Darker Than You Think (46 page)

"We'll
lick 'em!" Troy boomed aggressively. "You've come to the
right man, Barbee—I don't get beaten by anybody. Just give me
half an hour to get ready. I'll tell Rhodora that I'm mending
political fences—and she can go alone to Walraven's party. Use
the bathroom there if you want to wash up."

Barbee
was appalled by what he saw in the bathroom mirror. He looked as
gaunt and tired and bearded and begrimed and torn as Sam Quain had
been. And there was something else—something that somehow made
him think of those smiling skeletons of Homo lycanthropus the giant
snake had found. He wondered if the glass were faintly discolored and
slightly curved—he was sure he had never looked quite like
that.

An
unpleasant hunch jarred him out of that brooding puzzlement. He
hurried back into the den and carefully picked up the telephone on
the long desk. He was in time to hear Troy's voice.

"Parker?
I've got a man for you. This Barbee, that got out of Glennhaven and
ran down the Mondrick woman. He used to work for me, you know, and
now he's come to my house at Trojan Hills. No question the guy
belongs in the state asylum—he has been trying to feed me the
queerest yarn I ever heard! Can you come after him right away?"

"Sure,
Mr. Troy," the sheriff said. "Twenty minutes."

"Be
careful," Troy said. "I think he's dangerous. I'll try to
keep him in my den on the second floor." "Right, Mr. Troy."

"Another
thing, Parker. Barbee says he has seen Sam Quain—the man you
want for the Foundation murders. He says Quain is hiding in a cave up
Laurel Canyon, above Bear Creek. It might be a good tip— Barbee
and Quain are old friends, and they might be in the plot together.
With a little persuasion, Barbee might lead you to the cave."
"Thanks, Mr. Troy!"

"That's
all right, Parker. You know the
Star
stands
for law and order. All I want is the first look inside that green
wooden box. But hurry, won't you? I don't much like Barbee's looks."

"Okay.
Mr. Troy--"

Silently
Barbee replaced the receiver. The lush nudes on the walls were
dancing fantastically, and a gray mist seemed to thicken about him in
that long room. He stood numbed and swaying, shivering to the chill
of it. He knew he had betrayed Sam Quain—perhaps even to the
Child of Night.

For
this frightful blunder was all his own fault. Of course Sam Quain had
sent him here—but he hadn't dare tell Quain that April Bell was
a witch and rest on Troy her intimate. There was too much he had been
afraid to tell, and it was too late now.

Or
was it?

A
hard new purpose steadied him. He listened and slipped off his shoes
and padded silently out of the den. The door of Troy's bedroom across
the hall was slightly ajar, and he glimpsed the squat publisher
turning from a chest of drawers with a flat automatic in his pudgy
fist.

The
picture of a red-haired girl, standing on the chest, drew Barbee's
eyes from the gun. The girl was April Bell. Savagely, for a moment,
he wished that he were the great snake again. But no—he
shuddered away from the very notion. He didn't intend to change
again.

He
ran noiselessly down the stairs and slipped out through the side
door. The mud-splashed Foundation car stood where he had left it on
the drive. Quivering with eagerness, he started the motor as quietly
as he could and drove back to the highway before he clicked on the
lights.

He
turned west and tramped on the accelerator. Perhaps he could still
undo his blunder. If he could get back to the cave ahead of Sheriff
Parker and his deputies, Sam Quain might listen to his warning.
Perhaps they could carry the precious box back to the car and escape
together. Now that Troy knew of Quain's plan, they must go far from
Clarendon—because Preston Troy was very likely the Child of
Night.

The
lightning had ceased with the fall of darkness, but the cold south
wind blew steadily, laden with fine rain. The windshield wipers
slowed as he stepped oh the gas, and it was difficult to see the wet
road. Panic gripped him, for one skid on the slick pavement could
mean defeat for Sam Quain.

He
was already slowing for the rutted side road that led toward Laurel
Canyon when he knew that he was being followed. The steamy blur of
the rear vision mirror showed no lights behind, but his cold
intuition was too imperative to be ignored. Afraid to pause or turn,
he drove on, faster.

He
knew what was behind—as certainly as if he had seen the feral
flash of greenish eyes following. April Bell was after him, probably
in the guise of the white werewolf. She hadn't interfered with his
visit to Preston Troy because Troy was a leader of the clan. But now
she was going back with him to kill Sam Quain.

The
Child of Night had won.

A
cold sickness of despair took hold of Barbee, and he shivered at the
wheel. His dazed mind refused to make any rational effort to grasp
and follow the details of their dark conspiracy, but he knew the
reborn witch men were invincible. He couldn't go back to Sam Quain
and let April Bell use him for her killer again. He couldn't return
to Clarendon—that would mean a padded cell in the state asylum.
A hopeless panic drove him blindly on.

He
pushed the car on west toward the hills, just because he couldn't go
back. The headlamps made a white blur in the rain, and he saw a
strange procession marching through it. Mondrick's blind wife, tall
and terrible, leading her tawny dog and clutching her silver dagger.
Old Ben Chittum, fumbling with gnarled hands and failing to light his
pipe, struck dead inside. Fat Mama Spivak, wailing on the shoulder of
the fat little tailor. Nora Quain, her blonde hair disheveled and her
round face swollen with tears, leading little Pat, who was trying
stubbornly not to cry.

The
speedometer climbed to seventy. The vacuum driven wipers stopped as
he mounted the first foothills, and rain fogged the windshield. The
roaring car lurched and swayed on the wet pavement, flinging white
wings of water out of puddles. A farm truck with no lights burst
suddenly out of the mist, and he whipped narrowly around it.

The
needle touched eighty.

But
the sleek white bitch, he knew, was following close behind him—a
free mind web, riding the wind and swift as thought. He watched the
misted mirror, holding the accelerator down. There was nothing his
eyes could see—but his mind felt the malice of greenish eyes
leering.

The
hills rose higher and the curves were steeper, but he didn't slow the
car. This was the way the great saber-tooth had chased Rex Chittum.
He recalled the night-cloaked hills as the tiger's eyes had seen
them, and his nightmares began to haunt him.

Once
again he was the shaggy gray wolf, cracking the backbone of Pat
Quain's little dog in his jaws. He was the giant snake, flowing up
into the Foundation tower to crush out Nick Spivak's life. He was the
tiger, with the naked witch astride him, racing up this same road to
slash Rex Chittum's throat.

He
held the accelerator down and held the pitching car on the twisting
road, trying to run away from those evil dreams. He tried not to
think of Sam Quain waiting for help in that dripping cavern—until
Sheriff Parker's men should come. He watched the steamy mirror, and
he tried to get away.

For
a terrible sick eagerness was creeping upon him, more dreadful than
the sleek white wolf he felt behind. In the corner of the mirror was
a little sticker cut in the outline of a pterosaur—that winged,
reptilian monster of the geologic past was the emblem of an oil
company; and the sticker was marked with the mileage when the car was
last greased. The image of that flying saurian began to haunt Barbee.

Such
a gigantic winged lizard, he felt, would make a satisfying change of
shape. He would have fangs and claws to destroy all his enemies, and
pinions to soar away from all this unendurable confusion of troubles,
along with April Bell. He wanted to stop the car—but that urge
was insanity, and he fought it desperately.

He
held the roaring car on the road, racing to escape his fears, but the
sheets of rain glowing white in the headlamps seemed to make a kind
of prison in which no motion moved him. He tried to overtake his lost
sanity—to find some solid reality his mind could grasp —but
his fevered thoughts ran on endlessly, like some frantic creature
shut in a treadmill cage, and reached no goal.

Had
April Bell really snared him with black magic —or only with a
normal woman's lure? Had all the dreadful knowledge that he tried to
flee come from the cruel Ala-shan in that wooden box—or merely
in a bottle from the Mint Bar? Was he maniac or murderer —or
neither? Could Sam Quain really have been the killer, his motive some
treasure in that box, all his story of the witch folk merely the
clever invention of an expert anthropologist turned to crime? Or was
it truth and Preston Troy the Child of Night? Had Mondrick's blind
widow really been demented? What was the warning she had died trying
to bring Sam Quain?

Barbee
tried not to think, and tramped harder on the gas.

Sam
Quain, he recalled wearily, had warned him of all this. Knowledge of
Homo lycanthropus was horror and madness. Now he could never rest. He
could find no haven, anywhere. The secret hunters would trail him
down, just because he knew their secret.

The
car lurched over the last dark crest and roared down the grade
beyond. A yellow sign flashed in the headlamps, and he knew this was
Sardis Hill. His mind could see the treacherous hairpin turn ahead,
where the great saber-tooth had caught the linkage of probability to
slash Rex Chittum's throat. He could feel the wet tires already
skidding on the pavement; he needed no special perceptions to see the
stark probability of his own death here, but he didn't try to slow
the plunging car.

"Damn
you!" he whispered to the sleek she-wolf that he knew was close
behind. "I don't think you'll catch me now!"

He
laughed a little, triumphantly, at her crimson grin and Sheriff
Parker's men and that padded cell in the state asylum. He glanced at
the rain-blurred mirror, smiling defiantly at the Child of Night. No,
those secret hunters would never catch him now! He pushed harder on
the gas pedal and saw the hairpin curve flash out of the rain.

"Damn
you, April!" He felt the wheels slide and didn't try to stop
them. "I don't think you can make me change again."

Skidding
swiftly sidewise, the car was going off the wet pavement. The wheel
twisted viciously in his hands, and he let go. The car shuddered
against some boulder at the edge of the asphalt and went spinning
into the dark chasm beyond. Barbee relaxed happily, waiting for the
crash.

"Good-bye,"
he breathed to the white were-wolf.

CHAPTER
TWENTY

The
Child
of
Night

The
pain was less than Barbee had feared. The silence of the long
spinning fall ended suddenly when the car struck a hard granite
ledge. Tortured metal screamed hideously, as if in mockery of human
agony. His body was seized and torn and crushed. For an instant the
torture was unendurable, but he scarcely felt the final impact.

After
the merest second of darkness, he was conscious again. One front
wheel of the car still spun above him; he could hear the diminishing
purr and click of the bearings. Liquid was splashing near him. The
fear of fire took hold of him when he smelled the raw reek of
gasoline, and he dragged himself feebly from beneath a cruel weight
of wreckage.