cliff — ironically, dying in exactly the way Laura said he had half a year earlier.

Logan pulled out his cell phone, dialed 911 — it took three tries before he managed to keep the call from dropping — and gave them the location, as best he could, of where Albright could be found. Then he knelt beside her. She was rocking her father’s head in her arms now, the weeping reduced to racking sobs.

“How did you know to come here?” he asked her gently.

It took her some time to answer. “I couldn’t think where else to go.”

He waited, perhaps ten minutes, perhaps fifteen, for the sobbing to stop. There was nothing more to say. Finally, he put a hand on her shoulder. “Come on. I’ll take you back to the camp. Then we’d better call Krenshaw, turn ourselves in before he makes his move on the Blakeneys.”

At this she looked at him for the first time since he’d come up beside her. “Turn ourselves in? You’ve done nothing wrong. If anything, you were the one who came here tonight and showed me the truth. If it wasn’t for you, he’d have killed again. And again, and again. I’m the one — the only one — at fault. I wanted to believe him. I thought I did believe him. But deep down, I guess I always wondered — was he really there, locked in that room of his, on the nights of the full moon? Why was it that our research kept running into blind alleys? I should have asked myself those questions directly. Despite his pleas for privacy, to respect his affliction, I should have looked in on him those nights when the moon was full. I realize now the reason I never did was because I didn’t… didn’t want to know the truth.” She sniffed. “I thought I could cure him. But all I did was prolong his murderous obsession. And now, because of me — directly or indirectly, it doesn’t matter — four more people have died.”

And with this she laid her father’s head gently on a rock, rose, turned, and began walking back in the direction of the fire station. Logan watched her receding form for a minute until it was nothing more than a phantom, gray against black. And then he, too, rose from the gurgling pool and, moving slowly and painfully, began to follow.