The Passion Read Free

other of them, the guards, the trackers, final y Alexander himself, seeking an answer or a chal enge; but al remained silent, as was their place. Only in Alexander's eyes did he see compassion, but it was too little, far too late.
    He strode past them, his face marble white and his breath roaring, and in the wake of him the air was electric. He pushed out of the room toward the back of the house, to the French door that opened onto the cold dark garden, strode through it with a powerful kick that snapped the lock and ruptured the hinges and sent glass spraying like a fine misty rain over carpet and patio; he burst onto the stone courtyard and into the night where he lifted his arms and threw back his head and released a cry, a scream, a howl of torment so intense that it seemed to chil the very marrow of the earth.
    In the luxury high-rise two blocks down, lights came on and dogs barked, glassy-eyed with hysteria, at shadows on the wal . On Lexington, a man sleeping in a doorway sat up, his heart pounding in his throat, as the sound pierced the night. Across the East River a child whimpered in her sleep from a dream gone bad, and a wife awoke abruptly in her husband's arms, chil ed to the soul. Al ey cats crouched low, fur bristling, and rats that were bold enough to nibble at shoe leather in the subway tunnels fled for the safety of their dark holes. The night shuddered and writhed with the depth of his pain and when the sound died away the emptiness reverberated.
    He dropped his arms and his head, and, alone in the shadows of the winter garden, he stood until the quaking subsided.
    His name was Nicholas Antonov Devoncroix, and he was the head of an industrial and financial conglomerate so vast and so complex that no business in the world operated completely independent of it. Should the Devoncroix Corporation and its ancil aries suddenly cease to exist, so too would most of the world's major industries, banks and stock markets; technology would be set back half a century, research would grind to a halt, science and the arts would languish.
    He was the figurative and practical leader of over half a mil ion of the brightest, most inventive minds ever to grace the planet; he alone was responsible for their moral, spiritual and physical wel -being. He was a werewolf, and those were his people who had just been slaughtered. He felt the loss as keenly as he would have felt the amputation of one of his own limbs.
    After a long time he lifted his head to acknowledge the presence behind him. From inside the darkened room the voice spoke softly, reflectively. " 'Kil ers al until we say/I vow I shal not kil today… I shal not kil today.' "
    It was from a child's poem, a jumping-song that any wolfling with language skil s could recite. Nicholas had often reflected that that, then, was the essential difference between humans and themselves: what they taught their children. But he was not thinking that now.
    Nicholas turned slowly. A distant reflected light caught his face and gave it an otherworldly sheen.
    His eyes glittered like coals. He said lowly, "Wrong."
     
    Alexander said nothing, nor did he al ow any change of expression to register on his face.
    "We have the blood scent. My trackers wil find him by dawn." Nicholas's eyes narrowed. "But the pleasure of kil ing him wil be mine."
    Alexander commented neutral y, "It has been five centuries or more since one of us kil ed a human in anything other than self-defense."
    "You don't cal this self-defense?" Nicholas gestured brutal y toward the slaughterhouse they had left behind them. "They were scientists, researchers, humanitarians , for the love of al that's holy! They were murdered without warning, without reason.
    And not just murdered but—" His voice hoarsened and one fist clenched as he ground out the word.
    "Savaged. Eviscerated. You would have me ignore this?"
    Alexander asked reasonably, "And how wil you explain the execution of this human to the authorities who come