A Werewolf Among Us Read online

  St. Cyr turned toward the girl, waiting for something more. She sat in an overstuffed fur chair, made more petite by the size of it. She was dark like Dane, though more olive than brown, and her face was more open, her eyes more wide-set than his, her lips sensuous and heavy, whereas Dane's lips were thin and serious. Her black hair dropped straight over her shoulders, curled around the tips of her small breasts, as if accentuating them. At eighteen, she was one of the most interesting women that St. Cyr had ever seen. He wondered if he would have an opportunity to seduce her before the case was finished…

  Negative, the bio-computer informed him.

  Still and all, she was a charming creature, with—

  Negative. Too many familial complications would result from such a rash act, obstructing your conduct of the case.

  "I'll tell him the whole thing," Jubal said, sliding forward on his chair. The seat and arms of the chair rippled, gauged his new position, firmed up around his buttocks and thighs.

  "No, Jubal," Hirschel interposed.

  He had only spoken once before that evening, and then only to offer St. Cyr an obligatory welcome. He was quite like Jubal, heavy in the chest and shoulders, over six feet tall, leonine with a mane of hair and muttonchop sideburns. The chief difference was in the lines of his face. Where Jubal was soft, his cheeks smooth and the angles of his face pleasantly rounded, Hirschel was hard, cut deep by character lines, his skin tanned and leathery. Also, while Jubal was white-haired yet somehow young, Hirschel was black-haired and old, infinitely old despite his young man's constitution. Perhaps, actually, Hirschel was only a couple of years Jubal's senior, and certainly no more than a decade older; in experience, however, in knowledge and cunning, he was Jubal's great-great grandfather.

  The simple statement of the negative had drawn everyone's attention to the older man. He said, "I'll tell it, because I don't have nearly the degree of emotional involvement that you do, Jubal."

  Jubal nodded. "Go ahead."

  Hirschel turned to St. Cyr, smiled slightly, looking quite unlike the rider in the storm, the man with the pig heads slapping bloodily at his hip. Succinctly, he related much the same story that St. Cyr had gotten from Teddy, though with no extrapolation whatsoever.

  "You were living here at the times of both murders?"

  "Yes," Hirschel said. "I arrived a month before Leon's death; needless to say, a good part of this visit has not been a happy time for me." However, if he actually did agonize over the deaths of his niece and nephew, he did not indicate his inner turmoil in any way beyond this brief statement. He appeared healthy and happy, without the dark lines of anxiety around the eyes and mouth that characterized both Jubal and Alicia Alderban.

  Correctly projecting the line of thought St. Cyr was then pursuing, Hirschel said, "And, also needless to say, that puts me on your list of suspects."

  "How absurd! "Jubal said.

  "Really, Hirschel," Alicia said, "I doubt that Mr. St. Cyr—"

  "But he does suspect me," Hirschel said. "And he should. Just as he suspects all the rest of you."

  Jubal seemed twice as outraged at this. He turned to St. Cyr, his thick white brows drawn together over his eyes in one snowy bar. "Is this true? Do you think we'd murder our own children — brothers and sisters?"

  "Hirschel is correct," St. Cyr affirmed. "I suspect everyone until I have the data to logically eliminate suspects."

  "I won't have it that way," Jubal said, putting down his cordial.

  "Of course you will," Hirschel said quickly, before St. Cyr could speak. "You wanted a cyberdetective because you wanted a complete investigation, a thorough investigation. Now, you're going to have to take the sour with the sweet."

  "Hirschel, after all—" Jubal began.

  Then something he saw in the older man's expression cut him short. His voice died in volume and conviction until he only sighed, shrugged his shoulders and picked up the tiny glass of liqueur again.

  St. Cyr wondered what had passed between the two men. Clearly, Hirschel exercised some power over Jubal, though he was not a tenth as wealthy as the younger man and hardly old enough to pull a routine about being older-and-wiser-than-thou. Was it only his personality, so much more dominant than Jubal's, that had quieted the family head, or was there something else here? File it for consideration.

  Turning from the hunter, St. Cyr addressed the entire family. "Whose room is nearest the one Leon had?"

  "Mine," Betty said.

  She was demure, not quite as stunningly attractive as her sister but lovely in her own right. Her hair was yellow, her eyes blue, her features Roman in the traditional "classic" beauty that made good marble statues. When she spoke, her voice was so soft that St. Cyr found himself leaning forward in his chair to hear what she said.

  "You sleep in the room next to the one in which Leon was killed?"

  "That's right."

  "You were in your room that night?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you hear anything?"

  "No." She looked down at her hands, tried to hide them in each other, fingers kicking like spider legs. "We have such excellent soundproofing here."

  Half an hour later, St. Cyr had asked fifty questions and listened to fifty variations of Betty's excuse: "The walls are thick here"; "Sound doesn't travel well from one level of the house to another"; "After all, Mr. St. Cyr, the gardens are huge, and even if I happened to be out for a stroll at the same time poor Dorothea was murdered, I could hardly be expected to see or hear…" The bio-computer stored the answers, replayed them to itself, juxtaposed them, searched for a slip-up in someone's story, an odd clash of details. It found nothing out of the ordinary. St. Cyr, absorbing the family's rich emotional impressions, achieved no more than his mechanical comrade. The fifty questions might just as well never have been asked, the answers never given.

  "I believe," the cyberdetective said, "that will be all for the night. In the morning I'll want to see the dead boy's room, the place in the garden where Dorothea died, other things." He turned to Hirschel as the others stood to go, and he said, "If I might have a word or two with you, I would appreciate it."

  "Certainly," Hirschel said, sitting down again.

  Jubal sat down too.

  St. Cyr looked at the white-haired patriarch, then at Hirschel. "I wanted to speak with you alone."

  "Come along to my quarters," Hirschel said, rising, unfolding like a paper toy until he towered a few inches above St. Cyr.

  They had reached the door to the drawing room when Jubal spoke to their backs. "You're wrong."

  St. Cyr turned. "Perhaps."

  "You should be looking outside the family."

  "I will."

  "You're wasting time."

  "Perhaps."

  Jubal looked at Hirschel, saw that same undefined power that had quieted him before, was quieted again by it.

  "See you in the morning," Hirschel said.

  "In the morning," Jubal echoed.

  They opened the door, left the room, closed the door behind them.

  "You must forgive him," Hirschel said.

  "For what?"

  "His behavior, of course. It's just that he's so on edge."

  "I understand that; it's natural; there's nothing to forgive."

  Hirschel nodded, turned. Over his shoulder, as he walked for the nearest elevator, he said, "Come along."

  * * *

  Hirschel's rooms were no larger or smaller than St. Cyr's and were also on the fifth level of the mansion. The color scheme here was browns and greens instead of various shades of blue, providing an effect not unlike an open forest, heavy boughs, grasses, growth. The hunter dearly belonged here.

  The walls were decorated with the mounted heads of half a dozen animals: deer, large cats, and a wolf that must have been a hundred pounds heavier than Hirschel himself. Each of the creatures stared over the heads of the two men, its gaze fixated on something beyond the walls of the room.

  "Will the boar heads go here?" St. Cyr asked
.

  Hirschel looked surprised.

  "I was on my balcony, watching the storm, when you rode in this afternoon."

  Hirschel smiled, looked at his trophies. "Yes, the pigs will give the collection balance; nothing can look more fierce than a wild boar with its teeth bared."

  "Could it have been a wild boar that killed Dorothea in the garden?"

  "Hardly. You're forgetting the wolfs hair they found. Besides, was it a wild boar that came quietly into the house, sought out Leon and slaughtered him without a sound?"

  "No," St. Cyr said. "But was it a wolf either?"

  Hirschel shrugged.

  'You don't believe this du-aga-klava story, do you, as Dane does?"

  "I think it sounds like nonsense. However, I've lived long enough to know never to completely discount any possibility."

  He sounded, St. Cyr thought, like Teddy, as if he were purposefully trying to plant certain doubts in the cyberdetective's mind.

  He is only properly qualifying his responses.

  "As I understand it, everyone in the family has some artistic talent or other."

  Hirschel said, "Yes, even Teddy."

  "Teddy?"

  Hirschel slumped into an antique chair that made no attempt to form itself around him, motioned St. Cyr to the chair across from his. "Jubal's main interest is sculpture, but he designs cutlery, dishes, goblets, what-have-you, as a diversion. In order to spare himself all the manual labor involved in molding and machining the finished product, he programs his designs into Teddy. The Reiss Corporation, as an option, has especially designed and programmed Teddy to perform well in all phases of silver-working. He has his own workshop on the first level, near the garage."

  "And you?" St. Cyr asked.

  "No talents," Hirschel said, smiling. The cyberdetective noticed that the large, rugged man curiously resembled the head of the wolf behind him when he smiled.

  Immaterial.

  "Why is that?"

  "I'm not a resident in the house, merely a biannual guest. I never came under Jubal's influence when he was on this hypno-keying kick many years ago."

  "You sound as if you thought that hypno-keying was a bad idea."

  "Depends on what you want out of life," Hirschel said.

  "What do you want?"

  "The same thing that I traipse from world to world in search of every year of my life — adventure, danger, excitement."

  "And the artist has none of that?"

  "Only secondhand."

  "If you have so little in common with the family, why do you return every other year to visit?"

  "They're my only relatives," Hirschel said. "A man needs a family now and again."

  St. Cyr nodded. "How old are you?"

  "Sixty."

  "Six years older than Jubal." When Hirschel nodded, the cyberdetective asked, "Are you wealthy?"

  The big man evidenced no dissatisfaction with St. Cyr's prying. "Quite wealthy," he said. "Though I'm not as wealthy as Jubal, by even a fraction." He smiled the wolfs smile again and said, "That still makes me suspect, doesn't it? Perhaps even more than before."

  "Are you mentioned in Jubal's will?"

  "Yes," Hirschel said, still smiling. "I receive the least of all those included — unless, of course, I'm the only survivor."

  St. Cyr looked at the wolf. For a moment he felt that its glass eyes had shifted their dead gaze, stared directly at him. He blinked, and the eyes were where they should be, fixed on the air, cold, dry.

  "I guess that will be all for tonight," he said, standing.

  Hirschel did not rise to see him to the door, but the panel slid open as he took a few steps toward it.

  At the door St. Cyr turned and looked at the wolf, looked at Hirschel, said, "The wolfs head there…"

  "What of it?"

  "It's one of those now extinct?"

  "Yes."

  "And is that how the du-aga-klava is supposed to appear in its animal shape?"

  Hirschel turned in his chair and examined the long-snouted, wickedly-toothed beast. "Pretty much that way, I suppose, though a deal larger and far more ugly."

  St. Cyr cleared his throat and said, "Why did Climicon label the wolf for extinction?"

  "It was a predator, a very dangerous animal," Hirschel said "It was not at all the sort of thing you'd want running loose in the woods on a rich man's paradise."

  "Then why let the boars live?"

  Hirschel clearly had not considered that conflict before. He looked surprised, turned to examine the wolf again, frowned. "You've got a good point there, for a boar can be twice as deadly and mean-tempered as any wolf."

  "No ideas?"

  Hirschel shook his head; his black hair bounced, fell back into place. "You'll have to ask Climicon about that, but they surely had their reasons."

  "I'll find out in the morning," St. Cyr said.

  "Let me know what you learn."

  "I will. Good night."

  St. Cyr stepped out of the room, oriented himself by the paintings on the walls and walked the length of the long corridor to his own suite.

  In his bedroom, stretched out full length on the enormous waterbed, he said, "I've still got nothing concrete to go on, no base to build the case from."

  A few things.

  "Nothing."

  Bits and pieces.

  "Like Hirschel's curious resemblance to the wolf when he smiles?"

  Immaterial.

  FOUR: An Ugly Incident

  "Visitor, Mr. St. Cyr," the house computer said.

  The cyberdetective sat up, swung to the edge of the shifting bed and stood. "Who is it?"

  "Mr. Dane Alderban," the house told him.

  "Just a minute."

  "Holding, sir."

  St, Cyr took off his suit jacket and draped it over a chair, put the largest of his unopened suitcases on the bed, opened it, quickly dumped out the contents, ran his fingers along the cloth lining and watched it curl back from the concealed pocket in the bottom. He removed a handgun and a chamois shoulder holster, amused as he always was that this one requirement of his profession had changed little in a thousand years. He buckled the holster on, put the gun in the smooth sleeve of it, slipped into his coat again.

  "Still holding, sir."

  "On my way right now," St. Cyr said, wondering what Dane Alderban had to say on the sly, away from the rest of the family. He stepped out of the bedroom, pulled the door shut, crossed the sitting room as he called for Dane's admittance.

  The door slid up, and the young man entered the room fast, stopped beyond St. Cyr, and looked quickly around as if he expected to find someone else there.

  "You'll have to excuse the delay," St. Cyr said. "I was dressing for bed when you called."

  Dane raised a long-fingered hand and impatiently waved away the suggestion of an apology. He sat down in the largest easy chair in the room, by the patio doors, barely able to contain the nervous energy that normally kept him on his feet, pacing, moving. He said, "I've come here to make a suggestion that could put an early end to this whole affair — if you'll have the good grace to listen to me and to think about what I have to say."

  St. Cyr went to the bar, folded it open, looked at the contents and said, "A drink?"

  "No, thank you."

  St. Cyr poured Scotch, put the bottle back, popped two cubes into the glass and to hell with bruising the liquor, sat down in the chair that faced Dane's from the other end of the closed patio doors, putting a long swath of darkness on one side of them. "My job is to listen to people, consider what they tell me — and put a swift end to the case."

  Dane sat on the edge of the chair, his elbows on his knees, his head bent down, looking up at St. Cyr over the ridge of his brow, just as he had done in the drawing room earlier. It almost seemed that he affected the position to conceal most of the expression on his face.

  He said, "St. Cyr, I am thoroughly convinced that the native legends are the only answer to the murders."

  "The du-aga-kla
va, a werewolf among us?"

  "Yes."

  St. Cyr did not reply.

  "That thing you wear, the other half of you…"

  "The bio-computer?"

  "Yes. It rejects the notion of werewolves, doesn't it, discards the consideration right off?"

  St. Cyr took a sip of Scotch, found it smooth and hot, a good brand. "It doesn't, strictly speaking, discard any probability. It assigns degrees of possibility to every theory that comes up, that's all."

  "To werewolves — a very low degree of possibility."

  "Most likely."

  Dane drew even more to the edge of his chair, increased the odd angle from which he carried on the conversation. "So low a degree, in fact, that it doesn't give serious consideration to the idea at all."

  "It doesn't reason in absolutes," St. Cyr corrected, "neither negative nor positive absolutes."

  Suddenly the young man sighed and slid back in the easy chair, as if someone had tapped his skull and 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."