A werewolf among us Read Free Page A

moment, the sun shone through the break in the ubiquitous trees—then the dark branches and gray leaves enfolded the car once more.
     

TWO:
Rider in the Storm
     
    The Alderban mansion was built on the slopes of the last of the major foothills, in the shadows of the gray mountains. In five distinct steps, each fitted against the contour of the land, perfectly smooth and unseamed as if it had been carved from a single piece of blazing white stone, the house managed to appear more like a natural outcropping of the landscape than like the intruding hand of civilization.
    Teddy piloted the ground car into the irising mouth of the garage and parked it in a stall alongside five similar vehicles.
    "I'll show you to your room," he said.
    Five minutes later, by means of an elevator that moved both vertically and horizontally by turns, they reached the main hall of the topmost level of the house: deep carpet the color of untainted seawater; muted blue walls; indirect lighting, so indirect that he could not locate the source; paintings on both walls, all rather interesting at a glance, all signed by Tina Alderban; music, almost inaudible, gentle and soothing.
    Teddy palmed a wall switch, opened the door that appeared behind a sliding panel and showed the detective to his quarters: a comfortably furnished sitting room, a bedroom with a mammoth waterbed and a fireplace large enough to roast an ox, more of Tina Alderban's paintings, a private bath off the bedchamber complete with a Brobdingnagian sunken tub.
    "Will this do?" Teddy asked.
    "I'll try it for a day or so and see," St. Cyr said dryly. But his sarcasm was lost on the master unit.
    "If it doesn't suit, I am sure that something else can be arranged." Teddy floated to the door, turned and said, "Dinner will be served in two hours and twenty minutes, in the main dining room. You will find directions in the house guide in the top drawer of your nightstand."
    "Wait." St. Cyr said. "I'd like to talk to Mr. Alderban to get—"
    "That will come later," Teddy assured him. "Now, Mr. Alderban wishes that you rest from your journey."
    "I'm not tired, actually."
    "Then you may watch the thunderstorm, Mr. St. Cyr. Climicon has scheduled one for approximately six o'clock. It should already have begun to form."
    This time, when the robot assumed its air of dismissal, it was utterly inarguable. The door closed behind it; beyond the door, the concealing panel slid down the wall.
    St. Cyr, unable to imagine what else he should do to pass the time, afraid of growing bored again, went to the glass patio doors and discovered that they opened on
vocal
command. He stepped onto the slate-floored balcony, which was shielded from the elements by the slanted, spout-flanked, red-shingled roof. Below, a lush valley opened like the center of a flower, cut through by a blue stream of water, spotted with stands of pines and, now and again, a copse of gray-leafed trees.
    Above the valley was the storm.
    A towering bank of thunderheads had moved stolidly out of the east, black as a carboned anvil. A dozen quick, silvery Eyes of Climicon darted in and out of the dense clouds, drawing them forward with clever atmospheric chemistry.
    The thunderheads moved as fast as a freight train, across rails of air on wheels of vapor.
    St. Cyr pulled a chair to the railing and sat down, intrigued.
    Over the roof of the house, moving in from the mountains behind, a second storm front tagged after and sometimes swept across the spherical Eyes, bearing down on the deep evil of the thunderheads. This massive cloud formation was a softer color, more gray than black, more blue than purple.
    At ground level the wind had subsided, though it was clearly still a power at higher altitudes as it jammed the two centers of atmospheric disturbance into the area above the valley.
    St. Cyr realized that, in an incredibly small area, the wind appeared to be blowing from two entirely different directions, evidenced by the opposite line of drive