Darker Than You Think (21 page)

"Thank
you, Barbee!" She shuddered. "That was horrible. I'd have
died there in your old friend's cunning little trap if you hadn't
brought me away." Her feral eyes narrowed. "That thing in
the box is deadlier than I ever dreamed. I don't think we can ever
destroy it, really. We can only strike at those who hope to use
it—until it is buried again—and forgotten as it was under
those mounds in the Ala-shan."

Barbee
shook his pointed head reluctantly.

"At
Sam?" he whispered. "And Nick? And Rex?"

The
white panting bitch grinned at him wickedly.

"You're
running with the black pack now, Barbee," she told him. "You
have no human friends—for all men would kill us, if they knew.
We must destroy the enemies of the Child of Night before we die. But
Quain isn't first on the list—not since that phone rang. Now we
must dispose of old Mondrick's widow, before she talks to him."

Barbee
started back from her.

"Not—Rowena!"
he breathed urgently. "She has always been a true friend to
me—even since Mondrick changed. So generous, and always kind.
You forget her blindness, because she's such a real human being—"

"But
you aren't, Barbee!"

The
white bitch grinned at him, and turned suddenly grave.

"I
don't
think the widow is, either," she added soberly. "She has
just enough of our blood, I believe, to make her dangerous to us.
That's why we must stop her, before she can tell—"

"No!"
Barbee whispered violently. "Ill do no harm to a poor old
woman."

"She
won't be such easy game," the sleek bitch panted. "She
learned too much from old Mondrick, and she saw too much in Africa.
You've seen that silver she wears against us. She must have other
weapons, besides that great ugly dog that Mondrick trained. She'll be
tough, but we must try—"

"I
won't!"

"You
will," she told him. "You'll do what you must, Barbee,
because you are what you are. You're free tonight, and all your human
inhibitions are left behind with your body on the bed. You're running
with me tonight, as our dead race used to run, and we've human game
to hunt."

Her
red laugh mocked at his restraint.

"Come
along, Barbee—before the daylight."

The
white bitch ran, and the feeble fetters of Barbee's human constraints
fell from him. He raced after her across the grass, feeling the
pleasant crispness of crunching frost beneath his pads, alert to
every murmur and odor of the slumbering town—even the hot fumes
from the motor of a passing milk truck seemed almost fragrant now,
since he had smelled that poisonous thing from the mounds of the
past.

West
of the campus, on University Avenue, they came to the old brick house
on the ill-kept lawn. Barbee hung back when he saw the black crepe on
the front door, but the slender she-wolf trotted on ahead of him, and
her clean scent swept away his lingering compunctions.

For
his body lay far away, and his human bonds were broken. The sleek
white bitch was near him, alive and exciting. He ran with her pack
now, and they followed the Child of Night. He paused beside her on
the stoop, waiting for the panels of the front door to dissolve.

"Rowena
shouldn't suffer," he whispered uneasily. "She was always a
gracious friend to me. I used to come and let her play the piano for
me—usually pieces she had composed, weird and sad and
beautiful. Surely she deserves some clean, easy end—"

The
white wolf started beside him. His nostrils caught a faint pungence,
penetrating and hateful—the odor of dog. The hair rose on his
neck. Beside him the lean bitch bristled and snarled. Her greenish
eyes were fixed on the door, and she made no reply to his interrupted
plea.

Crouching
beside her, Barbee saw the bottom of the door fade into misty
unreality. Briefly, he glimpsed the familiar room beyond—the
black cavern of the fireplace and the dark bulk of Rowena's grand
piano. He heard the shuffle of hurried steps and saw vague shadows
move. The latch clicked, and that ghostly shadow of a door was flung
abruptly open.

The
she-wolf cowered back beside him, snarling silently.

A
flood of odors poured out of that open door, more immediate and real
than anything he heard or saw. He caught the thin, bitter reek of gas
burning in the old fireplace, and the thick sweetness of the roses
Sam and Nora Quain had sent in the vase on the piano. There was the
lavender perfume and the mothball sharpness of Rowena Mondrick's
clothing, and the hot, acrid, frightened odor of her body. And there
was the dog scent, overwhelming.

The
dog reek was less evil than the emanations of that thing in Sam
Quain's box, but still it sickened him again. It chilled him with a
terror older than mankind, and it steeled him with a racial hatred.
His hair stood up and his lips curled back. He gathered his feet and
caught his breath and crouched to face an immemorial enemy.

Rowena
Mondrick walked out past that ghostly door, her great leashed dog
stalking close beside her, stiff-legged and growling softly. Wrapped
in a long black silk robe, she stood tall and sternly straight. A
distant street light gleamed pale on the silver brooch at her throat
and on her massive silver rings and bracelets. It glittered cruelly
on the point of a thin silver dagger in her hand.

"Help
me!" whispered the crouching bitch. "Help me pull her
down!"

That
thin blind woman, clutching her dagger and her huge dog's leash, once
had been his friend. But she was human, and Barbee crouched beside
the snarling she-wolf. Bellies low, they crept upon their prey.

"I'll
try to hold her arm," the white bitch breathed.

"You
tear out her throat—before she can use that silver blade."

Rowena
Mondrick waited in the dark doorway, the ghostly panels of the open
door growing slowly real again beside her. Her growling dog was
straining forward on the leash; she drew it firmly back and caught
its silver-studded collar. Her thin white face looked tired and sad.
Her head tilted, and Barbee shivered to a disconcerting impression
that her opaque black lenses could see him.

"Will
Barbee." She spoke his name softly, looking down as if she saw
him. Still quietly gracious, her voice held a hurt reproach. "I
knew your danger, and I tried to warn you away from that slick little
witch—but I hardly expected you to forget your humanity so
soon!"

Barbee
felt hot with shame. He crouched back, turn-ins to whimper an uneasy
protest to the creeping she-wolf. The ferocious scorn of her white
snarl silenced him.

"I'm
truly sorry this must be you. Will," the woman's wounded voice
continued gently. "But I know you've surrendered to the dark
blood in you—I had always hoped you would master it. All who
have the black blood aren't witches, Will—I know that. But I
see I was wrong about you."

She
paused a moment, stiffly straight in her stern black.

"I
know you're here, Will Barbee!" He thought she shuddered,
clutching her thin silver blade—it had been hammered and filed,
he saw, out of a sterling table knife. "And I know what you
want."

Her
tawny dog was straining forward against the silver-bossed collar,
following every movement of the creeping wolf bitch with savage
yellow eyes. Rowena clung with a taut white hand to its collar, her
blind lenses watching.

"I
know," she whispered bitterly. "But I won't be easy to
kill!"

The
crouching bitch grinned at Barbee, and crept closer.

"Ready,
Barbee," she breathed. "When I get her elbow!"

Barbee
gathered his pads and hugged the cold floor, measuring the space to
Rowena's throat. He shook off a lingering reluctance, knowing he had
to obey—because this was real, and the lithe bitch his
companion, and his lost humanity a dim dream.

"Now!"
the she-wolf called. "For the Child of Night!"

She
sprang silently. Her slender body made a flowing gleam of white, her
bared fangs slashing at the blind woman's arm. Waiting for her to
drag down the dagger, Barbee felt a sudden black savagery mount in
himself, and a hot thirst for the sweetness of blood.

"Will!"
Rowena was sobbing. "You can't—"

He
caught his breath to spring.

But
the dog Turk had yelped a frightened warning. Rowena Mondrick let the
collar go, swaying back and slashing with her silver dagger.

Twisting
in the air, the leaping she-wolf evaded the blade. The heavy silver
bracelets on the blind woman's arm, however, struck her sleek, narrow
head. She fell, trembling from the blow, and the huge dog caught her
throat. She twisted helplessly in its jaws, whimpered once, and went
limp.

Her
whimpered appeal freed Barbee from his last compassion for Rowena.
His fangs ripped at the dog's tawny throat and struck the
silver-studded collar. Numbing pain flashed through him from the cold
metal. He staggered back, sick from the shock of silver.

"Hold
her, Turk!" Rowena gasped.

But
the great dog had already dropped the white wolf as it whirled to
meet Barbee's charge. She lurched to her feet, and stumbled painfully
off the stoop.

"Let's
go, Barbee!" she cried apprehensively. "The woman has too
much of our own dark blood—she's stronger than I thought. We
can't beat her, and silver, and the dog!"

She
fled across the lawn.

Barbee
ran after her. And the blind woman followed, moving with a swift
confidence that was terrible now. The far street light shone cold on
the brooch and the beads and the bracelets that were her invulnerable
armor and pale on her deadly blade.

"Take
'em, Turk!" she called fiercely to the dog. "Kill 'em!"

They
fled together, gray wolf and white, back down the empty street toward
the silent campus. Barbee felt numbed and ill from the shock of
silver against his jaw, and he knew the tawny dog would overtake him.
Its savage baying crept up close behind him, and he turned at the
corner of the campus to make a desperate stand.

But
the white bitch flashed back, past him. She ran in front of the dog
and danced away as it followed. She mocked its angry baying with her
own malicious yelping. Grinning redly, she lured it away from Barbee,
toward the empty highway beyond the dark campus.

"Take
'em, Turk!" the blind woman was screaming behind him. "Keep
'em for me!"

Barbee
shook himself and retreated uneasily from her. The racing wolf and
the pursuing dog were already gone from his sight, but her clean
scent and the dog's foul reek floated in the motionless cold air
behind them. He could hear the dog's deep-throated baying far ahead,
a dull note of frustration already marring its hot eagerness.

The
blind woman followed Barbee, running recklessly. Glancing
apprehensively back as he came to the highway, he saw her a full
block behind. She came to a drive that curved across the frosty lawn
as he watched her. Her black, staring lenses must not have seen the
curb, for she stumbled on it and fell full length on the concrete.