Darker Than You Think

by Jack Williamson

  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 t
he 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.

  Barbee felt a brief impulse of pity. The unexpected fall, he knew, must have bruised her painfully. In another moment she was up, however, limping after him desperately. He saw the glint of starlight on her bright blade and ran again, turning right down the highway on the hot mingled scent of the wolf and the dog.

  The next time he paused to look back, under the blinking traffic signal where Center Street crossed the highway, the blind woman was far behind. A lone car was drumming down the road toward them. Barbee ran hard from the glare of its headlights until they became too painful, and then crouched in an alley until it roared past. When he rose to look back again, he couldn't see Rowena.

  The doleful baying of the dog had drawn far ahead of him, and presently he lost it under the rumble of the mills and the steam-hiss and steel-clatter of the railroad yards. Still he could follow the trailing scents of the pursuit, and they led east through a maze of poor cross streets, until he came into the yards.

  The odors of dog and wolf were thinned there with the hot stink of engine grease and the dry bite of cinders and the reek of creosoted ties, diluted with the sharp sulphurous acid of coal smoke. Yet he kept the trail until a switch engine came chuffing down the tracks to meet him, a brakeman standing on the step.

  Barbee sprang aside, but an accidental blast of steam roared around him, sweeping away every scent except its own hot, wet reek of oil and metal. Blind to him, the brakeman spat accidentally near him, but even that sharp tobacco pungence was carried away by the steam. The trail was broken.

  He trotted in a weary little circle on the parallel tracks, sniffing hopefully. His nostrils found nothing except steam and steel and creosote and the bitterness of half-burned diesel fuel, all overladen with the settling chemical stenches from the industrial district.

  He cocked his shaggy ears, listening desperately. The clangor of the switch engine was diminishing down the tracks. Steam hissed and machines clattered in the roundhouse. The rumbling of the mills made a dull background of sound. Far in the east, beyond the river, he heard the whistle of a train coming in. But he couldn't find the voice of the dog.

  Sharp pain struck his eyes as he looked at the east; warning pangs throbbed through his head. The tall mill stacks were long black fingers, spread against the first greenish glow of dawn. The white bitch was lost from him, and deadly day was near; it suddenly occurred to him that he didn't know how to go home to his body.

  He was trotting aimlessly on across the bright cold rails when the baying came again, slow and hopeless now, from toward the mills. He ran down the yards toward the sound, keeping between two lines of standing boxcars that shut out part of the increasing, painful light.

  He could see the white bitch at last, loping back toward him with a lithe and lazy-seeming grace. She had led the chase in a clever circle, but she must be exhausted now, or weakening before the lethal light, because the dog was gaining swiftly. The baying turned sharper, quicker in tempo. It became an eager yelping, triumphantly excited.

  Barbee ran out from the standing cars to meet the bitch.

  "You rest," he gasped. "I'll lead the dog."

  He wasn't sure he could lead it far, because the dawn stung through him with its cruel, increasing radiation, and his weary body still felt stiff from that shock of silver. But the sleek she-wolf was his own kind, and he dropped back to draw the chase away from her.

  "No, Barbee!" she called quickly. "It's late—we must stay together now."

  He ran on beside her, too weary to ask what she meant to do. The glare of the east was mounting, and Barbee turned aside toward the river lowlands, when they came out of the yards, thinking to gain a little shelter from the light in the tangled thickets there.

  "This way, Barbee!" The she-wolf stayed on the tall embankment. "Keep with me."

  Frantically he scrambled back up the weed-grown slope, and raced to overtake her. The tawny dog was close behind, yipping breathlessly with each leap, the gray light glinting on its deadly collar. Barbee fled from it, straining to keep up with the white wolf's lazy fleetness.

  The dark river was close ahead. The stale reek of its muddy banks caught his nostrils, and the sharpness of rotting leaves. The wind brought him a rank whiff of the city disposal plant, and he could smell the acrid unpleasantness of chemical wastes from the mills in the flat, black water.

  Beyond the river, the white flame of dawn became terrible in the sky. His eyes dimmed and burned, and his body shrank from the driving light Grimly, he raced to overtake the lean white bitch. Somewhere far ahead, the train wailed again.

  They came to the narrow bridge, and the white wolf trotted out across the ties with delicate, sure feet. Barbee hung back, filled with an old, vague terror of running water. The great yelping dog, however, was almost upon him. Shuddering, careful not to look down upon the black sleekness of the far water, he picked his way out across the bridge. The dog followed recklessly.

  Barbee was midway of the span when the rails began to sing. The train's whistle screamed again, and its cruel headlamp burst around a curve, not a mile ahead. An impulse of panic checked him, but the plunging dog was close behind. Frantically, he raced on to beat the train.

  All the seeming weariness of the white bitch had vanished, now. She drew far ahead, a fleet white shadow. He ran desperately after her, beside the purring, shivering steel. The air trembled, and the bridge shuddered. He saw her waiting for him, sitting on her haunches beside the pounding track, laughing at the dog.

  He flung himself down beside her in the dusty wind of the thundering train. Faintly, he heard the dog's last howl of fear. The bitch smiled redly at the small splash of its tawny body in the black water, and shook the cinders out of her snowy fur.

  "That will do for Mr. Turk," she murmured happily. "And I think we can take care of his wicked mistress just as neatly, when the time comes—in spite of all her silver weapons and her mongrel blood
!"

  Barbee shuddered, cowering down beside the embankment, away from the burning east. The steamy dust was thinning, and the humming of the rails began to fade. He thought of Rowena Mondrick falling on the drive and limping on again; and pity struck him, sharp for an instant as his fear of her silver dagger.

  "We can't!" He shivered. "Poor Rowena—we've already hurt her enough."

  "This is war, Will," the white bitch whispered. "A war of races, old as mankind and our own. We lost it once; we won't again. Nothing is too cruel for such mongrel traitors to our blood as that black widow. We've no more time tonight, but I imagine we've already upset her plan to warn Sam Quain."

  She stood up gracefully.

  "Now it's time to go home." She trotted away from him, along the tracks. " 'Night, Barbee!"

  Barbee was left alone. The flame of the east was searing through him now, and a cold dread possessed him, for he didn't know how to go back. Uncertainly, he groped for his body.

  He didn't know the way. Yet he was dimly aware of his body, somehow, lying stiff and a little chilled across the bed in his little place on Bread Street. He tried awkwardly to possess and move it, a little as if he sought to awake from a dream.

  That first effort was feeble and fumbling as a child's first step. Somehow it was intolerably painful, as if he overtaxed some faculty never used before. But the very pain spurred him. He tried again, frantic to escape the greater pain of day. Once more he felt that curious change and flow—and he sat up painfully on the edge of his own bed.

  The narrow little bedroom had grown cold, and he felt chilled and stiff. A queer, heavy numbness possessed him, and all his senses were strangely dulled.

  He sniffed eagerly for all those odors that had been so richly revealing to the gray wolf, but his human nostrils, choked with cold, caught nothing at all. Even the whisky scent was gone from the empty glass on the chiffonier.

  Aching with fatigue, he limped to the window and put up the blind. Gray daylight had dimmed the street lamps—he shrank back from the bright sky, as if it had been the dreadful face of death.