The Wolves of Midwinter

It is winter at Nideck Point. Oak fires burn in the stately flickering hearths, and the community organizes its annual celebration of music and pageantry. But for Reuben Golding, now infused with the Wolf Gift, this promises to be a season like no other. He’s preparing to honor an ancient Midwinter festival with his fellow Morphenkinder--a secret gathering that takes place deep within the verdant recesses of the surrounding forests. However, Reuben is soon distracted by a ghost. Tormented, imploring, and unable to speak, it haunts the halls of the great mansion, drawing him toward a strange netherworld of new spirits, or “ageless ones.” And as the swirl of Nideck’s preparations reaches a fever pitch, they reveal their own dark magical powers.

Praise for Anne Rice's **Wolf Gift Chronicles

“Vintage Anne Rice. . . . This time, with werewolves.”  —The Wall Street Journal 
  
“A lot of fun…. Rice creates yet another world . . . along the lines of her greatest achievements.” —Alan Cheuse, NPR 
 
 “[Rice’s] books are scary and mysterious and mystical, filled with thrills and danger, frightening fun, and ardent passion.” —R. L. Stine
 
“Still sharp of tooth.” —The Daily News Journal (Tennessee)
 
“A terrific read by a master of her craft.” —Bookreporter

“Anne Rice is back with the bad guys.” —Library Journal
 
“Ranks with [Rice’s] best. . . . Feisty and terrific fun.” —The Dallas Morning News
 
“Fans will welcome Rice’s return to the realm of eccentric immortal predators.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
“Includes plenty of forest spirits, a restless ghost, and a grand mansion that almost feels like a character too.” —The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
 
“Intoxicating.” —USA Today
 
“Rice spares no detail in her lush imagining of dual holidays. One is the Christmas celebrations in the town where the werewolves live . . . and the other is a deep forest ritual.” —Lexington Herald-Ledger

Auteur

ANNE RICE is the author of thirty-seven books. She died in 2021.

Résumé
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The tale of The Wolf Gift continues ... It is winter at Nideck Point and for Reuben Golding, now infused with the Wolf Gift, this promises to be a season like no other.

Oak fires burn in the stately flickering hearths, and the community organizes its annual celebration of music and pageantry. Reuben is preparing to honor an ancient Midwinter festival with his fellow Morphenkinder—a secret gathering that takes place deep within the verdant recesses of the surrounding forests.
 
However, Reuben is soon distracted by a ghost. Tormented, imploring, and unable to speak, it haunts the halls of the great mansion, drawing him toward a strange netherworld of new spirits, or “ageless ones.” And as the swirl of Nideck’s preparations reaches a fever pitch, they reveal their own dark magical powers.

Échantillon de lecture
Two a.m.

The house slept.

Reuben came down the stairs in his slippers and heavy wool robe.

Jean Pierre, who often took the night shift, was sleeping on his folded arms at the kitchen counter.

The fire in the library was not quite out.

Reuben stirred it, brought it back to life, and took a book from the shelves and did something he had always wanted to do. He curled up in the window seat against the cold window, comfortable enough on the velvet cushions, with a throw pillow between him and the damp chill panes.

The rain was flooding down the glass only inches from his eyes.

The lamp on the desk was sufficient for him to read a little. And a little, in this dim uncommitted light, was all he wanted to read.

It was a book on the ancient Near East. It seemed to Reuben he cared passionately about it, about the whole question of where some momentous anthropological development had occurred, but he lost the thread almost at once. He put his head back against the wood paneling and he stared through narrow eyes at the small dancing flames on the hearth.

Some errant wind blasted the panes. The rain hit the glass like so many tiny pellets. And then there came that sighing of the house that Reuben heard so often when he was alone like this and perfectly still.

He felt safe and happy, and eager to see Laura, eager to do his best. His family would love the open house on the sixteenth, simply love it. Grace and Phil had never been more than casual entertainers of their closest friends. Jim would think it wonderful, and they would talk. Yes, Jim and Reuben had to talk. It wasn’t merely that Jim was the only one of them who knew Reuben, knew his secrets, knew everything. It was that he was worried about Jim, worried about what the burden of the secrets was doing to him. What in God’s name was Jim suffering, a priest bound by the oath of the Confessional, knowing such secrets which he could not mention to another living being? He missed Jim terribly. He wished he could call Jim now.

Reuben began to doze. He shook himself awake and pulled the soft shapeless collar of his robe close around his neck. He had a sudden “awareness” that somebody was close to him, somebody, and it was as if he’d been talking to that person, but now he was violently awake and certain this could not possibly be so.

He looked up and to his left. He expected the darkness of the night to be sealed up against the window as all the outside lights had long ago gone off.

But he saw a figure standing there, looking down at him, and he realized he was looking at Marchent Nideck, and that she was peering at him from only inches beyond the glass.

Marchent. Marchent, who had been savagely murdered in this house.

His terror was total. Yet he didn’t move. He felt the terror, like something breaking out all over his skin. He continued to stare at her, resisting with all his might the urge to move away.

Her pale eyes were slightly narrow, rimmed in red, and fixing him as if she were speaking to him, imploring him in some desperate way. Her lips were slightly parted, very fresh and soft and natural. And her cheeks were reddened as if from the cold.

The sound of Reuben’s heart was deafening in his ears, and so powerful in his arteries that he felt he couldn’t breathe.

She wore the negligee she’d worn the night she was killed. Pearls, white silk, and the lace, how beautiful was the lace, so thick, heavy, ornate. But it was streaked with blood, caked with blood. One of her hands gripped the lace at the throat—and there was the bracelet on that wrist, the thin delicate pearl chain she’d worn that day—and with the other hand she reached towards him as if her fingers might penetrate the glass.

He shot away, and found himself standing on the carpet staring at her. He had never known panic like this in all his life.
She continued to stare at him, her eyes all the more desperate, her hair mussed but untouched by the rain. All of her was untouched by the rain. There was a glistening quality to her. Then the figure simply vanished as if it had never been there.
He stood still, staring at the darkened glass, trying to find her face again, her eyes, her shape, anything of her, but there was nothing, and he had never felt so utterly alone in his life.

His skin was electrified still, though he had begun to sweat. And very slowly he looked down at his hands to see they were covered in hair. His fingernails were elongated. And touching his face…