A Werewolf Among Us

released the energy in one puff. He said, 'At least, give me a chance to show you a few things. Come with me tomorrow when I go up into the mountains.'

'What will we find there?' St. Cyr asked.

'Gypsies,' Dane said.

'Native Darmanians?'

'Yes. But there is one old woman, especially, who may be able to convince even your bio-computer. Her name is Norya, and she knows all there is to know about these mountains.'

'To convince both halves of me, of the symbiote, she'll have to have facts, not tales, evidence and not superstition.'

'She has all of that, facts and tales, evidence and superstition.' He slid forward on the chair again, his charge of energy having apparently built up to full strength. 'Will you come along with me?'

St. Cyr was about to reply when the bio-computer insinuated a command, unvoiced, into the conversation: Go easy on the liquor; you need to think clearly; you may have to react suddenly. He looked at the glass in his hand and saw that he had finished all but half an ounce of Scotch in the last couple of minutes, though he had not realized that he was even sipping at it.

'Will you?' Dane asked again.

'What time?'

'After lunch; meet me in the garage on the first level.'

'Fine,' St. Cyr said.

'You won't regret giving me your time.'

Dane got to his feet as if something had sneaked up behind him and gouged him in the ribs; he laced his fingers and stretched his arms, cracking his large knuckles.

St. Cyr stood too, trying to think if there were something he should ask the boy, some new angle of questioning warranted by the circumstances, and his train of thought was derailed by a curious, abrupt bark that seemed to come from the direction of the patio. They both turned and looked, but saw nothing out of place.

Then the noise came again, longer this time, long enough to identify. It was a woman's scream.

'Betty!' Dane said.

'Where's her room?'

'Fourth level.'

'Let's go.'

The door opened at their approach, though not fast enough, forcing them to crouch and scuttle under it. They burst into the hallway and ran to the nearest elevator, found that it was in use, turned to a lift farther along the corridor and leaped inside of that. Dane punched a button on the control panel. The doors clapped shut, and the elevator dropped forty feet in one sickening lurch, grooved into horizontal rails and carried them sideways for a moment before opening its doors again on the main corridor of the fourth level. They stepped into the hall, listened, heard nothing.

That struck St. Cyr as being the worst thing they could have heard — anything but silence.

'This way,' Dane said.

He led St. Cyr to a side corridor where they came upon Hirschel, who was pounding at a concealed door and calling Betty's name.

'What happened?' the cyberdetective asked.

The hunter shook his head. 'I was going into my room upstairs when I heard her scream; knew immediately who it was. I just got here a moment ago.'

'Is there any way to open the door?' St. Cyr asked.

Dane said, 'We have private voice-coded locks. But Teddy can get in if he has to.'

'Call him, then.'

'No need, sir,' Teddy said close behind them. He had drifted down the corridor without making a sound. 'If you'll stand back, I'll get you in.' When they followed his instructions, he slid to a point just under the recessed slot that marked the entrance, and he emitted a high, keening tone that was almost beyond the range of human hearing. The door slid open at this unsyllabled command.

At the far end of the corridor Jubal Alderban appeared, dressed in pajamas and a robe, his head bent forward and his shoulders hunched nearly to his ears, not running and yet not taking his time, either. He seemed afraid to react — as if, running, he would generate the reason he had to run, and if walking, he would somehow anger the Fates by taking their portents too casually. Alicia followed him, plainly tired, resigned.

'Keep them out of her room,' St. Cyr told Hirschel.

He and Dane went into the suite, where only a table lamp burned near a writing desk, leaving most of the room in deep shadow.

'Betty?' Dane called.

She did not reply.

'The patio,' St. Cyr told him, indicating the open glass doors.

Dane started forward.

'Wait!' St. Cyr dipped into his chamois holster and drew his pistol. 'You stay well behind me.'

'My sister has just—'

'Stay behind me,' St. Cyr said, his voice loud but brittle, no tone to debate. 'I'm not one of the family, not marked like the rest of you seem to be.'

Reluctantly, Dane obeyed, falling into step behind the detective as St. Cyr crossed the room and stepped through the double glass doors. As he placed one foot on the patio, the detective turned and shoved him backwards into Betty's room, almost knocking him down.

'What's the idea—'

'She's dead,' St. Cyr told him. He blocked the patio entrance.

'Betty?'

'Yes.'

Dane tried to say something, moved his lips without making a sound.

'No need for you to see her.'

Slowly the boy's face dissolved, working its way from fear into horror, slowly through the horror into an emotion that would last, into grief. In a few minutes, it would not be a face any longer, just a pale wet mass of doughy flesh.

St. Cyr told him to get the police and to make it quick.

Dane turned slowly and, numbed, not nearly so agile as he had been only a short while ago, started for the door.

St. Cyr added: 'And tell everyone to stay together, right in the corridor outside. No one is to wander off by himself. If Tina hasn't heard the commotion by now, two of you go and fetch her back here.'

Dane nodded and went through the open doorway, weaving from side to side; he bawled something unintelligible to the others.

St. Cyr turned away from him and walked onto the patio again, careful not to touch anything or to step in the blood. He looked at the corpse and fought down the nausea it caused. Several very sharp tines — claws? — had caught her at the base of her slim neck, just above the collarbone, gouged deep and then ripped straight up with awful force, nearly tearing her head loose.

Everywhere: blood. Blood looked black in the darkness.

At the patio railing, not daring to lean against the bars for fear of smearing some trace of the killer, St. Cyr looked down on the well-kept lawn, at the lumps of shrubbery, the well-groomed trees and the hedge-bordered flagstone walkways. It was all so manicured, so still and perfect in outline, that it might have been made of wax, a stage setting. He looked beyond the boundaries of the estate, at the rangier valley floor where all manner of scrub grew, beyond that at the foothills and the mountains in the distance, the peaks from which that afternoon's dark thunderhead clouds had come. So far as he could see in the dim light of the two tiny moons, nothing moved in that adumbrative landscape.

He knelt beside the corpse and peered into the wide, glassy eyes that stared at the patio ceiling. Her fixed stare reminded him of the trophies on Hirschel's wall, and from there it was an easy second step to visualize Betty's