Darker Than You Think (18 page)

He
rejoiced in the aroma of wet weeds and the redolence of decaying
leaves. He liked even the cold dew that splashed his shaggy gray fur.
Far from the too-loud clank and wheeze of the locomotive, he paused
to listen to the tiny rustlings of field mice, and he caught a
cricket with a flash of his lean forepaw.

April
called, but he still ignored her.

Elation
lifted him: a clean, vibrant joy that he had never known. He raised
his muzzle toward the setting half moon and uttered a quavering,
long-drawn howl of pure delight. Somewhere beyond a dark row of trees
a dog began to bark in a frightened and breathless way. He sniffed
the cold air and caught the noisome scent of that ancient enemy,
faint and yet sickeningly unpleasant. His hackles lifted. Dogs would
learn not to bark at him.

But
the white wolf's call came again, suddenly more urgent: "Don't
waste time on a stray dog, Barbee—we've more deadly enemies to
deal with tonight. I'm waiting on the campus, and I need you, now."

Reluctantly,
he turned back north. The dark world flowed, and the furious barking
of that angered dog was lost behind him. In a moment, he was passing
Trojan Hills—as Preston Troy had named his baronial country
place southwest of Clarendon, on the rolling uplands above the river
valley that held the town and Troy's mills. The lights were out in
the big house beyond the trees; but a lantern was bobbing about the
stables, where perhaps the grooms were tending a sick horse. He heard
a soft, uneasy whicker and paused a moment to sniff the strong,
pleasant pungence of the horses.

"Hurry,
Barbee!" begged April Bell.

He
loped on, unwillingly, toward the uneasy murmuring and the clashing,
violent odors of the city. Presently, however, he caught the
she-wolf's scent, clean and fragrant as pine. His reluctance faded,
and he ran eagerly along the deserted streets toward the campus,
searching for her.

Somewhere
among the dark, crowded houses, a dog made one thin yelp of alarm,
but he ignored it. Her scent guided him, and she came trotting out of
the fragrant evergreens on the campus to meet him on the wet grass.
Her long greenish eyes were bright with welcome. He sniffed the
clean, sweet redolence of her, and she touched his muzzle with a
tingling cold kiss.

"You're
late, Barbee!" She sprang away from him.

"You've
wasted too much of the night already, and we've enemies to meet.
Let's go!"

"Enemies?"
He stared at her lean white sleekness, puzzled. Somewhere to the
south, the way he had come, a dog was barking nervously. He snarled
toward the south. "That, you mean?" he whispered. "Dogs?"

Her
greenish eyes glittered wickedly.

"Who's
afraid of those curs?" Her white fangs flashed in scorn. "Our
enemies are men."

CHAPTER
SEVEN

The
Trap in the Study

The
white bitch ran, and Barbee followed. He hadn't realized how late it
was, but much of the night had fled. The streets were empty, save for
a few late motorists who seemed to drive with an apprehensive speed.
Most of the traffic signals were out; only the one at the corner of
the campus, where Center Street crossed the highway, was blinking a
warning yellow. Loping after the fleet white wolf, Barbee called
uneasily: "Hold on, here—I want to know where we're
going."

She
leapt gracefully out of the path of a drumming car—the driver
didn't seem to see them. Running on with an easy feral lightness, she
looked back at Barbee. Her long red tongue was hanging out of her
mouth, and her clean fangs shone.

"We're
going to call on some old friends of yours." He thought she
grinned maliciously. "Sam and Nora Quain."

"We
can't harm them," he protested sharply. "Why should they
be—enemies?"

"They
are enemies because they are human," the white bitch told him.
"Deadly enemies, because of what is in that wooden box that
Quain and old Mondrick brought back from Asia."

"They're
my friends," Barbee insisted, and whispered uneasily: "What's
in that box?"

Her
long eyes narrowed warily as she ran.

"Something
deadly to our kind—that's all we have been able to discover,"
she said. "But the box is still at Sam Quain's house, though
he's ready to move it to the Foundation tomorrow—he had been
clearing out the top-floor rooms for it, and hiring guards, and
arranging his defenses against us there. That's why we must strike
right now. We must have a look inside tonight—and destroy
whatever weapons they brought back from those prehuman mounds to turn
against us."

Barbee
shivered a little as he ran.

"What
sort of weapons?" he whispered uneasily. "What can hurt
us?"

"Silver
can," the white bitch said. "Silver blades and silver
bullets—I'll tell you why when we have a little time. But the
contents of that box must be something more lethal than silver—and
the night's going fast!"

They
passed the yellow-blinking signal, and ran on through solid walls of
odor—the sulphurous bite of settling fumes from the industrial
district and a piercing reek of garbage smouldering in some
incinerator, the crisp fragrance of a bakery, and a thin bitter
stench trailing from the packing plant across the river, and the
stale unpleasant human fetors seeping out of the silent houses.

She
turned off the highway, crossing a corner of the campus toward the
broad grounds of the Research Foundation and Sam Quain's little house
beyond. The leaf-strewn grass made a cool, pleasant cushion for
Barbee's pads, rustling very faintly, and his sniffing nostrils found
a new orchestra of odors so intriguing that he almost forgot the task
and the peril before them.

The
grass and the walks still reeked of the students who had thronged
them during the day, the human body smells rank and rancid, very
different from the clean, friendly fragrance of the racing wolf
beside him. An explosive purple malodor of hydrogen sulphide burst
from the chemistry lab, and a pleasant pungence of manure drifted
from the model dairy barn of the agriculture department beyond the
highway.

The
Foundation building was a slender tower of white concrete, aloof
beyond its lawns and hedges, nine stories tall. Barbee wondered for a
moment at the dogged intensity of old Mondrick's secret purpose—
at the tireless drive that had overcome his age and illness to build
this stern citadel and then ransack the cradlespots of mankind for
the archeological treasures he had hoarded and studied here.

The
white, graceful spire was enveloped in the turpentine-and-linseed-oil
smells of new paint, mingled with a faint, jarringly unpleasant scent
that Barbee couldn't identify. Light shone from the top-floor
windows, and he flinched from a sudden blue flicker, painfully
intense, that must come from a welding arc. The snarl of a power saw
came down to him, and the muffled thudding of a carpenter's hammer.

Racing
on beside him, the white wolf pricked up her ears.

"They're
at work tonight," she said. "It's too bad we had to strike
so openly against old Mondrick, but he gave us no time for the
niceties we prefer. Now I'm afraid we've tipped our hand too
far—Quain must know about what we expect, because he's having
that top floor rebuilt into a fortress against us. We must get at
that box, tonight!"

Down
the wind, Professor Schnitzler's collie began to howl.

"Why
is it?" Barbee asked apprehensively. "Men don't seem to see
us, but dogs are always frightened."

April
Bell snarled toward the howling.

"Most
men can't see us," she told him. "No true man can, I think.
But dogs have a special sense for us—and a special hatred. The
savage man who domesticated the first dog must have been an enemy of
our people, as cunning and terrible as old Mondrick or Sam Quain."

They
came to the little white bungalow on Pine Street that Sam Quain had
built for Nora the year they married—Barbee remembered drinking
too much at their house-warming party, perhaps to dull his own
unspoken disappointment. The she-wolf led him warily around the
silent house and the garage, listening, sniffing uneasily. Barbee
heard soft breath sounds from a lifted window, and then he caught the
scent of little Pat from the sand pile in the back yard, where she
had played.

He
sprang before the white wolf with a growl in his throat.

"They
mustn't be hurt!" he protested sharply.
"I
don't
understand all of this—and it seems like fun. But these people
are friends of mine—Sam and Nora and Pat. It's true Sam has
acted a little funny, but still they're the best friends I have."

The
bitch grinned redly over her hanging tongue.

"Both
Sam and Nora?" Her greenish eyes mocked him. "But they're
the dangerous ones." She crouched a little, fine ears lifted,
sniffing the wind. "The thing in that box must be the key to
some power more deadly than all our little spells—or they would
never have dared defy us as they did."

Still
he blocked her way.

"But
I don't think we'll have to harm them now," she said. "They're
both truly human—they won't be aware of us, unless we wish to
make them so. The contents of the box are what we must reach and
destroy."

"All
right," Barbee yielded unwillingly. "So long as we don't
injure them—"

Hot
dog scent struck his nostrils. Inside the house there was a sudden
small, shrill yelping. The she-wolf sprang back fearfully. Barbee
shuddered to a deep, ungovernable alarm, and he felt his gray hackles
rise.

"That's
Pat's little dog," he said. "She calls it Jiminy Cricket."

The
wolf bitch snarled. "She'll call it dead tomorrow."

"Not
Jiminy!" Barbee cried. "Pat would be heartbroken."

A
screen door banged. A fluff of white fur hurtled out into the back
yard, barking furiously. The she-wolf sprang away from it
apprehensively. It leaped at Barbee. He tried to cuff it away, and
angry little teeth grazed his forepaw. The pain woke a latent
savagery in him that drowned his regard for little Pat.

He
crouched and sprang. His powerful jaws caught that bit of fur, and
shook it until the thin yelping ceased. He tossed it upon the sand
pile and licked the evil-tasting dog hair off his fangs.

The
white wolf was trembling.

"I
didn't know about the dog," she whispered uneasily. "Nora
and the child were out when I came this evening to see what Sam was
up to, and it must have been with them." Her lean shape
quivered. "I don't like dogs. They aided men to conquer us
once."

She
slunk toward the back door.

"We
must hurry now—the night is already too far gone."

Barbee
tried to forget that little Pat would cry.

"The
daylight?" he asked apprehensively. "Is it dangerous?"

The
white wolf turned back quickly.

"I
had forgotten to warn you," she whispered urgently. "But
you must never try to change by day—or let dawn find you
changed. Because any strong light is painful and likely to be
injurious when we are changed; and the sun's rays are deadly."