Free A werewolf among us by Dean Koontz Page B

of the Alderban house gleaming like milky jewels in the lush green land.
    He grew uneasy, however, as they rose into the last foothills and then onto the broken slopes of the mountains themselves. Here the pines were replaced by the odd gray-leafed trees that spread concealing branches over
the road and brought a false dusk.
    When St. Cyr asked what the trees were called, Dane said, "These are Dead Men."
    "Because of their color?"
    "Partly that." He hunched against the wheel and took his eyes from the road long enough to look at the low-hanging branches. "There's a native legend that says the souls of the dead pass from their graves into the roots of these trees, are drawn up the tree and sprout as leaves on the branches. When a leaf falls, it is indication that a dead man has been released from—well, purgatory."
    "Quite fanciful."
    "Anyway, since the natives call the trees Dead Men, we colonists have done the same. Somehow, even without the legend, it seems to fit them."
    St. Cyr leaned back and stared at the road, trying to forget the trees. "Anyway, I wish it were autumn. I could do without this sort of foliage."
    "They're never without leaves—except for two weeks in early spring and two more in late autumn. They grow two complete sets of cover in each calendar year."
    "No rest for Dead Men."
    "That's it."
    The trees closed in as if in response, blocked the sun as the road grew worse. The graveled path had abruptly given way to a muddy dirt track full of ruts, potholes and sucking pits of black muck. The Rover plowed forward through it all, whined as it shifted its own gears, roared farther up into the mountains, where it was always early evening.
     
    Two hours later, Dane said, "Not much farther now."
    They had traveled slightly more than forty miles on a hideously inadequate switchback road that always appeared to be crumbling dangerously on the outer edge whenever it was flanked by a precipice of any depth. Now, far up the mountain but beginning to descend into a hidden pocket in its interior, they left the valley and the last vestiges of daylight far behind. A roof lay over them, a great arch of gray leaves interlaced like handwoven thatch. Now and again a hole opened in that canopy, never larger than a yard square and generally much smaller than that. Where there was a break in the cover, the sunlight came down like liquid, cutting straight through the unrelieved darkness and illuminating only the spot on which it splashed.
    Dane had long ago turned on the headlights. The road had gotten progressively worse until it occasionally dropped a foot or more without warning. They ran into cross-ruts that jolted them like railroad ties, or like regular waves smashing beneath a ship.
    "If you've got to have werewolves," St. Cyr said, "this is the best place for them."
    Dane glanced at him, perplexed at his tone, decided not to answer.
    "Doesn't the family have a helicopter—with all else it has?"
    "Yes," Dane said.
    "Why not come up here in that?"
    "We couldn't put down anywhere nearer the village than an hour's walk; the trees are everywhere in these altitudes."
    St. Cyr closed his eyes and imagined that he was somewhere else, anywhere else.
    Shortly, Dane said, "Here we are."
    St. Cyr opened his eyes and saw a tiny round valley, the brink of which they had just passed. Dozens of neat campfires filled it, threw flickering shadows on colorfully painted trucks, trailers and tents. Now and then, as fuel was added to a fire and the flames leapt higher, a tongue of yellow light licked the low, gray roof of vegetation, ruining the illusion of a vast hall with a ceiling several miles overhead.
    "I'll bet Norya's expecting us," Dane said.
    St. Cyr had not seen him this enthusiastic before, grinning, his eyes bright.
    "You sent word that we'd be coming?" St. Cyr asked.
    "No. But Norya will know about us. She has certain powers…"
    The intelligent species native to Darma was not, in appearance at least, greatly different from