Darker Than You Think (28 page)

"Faster!"
she screamed on the screaming wind. "And we'll kill Rex Chittum
on Sardis Hill!"

He
shuddered beneath her and lay closer to the black road as he ran. The
dark hills wheeled beside them, as if carried on two turning
platforms. They passed the first pines; he caught the clean
fragrance, and his eyes could see every needle and cone, distinct in
the starlight.

Beyond
the pines, red tail lamps winked and disappeared again.

"There!"
the white girl called. "Catch him, Barbee!"

He
stretched himself again, and the dark hills flowed. His long muscles
ached and his pads were bruised and his heaving lungs breathed raw
pain, but he overtook the glaring red tail lamps that fled toward
Sardis Hill. He came up behind the car, grinding up the last long
grade toward the saddle of the pass.

It
was the little tan convertible, he saw, that Nora had bought while
Sam was away. The top was down in spite of the chill of the night—it
didn't work well, he remembered. Hunched over the wheel, bundled in a
black overcoat, Rex Chittum looked scared and cold.

"Good
work, Barbee," the girl purred. "Just keep up, till he
starts down the curve."

He
bounded on obediently. Gears snarled ahead as the little car labored
up the grade, and the air behind it was foul with hot rubber and
half-burned gasoline. Rex Chittum turned once at the wheel to peer
back apprehensively. His dark head was carelessly bare—
Barbee's eyes could see every curly hair, ruffled by the cold wind.
For all the gray fatigue on his face and the black stubble on his
chin and the shadow of dread in his narrowed eyes, he still looked
handsome as another Lil Abner.

Barbee
growled at the girl astride him.

"Must
we kill Rex?" he protested. "He always was such a good kid,
really. We went to school together, you know. We neither had much
money—Rex was always trying to lend me his last dollar, when he
needed it more than
I."

"Run,
Barbee," the girl murmured. "Keep up."

He
turned to snarl with deadly sabers.

"Think
of poor old Ben Chittum at the newsstand," he growled softly.
"Rex is all old Ben has left. He worked at all sorts of odd jobs
and went dressed like a tramp when they first came to Clarendon to
keep Rex in school. This will break his heart."

"Keep
running, Barbee." The white girl's voice was clear and sweet and
limpidly pitiless. "We must do what we must, because we are what
we are." Her cool fingers scratched his mighty shoulders. "To
save our own kind, and defend the Child of Night."

She
flattened against his fur.

"Run,
Barbee!" she screamed. "Keep in reach— we'll have to
stand the motor fumes. Wait now—stay just behind. Wait till
he's on the hairpin—till he's going a little faster. Wait till
the linkage of probability is strong enough to grasp—can't you
feel it growing? Wait! Wait—"

Her
long body stiffened against him. Her cool fingers tightened in his
shaggy fur, and her bare, clinging heels dug deep into his heaving
flanks. She was sweet against him, and the clear logic of this new
life conquered the dreary conventions of that old, dim existence
where he had walked in bitter death.

"Now,"
she screamed. "Spring!"

Barbee
sprang, but the little car drew away from him, speeding on the down
grade. His reaching claws caught only asphalt and gravel, and the hot
fumes choked him.

"Catch
him!" shrieked the girl. "While the link is strong enough!"

The
fever of the chase burned away his lingering compunctions. He spurned
the road and sprang again. His extended claws scratched and slipped
on enameled metal, but he managed to catch the leather upholstery.
His rear feet found the bumper. He clung to the lurching car,
crouching.

"Kill
him!" screamed April Bell. "Before the linkage snaps!"

Rex
Chittum turned again, below him at the wheel, peering back with dark,
anxious eyes. He shuddered in his bulky coat, to the bitter wind or
something else. He didn't seem to see the snarling saber-tooth. A
brief, stiff smile lighted his haggard, stubbled face.

"Made
it," Barbee heard his thankful murmur. "Sam said the danger
was—"

"Now!"
the girl whispered. "While his eyes are off the road—"

Swiftly,
mercifully, the long sabers flashed. Rex Chittum had been a loyal
friend to him in that dead, dim world behind, and Barbee didn't want
to cause him pain. The linkage of probability was still a dry
technical phrase to Barbee, but he could feel the warm yielding
tissues of the human throat his sabers slashed.

He
forgot the words, tasting the hot salty sweet of spurting blood and
giddy with its odor.

The
man's lifeless hands let go the wheel. The little car had been going
too fast—somehow, Barbee sensed, that fact had intensified the
link that let his long fangs strike home. Tires smoked on the
pavement and danced on the gravel, and the car left the road where
the hairpin bent.

Barbee
flung himself away from the plunging machine. He twisted in the air,
and dropped cat-like on all four pads, clinging to the slope with his
claws. The girl had lost her seat as the car lurched over beneath
them. She came down on the loose rocks beside him, clinging to his
fur with both frantic hands. He heard her gasp of pain, and then her
awed whisper: "Watch, Barbee!"

The
hurtling car, the motor still drumming and wheels spinning against
the empty air, seemed to fly almost above them. It turned three times
in empty space, and first struck the long rockslide a hundred feet
below them. It flattened and crumpled and rolled until finally a
boulder stopped it. The red, torn thing half under it made no
movement.

"I
thought the linkage would be strong enough," the tall girl
purred. "And you needn't worry over your own part, Barbee—the
police will never know that the broken windshield didn't slash his
throat. Because, you see, the probability that it would was all that
forged the linkage to enable your fangs to do it."

She
tossed the long red hair impatiently back of her bare shoulders, and
bent to feel her ankle. Her white face set with pain, and her long
greenish eyes turned uneasily toward the pale silver point of the
zodiacal light, rising in the dark hollow of the pass behind them.

"I'm
hurt," she whispered, "and the night is nearly gone.
Darling, you must take me home."

Barbee
crouched beside a boulder to help her mount again, and he carried her
back over the pass and down the long dark road toward Clarendon.
Light as his own footfalls when they set out, she now felt heavy as a
leaden statue. He lurched and swayed to her weight, shivering to a
sickening chill.

That
hot sweet taste of Rex Chittum's blood was a lingering bitterness in
his mouth. All his mad elation had fled. He felt cold and ill and
strangely tired, and he was afraid of the glowing east. He hated that
narrow, ugly prison sleeping on his bed, but he had to go back.

He
shook himself as he limped wearily on toward the greenish glow of
day, until April Bell protested sharply. He couldn't quite dislodge
his memory of that dull shadow of horror in Rex Chittum's eyes,
looking back through him before he struck, or forget the grief that
old Ben would feel.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

Hair
of
the Tiger

Barbee
woke late. The white glare of sunlight in the bedroom hurt his aching
eyes, and he rolled shuddering away from it before he remembered that
its deadly power was only a dream. He felt stiff and vaguely ill. A
dull, leaden weariness ached in all his body, and a clamor of agony
started in his head when he sat up.

The
shadowy dread in Rex Chittum's dark, unseeing eyes still haunted him,
and he couldn't forget the feel of soft skin and firm tendons and the
stiff tissues of the larynx slicing to his long sabers. He blinked
apprehensively about the narrow room, glad to see no evidence that
any saber-tooth had ever walked there.

He
stood up uncertainly and tottered into the bathroom, holding his
head. The shower, as hot as he could bear it and then as cold, washed
some of the stiff pain out of him. A teaspoon of baking soda, stirred
in a glass of cold water, eased the queasy feeling in his stomach.

But
the face in his mirror shocked him. It was a bloodless gray, seamed
and drawn, the eyes deep-sunken and red-rimmed and glittering. He
tried to smile, just to light the dark strangeness of it, and the
pale lips twitched at him sardonically. That was a lunatic's face.

He
reached a shuddering hand to change the angle of the cheap mirror,
hoping to correct some accidental distortion. The result was still
unpleasant. The putty-colored face looked too gaunt, the raw-boned
skull too long. He had better get more vitamins, he told himself
uneasily, and drink a good bit less. Even a
...
shave might help, if he could manage not to nick him self too deeply.

The
telephone rang as he fumbled with his razor.

"Will?
... This is Nora Quain." Her voice was sick. "Brace
yourself, Will. Sam just called me from the Foundation—he
worked there all night. He called to tell me about Rex. Rex started
to drive to State College last night—in our car, remember. He
must have been driving too fast—too nervous, maybe, about that
broadcast he meant to make. Anyhow, the car turned over on Sardis
Hill. Rex was killed."

The
telephone fell out of Barbee's hands. He dropped weakly on his knees,
and groped for it with queerly numb fingers, and picked it up again.

"—ghastly,"
Nora's low, hoarse voice was rasping. "Anyhow he died instantly,
the state police told Sam. His head was cut almost off. The edge of
the windshield, the police said. It's a terrible thing, and I—I
almost blame myself. You know the brakes weren't very good—and
I didn't think to tell him."

Barbee
nodded at the receiver mutely. She didn't know how terrible it was.
He wanted to scream, but the stiff constriction in his dry throat
wouldn't even let him whisper. He shut his aching eyes against the
cruel white glare from the window, and saw the handsome haggard face
of Rex again, grown bitterly reproachful in his recollection, the
brown fearful eyes still peering through him unseeingly.