Riverwatch

Her tongue flicked forward, caressing her upper incisors, feeling their length and sharpness.

What the hell?a distant part of her mind wondered.

A voice not her own spoke, and a chill ran up and down her spine at the icy menace in its words.

“Give me the stone,” it said.

A hand, her own but not her own, reached forward and uncurled its fist.

She saw with growing horror that it wasn’t human.

There were only four fingers, each one tipped with a razor-sharp claw, and when they curled into the palm and back out again, gesturing, she heard them clicking together like the rasp of steel on steel.

Her breath caught in her throat as she tried to scream…

She awoke, gasping for air, the sound of her scream still ringing in her ears. Something clutched at her out of the darkness, twined itself in and out of her legs, and she screamed again, thrashing her limbs frantically, fighting off whatever it was with strength born of desperate fright.

With a start she realized she was merely tangled in her bedsheets, the material clinging to her sweat-drenched skin.

“Oh, my God!” she said, her chest heaving as she fought to control the wild beating of her heart.

“It was a nightmare, just a nightmare,” she mumbled as she slumped back against the headboard, drained and exhausted.

Unlike most dreams, this one stayed with her, most of the details etched firmly in her mind. It had been shockingly real and frightening. She couldn’t imagine what had caused it; she hadn’t had such a vivid dream in years, certainly not one so violent.

Or so strange.

She sat up and glanced at the clock.

Three-thirty.

Hours before daylight yet.

She lay back down, willing her body to relax. In time her shaking finally stopped, and her breathing lost its ragged edge, returning to its normal rhythm.

Though she hadn’t expected to return to sleep that night, her exhaustion worked to her advantage. Eventually the gentle sounds of her own breathing lulled her to sleep as easily as a child listening to a mother’s lullaby.

At her breast the red gemstone shone brightly with a crimson light all its own.

16

PREMONITIONS

Katelynn awoke the next morning with a nagging suspicion that something was wrong. The dream remained with her still and all through breakfast images flashed before her, reminding her of the horror she’d seen. The face of the man she’d seen from the balcony kept playing itself over and over again, haunting her, until she knew she would have to do something about it.

Although she was reluctant to admit it to herself, she knew that face in her dreams.

She saw the scene again in her mind.

The open balcony doors.

The symbols etched out on the floor.

The man standing in the center of the room, blood covering his face and chest, a sword held in his right hand.

She’d seen both eager anticipation and sudden fear in his eyes.

Katelynn couldn’t deny it any longer. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that the man in her dreams had been Hudson Blake.

She saw enough in the local news and had even gone to his estate to try and interview him at the start of her thesis. She could still recall his butler’s haughty dismissal of her request and the way he’d slammed the door in her face.

What was Blake doing in her dreams?

Katelynn ate her breakfast, mulling it over, then picked up the phone and called Jake. She told him that she had something important to speak to him about, something that she had to do in person, and asked if they could meet. Jake agreed and told her he’d be at her place within the hour.

Good to his word, Jake arrived just on time. She let him in, and the two of them walked through the kitchen and out onto the deck, where they took seats next to each other on the patio chairs. It was a gorgeous morning, but the heat of the sun did nothing to thaw the chill in Katelynn’s bones.

“I want to go over to Riverwatch.”

Jake could see that she was agitated. “Why?”

“I want to try again to get Blake to give me an interview for my thesis. I thought maybe you could help out.”

Jake laughed. “Hell, Katelynn. The man can’t stand me. You’d probably have better luck going without me.”

“No, I don’t think so. He hired you, didn’t he? Maybe with you there he will be more apt to say yes.”

Katelynn didn’t like lying to Jake. He was a friend and deserved better, but she knew that if she told the truth, he would laugh in her face. Jake was too firmly rooted in reality to believe that something like premonitions could exist outside their weekly Swords and Sorcerers sessions. She wanted him there because she had a nagging suspicion that something would be horribly wrong when they arrived at the Blake estate. Jake had always been levelheaded in a crisis, and she needed that rock-solid support if it turned out that she was right.

He protested for several more minutes, but eventually Katelynn wore him down. He had the day off because of the continuing police investigation at the Stonemoor estate. He had yet to hear when they would be resuming work, so he could use that as a pretense for going to see Blake. Reluctantly he agreed, if for no better reason than the fact that he enjoyed her company and had nothing better planned for the morning.

Jake waited while she cleaned up her breakfast dishes, then they went out to the Jeep. Loki was waiting inside and Jake let him out to greet Kate for a moment before they all climbed back inside.

The ride to Riverwatch passed in companionable silence, with an occasional chuff from Loki at a passerby on the street whom he found particularly interesting. It was a sunny morning, and Jake was feeling pretty good about things in general. He had time off from work, money in his pocket, and good friends. He did his best not to think about yesterday’s events, not wanting to ruin the beginning of a potentially great day.

When they arrived at the estate, Jake pulled into the drive and down to the front of the house. He parked directly in front of the entrance, knowing that it would probably irritate Charles, which was okay by him, and got out of the Jeep. Katelynn did the same. Before she could shut her door, however, Loki pushed his way past, shot up the front steps, and began barking furiously at the door.

“Shit!” Katelynn exclaimed.

“Don’t worry about it.” Jake said, shutting his door. “Just leave the door open a minute, and I’ll get him back inside.” He called to the dog, fully expecting him to return. He’d trained the Akita well, despite the aggravation and the time it had taken. Having such a large dog made the training mandatory in Jake’s view, and since being trained Loki had always obeyed him. This time was no different. The dog stopped barking immediately and trotted back to Jake’s side. But instead of climbing back into the car, Loki stood close to Jake, his attention fixed on the mansion’s front door, growling low in his throat.

Jake had only seen him act this way on one other occasion, and that had been when a burglar had tried to break into his home. Something was wrong, that was clear.

Jake squatted down next to the dog. “What is it, boy? What’s in there?”

The Akita looked at him, then turned back to the door, growling once again. He took a step or two forward, looked back at Jake, and growled a third time.

“Something’s wrong, Katelynn. He never acts like this. I think we should go.”

“Go?” Katelynn asked. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the dog since he’d leapt from the car. A heavy, suffocating weight was slowly settling on her shoulders as she realized that her suspicions had been correct. Something was terribly wrong there, and Katelynn had a hunch she knew just what it was.

“We have to go inside,” she heard herself say. It sounded to her like her voice was coming from a distance, and she wondered if she’d even said it aloud.

Apparently she had. “Inside? What the hell for?” Jake replied.

“Someone might be hurt, Jake. We can’t just leave.”

“The hell we can’t. If it’s got Loki this upset, I’m not going inside.” He turned toward the Jeep, intending on doing just what he’d suggested, when Loki made his own opinion known. The dog dashed back up the steps and jumped up, putting his front paws against the door.

Much to everyone’s surprise, the door opened beneath him and dumped the dog into the foyer. With a cacophony of barking, the Akita disappeared inside.

“Oh, shit!” Jake exclaimed as he chased after him.

Katelynn followed.

Loki must have gone straight upstairs because once he was inside Jake could hear barking from somewhere above. He raced up the steps to the second floor. Loki’s barking became deeper, more strident, and Jake knew that the dog had found whatever it was he had been looking for.

Back in the foyer, Katelynn glanced around.

Instinctively she knew the house was empty. She knew it with a certainty that surprised her, and it only served to heighten her discomfort. She was frightened for both Blake and his servant, beginning to think that what she had seen in her dreams had been a premonition of harm for them both.

Somewhere above, the dog’s barking became more urgent.

Katelynn glanced into the closest rooms. If anyone had been in the house, they would have heard the commotion and come to investigate, but every room she checked was empty. Satisfied that her observation had been correct, Katelynn returned to the entryway and started up the steps to the second floor.

* * *

As Jake reached the second-floor landing, he glanced down the hall to find the dog standing in the entrance to the very last room. Loki stopped barking and stared at him, obviously waiting for permission before entering.

Jake was not going to give it.

“Come, boy,” he said firmly.

The dog stood his ground.

“I said, come.”

Loki paced back and forth, whining in his throat. It was clear he was not going to obey the command.

“You’re going to regret this,” Jake said through clenched teeth, his anger rising. The last thing he needed was to be caught in his employer’s house with his dog. He would be out of a job quicker than he could blink. Shaking his head in frustration, he started down the hall.

As soon as Loki saw that Jake was coming toward him, he turned back to face the room, but did not enter it.

When Jake reached the door, he saw why.

Katelynn came up the stairs, calling their names. She reached the second-floor landing and saw Jake and Loki down at the end of the hall. “What’s going on?” she called.

Jake jumped, then turned to face her. “Stay there, Katelynn. You don’t want to see this.”

“Don’t want to see what?” she asked, ignoring him.

She started down the hallway, her fear growing with each step.

Jake came forward and tried to stop her, but she slipped by his grasp, needing to know, needing to see.

The room was just as she’d seen it; the bookcases, the symbols drawn on the floor, the sword standing upright in the center of the room, except now the room seemed to have been splashed with blood. It was everywhere, and the stench of it must have been what drew the dog. Across the room, Katelynn could see the body of a small animal in the far corner. Through the open patio doors the lower portions of a man’s legs could be seen lying on the balcony.

Loki growled softly.

“Is he…?” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the question.

“I don’t know.”

“We’ve got to find out. What if he needs help?” It was the right thing to do, but in her heart Katelynn knew the man was already beyond help.

Jake nodded and started forward.

Katelynn watched as he made his way across the room and out onto the balcony. He disappeared from view behind the partially opened door and emerged a few moments later. He saw her looking at him and shook his head, letting her know there was no help to be given.

“It’s Blake’s butler,” he said, when he rejoined her. “We’d better find a phone and call the police.”

Taking hold of Loki’s collar, Jake led the way back down the stairs and into Blake’s study, where he knew he would find a phone. He gave the details to the 911 operator and was told to wait outside until the sheriff arrived.

Back in the Jeep, Jake thought about what he’d seen upstairs. He hadn’t really needed to go into that room, hadn’t really needed to discover if the man they’d seen on the balcony had been dead or alive.

He’d already known.

Once you’ve seen death up close,he thought,you can recognize it anywhere.

Despite the sun shining high overhead, the day was no longer as bright and beautiful as it had been when they’d left Katelynn’s.

It had gotten considerably darker.

In the backseat, Loki looked up into the sky and growled low in his throat.

17

RIVERWATCH

Damon spent his first twenty minutes on the scene interviewing Jake and Katelynn. After telling them he’d be in contact shortly to follow up, he let them go home and turned his attention to the scene itself. He had had a lurking suspicion that they’d missed something at the first two crime scenes, something that would provide that one important clue he so desperately needed. This time he intended to take no chances.

If it’s here,he thought with grim determination,we’ll find it.

He ordered the deputies to take up watch at the gates to the estate with the command that they admit no one but the ME and the state police forensic squad. Officers searched the house thoroughly looking for any sign of the owner, to no avail. Hudson Blake was quickly put at the top of the sheriff’s suspect list, and an APB was put out on him with a “wanted for questioning” alert.

It wasn’t long before Strickland arrived, alerted personally as he’d been by Damon via radio just after the call came in. Ed came up the drive in a hurried walk, his black doctor’s bag in one hand and his crime scene kit in the other.

Damon turned toward the house and matched his stride, filling Ed in on the details as they went in.

On the second floor they stopped at the entrance of the room before entering, letting initial impressions sink in. Roughly sixteen feet per side, the square room looked to have once been a study. A desk was pushed flat against the wall off to the right, next to a small table. Bookshelves partially lined two of the other walls. A glass-shelved display case, filled with medieval weaponry, stood between the bookshelves. The fourth wall, directly opposite the doorway in which they were standing, was split in the center by a set of open French doors.

In the middle of the room a large circle had been drawn on the polished wood floor with some kind of white powder or sand. In the center of that circle, a second design had been similarly laid out, but outlined in a dark substance. A bejeweled sword was thrust point first into the floor inside the latter. A dark stain coated the blade’s surface and a section of the floor several feet wide surrounding the tip of the blade. The light from the morning sun coming in through the open balcony doors glistened off the precious stones set in the weapon’s hilt and cast a long, cross-shaped shadow across the floor in their direction.

Beside him, Damon heard Strickland whisper, “What in the name of God…?”

Once Damon tore his gaze from the strange tableau in the center of the room, he noticed what had sparked Strickland’s outburst.

Small amounts of blood were splashed in odd places throughout the rest of the room: on the spines of a book, on the front of the desk, on the gossamer-like curtains that blew in the slight breeze coming through the open doors. The headless corpse of a small animal, possibly a cat, lay in one corner, as if carelessly tossed there. A small gilded cage lay discarded in the center of the room. A revolver rested nearby.

A man’s lower legs jutted out from behind one of the open balcony doors.

Thinking of the other recent crime scenes, Damon found himself hoping there was a body attached to that leg.

“Ed,” he said aloud, pointing out the limb to his companion, who was still staring in amazement at the condition of the room. The two men made their way to the balcony, being careful not to disturb anything as they crossed the room.

On the balcony they discovered the mutilated body of a middle-aged man. Like the Cummingses, large chunks of flesh were missing from the corpse. However, this time the killer had added a new twist. Several weapons, obviously taken from the weapons case in the next room, had been thrust violently into the body and left there, reminding Damon of pins in a pincushion. One corner of Damon’s mind began absently cataloging the weapons;that’s a broadsword, and an epee, and a dirk…. He shut the voice off quickly.

“Recognize him?” Strickland asked.

“No, but we’ve got a positive ID.”

Partially splashed with blood, the man’s face was twisted in a savage expression of fear and pain. Damon told Strickland that Jake had provided a confirmation that the man was Charles Turner, Blake’s butler.

Strickland set his bags down on a clean section of the balcony and opened one up. Withdrawing a pair of thick rubber gloves, he pulled them on and knelt next to the body to begin his examination.

Damon gave him a few moments to do the prelim, and asked, “What do you think?”

“No question it’s the same killer. Exterior soft organs gone; eyes, tongue, etcetera. Chest cavity penetrated, probably find a few organs missing from there as well once I open him up on the table. What I can’t figure are these weapons.”

“Pre or post?” Damon asked, referring to whether or not the weapons had been used while the victim was still alive.

Ed gave it some thought. “At a guess I’d have to say he was still alive when they were used. There’s some evidence of bleeding around the wounds themselves, though it is hard to be sure. From his facial expression there is no question the poor bastard suffered.” Ed shook his head in frustration. “Then again, they could all be postmortem. Wounds of that type should have bled one heck of a lot, yet the floor beneath him is practically blood-free.” He looked up at Damon. “I can’t say either way until I open him up.”

When Ed bent again over the body, Damon left him to his task and walked back into the room. He surveyed the damage, then headed over to the dark stain in the center of the room. As he got closer to it, several details became clear.

The stain was obviously blood; that was immediately apparent. And though the shape was partially obscured by the blood, Damon could see that the design laid out on the floor was actually a pentagram enclosed by a circle, drawn first with salt or colored sand and then retraced with blood. It reminded him of the Hopi sand paintings he’d seen once on a trip out West.

The symbolism troubled him. A pentagram inside of a circle was not all that common. He didn’t like the implications. Back in Chicago he’d encountered the symbol once before, during a rash of cult-related homicides. The killer had been deep into the occult, the murders took place as sacrifices in the midst of a black mass.Is that what happened here? Damon wondered.Is Turner the sacrificial victim in some occult ceremony? Did his death take place here, inside the room, and his body was dragged out onto the porch once it was no longer needed? If so, why? Damon gritted his teeth in frustration. This one was like all the others; too many questions and not enough answers.Starting to be the story of my life, he thought.

Being careful to avoid disturbing anything, Damon moved closer to get a better look at the sword. The blade, most of which was stained with blood, was roughly three feet in length. The weapon’s hilt was covered with what looked to Damon to be precious stones, though they might have been fake; he certainly wasn’t one to tell the difference.

All in all, it was an impressive weapon. As were the others in the room.Blake must be quite a collector, Damon found himself thinking.

The thought froze him in place.

Damon stood and moved over to the display case. Some weapons were still in their proper places, but the majority lay in a reckless heap on the floor in front of the case. He looked them over carefully, taking his time, examining the setup. He counted those he could see, then did his best mentally to place them in their proper places with the help of the identification tags inside the case and his own knowledge of ancient weapons. He did this three times, each time arriving at the same result. If he included the sword in the center of the room and those still in the corpse outside, he came up one short. Another sword of approximately the same length as the one in the center of the room was missing.

Had the killer taken it with him?

Damon moved around the room, bending to look beneath the furniture and the bookshelves, making certain he hadn’t simply overlooked it. Beneath the shelves closest to the display case something glinted in the light from his flashlight. Something red.

Damon withdrew an extendable pointer from his breast pocket and used it to fish the object out into the light.

It was a necklace. A gold necklace on which hung a ruby red stone of considerable size. The chain itself was broken and stained with more dried blood. Damon guessed that it must have been torn off and flung aside during a struggle, and wondered whose it was.Blake’s? Turner’s? The murderer’s?

He used the pointer to push the necklace into a clear plastic evidence bag he withdrew from another pocket and marked with his pen, noting the date, time, and location he found it.

At that point Strickland came back in from the balcony. “Okay. Here’s what we’ve got. Turner’s wounds are definitely consistent with the other killings. Rigor has set in, but hasn’t left yet, so we know that his death took place sometime in the last twenty-four hours. There’s no sign of postmortem lividity on the body. A full autopsy should provide more answers, but for now my guess is that he was killed in this room and moved out to the balcony afterward.”

The sound of Damon’s radio interrupted him.

“Wilson here.”

“Nelson, sir. The CSC team is here. And, uh, so is the press.”

Shit.

“Send up the team. Hold the press at the gate; do not, I repeat, do not let any of them onto the property. We’ve got a crime scene to protect here. Tell them I’ll be right down to talk to them personally.”

He replaced the radio on his belt and looked over at Ed.

The coroner nodded, a grim smile playing across his face. “Have fun.”

“Yeah,” Damon responded dryly, and went downstairs to face the music.

18

TO PROTECT AND SERVE

“Ihate this,” Deputy Steve Bannerman mumbled beneath his breath.

In the seat next to him, his partner, Deputy Charlie Jones, nodded in silent agreement. He knew without asking just what it was that Bannerman was referring to; the fear they both felt, fear bred from constant hours of uncertainty. A week ago, night shifts like this one were considered an easy ride. A few cruises around town in the patrol car, a little time spent at the station house doing paperwork, an extralong dinner break over at Rosie’s Truck Stop on the west edge of town. They were simple and hassle-free tours.

Until the killings started.

Now these shifts were the worst.

Knowing that somewhere, out there in the darkness, was a killer who operated solely at night and whom they knew next to nothing about was not a reassuring thought. It made them constantly edgy, always looking over their shoulders, wondering if he was behind them, waiting, watching, choosing his next victim.

It did not make for a relaxed evening.

“Did you hear the latest?” Jones asked his partner.

“No, what?”

“They found a scene right out of a black mass this morning at Hudson Blake’s mansion.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No. Pentagrams inscribed on the floor, a bloody sword, even a decapitated cat. Never mind the hunks of flesh missing from the corpse of Blake’s butler.”

“What?”

Bannerman never got the chance to reply. As he opened his mouth to speak, something dashed out of the darkness and into the road directly in front of them. He reacted instinctively, wrenching the wheel in an effort to avoid whatever it was and sending the car into a long, uncontrolled slide.

For just a second, Bannerman thought he’d been successful, that they’d missed it.

Then came the thud of impact as the back end slewed around in response to the motion of the front, and there was no mistaking that sound.

The car traveled for several more seconds before the deputy could get it under control and pull to a stop.

Bannerman got out and looked back.

The body was about a hundred yards behind them, lying near the left shoulder of the road.

It wasn’t moving.

From this distance he couldn’t see enough detail to determine what it was. For all he knew, he’d struck a hitchhiker who’d run into the road to catch his attention.

Drawing his weapon, Bannerman moved forward.

Behind him, he could hear Jones getting out of the cruiser. He knew his partner would assume the standard position several yards behind him and off to one side, in order to be able to provide backup without having his line of fire blocked by Bannerman’s movement forward.

The body did not move.

As he got closer, Bannerman could see that the body had four legs, not two. Blood stained the road around the carcass, black and glistening in the moonlight.

Bannerman breathed a sigh of relief when he was close enough to realize what it was that he had hit.

A deer.

It was a fair-sized male, judging from the rack of antlers and the overall size of the carcass. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 125 pounds, was his guess. There was no doubt that it was dead; its tongue lolled out the side of its mouth, and its eyes stared glassily across the road.

“What is it?’ Jones called out nervously.

“Deer,” Bannerman called back, tactfully ignoring the quaver that he heard in Jones’s tone. “Big one, too. I don’t think he felt much.”

Bannerman lowered his weapon, staring in remorse at the animal he had killed. Remembering how swiftly the creature had charged out of the undergrowth, he guessed it had never even known the car was there. Something else, something in the woods behind it, must have spooked it enough to force it to charge out of the undergrowth in a blind panic.

These thoughts ran through Bannerman’s mind in a matter of seconds, and he came to his conclusion right about the same time that Jones started yelling. Bannerman jerked his head up in surprise at the stark panic in his partner’s tone, and was astonished at what he saw.

Jones was brandishing his gun in the air as he ran straight toward him!

Bannerman fumbled for his own gun, thinking Jones had finally cracked under the pressure of the recent murders. He got it halfway out of its holster when he was struck violently from behind. He hit the ground hard, and heard the snap of his wrist clearly as it was trapped between the weight of his body and the hard surface of the ground. The sudden pain almost made him pass out.

Gunshots split the night air seconds later, and Bannerman jerked his head up in surprise.

Jones was standing in the middle of the road firing his revolver into the sky above, using all six cylinders, then immediately reloading. Only once he had ammunition back in his weapon did he run over to check on his partner.

Pain suddenly overwhelmed Bannerman.

His back was on fire, a white-hot forge full of molten lead, the pain searing at his body. As Jones squatted down beside him the full force of that pain became acutely clear, and he screamed in agony.

“Oh Jesus, Oh God,” Jones said, when he saw the condition of his partner’s back.

It was immediately obvious that he was seriously hurt. A softball-sized chunk of flesh had been torn out of his body in the area of his kidneys, and Jones could see pieces of internal organs extending from the wound. Blood was flowing in copious amounts, a small dark river pumping its waters onto the road beneath.

Bannerman screamed again in pain.

“Christ,” Jones swore. “What do I do? What do I do?”

The decision was taken from him.

A whistling sound filled the air, and Jones knew that the thing that had attacked his partner was coming back for another strike. Realizing he was dead if he didn’t move, Jones dived to the left, away from Bannerman.

He had a momentary glimpse of a dark, winged shape roughly the size of a man and the flash of claws in the moonlight, then it was gone back into the darkness above as quickly as it had come.

“Shit, Steve! We’ve got to get out of here.” He crawled back over to his partner and bent to help him up, knowing he had to try and get him to safety even if the effort seemed fruitless.

He needn’t have bothered.

A fresh, thick stain of blood was pouring out of a second wound high on the man’s back, and Jones could see that a good portion of the man’s neck had been torn free during the attack.

Bannerman was beyond pain.

Jones didn’t hesitate any longer.

He leapt to his feet and ran for the car, his head tucked low in the hollow of his shoulders, acutely aware of his present vulnerability. He kept his eyes fixed on the car ahead, believing that he could find protection inside its steel frame if he could just reach it in time.

He almost made it.

He was roughly fifteen feet away when the Nightshade struck for a second time that evening. The beast came at him from behind the vehicle, skimming low over the rooftop. He exploded out of the darkness, a dark shape that hurled forward on wide-stretched wings, resembling a Dantean demon straight from the depths of Hell. As the beast crossed the distance between them in the blink of an eye, Jones flung himself forward and down in a face-first slide that got him beneath the reach of the Nightshade’s wings and saved his life. He could feel the closeness of the passage of the thing’s claws as they sliced through the hair atop his head, carving a thin furrow across the surface of his scalp but penetrating no deeper.

Instantly he was back on his feet, crossing the remaining distance to the car in a half walk, half crawl, yanking open the door and falling inside. He slammed the door closed, locked it, and grabbed for the radio with his free hand, his revolver miraculously still held tight in the other.

All of his careful police training was forgotten in his fear and need to get help as quickly as possible. He depressed the transmission switch and started yelling into the mike. “Help! I need help! Bannerman’s dead and this thing is…”

The car door was torn violently away. The beast reached in and grabbed the deputy by the arm. Jones screamed in horror and turned to look.

For the first time he got a close look at what was attacking him.

The light from the patrol car’s interior fell on a long, narrow face with wide, upswept ears and a mouth full of several rows of needle-sharp teeth. The thing’s yellow, catlike eyes glared at him, full of hunger and hatred. One thick, misshapen hand was clasped tightly around Jones’s upper arm as the beast dragged him out of the car. His head smacked the steering wheel, a hard, painful blow, then hit the ground as the beast dragged him free of the patrol car.

Jones was dizzy and disoriented from the blow to his head, but could still feel the reassuring weight of his weapon in his hand. He lifted his other arm and pointed it in the general direction of the thing that was holding him.

His revolver found its voice, speaking out into the night in a succession of thunderclaps. So close, he couldn’t possibly miss.

Jones watched as each bullet struck the beast in rapid sequence, knocking it backward into the road. Its claws gouged a long furrow down his arm as it did so, tearing through his uniform and the soft skin beneath with little effort. Jones could feel the sudden pain and the warm gush of flowing fluid, but he ignored both, his attention riveted on the spectacle of the six-foot winged beast before him. Blood splashed onto him, a deep purple in color, and fountained up into the night in a dark spring running from the creature’s wounds. For just an instant their gazes locked, then the beast was knocked to the ground and the connection was broken.

His training reasserting itself, Jones whipped open the breech of his revolver and quickly slipped in another set of six rounds, never once taking his eyes off the beast.

When he was finished, he tried to stand and discovered he was already getting dizzy from loss of blood. The beast hadn’t gotten back up and he didn’t expect it to; nothing short of a grizzly could survive that much damage. He stumbled back toward the cruiser in order to radio for assistance again.

When he reached the car, he steadied himself against the doorframe and slipped into the front seat.

Jones had just picked up the mike when a sound caught his attention.

Her turned his head.

The beast was sitting up, looking at him. Fury churned in those yellow eyes, and a double-forked tongue shot from between its lips to hiss at him in anger. Jones was not concentrating on the creature’s face, however, because as he watched, the six lead slugs he had fired into the beast were slowly reversing their course, working themselves free of the creature’s flesh with soft pops and thin drizzles of blood, which quickly stopped flowing as each slug fell free to the ground.

As Jones watched in horror, the thing climbed to its feet and shrieked a challenge into the night air.

Jones’s bladder let go suddenly, filling the air with the sharp scent of urine.

The beast seemed to smile in response.

It spread its wings, looming above him like some kind of avenging angel.

Its piercing, yellow eyes held Jones’s own for a moment, and Jones found he was completely paralyzed with fear, the gun in his hand forgotten.

The beast pounced.

Jones screamed then, a long, shrill scream of complete terror as the beast seized his leg in its iron-strong grip and hauled him bodily back out of the patrol car.

Back at the sheriff’s office, the dispatchers could hear Jones’s screams through the open mike.

Eventually, they stopped.

Only to be replaced by something far worse.

The sounds of a large animal feeding.

19

WARNINGS

While the two officers lay dying on the other side of town, Sam was seated in his swivel chair behind the nursing station with his dog-eared copy of Stephen King’sIT in his hands. He was halfway through his shift when he heard a faint scream.

He leaned forward so he could see over the countertop and looked down the hall.

It was empty.

Silence lay thick in the air, a brooding, physical presence.

He sat there for a moment, listening, and had just convinced himself that he’d only heard the sound in his mind, a result of King’s ability to bring the written word to life, when he heard it again.

Except it didn’t stop. This time it continued in one long wail, a desperate sound of anguish and terror that rose in volume until it was impossible for him to believe it was anything but real.

For a split second, Sam was paralyzed by the horror he heard in that cry.

Then his training took over and he was up and running, his rubber-soled shoes slapping against the cold linoleum floor, his book forgotten on the counter behind him.

The screaming continued.

He felt the cold dead hand of fear grasp his gut and twist it savagely.

Nausea threatened.

His mind raced ahead of him, doing its best to come up with a medical emergency that would cause a person to scream in such a fashion.

When it failed, his imagination took up the slack, conjuring up visions of dark little demons that had crossed the barrier from the Underworld, hell-born fiends that ripped and tore at frail, unprotected flesh; their razor-sharp teeth glinting wickedly in the dim lighting of the rest home.

He was halfway down the hallway by then. Only a few seconds had elapsed since he’d hurtled out of his chair, but as that scream rose and fell in his ears, every second felt like an eternity. Time became an exercise in slow-motion cinematography, and Sam was cast as the show’s male lead. He felt like he was swimming through a river of molasses and barely making headway against the current.

His mind urged him to run faster.

The scream went on and on.

His heart was in his throat, beating a rapid-fire rhythm.

His hands were slick with sweat.

A strong urge to clamp his hands tightly over his ears to block out that chilling cry came to him then, but he ignored it.Jesus, he thought,make it stop, please, God, make it stop!

But God either didn’t care or wasn’t listening because it didn’t. It just went on, echoing off the stark institutional walls.

Sam was passing individual rooms now—301, 302, 303, 304…

With a jolt he realized the sound was coming from the last room on the left, the one that stood all alone around the far corner of the hall.

Number 310.

Gabriel’s room.

As he swung around the corner, his feet sliding on the slick tile, his arms thrust against the walls to maintain his balance, time returned to its normal pace, and for one awful moment Sam thought he’d black out as his senses rebelled against the illusions his mind was creating. But then he regained a minimum of control on his body and the grayness that was looming just behind his eyes receded.

He skidded to a stop in the doorway of the room.

In the split second in which he first glanced inside the room Sam thought he’d been right; gremlins from Hell had indeed paid Gabriel a visit. The old man was thrashing wildly in his bed and Sam saw with horror that there was something crouched on the man’s chest, a small dark form he was beating with his fists. The room was filled with the sound of screaming.

As Sam’s eyes adjusted to the dimness inside the room, he realized the truth.

Gabriel was having a nightmare.

The object on his chest was nothing more than his own pillow. His thrashing was a result of being entangled in his bedsheets.

Relief swept over Sam like the touch of a cool ocean wave.

Sam crossed to Gabriel’s side and tried to awaken him. The old man’s efforts were only making the situation worse, as each new tossing of his limbs twisted the sheets tighter around him, so that he must have felt like a fly caught in a spider’s web.

The screaming suddenly stopped.

In its place came a whimpering cry that filled the room, the cry of a rabbit caught in a snare, and Sam felt the hair on the back of his neck stiffen at the sound.

His mind balked at the terror the man must be experiencing to reduce him to such a state.

“Gabriel! Wake up! It’s just a dream! Wake up!” Sam yelled over the noise. It took some effort to pin one of the old man’s arms to the mattress after grasping hold of it, and Sam was surprised at the man’s wiry strength. He made a grab at the other arm and missed, getting a fist in the mouth for his trouble.

“Gabriel, wake up!”

This time his voice was of sufficient volume to cut through the terror of the Gabriel’s nightmare and reach him. He awoke with a start, and Sam held his arm tighter as he saw the sudden fear that surged in the man’s eyes.

“It’s okay, Gabriel. It’s okay. It’s Sam. You were just having a bad dream, that’s all, just a dream.” He spoke in soft gentle tones and gradually the fear he saw in the man’s wrinkled features receded, to be replaced by a look of utter exhaustion.

“Oh, sweet mercy, Sammy,” the older man croaked in a weary voice as he slumped back against the pillows.

“It’s okay now, Gabriel. You were just dreaming. Take a few deep breaths and try to relax.”

“He’s out there, Sammy. I know he is. I can feel him. He’s out there waiting for me.”

“Nobody’s out there. It was just a bad dream.”

“No, Sammy. You don’t understand! He’s out there and he knows I know it. He escaped, he’s gotten free. But I’m too weak now Sammy, too weak. I can’t stop him this time,” he said.

Sam watched as Gabriel turned his head to stare out the window into the night’s darkness. He seemed to be searching the sky for something and seemed more than a little relieved to see that whatever it was wasn’t there. He turned back to face Sam.

“He knows. Knows where I am. He’ll come for me, too. You mark my words, he’ll come for me. And this time he won’t be the one who loses.”

“Come on, Gabriel. There’s nobody there. No one is going to come after you. You were just having a bad dream.” Sam was growing nervous himself, Gabriel’s agitation like some kind of infectious disease, quickly spreading.

Relax,he told himself.The old man’s starting to lose it upstairs. Had to happen sometime, right?

Sam sighed. He genuinely liked Gabriel. He was a quiet patient, never needing much but a few kind words now and then, but old age was bound to have caught up with him at some point and it looked like it finally had.

“Tell you what, Gabe. I’ll just sit right here next to you and keep you company. That way no one can get to you without going through me, okay?” he said, smiling to show there was nothing to fear as he pulled a chair up next to the bed. The old man’s hand sought his own, and Sam held it gently without saying anything, calmly waiting for Gabriel to fall back asleep.

Fifteen minutes later, just when he got up to leave, positive that the old man was sleeping peacefully, Gabriel spoke out of the darkness in a thin, whispery tone.

“Watch the sky, Sammy. When he comes, it will be on night’s velvet wings, as swift as the darkness itself. It will be too late to save me but not too late to save yourself, as long as you watch the sky…”

He sounds so certain,Sam thought as he stepped to the door, and for a moment considered going back to question Gabriel more closely to see if there was any substance behind his talk. But then the man’s gentle breathing reached his ears across the short space of the room, and he changed his mind.

He’s asleep now. If you wake him up, he’ll only be frightened again and may not be able to get back to sleep so easily a second time. It’s better to just let it go. He probably won’t even remember it in the morning,Sam thought to himself.

That was when he looked toward the window and saw the dark, hulking shape perched on the balcony just outside.

“Oh, my God!” he said in a frightened whisper, his arms falling limply to his sides. He was suddenly too scared to move.

It’s here,he thought.The thing Gabriel’s afraid of is really here! It’s come for him, just like he said it would!

But after a moment or two, when whatever it was didn’t move, Sam began to doubt what he was seeing.

What’s your problem?he asked himself irritably, willing his body into motion.There’s no such thing as flying demons or whatever the thing is supposed to be. It’s probably just a chair someone forgot to take back inside, that’s all.

Keeping that idea foremost in his mind, Sam marched across the room and flipped on the light switch on the wall next to the sliding glass door to the balcony. The lamp hanging on the wall outside came on, flooding the balcony with light.

He’d been right.

It was only a chair.

Feeling more than a little foolish, Sam turned the light off again and slipped quietly out of the room. He returned to his station at the other end of the hall and sat back down. He picked up his book, intending to return to the place where he’d left off, but found that he didn’t have the heart for it anymore. Not after Gabriel’s nightmare and his own scare moments later.I’ve been frightened enough for one night already, thank you very much. Tossing the paperback aside, he grabbed a stack of files and began updating the charts.

He never saw the dark form that returned to the balcony of Room 310 just moments after he’d left the room, never knew it spent the rest of the night staring in through the window at the old man lying peacefully in his bed.

More than once Sam found himself glancing up from his studies to peer out the windows into the darkness, searching the night sky for he knew not what.

There was never anything there, but for some reason that didn’t make him feel any better.

20

FORENSICS

Damon sat staring at the forensic reports in short-tempered silence. The interviews earlier that morning hadn’t produced anything useful, and these reports seemed to be a dead end as well. The scientific team had examined the bullets recovered at the scene. Ballistic tests proved that all of them had come from Jones’s sidearm. The flattened condition of each bullet proved they had struck their target, a conclusion bolstered by the presence of blood samples on each. So far, the technicians had been unable to match the blood to any known species, however, making them come to the conclusion that the samples were somehow contaminated. Further tests were being conducted.

What a damned mess.

Glancing at his watch, Damon realized he’d have to get moving if he was going to be on time for his meeting with Strickland. The sheriff left the station house and drove over to the medical examiner’s office. He rode the elevator down to the hospital basement with three surgeons; his manner hard and grim, the two dead officers very much on his mind, the physicians enduring the ride in silence, studiously not looking in his direction. At the lower level Damon stepped off the elevator and moved briskly down the hall until he came to the morgue.

The room was starkly lit with bright fluorescent lights. Three autopsy tables were spaced evenly, a bank of movable lamps hanging within easy reach over each one. Large drains dotted the floor. Two of the tables were occupied, their contents covered with white plastic sheets. Around the lip of the drain beneath the table containing the larger bundle, Damon could see a thin pink froth left over from when the floors had been hosed down after the morning’s work. His shoes squeaked as they crossed the still-damp linoleum.

Strickland was at one of the sinks, washing up.

“Hello, Ed,” said Damon, entering the room.

“Sheriff.”

Ed dried his hands and moved to close the morgue’s doors, assuring them of privacy. “I’ve spent the last ten hours doing multiple autopsies, first on the Cummings couple, then Blake’s butler, Turner, and now on your two officers.”

Damon’s jaw clenched at the thought of his murdered men, but he did not interrupt the other man.

“In each and every case, I found the same types of evidence, the same confusing issues.” He moved over to one of the autopsy tables. A body lay on top of it, covered by a clean white sheet. Reaching up, he switched on the bank of lamps above it, then pulled the sheet down to unveil the remains of George Cummings.

“The reason I called you down is simple.” Strickland hesitated, took a deep breath, and said, “Whatever killed this man wasn’t human.”

Damon stared at his friend for a moment in silence, then said, “Come again?”

Ed looked down at the corpse before him, an expression of honest bafflement on his face. “In all my years of pathology I’ve never run across something as strange as this. Every time I think I’m getting somewhere, I find something else that completely shatters my current theory. I haven’t finished all the tests I intend to do, but I’ve got the feeling that once I do, I still won’t know any more than I do right now, which is practically nothing. There’s only one thing of which I am positive.” Strickland looked up and met Damon’s disbelieving gaze. “Nothing human killed this man.”

The words hung in the air between them.

Maneuvering the lights down closer to the body, Strickland tried to explain. “First of all, the man’s head wasn’t cut off his body. It was torn off.”

He bent over the corpse. “See this ragged tear here?” he asked, pointing to what was left of the man’s neck. The flesh at that point rose and fell in uneven peaks and valleys. “If the killer had used a knife or some other sharp object to sever the head, we’d see a relatively smooth cut.”

“What about a saw?” Damon asked. “That wouldn’t leave a smooth edge, would it?”

“No, but it would be a uniform tear. This is too uneven to be a saw blade.” He paused and looked up to make certain Damon was following his explanation. When he saw that he was, Strickland continued. “Do you remember a game we used to play with dandelions when we were kids? Something about Momma having a baby and her head popped off?”

“You’re not saying…?”

Ed smiled a strange and bitter smile. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Something pulled this man’s head from his body as easily as we used to flip those flowers off their stems.”

Damon stared down at the corpse with a whole new sense of horror.

“It gets worse. With the exception of his eyes, still in the head you recovered from the toilet and the intestines you found strung all over the bedroom, all the other soft organs in the body have been removed.”

“Removed?” The slight tremor in Damon’s voice suggested he already knew what Strickland meant by the euphemism.

Again the smile. “Removed. Eaten. Devoured. Call it what you will. As far as I can tell, the beast, whatever it is, got his heart, his kidneys, his liver, even his tongue and testicles.”

“Oh, God,” said Damon, as he fought to make his mind accept what he was hearing.

“My thoughts exactly.” Strickland flipped off the lights and covered the body.

Damon finally got his thoughts in order. “How come you’re so certain it’s an animal? Couldn’t a human, albeit a very sick one, have done the same thing? Look at that guy Dahmer. He was certainly capable of something like that.”

“Sure, I guess it would be possible. But not in this case. No human left the teeth marks I found.”

“Teeth marks?” Damon echoed. He was starting to feel a little slow on the uptake.

Ed moved over to the other table. Turning on the lights and drawing back the sheet as he had before, he exposed Cummings’ head and limbs.

“The bones had been deeply scored at the point of separation from the rest of the limb. My first hunch was that the marks were caused by some kind of tool, maybe a tire iron or an ax, but on closer examination I realized that they were really the imprints left when the beast crushed the limbs between its jaws. Its teeth are curved inward, at an angle, so when they cut through the skin and hit the bone, they leave evidence of their passing”—Ed turned the foot so Damon could see the exposed cross section of the bone—“and if you look closely, you’ll see that the marrow has been sucked out as well. While the creature had less time with Bannerman and Jones, their bodies showed many of the same results.”

“Jesus! What kind of animal are we talking about here, Ed?”

The medical examiner shrugged. “Damned if I know. Something big enough to tackle a full-grown man. Something that’s not only not afraid of him, but also happens to like how he tastes. But I’m afraid there’s more. I found the same strange lack of blood with this body as I did with Halloran’s corpse.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“ ’Fraid not. No blood, and the veins themselves collapsed throughout the entire system. I can’t explain it any more than I could when I talked to you yesterday. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“So what you’re saying is that whatever killed Halloran also killed the Cummingses as well?”

“It appears that way.”

Damon was perplexed. “Why didn’t it feast on Halloran, too? Why just the older couple and my men?”

“Who knows? Could be for a variety of reasons. Maybe it was just thirsty the first time.” Strickland’s weak attempt at humor blew right past Damon. For all he knew, it might not be a joke at all.

“You ready for the rest?”

“There’s more?” Damon asked him, incredulously.

Strickland picked the head up off the table and turned it around so Damon could see the fist-sized hole in the back of the man’s skull.

“It ate his brain, too,” Strickland replied.

21

CONFRONTATION

Later that night, Gabriel lay quietly in his room, thinking about the past. Once he’d been young and powerful, but that time had long since faded into dust. His end was approaching, he knew that, and in certain ways he welcomed it. He lifted one frail hand and stared at it, remembering how it had appeared long ago, smooth and strong, a power to be reckoned with, not liver-spotted and weak as it was now. The years had, at last, taken their toll on his physical form.

His mind was as sharp as ever, though, and he decided to make use of its powers one last time before he moved on from this place. Settling back against his pillows, he gathered his strength and, with a sharp mental shove, cast his consciousness out beyond the walls of the facility in which he lay to the crisp, clean air of the summer night. While the Na’Karat might have the physical power to fly, Gabriel’s kind flew in other, truer ways, and he wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

He soared above the buildings, reveling in his freedom, then swooped down toward the forest floor below. As he did so, a rabbit jumped out of the undergrowth and stopped to feed on a patch of clover.

What would it be like to exist as you do, my little fellow?he asked it silently.To have no responsibilities, no worries, to sleep at night without the burden of suffocating doubts that plague you like a leprous disease rotting you away from the inside out? What would it be like, to think only of the present moment, with no thought or consideration to the future or the past?

The rabbit stiffened suddenly, as if sensing his presence, and with a sudden burst of speed it spun to the right and disappeared into the undergrowth.

Gabriel watched it go, following its passage into the woods by listening for the tiny thump of its heart. He wished his furry friend good fortune, then sent his presence soaring high above the ground to view the world once more in the fashion of his youth, before the coming of man and the war that destroyed his people.

Once his “eyes” had seen enough, he returned to his body and lay there in the darkness of his room, waiting.

Instead of concentrating on the confrontation he knew would soon occur, his thoughts drifted.

An image of a woman formed in his mind. She was beautiful, a golden-haired goddess with eyes of emerald green and cherry red lips.

Ah, Mira, my beautiful Mira! How long has it been?he thought sadly. His heart ached for her just as it had in ages past, when they had walked hand in hand beneath the golden spires of their fair city. He loved her as strongly as he had in the days of his youth. If anything, that devotion had grown stronger with the passage of time, until he felt close to bursting with his longing for her. He could remember her face as clearly now as if he’d seen it only yesterday; he could trace its soft, gentle curves in the air with his eyes and feel the heat of her breath on his lips. He knew it wouldn’t be long before they were reunited, and he secretly longed for his journey through the ages to be over so that he could join her in the afterworld.

Gabriel watched the ticking hands of the clock and wished they’d move faster.

Eventually, he drifted off to sleep.

He awoke a short while later, and knew immediately that he was no longer alone.

The sliding glass doors to his balcony hung open, the stiff breeze coming through causing the curtains to billow out into the night.

At the base of his bed stood the Nightshade.

They stared at each other.

To Gabriel, the beast was as foul as the day he had locked it away beneath the earth. The Elder was dismayed to see that it looked as powerful as it had on that long-ago night, as if sealing it off from reality had let it gather strength in some mysterious fashion instead of crippling it as he’d intended when he’d created its prison. The beast’s muscles rippled beneath its hide, and its eyes gleamed with cunning intelligence.

Gabriel was suddenly worried that he had waited too long.

There was no way Sam and his friends would be able to defeat it if it was as strong as he feared.

Moloch stared at the Elder. Rage and hatred rose in him like a rain-swollen river. Here was the one who had pursued him through the ages. Here was the one who had sought to imprison him forever without shape or substance in a timeless void deep beneath the earth.

Here was his enemy.

The beast almost laughed. The Elder was nothing more than a pathetic husk of what he’d once been, and certainly no match for Moloch’s own powers.Killing him won’t be an effort, it will be a favor.

Gabriel broke the silence, speaking in the old tongue.

“You will regret coming here.” He kept his voice firm, but suspected that the beast had already seen his dismay at the other’s apparent strength. He would give no more away than he had to, however.

“I think not.”

The Nightshade’s voice was thicker, more guttural than he remembered, and Gabriel found himself wondering if it had sustained some permanent damage from its confinement.

“You will not succeed. The humans are stronger now, more able to face the challenges that life lays at their feet. They will use their technology to destroy you.”

Moloch laughed. “I have not been idle since my release. I have watched the cattle. I have seen what they are capable of. I have also learned that they do not believe in anything besides that which they can lay their hands upon. They have forgotten the past and rely too much on the future. I will show them what it means again to be hunted, and they will once again remember their fear.”

Gabriel had been gathering his strength during the beast’s speech. As the final syllables were falling from its mouth, Gabriel lashed out with the force of his mind in a vicious mental attack.

The Nightshade stumbled under the sudden onslaught. It had been caught off guard, unsuspecting, and the Elder’s mental barrage began to knock down its internal defenses, threatening to kill it by sheer force of will. It was actually forced backward, away from the bed, by the power of the attack.

Gabriel realized that he had the upper hand, and threw more of his reserves in behind the attack, hoping to overwhelm the beast and destroy it before it had a chance to retaliate.

The end was not to be that easy, however.

The beast quickly regained control, snapping its shields into place, protecting itself, locking out the power of the attack. Gabriel tried vainly for several long moments to breach the shields, but to no avail.

At last, exhausted, he was forced to drop the assault.

Shaking his head, Moloch stepped back over to the bed and stared at Gabriel anew. He did not look damaged in any way by the attack, and despair washed through Gabriel for the first time in many years. He had to face the truth; he was no longer a match for the beast.

Unless Sam and his friends could destroy it, the Nightshade was going to win.

Katelynn was in the library, reading, when it happened. One moment she was engrossed in the record of life in the 1700s; the next, the world seemed to shrink inward on her, a black haze obscuring her sight. She fought to remain conscious, but it was too late.

She lost herself in the darkness.

When she came to again, she was no longer in the library.

She stood in Gabriel’s room at the nursing home. He was sitting upright in bed, staring at her standing at its foot, an expression of fear and revulsion on his face. He was obviously exhausted, but he seemed to summon his strength as she watched, as if preparing for a confrontation.

Katelynn did not understand what was going on.

What am I doing here?

Gabriel watched the Nightshade recover from his attack. The beast’s tongue flicked out over its teeth, and the Elder knew the end was near. He had exhausted his strength in that last-ditch effort to destroy the Nightshade, and knew he would not survive long at the creature’s hands. That Moloch intended to make him suffer as long as possible was entirely too clear.

Gabriel had no intention of allowing that to happen.

As the beast stalked closer, Gabriel summoned what little strength he had left. He did not have the energy to project another attack at the beast, but there was another way out, one he’d longed to use for centuries.

Moloch moved closer, coming around the side of his bed.

That close, Gabriel could smell the stink of his fetid breath, and hear the rasp of claws on the linoleum floor.

The beast’s long forked tongue flicked out, tasting the air, searching for the fear that should have been coming off its opponent in waves.

Gabriel waited patiently, letting the beast think it had won, letting it gloat in its success, for by doing so he gained another moment to prepare.

He had to be certain he had the strength to succeed with his plan. If he did not, he would be too weak to do anything more. He would be helpless in the hands of his ancient enemy.

Katelynn moved closer to the bed, and glanced down as her hands found the safety rail. She was shocked by what she saw. Her hands had changed; had become hideous. They were scaled like a lizard’s and a dark gray-green in color. Each one had four fingers; three rising together from the top of the palm, the fourth opposing them, much like the talons of a bird. Each finger, in turn, had four swollen, misshapen knuckles the size of walnuts, topped with long inwardly curving claws that shone like ivory in the room’s dim light.

Katelynn’s mind whirled at a frantic pace, trying to explain what her eyes were seeing. Then, like a dash of icecold water thrown in her face, her subconscious dragged from its depths the memory of her other dreams, making her accept what was happening.

With a small gasp of horror, she understood.

She was no longer in her own body, but had somehow been transported inside something else and was looking out through its eyes instead of her own!

While she could feel her madly accelerated heartbeat, she could also feel that of the creature in whose body she rode, a heartbeat that was deeper and more powerful than her own, one that beat at a much slower rate.

If she concentrated, as she did now, she could dimly perceive the other’s thoughts as well.

A wave of hatred so vile that it made her want to retch rolled out of the form she was inhabiting. That Gabriel knew her in this form was beyond a doubt; there was hatred and recognition in his eyes. As her mind struggled with a thousand questions, she felt herself speak, the voice in her ears like crushed gravel.

“Time to die, old fool,” she said.

Leaning close, Moloch opened his mouth to reveal the many rows of scalpel-sharp teeth.

Using the last of his strength, Gabriel reached deep inside his body and simply ordered his heart to stop.

He died with a smile on his face, knowing he’d cheated the Nightshade out of the final victory.

Katelynn felt her mouth stretching impossibly wide, felt her tongue flickering across the tips of monstrously long teeth as sharp as surgeon’s knives as she leaned closer to Gabriel.

Noooo!she cried mentally, but was helpless to stop the sudden descent of those awful fangs.

As the teeth ripped pitilessly into the fragile flesh of the old man’s neck, Katelynn’s mind mercifully found the strength to flee, and she came to herself again, lying on the floor beside the table she’d been working on in the library. A long shrill scream was bursting from her lips. She felt someone grasping her limbs, and fearing that whatever it was had followed her, she thrashed wildly, terrified that she was about to die.

A sudden pain flared on her right cheek, bringing her back to reality. The middle-aged librarian who had administered the slap was crouched beside her, one hand in the air in preparation of delivering a second slap should it prove necessary. Two students were pinning her arms and legs to the floor. The lips of the one at her feet were red and rapidly swelling, and Katelynn realized with shocked sympathy that she must have kicked him in the face during her struggles.

“Settle down,” the older woman said. “You’ve had some kind of an attack. Just lie still for a moment. The health team is on its way.” The woman smiled at her, but Katelynn could recognize the woman’s fear and apprehension.

Probably thinks I’m ready for the psycho ward,Katelynn thought.

With growing dismay she realized that the woman could be right.

Suddenly, she desperately wanted to get out of there, and assuring her rescuers that she was fine, got to her feet, quickly gathered her books, and went out into the night, ignoring their protests.

Her nightmares from previous evenings crowded in on her, spurring her fear. She finally accepted that they were more than simple nightmares, knew that the connection she had made while in that twilight realm had followed her into the real world.

Lord only knew what might happen next.

As he realized that his enemy had taken his own life before he could enact his vengeance, Moloch lost control. He tore into the fresh corpse, ripping the limbs from the body in his frenzy, delighting in the way his claws sliced into the weak flesh as if it were butter. He shrieked his rage and frustration, uncaring if any of the humans heard him. If they were foolish enough to investigate, then he would tear them apart as well.

Later, once his anger was spent and the corpse was barely recognizable as having once been human, Moloch left the way that he had entered, leaving the sliding glass doors open behind him as he soared off the balcony into the night.

As he returned to his roost, slipping easily through the night’s inky blackness, he pondered the evening’s events.

Just before he had killed the Elder, he’d felt the presence of another being there in the room with them.

Yet he was positive the room had been empty with the exception of the Elder and himself.

So how did he explain the sensation that someone had been watching them? Or the scream he had heard as his teeth had ripped out the old fool’s throat?

He didn’t know.

But he was determined to find out.

For the time being, though, he could wait. With his hunger sated, Moloch felt heavy, bloated, full. The quiet oblivion of sleep and his own sweet dreams beckoned to him. He decided he would rest before he sought the answers to those questions.

After all, with his oldest enemy now dead, what did he have to fear?He was once again ruler of the night, and nothing stood in his way. The human fools would again learn to fear the darkness, and he would rule over them in his rightful place as king.

And, oh, how much fun I am going to have,the beast thought gleefully as it winged its way home.

22

A MESSAGE FROM BEYOND

Earlier that evening, around seven o’clock, Jake sat in Sam’s apartment waiting for his friend to finish dressing. Sam had swapped shifts with a coworker earlier in the week so that he could go to a celebration being held for Dana Sandings, one of his friends, and Jake had reluctantly agreed to come along. While sitting around with a bunch of literary types might not be Jake’s first choice for a night out, it certainly beat being home alone.

The party was in full swing when they arrived, with people filling the apartment and spilling out onto the deck in back. Jake slipped through the crowd in search of the bar, while Sam grabbed a Pepsi from a passing tray, said hello to those he knew, and spent some time mingling with those he didn’t.

After a while he felt someone come up behind him and punch him lightly on the shoulder. He turned to find Jake standing there.

“Come on, you’ve got to see this,” his friend said.

Jake headed back into the crowd, making his way toward one of the back rooms. They reached a closed door, which Jake opened softly, gesturing for Sam to precede him through the door.

The room they entered was almost completely dark, four candles being the only source of illumination. By their soft light, Sam could see five or six people seated in a loose semicircle on the floor in the middle of the room, facing two others. These two in turn sat facing each other with some kind of game board between them.

It took Sam a minute to realize it was a Ouija board.

Will you look at this?he thought to himself. He’d always wanted to try a Ouija board but had never had the chance. He moved closer.

In the dim light, Sam recognized one of those in the group as Dana, their hostess. That wasn’t surprising. Sam knew she practiced such things as spirit-trances, fortunetelling, palm reading, and what she described as communication with the dead; all a result of having a Romanian gypsy for a mother, she’d say.

While he watched, Dana began speaking.

“The spirits are everywhere, they see and know everything. They are always around us; in the air we breathe, in the smoke from the candles, in the light of the flames, forever present but cut off from us owing to our skepticism about their existence. One must overcome this if a message is to be received.”

Sam realized suddenly that Jake had sat down on the outskirts of the circle and moved to join him. The others noted their presence but did not speak to them. No one wanted to interrupt Dana.

“In order for us to contact someone on the other side, we must all wipe our minds clean of doubt. The spirits are constantly trying to communicate with us on this plane; with our help, they will be able to. If you can’t believe but wish to stay and witness their presence among us, you must wipe your mind of all negative thoughts. Think only positive thoughts. It doesn’t matter what they are, just as long as they are happy thoughts. The spirits will use the energy you produce to help them break through the barrier to our side.”

“Whom should we talk to?” asked a dark-haired man.

Dana asked, “Are there any particular requests?”

A number of names were called out: John F. Kennedy, Jim Morrison, Ben Franklin, Adolf Hitler, Ted Bundy. Dana held up her hands for silence, and when she got it, looked over at Sam. “Choose someone,” she said.

Sam was at a sudden loss.Whom did he want to talk to?

Jake spoke up. “What about that Jesuit who supposedly haunts the library on the Benton University campus, Father Castelli?”

Sam agreed. He was as good as anyone else.

“Okay. Father Castelli it is.” Dana turned her attention to Jake. “Why don’t you come over here and help me work the board?” she asked.

Jake was about to decline when Sam elbowed him sharply. “He’d love to,” Sam replied for him.

Jake got up and crossed the room, sitting Indian-style in front of Dana with the Ouija board between them.

“Have you ever done this before?” she asked.

Jake shook his head. Sam could see he was doing his best to stifle a grin.

“Okay, then. Rest your fingers on the planchette. No, that’s too heavy. Do it lightly, so that you’re just barely touching it.” As Jake complied, Dana said, “Good. That’s much better.” She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. Sam glanced around and saw everyone else staring intently at the board. He exchanged a humor-filled glance with Jake and was about to follow the others’ lead when Dana said, “Sam, why don’t you come over here and take my place? I don’t have to be using the board in order to provide a spirit channel for them to work through. I know you and your friend are most likely skeptics. This way neither of you can claim I was moving the planchette myself.”

Sam enthusiastically agreed.

“Do I have your word that neither of you will consciously move the planchette?”

“Sure,” said Jake.

Sam nodded as well.

“Okay. Everyone close your eyes. Clear your minds of all extraneous thoughts; let the outside world wash away. Pretend your mind is a television set, and the only thing you are receiving is static. When you feel you’ve reached the proper state of awareness, you can open your eyes again. Casey, why don’t you read out the letters as the planchette lands on them?”

The woman seated to Sam’s left agreed.

Sam let his eyes slide shut and tried to follow Dana’s instructions, a little thrill of excitement growing in his stomach.Imagine if we really manage to contact someone, he thought to himself.Wouldn’t that be something?

Someone gave a small gasp, and Sam opened his eyes to find Jake and everyone else in the room staring in Dana’s direction.

Sam followed suit.

Dana’s eyes had rolled back in their sockets, so all that was visible were the whites of her eyeballs.

Neat trick,Sam thought, a bit disappointed at the theatrics.

Voices murmured somewhere on the edge of the room.

“Silence,” Dana hissed, and quiet instantly returned. In a soft voice that was oddly lilting, she began speaking. “Is anyone out there? Can anyone hear me?”

Sam started to close his eyes again. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of the clock on the wall and noted in the back of his mind that it was one minute to twelve.

“Is anyone out there? We are trying to reach Father Castelli. Can you hear me, Father?”

Suddenly Sam felt two things happen at once. Across from him, Jake stiffened, and the planchette twitched beneath their fingers. Sam glanced up at Jake, but his head was lowered, and he wouldn’t meet his gaze.Did Jake move this thing?

“Is anyone out…” Dana paused, and in a whisper spoke to the group. “I can feel the spirits. They are all around us, clamoring to speak to us. I sense a great urgency among them. Everyone concentrate on reaching out to Father Castelli. Let him know we wish to speak to him. Casey, would you please read the letters off the board once contact is made?

“Can you hear me, Father?” she continued.

Beneath his fingers, Sam felt the planchette move again. He eased up on the pressure, until his fingers were barely touching it. He wanted to make sure that he wasn’t causing it to move. He saw the rest of the group leaning forward eagerly to watch the proceedings, and this time he kept his eyes open like the rest of them.

“Father? Are you there, Father Castelli?”

The planchette began making slow lazy circles around the board, and Sam felt a slight tingle in his fingertips, as if a mild current was passing through his flesh. The planchette began to move quicker, then abruptly slid across the board to the top left hand side, centering itself over the word “YES.”

The group gasped collectively.

“Who are you?” Dana asked aloud.

The planchette swirled aimlessly for a moment and then dropped to the double row of letters in the center of the board.

“M,” read Casey, and then “A… T… T… H… E… W.” The planchette paused and so did Casey. After a moment, as if to signal the start of a new word, it continued. “C… A… S… T… E… L… L… I.”

“This is Father Castelli?” Dana asked, just to be certain.

The planchette immediately moved back to the “YES.”

Dana said, “The contact is strengthening now. The spirits have broken through the barrier, and their message will be clearer to us.”

Before Dana could ask her next question, however, the planchette began spinning aimlessly around the board for a moment before moving on to spell another new word.

“B… E… W… A… R” Casey called out in response, her voice shaking slightly.

Stupid spirit can’t even spell,Sam thought to himself.

As if she’d heard him, Dana said, “Often a spirit will misspell something, it’s a pretty common occurrence, especially if the subject has been dead a long time.”

“Is that your message?” she asked the board. “Beware?”

YES.

“Beware of what?” she asked.

A cool, whispery chill ran lightly up Sam’s spine.

The planchette was moving faster, as if guided by an unseen hand filled with urgency. Casey called out the letters in a voice filled with excitement. “E… V… I… L. —E… V… I… L.—E… V… I… L. It’s repeating the word “evil” over and over again.”

The planchette came to rest in the center of the board. Sam shifted his position slightly to get more comfortable.

“Don’t remove your hands, Sam! You’ll break the contact,” said Dana.

Her warning was unnecessary, however. Sam was too engrossed in what was happening even to consider it.

Dana went on. “What is evil? Can you tell us what evil we are to beware of, Father Castelli?” Her voice was a quiet whisper in the otherwise silent room.

Immediately: B… L… A… K… E… S… B… A… N … E.

“Bane?” someone asked.

This time it was Jake who answered, his voice low but steady, “It means a cause of death or ruin.”

Another voice could be heard from the back of the room. “It says Blake. Do you think it means Hudson Blake?”

No one had an answer.

Dana decided to ask for clarification. “Can you tell us what that is, Father?”

The planchette fell still. Dana repeated her question twice, slower each time. After what seemed an age to Sam, the planchette moved again. This time it was different instead of the smooth, circular motions, it moved in fits and starts, spasmodically jerking across the board.

“B… E… W… A… R… I… T… C… A… N… S… E . . ,” Casey called out for those who couldn’t see the pointer.

Sam stared down at the board. The planchette was still moving helter-skelter across its surface, jerking left and right like a puppet on a string. The tingling in his arms had become almost, but not quite, pain. He wanted to tear his hands away and break the contact, but something compelled him to keep them in place. He tried to reassure himself.Jake must be doing this, he thought.Jake’s just spelling out messages to scare everyone.

“Father Castelli? Are you still with us, Father?” Dana asked. A strange expression ran across her face then, part grimace, part bewilderment. “Who’s there?” she asked. “Do you wish to speak with us?”

Beneath his hands, Sam felt the planchette slow down, then move with deliberation.

He watched in shock as it spelled out a message directed specifically at him.

R.E.M.E.M.B.E.R.M.Y.W.A.R.N.I.N.G.S.A.M.M.Y.

Sam sat there, stunned. The others around him who could see the board gasped in surprise, then looked at him rather oddly, as if they had just discovered something mysterious in their midst.

The planchette began moving again.

GOODBYE, SAMMY, it read.

That whispery touch of fear turned into a fist clenched savagely around his spine.

Then, with the suddenness of a striking snake, the planchette spelled out another message.

FOOLS! NEITHER YOU NOR THE OLD ONE CAN STOP ME NOW! I WILL SLAUGHTER YOU LIKE THE CATTLE YOU ARE.

Seeing this message spelled out in front of him, Sam jumped, almost breaking the contact. After what happened next, he wished he had.

Dana moaned.

Sam looked at her and recoiled in shock. She was shaking fiercely, as if a high-voltage current were running through her veins. Her teeth were chattering, and the sound quickly filled the room, making it seem as if a herd of skeletons were charging past. The hand on his spine squeezed tighter.

There’s no way Jake is causing her to do that,his inner voice said.

Everyone in the room was frozen in a state of shock.

No one moved to help her.

Over her shoulder, Sam was surprised to see Katelynn staring across the room in their direction, her face as pale as a ghost. He had been so engrossed he hadn’t even noticed that she’d arrived.

Beneath his fingers, Sam felt the planchette begin to move again with slow, deliberate speed.

In a voice shaking with fear, Casey read the message aloud.

“SAY GOODBYE TO DANA.”

As if in response, Dana suddenly screamed. The sound of her cry broke the paralysis that had held everyone in its grip. Sam jumped away from the board as if it were alive. Jake grabbed Dana. She was still shaking, more violently now, her heels drumming in a frenzy on the floor.

“She’s having a fit!” someone yelled.

“Hit the lights!”

A moment later the room was filled with electric brilliance as someone complied with the request.

Sam recovered his wits and moved to help Jake. He held Dana’s feet steady. Someone else, he thought it might be Bill, pinned her arms.

Blood was flowing from her mouth, and Sam realized she’d clamped her teeth down on her tongue.Probably bit the damn thing nearly in half . He watched as Jake clenched the sides of her jaw at some hidden nerve point and forced her mouth open. Inside it was a mess; blood and saliva mixing into a crimson froth that kept them from seeing how much damage she’d done to herself. Trying to find a way to prevent her from tearing herself up further, Jake forced his wallet between her jaws, then let go of his hold. Her teeth immediately clamped down on the wallet’s leather surface like a spring-loaded vise.

Katelynn pushed her way over to them. “Someone call the hospital and get someone up here quick,” she told the crowd. She turned to Jake. “Is she going to be okay?”

“I don’t know. Does anyone know if she’s epileptic?” he asked.

No one did.

Another minute passed. The convulsions slowed, then stopped altogether. Dana lay in Jake’s arms, limp but still conscious.

Katelynn removed the wallet from her mouth and tried to reassure her. “Take it easy. You’ve had some kind of a seizure. Help is on the way, just lie still.”

Her gaze rolled around the room, wide and vacant, not really noticing any of them around her. Then she saw Jake. She stiffened in his arms, her eyes growing almost comically wide. Her left hand shot up and gripped the front of his shirt and pulled, dragging his face down close to her lips. She said something to him, but Sam was too far away to hear.

Jake blanched in response.

The mobile emergency team hustled into the room then, and everyone moved back to allow them some space to work in. Sam, Jake, and Katelynn backed away as well, noticing as they did so that the party had rapidly broken up around them. Only a few people were still in the apartment.

Katelynn stood at Sam’s side, her face pale. “What happened in there?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. We were using the Ouija board, and she suddenly went nuts, threw a fit of some kind.” He shivered.Jake was moving that planchette, he kept telling himself.Just Jake, no one else.

That small voice spoke up again.Why don’t you ask him, it said, and he decided to do just that.

The medics loaded Dana onto a stretcher and carried her down the stairs. Jake, Sam, and Katelynn followed the emergency team out of the building and watched as Dana was loaded into an ambulance. Lights flashing, the vehicle roared off toward the complex’s gates.

Jake turned to face Sam.

One glance into Jake’s eyes and Sam felt his fear grow. His blood ran cold and sluggish through his veins. He wrapped his arms around his chest in an unconscious attempt to warm himself.

Jake’s scared,he realized, recognizing the look in his friend’s eyes.

That frightened Sam more than anything that had happened that night.If Jake’s scared, he told himself,then I should be terrified . Abruptly, he realized that he was.

What Jake said next made things worse.

“Were you moving that thing, Sam?”

The question froze him where he stood. Numbly, Sam shook his head. He didn’t want to hear what he knew was coming next, but there was no escaping it.

“I wasn’t either, Sam. I swear it.”

Next to them, Katelynn said, “If it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t Sam, then who…”

Jake could only shake his head in reply to her question.

But Sam thought he knew. There was only one person who called him Sammy.Gabriel. Something must have happened. He turned and began pushing his way back through the crowd, desperate to reach his car, his sudden fear so overwhelming that he didn’t bother telling his friends where he was headed.

The two of them stood there for a few minutes as the crowd dispersed, each of them lost in his own thoughts, until Katelynn broke the silence.

“What did she say to you, Jake?”

Jake hesitated, then answered in a subdued tone. “She said that someone in the room was going to die soon.”

In the distance, the ambulance siren shrieked like a banshee into the night’s darkness.

23

PUZZLE PIECES

Not wanting to be alone, the two of them walked over to The Hemingway, an all-night coffeehouse and Internet café on the other side of campus.

The café consisted of one long room filled with odds and ends of furniture, tables and chairs, mismatched sofas and love seats, even a few booths from a now defunct diner, really anything the students could get their hands on. A small stage stood to the left of the bar, and throughout the night the poets and writers who typically haunted the place would get up to read selections of their works, while others listened attentively or carried on conversations amongst themselves in muted tones. The walls were fashioned of unfinished wood, decorated here and there with posted notices of poetry readings and flyers from a variety of political and artistic groups.

They took a seat in the back, away from most of the other tables so that they could talk freely without being overheard. Katelynn was the first to broach the subject.

“What’s going on, Jake?”

“Damned if I know,” he answered gruffly, still disconcerted both by what had happened at the party and by Sam’s odd behavior immediately thereafter.

“Come on, Jake. I’m serious.”

“So am I, Katelynn. I don’t have a clue. It’s bad enough that I find a corpse every time I turn around. Adding Ouija boards and communication with the dead does not make me feel any better. Never mind Sam’s rushing off like that.” Jake poured himself another beer from the pitcher on the table before him. While he wouldn’t admit it, he was scared. Getting drunk seemed a good solution, and he fully intended to put his plan into motion without delay. “What the heck were you doing at the party anyway? I thought you were studying tonight.”

“I was. Something happened.”

She took her time, explaining the dreams that she’d been having and her “attack” at the library. She told him about the odd sensation of looking through another’s eyes and about her increasing belief that what she was seeing was not imaginary but real.

Jake had had enough weirdness for one night, however. “Come on, Katelynn. You can’t really believe that.”

“Why not?”

“Because its crazy, that’s why,” he retorted sharply, but upon seeing her expression he decided to take another tack. “Look,” he said more gently, “just think about this rationally for a minute, okay? You’ve been under a lot of stress, everyone has. This killer is making everyone nervous.”

“So it’s making me see things, is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. I told you yesterday afternoon about the body we found at Stonemoor and that night you dreamed about Hudson Blake. It stands to reason that your subconscious would twist what you learned earlier into your dreams at night as you slept.”

“But something happened to him, just as I saw it in my dream.”

Jake shook his head. “Not really. Think about it. In your dream you say you saw Hudson Blake, yet we didn’t discover Blake’s body at the estate, we found his butler’s. And tonight you saw Gabriel, but as far as we know he is perfectly all right. We don’t know that anything has happened to Blake—he’s just disappeared. It’s just your subconscious taking the things you know and twisting them up with your fear and your nervousness over the fact that the police haven’t caught the killer yet.”

Katelynn wasn’t convinced. “How do you explain tonight then?” she challenged him.

“What about tonight?”

“How do you explain the Ouija board or what happened to Dana.”

Exasperated, Jake replied, “It could have been any number of things. Sam could have been moving that pointer purposely. He could have been lying when he said he wasn’t, just to pull our legs. Or it could have been moving on its own, a result of a buildup in static electricity between Sam and me. Hell, there are a thousand reasons it could have been moving around. And the least likely one is that we were really speaking to the dead. It was simply coincidence that Dana suffered an epileptic attack when she did. It was probably brought on by all of the excitement of the party.”

“So what happened to Sam? Why did he rush off like that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he just freaked out over Dana’s fit.” Finding the pitcher empty, Jake half turned in his seat, searching for the waitress.

“Come on, Jake. Doesn’t that all sound just a bit too pat to you?”

Without stopping his attempts to signal a waitress, Jake answered, “Nope. It certainly sounds far more reasonable than that garbage you’re spouting.”

Katelynn had had enough. Whether it was her fear or her annoyance at how much Jake had drunk in such a short time, she was less tolerant than usual. Having Jake brush her off so cavalierly infuriated her. She slid out of the booth, grabbed Jake by the chin, and turned his head to face her. “Do you know what a shithead is, Jake?” she asked, then continued without giving him time to answer. “I’ll tell you. A shithead is someone who can’t see the truth even when it’s right there in front of him. Thanks for your help. I guess I’ll figure it out on my own.”

Jake could only stare.Just what the hell is wrong with everyone tonight? His beer-addled mind just couldn’t put two and two together.

Without another word, Katelynn turned and stormed across the room, disappearing out the door.

For a moment Jake considered following, but quickly decided against it. She probably wouldn’t talk to him, and if she felt like being a bitch, then it was best if he just left her alone. She’d cool down after a while.

And then maybe she’d talk some sense. He went back to trying to signal a waitress and did his best to forget about what had been happening lately.

It was more than he wanted to think about at the moment.

24

THE LAST OF A NOBLE RACE

Something terrible had happened to Gabriel.

Sam was certain of it and as he sped through the streets, his fear grew with every mile passing beneath his wheels.

Sam could see the flashing blue lights as soon as he turned onto the long, tree-lined drive that led to the main building of the complex. His heart froze at the sight. As he drove closer he made out the forms of the individual sheriff’s cars that were parked haphazardly in the small cul-de-sac fronting the building. An ambulance was also there, its rear doors thrown wide, its red strobes mingling in eerie symphony with the blues.

Sam jerked the car to a stop, jumped out, and was running toward the front door even before his engine had grown silent. A uniformed deputy saw him at the last minute and tried to prevent him from entering, but Sam ducked beneath the man’s outstretched arms and pushed through the glass door.

The main lobby was full of residents, most of them from the third floor, each in an assortment of pajamas. Deputy sheriffs were milling here and there amongst the patients. It seemed to Sam as if the sheriff’s men were trying to interview some of patients, but for what reason he couldn’t guess. Most of them were senile and would prove of little or no use in whatever investigation they were conducting.

The confusion in the room had brought him up short just inside the door, and when he realized he was no longer moving, Sam cast an anxious glance back over his shoulder. He was relieved to see that the deputy he’d sneaked past was still outside, prevented from following him by a sudden swarm of spectators who were likewise trying to get inside.

Ignoring the masses of people moving all around him, Sam walked over to the elevators, his thoughts on Gabriel. The presence of the police and the emergency medical team confirmed what he’d previously only suspected. Something had happened there that night, and he was all but positive it had something to do with Gabriel.

A sense of evil lingered in the air, like a gas that had been only partially dispelled. He wasn’t the only one who felt it; others in the room were constantly looking over their shoulders as if they, too, could sense some presence in the room—a grim shadow that crouched behind them. In that instant Sam knew the object of Gabriel’s fears had come for him. All that was left to do was to find out if the old man had survived.

Sam had a hunch he already knew the answer to that question and had to force himself to keep moving forward. He had forcibly to ignore the reluctance that suddenly settled about his shoulders like a mantle of lead, threatening to bend his back beneath its great weight.

He was afraid.

Afraid of what he would find upstairs.

As he reached out for the elevator call button, a hand landed on his shoulder, startling him.

“Sorry. Elevators are off-limits. Nobody leaves the lobby until we’re finished,” a gruff voice said from behind him.

Sam turned and found himself face to face with another deputy. The man glared at him with eyes as hard as stones and heavy with suspicion.

“Oh,” Sam said, a bit flustered by the man’s sudden appearance. “I’ll just use the stairs then.” He moved to step past the man.

The other’s broad bulk blocked his path. “Are you deaf?” he asked with ill-concealed hostility. “I said nobody’s allowed upstairs.”

“Look, Deputy. I work here. These people are more than my responsibility. Many of them are my friends. If something has happened to one of them, I’ve got to do what I can to help.”

“You can help out by staying the hell out of the way of the professionals.”

Sam willed himself to stay calm.Humor the guy, an inner voice said.

“Okay, okay,” Sam said in a resigned voice, and moved off into the crowd again. Several minutes later, when he was certain the deputy was no longer watching him, Sam drifted slowly to his right in the direction of the stairwell.

Damn!he thought, once he had the stairwell in sight. Another deputy was stationed there, blocking the way to the upper floors. He was stuck. There was no other way to the upper floors unless he came through the walkway that connected the nursing home to the rest of the hospital complex, and if they had this end covered, Sam was certain they would have that guarded as well.

Now what?

Then fate provided him with the opportunity he needed. Several members of the press arrived outside and were attempting to force their way past the deputy guarding the front door. The man guarding the stairwell noticed his partner’s plight and moved to help, leaving the door to the stairwell unguarded.

Sam took advantage of the opportunity and calmly walked over to the door, opened it, and slipped quietly into the stairwell. He took the steps two at a time, his heart thumping madly in his chest. There might be more guards at the top, but for now he didn’t care. His only concern was the fate of his friend. He had to discover if Gabriel was still alive!

He emerged onto the third floor at the opposite end of the hall from Gabriel’s room. The small corridor before him was empty, but he could hear a good deal of commotion coming from the main hallway around the corner.

Sam took the chance.

The main corridor was filled with people, most of them uniformed deputy sheriffs. A few men were dressed in dark suits and ties. Sam took them to be detectives. Two ambulance attendants sat in the plastic chairs that lined the hallway with decidedly queasy looks on their faces. An empty stretcher was pushed up against the wall next to them.

While Sam was standing there trying to decide what to do, he heard a familiar voice call his name.

“Sam! Over here!”

He looked to his left and saw Jerry Peters, a coworker. Jerry was sitting at the nurses’ station, a uniformed cop at his left elbow. An open notepad was in his hand, and he frowned as Sam walked over to join them.

“What a fuckin’ mess, Sam! Last time I switch shifts with you!”

His friend’s face, normally ruddy with a glow bestowed from the flask of Dewar’s he kept in his pocket, was so pale as to seem almost bloodless. Dark circles drooped beneath his eyes. Sam watched Jerry’s hands shake as he took a drag from the cigarette he was smoking. The ashtray in front of him was filled with butts.

“Tell me about it, Jerry. What happened?”

Before he could receive an answer the cop spoke up, “Who are you?”

Jerry answered for him. “It’s okay, Deputy. He works here. This was supposed to be his shift.”

The deputy looked questioningly at Sam.

“Yeah, that’s right. I had the night off but came in for some things out of my locker and saw all the commotion. I came up to see what was going on,” Sam replied.

Deputy Collins hesitated. His orders were to make sure no one left the floor; nobody had said anything about keeping anyone out. For all he knew, the guys downstairs had sent this guy up here. After giving it a moment’s consideration, he decided it would be best to check with the sheriff and let him know the guy was here. That way he’d at least have covered his ass.Let the guys downstairs take the heat for letting him by.

“Got any ID?” he asked Sam.

Sam dug out the laminated ID card he carried in his wallet. The card bore his photograph, and had his name and position printed beneath the nursing home’s seal. He handed the card to Collins, who scrutinized it for a minute, then moved off down the hall without saying anything.

Sam slumped into the chair the deputy had vacated. “What’s going on, Jer?”

“Shit! You ain’t gonna believe this man! Some fucker got in here and sliced one of the old coots to bits.” Peters shuddered. “Found what was left of him ’bout a half hour ago. Man, you shoulda seen that room. Blood was freakin’ everywhere!”

Sam had heard enough. “Who was it?” he asked, dreading the answer but needing to ask.

“It was, ahh, what’s his name? The guy who’s always havin’ those weird dreams? You now, the guy with the funny last name. Gabe what’s-his-face?”

Before Peters knew what was happening Sam was up off the chair and running down the hall, racing past a group of deputies too surprised by his sudden appearance to stop him. His heart lodged like a bone in his throat.

Flashes of light could be seen coming from Room 310, and a group of deputies were clustered in front of that door, their backs to him.

Barely slowing, Sam shoved through them into the room itself, ignoring the protests and evading their attempts to stop him.

The room was awash in blood. Crimson splatters covered every surface.

On the walls.

On the floor.

On the once-white sheets of the bed.

Unidentifiable lumps covered in blood were scattered all about the floor. As he glanced around the room in shock, Sam’s gaze came to rest on the two men who were working inside the room. Dressed in white lab smocks, one used a camera to photograph each of the strange lumps in the place where it had been found, then waited while his partner used a spatula-like device to scoop those pieces into a small plastic bag. The bag was then deposited onto a small, steel cart that stood behind them.

Sam could see the cart was slowly being filled with bags. Numb with horror, he forced himself to walk over and peer at one of the objects through the clear plastic.

The bags were filled with ragged chunks of human flesh.

Gabriel’s flesh.

The veteran deputies watching from the door might have been around long enough to have become hardened to the overpowering stench, but Sam had not. He spun around and stumbled back out the door of the room into the hall, desperately struggling to keep his teeth clenched tightly against the tide that surged up from his stomach.

His distress grew stronger than his willpower, however, and he threw up, splashing the shoes of one of the nearby detectives with a semisolid stream of vomit.

25

THE BATON PASSES

The cold water from the basin felt good on his face and hands. After unceremoniously losing his dinner, Sam had stumbled down to the men’s room and suffered another attack of retching that lasted almost fifteen minutes. His throat was raw. His stomach ached. He was all but certain the next attack would leave him exhausted.

Sam reached over and yanked several paper towels from the dispenser hanging on the wall and used them to mop his face dry. One glance in the mirror at the bleak, unhinged look in his eyes was enough. As he bent his head beneath the faucet and tried to rinse the foul taste from his mouth for the fourth time, he made sure he refrained from looking in that direction again.

When he felt he had himself together, he left the men’s room and stepped back into the hall.

Two uniformed deputies were waiting for him just outside the door.

Damon was talking with one of the responding officers when Collins came up beside him and signaled for his attention.

“What have we got?” Wilson asked while studying Sam over his fellow officer’s shoulder.

“Nothing much, I’m afraid.” Collins pointed a thumb back over his shoulder. “Name’s Samuel Travers. Claims he works here, stopped by to get a few things from his locker, and ran into the commotion downstairs so he thought he’d check things out. The victim was a friend of his it seems.”

Collins handed Damon a small laminated card that had Sam’s picture and employee information. Damon glanced at the photo, then suddenly remembered where he had seen him last.

Travers had been at the site where they’d discovered the Halloran corpse. Damon wondered if it was just a coincidence that Sam had shown up at this murder scene as well.Come to think of it, Jake Caruso had been at two of the murder scenes as well, the two at the Blake estates. Damon filed the thought away for later investigation.

The sheriff handed the ID back to Collins. “Check this out for me. Find out who his supervisor is and get him on the phone. I want to know everything he can tell us about this guy. You know the drill.”

“Gotcha, Sheriff.”

As Collins headed down the hall, Damon walked over to where Sam was standing. “Feeling any better, Mr. Travers?” he asked kindly.

“Uh, yeah, thanks. Sorry about the mess.” He waved his hand feebly in the direction of the doorway where he’d lost control of his stomach earlier.

“Don’t worry about it,” Damon replied. “A sight like that isn’t an easy one to take.” He shook his head sadly. “Unfortunately, when you’re in a position like mine you get used to it after a while.”

Sam didn’t reply. He was barely listening. He knew that he should be paying attention. He was probably in a whole lot of trouble, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. His thoughts were a confused jumble, like a swarm of bees around a hive.

He realized suddenly that the sheriff had asked him another question.

“Uhh, pardon me?”

Wilson eyed him calmly. “I asked if you knew the victim.”

Gabriel!a voice cried in the back of Sam’s mind. “Yeah. He’s…” he began, and then corrected himself. “He was a friend of mine. I work here, this is my floor.”Forgive me, Gabriel! How could I have known it was all true?

“Are you friends with most of the patients entrusted to your care?”

“Some of them,” Sam replied.

The heavy stench of death filled his nostrils as the ambulance attendants walked past carrying a stretcher on which sat a number of body bags. Sam’s gaze followed them the length of the hall until they disappeared around the corner.

Damon waited until he had Sam’s attention again. Then he asked, “Do you know who killed Mr. Armadorian?”

Yes!Sam’s mind cried, and for a moment he was afraid he’d be unable to prevent himself from telling the sheriff all he knew, that his mouth would disobey the commands his mind was sending to it and the whole sorry story would be revealed, but some rational part of him was still functioning. He knew that if he told the sheriff what he suspected, he’d only wind up at the county hospital awaiting a psychiatric exam. He managed to squelch his desperate need to unburden himself and answered the question in the negative.

Sam’s inner turmoil did not go unnoticed, but Damon gave no indication that he’d seen it.

If Sam might know something that could help the investigation of the murders, then Damon was duty-bound to bring him in for questioning. The mayor and the public were screaming for him to make an arrest and end the killing spree that was rapidly turning their town into a frightened community of hermits, too scared to leave their homes. He couldn’t arrest Sam just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but bringing him down to the station house for questioning wouldn’t violate any of his civil rights. Something stayed his hand, however.

Maybe it didn’t make much sense, but in his gut Damon was certain that Sam had no connection to the murders. While there was no evidence yet linking this one to the others aside from its sheer savagery, Damon was certain that they were all connected. They had to be. There was no doubt in his mind that all four murders were committed by the same person. Or animal, if he were to use Strickland’s theory. While Sam’s appearance tonight might indicate he knew something about the murders, not for a moment did Damon believe that Sam was capable of committing them. It took a certain maliciousness to kill in such a brutal manner, and his gut reaction told him Sam wasn’t capable of that.

Which left him back at square one.

Except for whatever it was that Sam knew.

Damon watched as Sam dug a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and stuck one between his lips. His hands trembled as he tried to light it, and after three unsuccessful tries the sheriff took pity on him and lit it for him.

Sam weakly smiled his thanks.

Damon came to a decision. “Look, Mr. Travers. I get the feeling you know a bit more about all this than you’re letting on. I’m giving you a chance to come clean right now. Is there anything you wanna tell me?”

Sam merely shook his head. “Is it okay if I go now? I’m not feeling all that great and…”

Damon cut him off. “Yeah, all right. I’m sure the whole situation has been a shock. There are a few other questions I want to ask you about Mr. Armadorian, but they can wait until the morning. I’ll expect you in my office sometime tomorrow, all right?”

“Yeah. Okay.” Sam turned and began walking down the corridor. He’d only gone a few steps when Sheriff Wilson called out to him.

“Mr. Travers?”

Sam turned back around to face him.

“The stairway to the locker room is this way,” the sheriff said, indicating the other end of the hall with an outstretched hand.

For a moment Sam was completely confused. The locker room? What the hell did that have to …? Then he remembered the cover story he’d told Deputy Collins. He smiled weakly, doing his best to cover his lapse. “Thanks. In the midst of all this I guess I forgot why I came here.” Sam turned and walked back past Wilson and down the hall in the other direction. He knew the sheriff wasn’t fooled.

Damon watched him go, then walked down the hall and reentered the room where the old man had died. He stared at the splattered bloodstains while the crime scene technicians went about their business around him.

Jesus H. Christ!he thought.Who the hell could do something like this?

The mutilation of the Cummingses had been bad. The memory of the man’s head stuffed into the toilet bowl rose in his mind, but he quickly shoved it away again. It was bad enough that he saw it in his dreams; he didn’t need to see it while he was awake.

Yet that horror had been something he could understand. It was sick, sure, but normally sick, if that made any kind of twisted sense. Mutilation of a victim’s body wasn’t all that uncommon in psychotic killings.

But this….

This was beyond anything he’d ever seen.

The poor guy had been torn to shreds, for Christ’s sake.

He shook his head.What kind of animal am I after? How the hell did it get in here without being seen or heard? How intelligent is this thing?

Sheriff Wilson’s right hand unconsciously slipped down to caress the butt of his service revolver.

There was one question he did know the answer to, however.

What do you do with an animal that is running wild in the streets?

Damon smiled grimly.

You hunt it down and kill it.

Sam felt like he’d been caught up in a giant whirlwind that was hurtling his body relentlessly forward without his control. He sat slumped on the floor in the basement locker room, his back resting against the cool metal of the lockers. He was doing his best to stop the palsied trembling of his body, which had started as soon as he’d sought refuge there.

He wasn’t having much success.

The events of the last hour had been too much for him. His mind and his body were numb with shock. It was hard to believe that Gabriel was dead. He knew it was true, yet a part of him resisted the notion.

Sam was overwhelmed with guilt. There was no way he could deny the fact that he had killed his friend. He hadn’t harmed him physically, but in his own mind he was as responsible as whoever had actually performed the violence. He had dismissed his friend’s fears as the harmless ramblings of an old man rapidly approaching senility, even when there had been no evidence that Gabriel had begun in any way to lose touch with reality, and that had killed him as surely as if Sam himself had wielded the knife.

If he’d listened, he might have been able to save him. He and Gabriel could’ve faced the old man’s enemy together. Gabriel might have survived.

If only he’d listened!

But he hadn’t, and Gabriel had paid the final price for Sam’s own ignorance.

With his heart aching and filled with guilt, grief finally broke through. His face in his hands, Sam wept long and hard, his shoulders hitching with the force of his sobs.

After a time, grief slowly gave way to anger.

Gabriel’s death would not go unavenged, he vowed to the empty air around him.

With the backs of his hands, Sam wiped the tears from his face and rose slowly to his feet. Knowing the police might still be outside, he knew he had to maintain his appearance, particularly in the light of Sheriff Wilson’s obvious suspicions. He went to his locker and spun the combination, intending on removing the extra coat he kept there to support the story he’d told the sheriff and Deputy Collins. When the lock clicked he yanked open the thin metal door and froze, staring at what lay inside.

A thick package wrapped in brown paper rested on the top shelf inside the locker. Sam’s name was scrawled across the front in Gabriel’s script.

The package hadn’t been there the day before yesterday.

It was just a simple package, no bigger than a couple of paperback books.

Yet something about it sent chills racing up and down Sam’s spine.

He had the distinct impression that it had been waiting there for him; waiting there in the darkness of his locker, quietly, patiently, like a spider hanging suspended in its web.

He stared at it for several long moments, his heart beating painfully in his chest.

Very slowly he reached in and picked it up. He held it gingerly, half-expecting it to scuttle swiftly out of his hands.

It did not.

It merely sat there, its very presence seeming to mock him, daring him to open it.

A voice in the back of his mind told him to toss it back into his locker. Better yet, straight into the nearest trash can.It’s probably nothing important anyway, the voice said.Get rid of it. Forget you ever set eyes on the damn thing. Let it sit there and rot until there’s nothing left but a thin film of fuzzy mold growing in its place.

Ignoring the voice, Sam took a deep breath, ripped the package open, and peered inside.

The black face of a videotape stared back at him.

26

REVELATIONS

Jake awoke.

He lay flat on his back in bed, his eyes straining to see in the darkness. His muscles tensed, and he was surprised when, a second or two after awakening, he realized he was holding his breath.

For several long moments, there was silence.

Just when he’d convinced himself that he was imagining things, the loud pounding that had awoken him resumed.

The front door, Jake realized distantly.

He glanced at the glowing hands of his watch.

Who the hell was banging on his door at midnight?

Finding his jeans where he’d dropped them beside the bed, Jake swung his legs out from under the sheets and pulled the jeans up over them.

The knocking continued.

“Hold your damn horses. I said I was coming!” he called in the direction of the front door.

The pounding had awoken Loki, and the dog added his barking to the din.

“Quiet, boy!” Jake said as he rounded the corner and snapped on the foyer light. Loki stood in front of the door, barking furiously, but when he saw Jake, he backed off and settled down.

The sudden quiet left in the wake of Loki’s silence was interrupted a second later as the pounding resumed for a third time.

Jake lost his patience. He turned the lock, disengaged the bolt, and threw the door open violently.

“Look you stupid son of a…”

He got no further.

The flood of words leaving his mouth trickled to a stop the moment Jake realized who it was standing on his front steps.

It was Sam, and his friend was a mess.

The knees of his jeans were stained with mud and grass. His shirt was buttoned improperly and on its front was a long streak of drying vomit.

Sam looked up and Jake knew something terrible had happened.

At last he found his voice. “Sam! What the hell happened?”

Travers smiled sadly. He opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out.

His chin dropped, his shoulders slumped, and without uttering a sound he collapsed directly into Jake’s arms, unconscious. The beer can he’d been holding behind his back clattered to the floor.

“Aw shit, Sam,” Caruso muttered as he manhandled his friend into the apartment and out into the living room.

As they passed through the foyer something slipped out of Sam’s half-tucked shirt and fell to the floor. Loki scooted in and retrieved it as Jake dumped Sam unceremoniously onto the couch.

Jake struggled with his friend’s limp body for a few moments until he’d managed to get the soiled clothes off him. He tossed them into the wash and got a spare blanket out of the hall closet to cover him up. He retrieved the beer can from the floor, then went outside and looked in the window of Sam’s car. The other five cans of the six-pack were on the front seat, still in their plastic binding. Satisfied that Sam wasn’t going to die of alcohol poisoning in the middle of the night, Jake went back inside.

Loki was lying on the floor, gnawing on his newfound toy, whatever it was. His own hangover forgotten in the excitement, Jake reached in and pried whatever it was from between the dog’s jaws, ignoring the low growls that he got in return.

“Shut up, boy,” he replied distractedly as he turned the object over in his hands.

It was a videotape. There was no jacket and no writing on the label; nothing to identify what it might contain.

Jake’s curiosity meter rose a notch.

He walked into the kitchen, the dog trailing eagerly at his heels. “See what you did, Loki?” Jake said as he held the tape in front of the dog’s nose and indicated the saliva hanging from it. “You got slime all over the tape. How am I supposed to watch it now, huh?”

The Akita whined as if in apology.

“Yeah, I know. You just couldn’t help it, right?” The banter with his pet helped take his mind off Sam’s condition and he relaxed a little as he cleaned the outside of the videotape.

Jake returned to the living room, slipped the tape into his VCR, and switched on the television. Settling comfortably onto the floor with his head against the cushion of the couch behind him, he sat back to watch the show.

The face of an old man filled the screen as the tape began to roll, and without having to be told, Jake knew this was Sam’s friend from the nursing home, Gabriel. The man smiled and began speaking.

“Well, Sammy. If you’re watching this we both know it’s too late to do anything for me.” He smiled grimly. “Don’t worry, my friend. I’ve waited a long time for this day. Longer than you could ever know. My time is up, but I’m afraid that yours has just begun.”

Jake leaned closer to the television, his interest aroused. The old man was talking as if he’d passed away.Could that be why Sam was so upset? Because Gabriel had died?

He glanced over his shoulder. Sam looked half-dead himself. His head was thrown back at a strange angle, his mouth agape. If it weren’t for the steady rise and fall of his chest, the illusion would’ve been perfect.

Shaking his head in sympathy, Jake turned back to the screen as the old man resumed his speech.

“I know you didn’t ask for this, and I know if you had your choice that you wouldn’t want it either. But there is no choice here. You must do as I ask. You must! You’re the only one who might possibly understand, the only one who won’t dismiss the entire story as pure nonsense.”

Say what?

“You’ve got to believe what I’m about to tell you. I know it’ll be hard. It’ll seem strange, even unbelievable at first. But it is true. On that, you’ve just got to trust me.”

The old man paused. He was staring straight at the camera, and from Jake’s viewpoint it seemed as if Gabriel was staring straight out of the screen, directly at him. Though it was completely irrational, Jake had the odd feeling that even now Gabriel could in some way actually see him.

It gave him the creeps.

But what Gabriel said next was even more frightening.

“If you don’t believe me, more innocent people will die.”

Jake straightened up.Gabriel was talking about the recent murders! Did he have something to do with them?

Little fingers of unease began caressing the back of his neck.

Jake made no move to turn the tape off, however.

Just a few more minutes,he told himself.

“Remember the story I told you a few weeks ago?” Gabriel was saying. “About the Beginning? About the Nightshades and the world before the coming of man? You’ve got to believe me Sam when I swear to you that it was all true! Every word of it!

“And now it is up to you to take up the fight.

“I am the last of the Elders, the last of my people. We were a brave and noble race, but when I am gone we will exist no more. We will pass out of this world, and only a faint echo of our glorious times will remain, meager memories that your people believe are nothing more than myths and legends.”

Time-out here!Jake thought, frowning.Nightshades? Elders? What is he talking about? It sounded as if the old guy didn’t think he was human, which was completely absurd. Had the guy gone completely off his rocker?

“As I told you before, millions died in the Great War between our two races. When it was over, only a handful from each side survived. A few of us cried out for peace between our two peoples. They believed the Elders and the Nightshades could exist together, side by side in harmony, working to rebuild a world we’d come close to destroying in our greed. But others among us, myself included, disagreed.” The old man’s fist clenched, and his voice rang with remembered pain. He shook his hand in the air. “White-hot hatred burned in our hearts, and in our minds there was only rage. We swore we would obtain vengeance for our dead or die ourselves in the attempt.”

Despite himself, Jake was moved by the man’s impassioned words, even as his mind sought to deny their authenticity. It was clear that Gabriel believed what he was saying to be the truth.

He watched as the old man lowered his fist and stared at it, as if surprised to find it there. Jake could see small red half-moons in his palm where his nails had pressed savagely against the tender flesh of his palm when Gabriel uncurled his fingers.

Gabriel went on, but the passion was gone as swiftly as it had come. His voice was now little better than a whisper and thick with the knowledge of choices made in error.

“We hunted each other through the ages, neither side gaining the upper hand. Hiding from the humans who had grown in number and spread their own civilization across the globe, we continued our war in the shadows. Savage clashes occurred whenever we met. We fought, and fought, and fought some more, until there were too few of us for it to matter any longer. Yet still we continued. We knew nothing else by then; the fight consumed us, body, mind, and soul. In the end, it became our only reason to live.

“It continued that way for centuries, until only two of us remained. Myself, and a Nightshade by the name of Moloch.”

Gabriel’s eyes burned with fanaticism. “He tried to flee, to escape my wrath, but I was better than he. I tracked him relentlessly, never tiring in my chase. I had the conscience of an entire race on my shoulders, and I swore to myself that I would not fail, that they would not have died in vain. Moloch would pay for his crimes. Victory would be ours at last!

“The chase led me here, to Harrington Falls, which at that time was nothing more than a small, pioneer settlement. Moloch had taken refuge in the home of a human, a man who sought to harness the ‘Powers of Darkness,’ as he called them, for his own evil ends. I confronted the Nightshade there and the battle was intense. The fighting between us went on for days, and many times it had me on the brink of defeat. Each time I would recall the faces of all those who had fallen before me and my strength would be renewed, until I could turn the situation to my advantage.

“In the end, it was Moloch who was defeated.

“It was then that I made my greatest mistake. As he lay there at my feet, awaiting the final blow that would send him into the darkness forever, I found I couldn’t finish what I’d begun. For decades, destroying him had been the sole purpose of my life, the very reason for my continued existence. When I thought of what it would be like to live without that burden, all I could envision was a bleak life, living without the company of my people. Even the world was something I no longer recognized, Man was everywhere; the last, wild sacred places dwindling by the day. In that moment of triumph, I realized the irony of my existence.

“If I destroyed him, I would in fact be destroying myself as well.

“Despite my loneliness, I did not want to die.

“In the end, I compromised. I used the last of my powers to rob him of his physical existence, imprisoning the rest of his being, his soul if you will, inside a void, a sphere of nothingness. That was in turn sealed inside a stone likeness of him that his human ally, Sebastian Blake, had fashioned. I sealed the statue and its precious contents away in a place where I thought it would never be found while the townspeople were sending Blake on to his last reward.

“I was no longer the Hunter. I was the Guardian. Once again, I had a purpose in my life, a reason to continue.

“Decades passed and the beast remained locked in its cell. It had lost its body, but its mind still functioned; it was helpless, trapped with only its thoughts for companions for all eternity. I hoped it would eventually lose its mind, but not before it suffered long and hard for what it and its kind had done.

“Such was the nature of my vengeance.” Gabriel’s voice rose once more. “I was a fool! The years passed. I roamed the world as one of you, pretending to be an ordinary human, hiding my true identity. Nightly I would let my consciousness return here to check on my captive, to ensure that all was well with Moloch’s confinement. In time I grew overconfident. My visits became weekly, then monthly, and before long entire decades would pass before I would return. I was enjoying life as a human, crude though it was in comparison to our world, and sought the kind of pleasures from life that I had missed in my earlier years because of the war.

“My people have much longer life cycles than your own, and so I watched generations pass me by while I remained as I was and always had been, young and strong. Eventually, time caught up with me and took its toll. Our lives may be longer than yours, but we are every bit as mortal in the end.

“Knowing my death wasn’t far in the future, I returned here to live out the last of my days.

“That’s when it happened.

“Moloch escaped.”

Jake was staring at the screen with his jaw hanging wide, absolutely astounded at what he was hearing.Everything the old man said was bullshit, but what bullshit it was! The best part of it all was the fact that Gabriel believed it all. Every word. You could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice.

Gabriel went on. “I am too old to fight him as I once did. My body is weary, and my power wanes. If you are watching this, then you know I was too weak to defend myself and the war is at last over. But you are young. You have the power of truth and righteousness on your side, as I had so long ago. You can defeat him!

“He has killed several times already and will no doubt kill again and again unless he is stopped. You must find him and destroy him once and for all. You must succeed where I have failed.”

The old man’s face took on a look of chagrin, as if he were begging for forgiveness. “I wish I had more time to teach you what I know. But I waited too long, hoping against hope that I would be strong enough to finish the deed. How wrong I was! I can tell you this; he has gained new abilities since his release, abilities even I am uncertain of. But he has gained a weakness as well. He requires blood to remain corporeal, or the sorcery he used to release himself will be undone. Do not repeat the mistakes I have made, my young friend. Remember, when he comes, he will come on night’s velvet wings. Watch for him. Find him and destroy him. The fate of your world now hangs in the balance.”

With that final statement the tape ended.

The screen in front of Jake went blank.

Holy Shit!Jake thought a few moments later, once his mind had managed to digest everything the old man had said.Nightshades? Civilizations long before the rise of man? And that shit about chasing the Dark One down through the centuries, that’s rich. The guy was a certifiable loon, that was for sure, but hell, he had one heck of an imagination, you had to give him that.

No wonder Sam liked him.

Shaking his head in amazement, Jake flipped off the set and headed back to bed, intending on catching some sleep. He could talk to Sam about things in the morning.

He was in the process of double-checking the lock on the front door when something clicked in the back of his mind.

Jake stiffened and his eyes widened involuntarily. His mouth opened, but no words came out.

Images flashed inside his head, one after another, coming so fast that they seemed to blend together into a hideous collage.

Halloran’s corpse.

The statue they’d found inside the crypt.

The news reports about the murders.

The butler’s body.

The visions Katelynn had been having.

Gabriel pleading with Sam to stop the thing from killing again.

Good Lord!Jake thought.Could everything Gabriel had said be true?

At that moment Jake felt a mental hinge beginning to let go in the back of his mind. With it, his entire foundation of rational thought began sliding down a long dark ramp.

All right, Jake. Don’t freak out on me here,he told himself.Get a grip and just think this whole thing through logically. There’s got to be a better explanation for all this. There has to be!

There wasn’t.

A part of him deep down inside knew it.

Calming himself, Jake went into the kitchen and sat down, considering the whole situation step by step.

The killings had begun Tuesday afternoon or evening, only a short time after Kyle Halloran’s body had been discovered in Sebastian Blake’s crypt. Since then all hell had broken loose. In the space of forty-eight hours, five, possibly six, people had been hideously murdered. Jake knew from the news reports that the bodies had been ravaged as well. In one case, the death of an elderly couple, the victims had been mutilated so badly that the police hadn’t been certain how many bodies they were actually dealing with when they first arrived at the scene. Jake had even heard rumors that parts of the bodies had been eaten.

Judging from the frantic pressure the papers were putting on the sheriff’s department, Jake suspected that the authorities were no closer to catching the killer than they had been from the very start.

Why?

Because they were looking in the wrong place?

Because the killer wasn’t human, as they so naturally assumed?

While the logical side of his mind was telling him to knock off the bullshit and go back to bed, the other half—the one that loved to read horror novels and play Swords and Sorcerers—was saying,Why the hell not? Weirder things happen all the time, right? Take a look around. How many UFO sightings were there last year? What about the Loch Ness monster? Sure, and the National Enquireris up for the Pulitzer Prize this year.

Suppose the creature did exist.

That would account for the police having so much trouble finding the killer, wouldn’t it? A demon, or whatever you wanted to call it, wouldn’t leave the usual sort of evidence that police investigations relied upon. There’d be no motive, no connections between the victims. There wouldn’t be any fingerprints, or fiber traces, or paper trails for them to follow. There’d be no murder weapon; no pistol, no knife, no lead pipe or candlestick. Any blood or tissue samples the police recovered wouldn’t do them any good. What could they match them to? The same went for teeth marks on the victims.

The creature could leave behind a trail of corpses and still be practically untraceable!

This is crazy,he told himself, but he wasn’t quite ready to let it go.

Not yet.

His theory would also go a long way to explaining what it was that Katelynn was seeing in her “visions.” Once he made the simple jump in logic that said such a thing might be possible, everything else fell solidly into place.

Okay.

Say it does exist.

How can I prove that?

Jake got up and poured himself some coffee. He had a hunch he was going to need it. He crossed to the junk drawer and dug around until he found a clean sheet of paper and a pen. He took them both back to the table.

After a couple of minutes, he began writing.

27

CONNECTIONS

While Jake was wrestling with the idea that something paranormal was happening around him, Katelynn was pacing her living room, lost in thought.

Blake’s Bane,she kept repeating to herself as she moved about the room.

Blake’s Bane… Blake’s Bane… Blake’s…

She tried to sleep, but after lying in bed awake for half an hour she’d given up and gotten to work. The innate curiosity that had led her into a life of research assumed control and pushed her emotions back where they couldn’t interfere with her work. There they could simmer until she was ready to deal with them.

For the time being, Jake was forgotten.

Katelynn had bigger fish to fry.

Blake’s Bane… Blake’s Bane…

Father Castelli’s phrase had rung a bell somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind. Katelynn was positive she had heard it before. It didn’t even occur to her to doubt that the phrase was genuine; she was convinced that they had, indeed, been speaking to the deceased priest.

But when had she heard it? And where?

She had a hunch that if she could find the answer to either of those questions, then she’d also discover the answer to what had been happening to her lately.

Back and forth…

Back and forth…

Blake’s Bane…

With a sharp cry she dashed across the room to her desk and frantically dug through the stacks of books piled haphazardly on the floor, at last pulling forth a small, leather-bound volume that had seen better days. The book’s cover was torn, the corners bent, even the pages had taken on the yellowish brown hue that belied old age.

She seated herself behind the desk unconsciously and, after turning on the light, began slowly scanning page after page of the small work.

I know it’s here somewhere,she told herself over and over again.I know it is.

Indeed it was.

On page 243, to be exact.

The volume itself was the traveling diary of Edward Beckett. It was a slim volume, one she’d found only after acting on Gabriel’s advice during her fourth search of the library’s rare books collection. Beckett had been a circuit-riding minister who traveled from settlement to settlement in the country’s early years, bringing the word of the Lord to any and all who would listen. Beckett had passed through Harrington Falls several times in the 1760s and she had been using his firsthand observations of the area as a sourcebook for her thesis. Harrington Falls had been well established by then, having swiftly spread into the surrounding countryside as the Blake family’s wealth brought more people into the region. Beckett’s observations provided a clear and accurate picture of life on the frontier. He apparently rode several hundreds of miles a year, preaching as often as possible.

A meticulous man, he recorded every little detail in the volumes of travel diaries he prepared along the way.

As chance would have it, he arrived in Harrington Falls on a cold evening in October of 1763, the same evening Sebastian Blake was accused of practicing witchcraft and wizardry.

The townsfolk had decided his guilt right then and there and passed judgment on their neighbor.

The sentence: death.

Beckett had watched the trial and the punishment that followed, and, as always, had recorded his observations in his journal.

He had been the one to coin the odd term, “Blake’s Bane.”

Now, reading the words of a man who had long since turned to dust, Katelynn discovered some of the answers she’d been searching for.

And something else, as well.

She discovered that she was more frightened than she’d ever been in her entire life.

28

FOREST GREEN REVISITED

Having left Sam asleep on the couch, Jake stood beside his Jeep, staring across the street at the entrance to the cemetery, driven by his own logic to see if his theory was true.

Two spotlights lit the concrete arch in a brilliant glare, making the darkness just beyond seem that much darker. It looked to him to be a solid wall of black, and as he strained unsuccessfully to see into it, Jake had the uneasy feeling that something was hidden within its swirling depths, hiding just beyond the range of his vision, crouched there in hungry anticipation of his arrival.

You don’t want to go in there,an inner voice warned.There’s nothing on the other side of that arch; no grass, no graves, no cemetery. Just one great, sprawling nothing, and it’s waiting for you.

Waiting to swallow you whole.

“Bullshit!” he said aloud. The echo of his voice in the otherwise empty silence of the night made him jump in surprise.It’s just dark, that’s all. That’s why you brought the flashlight, remember? he told himself. Though he knew he was being ridiculous, knew it was just an illusion created by the contrast of the lights and the night’s darkness, he still couldn’t help but cringe when he passed beneath the arch, expecting in that instant to be sucked away into the void, never to return.

Of course, nothing like that happened, and he emerged on the other side unscathed.

“Nothing to it,” he muttered beneath his breath as he wiped the thin sheen of sweat from his brow.

Turning on the flashlight, its beam lighting the way before him for a good twenty feet, Jake set off, knowing if he hesitated, he might lose his nerve and turn back.

The darkness pressed in from all sides.

It was a hungry beast waiting to pounce, and more than once he stopped in his tracks and swung the flashlight in a slow arc around him, assuring himself that he was, indeed, alone. On the last such pass, a sudden realization came to him, and it was one that did nothing to improve the state of his already frayed nerves. Seeing the glistening marble of the headstones that stood in silent rows on either side of the path on which he stood, Jake remembered he wasn’t alone.

Not really.

Not by a long shot.

He had the dead for company.

He imagined them in their holes beneath the ground, lying languidly in their coffins, their flesh rotting from their bones, their lips pulled back to reveal grinning teeth, their eyes open and staring. Eyes that were alive with unnatural life. Eyes that could see him despite the wood and earth that separated them. He pictured their grins growing wider at the sight, their arms slowly rising off their chests to reach upward toward him…

Jake shook himself violently, trying to dispel the images. He wasn’t entirely successful. The hair rose on his arms and the back of his neck. He had to force himself to keep moving. It couldn’t be much farther, he figured.

If you go on, you might not be able to turn back,that disturbing little voice whispered in the back of his mind, but he ignored it and continued on.

Five minutes later he turned off the path, his feet seeming to know the way of their own accord. Despite his unease, Jake really couldn’t believe he was doing this. Back home, with the night’s excitement still rampaging through his system and Gabriel’s voice echoing in his ears, the idea that some supernatural being was hunting in Harrington Falls had seemed possible. The strange coincidences that had been occurring around him had added fuel to the fire, seeming to add up to that conclusion as naturally as two and two make four. But here, in the depths of the cemetery in the heart of the night, Jake was no longer so certain.

Jake wrestled with his thoughts for several more minutes, until he realized he had reached his destination.

There, not ten feet away, was the tomb.

Maybe it was the sense of evil that pervaded the place, or the nerve-jabbing feeling that all was not as it should be there, or the perception of wrongness that penetrated to the bone like an ice-cold February rain, but whatever it was, Jake suddenly knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that his conclusions had been right. He could feel it in his heart, in his head, and in his soul. Where five minutes before he had come close to convincing himself that it was all nonsense, now, staring at the crypt, all his suspicions were swept away by a mental tide of profound certainty.

The beast was real.

As if in confirmation of that fact, the open door of the crypt creaked loudly.

Jake felt his breath vanish in a sudden rush. “Oh, God,” he said softly.

Shining the light out on the ground before him, his feet suddenly unsteady, Jake cautiously made his way closer to the crypt until he stood only a foot or so in front of the door.

He was sick with dread.

Praying that his mind was right and his instincts wrong, Jake lifted the flashlight until its beam shone directly into the tomb.

He felt his mind tilt crazily at the sight before him, and his knees grew dangerously weak. He knew that if he fell there, that close to the tomb, he might not have the strength to get back up. That was the last thing he wanted just then. If he didn’t get away from there, he knew he’d go crazy. As it was, he couldn’t bear to look any longer.

Try as he might as he slowly backed away, Jake found he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the sight before him.

The beam of light shone directly on the rear wall of the tomb.

The emptiness of the chamber seemed to mock him in return.

As impossible as it was, it was true.

The tomb was empty.

29

DECISION TIME

“Can I come in?”

Jake nodded and stepped back slightly, allowing Katelynn just enough room to get through the door before he quickly closed and locked it thoroughly. He then checked the locks twice before peering out the peephole into the night.

Katelynn watched all this without a word.

Jake didn’t look so good. His hair was uncombed and wildly tangled. A five o’clock shadow lay heavy on his face.

Jake turned to face her. He put one finger to his lips and motioned for her to follow with his other hand.

They went through the living room, where Katelynn saw Sam asleep on the sofa, looking even worse than Jake. The large circles under his eyes were exaggerated by the pale, pasty color of his skin. One hand lay atop the blanket that covered his body, and Katelynn could see that it trembled while he slept.

Jake took a seat at the table and, with an unsteady wave of one hand, indicated she should do likewise.

“What happened to Sam?”

Jake shook his head. “He showed up here a few hours ago but passed out before he could tell me anything. I haven’t bothered to try to wake him.”

“What’s going on, Jake?” she asked in a quiet voice.

For several long moments she thought he wasn’t going to answer. He sat there without moving, silently staring at the table, a distant glazed look in his eyes. When at last he did answer, his voice was a low monotone. “Earlier, when I told you that you must have been dreaming, I was wrong. It’s real, Katelynn. It’s real, and it’s out there somewhere. Waiting to kill again.” He told her everything that had happened from the time she left him in the Hemingway until he called her to come over.

Katelynn didn’t say a word the entire time he spoke, just patiently heard him out.

When he was finished, she got up without a word and started out of the room.

“Where are you going?” he called after her, then reluctantly got to his feet and followed.

He found her in the living room, sliding the video back into the VCR.

Watching it a second time, Jake felt the fear that had been gnawing at his gut for the last few hours come back for a second course. Knowing Gabriel was telling the truth gave his plea for help that much more of a punch. It was no longer the fanciful ravings of a lunatic; it was stark, cold reality. Jake shivered with the implications.

Again, Katelynn didn’t say a word; she quietly got up when it was over and returned to the kitchen.

Jake spared a quick glance over at Sam, saw that he was still asleep, and followed her.

She was sitting at the table, waiting for him.

“I’m afraid there’s more, Jake,” she said.

He looked at her, thinking he was about to get the second half of a one-two punch.

“Does the name Edward Beckett ring a bell?”

He shook his head.

Taking a deep breath, she began her story. “Beckett was a minister, a traveling one, who spent a good deal of time around these parts in the late 1700s. He kept extensive journals of all he did and saw. I’ve been using some of his works as references on my thesis.

“In October of 1763, Beckett arrived here in Harrington Falls just in time to witness the one and only witchcraft trial this town has ever seen. The man who was accused, and later convicted, of the crime was Sebastian Blake.”

“What’s that got to do with Gabriel and the thing you keep seeing in your dreams?” Jake asked.

“I’m getting to that. It seems that Blake was practicing what everyone considered to be black magic. Among other things, he supposedly had a demon familiar, a kind of magical companion, that followed him and did his bidding.”

Jake nodded that he understood. He was familiar with the concept of familiars from their weekly session of Swords and Sorcerers.

“At the trial, several witnesses came forward and admitted to having seen this familiar. One of them even claimed to have survived an attack by it. The authorities took them at their word and searched Blake’s house, but they never found the familiar. They did find a statue of a demonic-looking creature carved from stone, so lifelike in its appearance that they believed Blake had used a living beast as a model. That was all the evidence the authorities needed to convince the jury that the witnesses were telling the truth. For Blake, it was the final nail in his coffin.

“Beckett recorded all this in his journal, including a description of the beast, and went so far as to name it Blake’s Bane. I believe the statue you found in Sebastian Blake’s tomb is the statue Beckett mentions in his journal.”

They sat in silence for a moment, digesting the implications.

“What happened to Blake?” Jake asked.

“They supposedly sealed him alive inside a tomb as a warning to anyone else who might be tempted to fool around with witchcraft,” she answered matter-of-factly.

Jake stared at her in surprise. “Are you kidding?”

She shook her head.

“Nice neighbors,” said Jake.

Katelynn went on. “It is my belief that statue was not a model of Blake’s familiar, it was the familiar itself, somehow transformed into stone. And by breaking into the tomb, Kyle unwittingly provided what the Nightshade needed to secure its release,” Katelynn finished.

They sat in silence, lost in their own thoughts.

“What do you think happened to Gabriel?” Katelynn asked.

“Something broke into the nursing home and ripped him to shreds.”

Then Jake and Katelynn jumped in surprise. They looked up to find Sam leaning against the doorframe, wrapped in the blanket in which he’d been sleeping. On his face was a blank expression, and his voice was utterly devoid of emotion.

He’s in shock,Katelynn thought.

Sam went on, “I went to the nursing home. I managed to sneak past all the cops and got to the third floor in time to see them photographing the scene. What was left of him looked more like raw meat than the remains of a human being.”

He shuffled into the room and took a seat opposite Jake, retreating into silence.

Loki chose that moment to come wandering in, eyed them all, and settled on the floor at Katelynn’s feet.

She reached down to stroke his fur in an effort to calm her own rapidly fraying nerves. “So it was Gabriel who was trying to warn us through the Ouija board?” she asked.

Sam nodded. “I should have known it was him. Only Gabriel called me Sammy. When that message came up, I was simply too stunned to act, then Dana’s seizure delayed us all. By the time I got to the nursing home, it was too late. Gabriel was dead.”

“Then what I am seeing in these visions…”

“Is this Nightshade Moloch,” Jake finished for her.

“What do we do now?” Katelynn wondered.

Jake answered without hesitation. “We’ve got to stop him.”

She looked at him. “What do you mean ‘stop him’? How?”

“Kill him, I suppose. What else can we do?”

“We’re not talking about some rabid dog that you can just track down and put out of its misery. This is a, uh…” She struggled, not quite sure what to call the thing.A beast? A demon? Just what in the name of God is it?

Jake watched her confusion, thinking that while he might not know what to call it, he at least knew what it was.

Evil.

With a capital E.

“What do you suggest we do?” he asked Katelynn in reply. “Just let it keep killing people?”

“Of course not! I just think there might be someone else better qualified to do the job. Why don’t we tell the cops? They can call in a SWAT team, or the National Guard, or somebody. They’re trained for this kind of thing. We aren’t.”

Jake laughed. “Yeah, right Katelynn. I can see it now.” He mimed picking up the telephone and dialing a number. “Yeah, hi. Is this the police? Good. My name is Jake Caruso, and I just wanted to let you know that there’s some creature from Hell loose in Harrington Falls and that’s what has been killing people. What’s that? Oh, of course I have a description. He’s red, with cloven hooves and a forked tail, and usually carries a pitchfork.”

Katelynn stared at him for a moment, then sighed. “Okay. I get the point. But I still don’t think it’s a good idea for us to get involved. We don’t know anything about stopping this thing. We don’t know where it lives, what its weaknesses are, nothing. How are we supposed to kill it? Drive a wooden stake through its heart? Shoot it with silver bullets? Wrap it in iron chains and drop it in running water? What?”

“I don’t know. But there’s got to be some way to stop it, or else there’d be thousands of them out there. The Elders managed to do it, according to Gabriel. So can we!”

“Come on, Jake! This isn’t a game of Swords and Sorcerers, where you can drink a healing potion or receive a resurrection spell and everything will be all right again. Wake up to reality. This thing has been savagely killing people, including two cops. And you can bet your ass they had guns and knew how to use them!”

Jake turned to Sam, who’d been silently watching their exchange. “What do you say, Sam? Are you with me?”

Sam’s gaze met his own, and in his eyes Jake could see a rage that smoldered like a white-hot ember. Sam’s voice was flat and hard, but this time full of emotion, his anger barely held in check. “I want to kill that motherfucker. I don’t care how we do it. I just want it dead.”

“All right! That’s my man!” Jake said, clapping him on the back. “We’re gonna send this mother right back to whatever hell it crawled out of!” He turned back to Katelynn. “So? Are you with us or not?”

Katelynn stared at the two of them. They were really going to do it, whether she agreed to go along or not, she could see that.Have they both gone completely nuts? She was convinced they had.

“No.” she said, then once again more firmly. “No, I’m not going with you. And I won’t sit here listening to you anymore. You’ve got to be out of your mind, Jake. You heard what Sam said. This thing ripped Gabriel into little pieces. If he was one of these Elders with their mystical powers and still got torn to shreds, what do you think it will do to the two of you?”

“I guess we’ll just have to take that chance,” Jake replied calmly.

Katelynn could see the hurt in his eyes, but she ignored it. If he wanted to be mad at her for trying to save his life, let him. He’d done dumber things before. “Then you’ll do it without me.”

Katelynn got up and walked out of the kitchen.

A few moments later the two men heard the front door open and close, then the sound of her car starting in the driveway.

Katelynn wasn’t coming back.

Jake looked at Sam, then shrugged. “So be it. We’ll just do it on our own.” He got up, filled a mug with coffee for each of them, then sat back down and started to plan.

30

RIVERWATCH

Sam awoke to a hand gently shaking his shoulder. In the dim light he could see Jake standing over the bed. “Time to go,” his friend said.

Sam nodded to show he understood.

As Jake disappeared back into the living room, Sam swung his legs out of bed and quickly dressed. A passing glance at the clock told him it was 4:00A.M .

He slipped out of the bedroom and moved down the hall to find Jake waiting silently by the front door. Loki stood beside him, but Jake indicated to the dog that he was to stay, and the Akita complied. Sam nodded that he was ready, and the two of them left the house and climbed into the Jeep.

They had settled on a simple plan. The two of them would climb the Rock, a tall outcropping of stone that overlooked the Quinnepeg River and set up a watch. As the highest place in town, and one that overlooked the Riverwatch mansion, it seemed a logical place to start. All of the attacks had been at night, under the cover of darkness. That had led the two of them to hypothesize that the beast either chose not to be out and about during the daylight or could not. Either way, it would attempt to return to its hiding place before the sun came up. The Rock’s height gave them the best possible chance of spotting the Nightshade in the air, and there was always the possibility that it might actually be hiding in Riverwatch, despite the search the police had made of the premises earlier. Jake and Sam intended to be on the Rock before then, so that they would have the opportunity to see it when it returned. That would give them an idea of what they were up against.

After that, they’d figure out the rest of the plan.

For his part, Sam found himself wondering just what the hell they thought they were doing. He didn’t doubt for an instant that the beast really existed. He’d seen enough in the last two days to convince him of that. He also knew just what horrible acts of violence the beast was capable of committing, and yet, here he was actively going to seek the thing out, to discover where it lived. His anger had cooled slightly, and this gave him some perspective on the situation. Katelynn had been right. They had to be nuts to try a stunt like this. This thing could kill them without batting an eye. He turned to voice his opinion to Jake, when his friend said, “We’re here.”

Sam glanced out the window as Jake pulled the Jeep over and parked it on the side of the road. From where Sam sat, the woods seemed to extend for miles out from the road, though he knew that just a few hundred yards away they suddenly dropped off at the edge of the Quinnepeg River. Next to the shoreline loomed the Rock, though they couldn’t see it from the street.

“I don’t know about this anymore, Jake. It seems kind of crazy to me.”

Jake wasn’t pleased. “I thought we agreed.”

“We did,” Sam said. “It’s just the rest of the plan that bothers me. Sure, we might actually see this thing, but then what? What happens if it discovers we’re up here? Have you thought of that? Gabriel didn’t give us information on how to stop the Nightshade. I don’t particularly like the idea of trying to fight it off with my bare hands!”

“It’s not going to find us,” Jake said as he climbed out of the Jeep, looking back in through the open door. “We’ll be hidden in the trees, well out of sight. All we’ve got to do is hang around long enough to see if it’s still in the mansion, then we’ll get the hell out of here and call in some help.”

“Like who?” Sam wanted to know, making no move to get out of the car.

“How the hell should I know?” Jake replied in exasperation, and shut the door in Sam’s face.

Sam watched as Jake crossed to the other side of the road, stepped over the old stone wall that lay crumbling at the edge of the trees, and disappeared into the darkness on the other side.

The silence that settled on the Jeep in his passing seemed to weigh heavily on Sam. Fear had come to replace the anger he felt earlier when they’d decided on this course of action and seemed to settle about his shoulders like a wet cloak. Being alone in the dark was not the best idea at the moment. Should he stay there, and hope the Nightshade didn’t see him hiding in the car, or join Jake and pray it never looked in their direction? Neither alternative held that much appeal to him. It only took him another second to make up his mind.

Sam opened his door and got out of the Jeep. “Hey, Jake!” he hissed into the darkness. “Wait up!”

Ten minutes later they were settled in on the top of the Rock, doing their best to blend in with the landscape. The stone they sat upon was wet with the evening’s condensation, and its coldness quickly sapped the heat from their bones. The wind whistled lightly through the trees around them, rustling the leaves, sounding like voices calling out to them from the darkness. Below, a thick fog lay a few inches above the water, swirling about in the light breeze like ghosts dancing in the night. Nothing in their situation made Sam feel any better about his decision to leave the Jeep.

Sam glanced out over the water. From where they sat, the tall spires of Riverwatch were clearly visible in the light of the moon. It was there that they suspected the Nightshade had been hiding since the most recent killings.

They sat quietly in the darkness, ignoring their discomfort, lost in their own thoughts, until Sam broke the silence about half an hour into their watch.

“I think I have it figured out.”

In the dim light Sam could see Jake’s head turn toward him. “Have what figured out?”

“Why there’s been no evidence of Gabriel’s version of history.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because mankind just hasn’t recognized it for what it was when we saw it.”

Jake chuffed, a trait he’d probably picked up from Loki. “Run that by me again.”

“Think about it. If these things were supposed to have had their own civilization like Gabriel said, there should be some kind of physical record of their existence, right? I mean, if we can find evidence of man’s earliest ancestors walking across the plains of Africa, then there should be some clues left behind that these two great races inhabited the world before we did. Hell, Gabriel even bragged about the Elders’ great cities. Why isn’t there any evidence of them?”

Jake pondered this for a moment. “Beats me.”

“Maybe there is evidence. Think about it, Jake. How many unexplained coincidences and unsolved mysteries are there concerning the ancient world? Hundreds, right?” Sam’s voice started to rise in excitement.

“So?” replied Jake. He wasn’t sure where Sam was going with this. “And lower your voice, will you?” he added irritably.

“I’m talking about hard, substantive evidence that Gabriel’s story of the Age of Creation is true. Evidence that’s always been right under our noses, we just didn’t recognize it.”

“Like what?”

“Like who built the statues on Easter Island, for instance. They’ve stood there for centuries, yet no one knows one iota about the people who built them or why they were built in the first place.”

Jake stared at his friend in disbelief, though the darkness prevented Sam from seeing his expression. “That’s your evidence? A bunch of lousy statues no one knows who built is your proof that some highly developed civilization ruled the earth before we did? Don’t you think that’s pushing things?”

“But that’s just it, Jake. It’s not the only evidence. It is just one example. There are others just like it. Look at the pyramids. Even today, with all of our modern technology, we still couldn’t replicate even one of those pyramids and get it as mathematically precise as the Egyptians did, and they used only their hands. And what about the Mayans and the Incas? Two incredibly advanced civilizations with both a spoken and written alphabet long before our ancestors in Europe had learned the value of writing. Both groups also had enough respect for geometry and astronomy to create a calendar that many argue is even more accurate than the one we use today. How else could they have done it, Jake, if not with a little help from someone else, like the Elders?”

Jake was interested now. Sam was actually making some sense. He remembered such theories had been put forth in the past, though they usually revolved around some extraterrestrial intelligence landing in flying saucers for a neighborly visit. Such ideas had always been scoffed at, with valid reason, in Jake’s opinion. But Sam’s idea struck a little closer to home. A prehistoric, intelligent race of “others,” for lack of a better term, was just as good a theory as any for explaining how man had managed to rise from naked, bestial savagery in such a short period of time, if you looked at things on the cosmic scale. It seemed impossible for them to have done it on their own. Jake turned back to stare out into the night, pondering this new twist.

Sam’s mind was still going a mile a minute as he sought to collect his thoughts into a coherent sequence. Everything suddenly made sense, and one simple answer could explain hundreds of mysteries.

“But why don’t we have any relics, any ruins, from these people? Every other civilization has left something behind, some record of the past, why not this one?” asked Jake.

“There wouldn’t necessarily be any ruins left. It’s the way they did things back then. Look at Troy, for God’s sake. That’s a perfect example. By the time Heidelmann actually found the place, he found not one city, but twenty-two cities, each one built on the ruins of the others, the materials of the former scavenged to form the building blocks of the next. Maybe that’s why some of the earliest human establishments were built where they were; they were building on the ruins of the civilization they remembered of old.”

Jake wasn’t buying all that, however. “There’d still be something left, Sam. Some reference, some clue that they’d been there before us.”

“But there is, Jake! What’s the one constant myth that can be found in hundreds of cultures? The myth of a great and shining civilization destroyed by some tremendous cataclysm in the earliest days of recorded history. Atlantis.

“Can’t you see it, Jake? Those last violent days, as the race you’ve nurtured grows into adolescence while your own dwindles into its final days, your ranks and those of your enemies diminished beyond recovery by centuries of warfare?”

Sam began pacing back and forth across an exposed portion of the Rock, no longer hiding, completely in view should anyone be looking in their direction.

Knowing that in his excitement Sam had forgotten what they were doing there and the need to remain undetected, Jake turned to tell him to shut up and sit down.

The words froze on his lips.

From over Sam’s shoulder, Jake could see a long, dark shape diving out of the night, its form darker than the darkness it descended from, silhouetted in the light of the stars it blotted from view.

The sight shocked Jake into immobility.

Down, down it came, traveling dozens of feet in seconds, hurtling toward its target, Sam’s unprotected back.

Jake tried to yell, tried to scream, to break the paralysis that gripped him, as raw, undiluted fear squeezed his heart like a vise and threatened to shut down his nervous system. Yet still he couldn’t move, couldn’t warn his friend of death approaching from the night sky above.

Everything seemed to happen at once.

A sharp, shrill shriek filled the air, as the Nightshade gave voice to the sheer pleasure and anticipation of the kill to come.

Sam spun around and looked up, seeing for the first time that dark shape streaking toward him.

The moon reflected off the claws of the beast’s outstretched talons as they prepared to rip and tear into its prey.

Jake’s paralysis broke.

He reacted without conscious thought; his body swung sideways without a word, his legs extended out before him in a wild kick with all the weight of his six-foot frame behind it.

His ankles struck Sam’s legs at a point just above his knees, knocking his friend’s legs out from under him, throwing him into an uncontrolled fall that forced him right over the edge of the Rock toward the water below.

With a sharp cry, Sam disappeared from view.

Knowing he had scant seconds to escape, Jake wasted no time in thinking about his response. He simply let his body continue the arc it had begun, throwing himself sideways and following Sam off the edge.

One moment the solid surface of the Rock was beneath him, the next he was falling through space. The drop seemed to last forever, until with a sudden impact he plunged into the icy waters of the Quinnepeg.

The fall took him deep, and the cold of the water seemed to suck the air straight out of his lungs. He frantically fought to the surface, feeling the weight of his wet clothes trying to drag him under, and he gasped with relief when his head broke clear of the water.

He found Sam coughing up a mouthful of water just a few feet away.

“You okay?” Jake asked him.

“Yeah.”

“I guess we found it,” Jake said weakly.

Sam chose not to reply.

Jake was about to continue when a whistling sound alerted him to the oncoming danger.

“Down!” he cried, not even bothering to look up, instinctively knowing that what he heard was the sound caused by the rush of air over the surface of the Nightshade’s wings as it plunged toward them from above.

Jake dived again, dived deep to evade the deadly claws that plunged into the river in search of his tender flesh. He struck out for shore at the same time, hoping that the Nightshade’s eyesight wasn’t sharp enough to see him beneath the water in the darkness. He planned to come to the surface a fair distance from where he’d gone under, hoping that would buy him enough time to figure out how to get out of this situation.

Jake stayed down as long as he could, until his lungs were screaming for oxygen and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he couldn’t hold out another moment.

He broke the surface of the water some thirty-five yards from where he’d gone under, having covered two-thirds of the distance to the other bank.

A quick, frantic look above told him the sky was empty for the time being.

It was a blessing, though there was no telling how long it would last.

Still, he’d take whatever time it gave him.

Where’s Sam?Jake thought, and looked around, doing his best to pierce the layer of fog that floated an inch above the dark water. A subtle motion in the haze and the rhythmic sounds of a swimmer’s strokes through the water reached him, and his heart began beating again.

They were both all right, for the time being, it seemed.

Jake knew if they didn’t come up with a plan quickly, they were finished. The noise they were making was sure to bring the Nightshade down on top of them, and each successive moment they spent in these freezing waters would quickly leech away their strength, slowing their reaction time. They might not move fast enough to get out of the way of the next attack.

Jake didn’t even want to consider what might happen then.

He struck out after Sam, quickly catching up to him as he floundered toward shore.

“You all right?” Jake asked softly, when he had reached him.

“Shoulder’s bleeding, but I don’t think it’s too bad. Not sure if that thing got me or if I hit the rocks on the way down. The cold is helping to numb the pain, though. I think I’ll be all right provided we get out of here soon. Any ideas?”

Jake shook his head in reply.

They didn’t have much time to debate their choices.

As they spoke, they kept looking up into the sky, struggling to catch a glimpse of their pursuer. Which was why they failed to see it, when, minutes later, it swept out of the fog only an inch or two above the water, suddenly appearing like a wraith in the night, its claws extended and eager for flesh.

“Look out!” Sam cried, spying the beast, shoving himself backward at the last moment in an effort to get away from those deadly talons.

Jake was not as quick. The Nightshade’s claw caught him a glancing blow across the face, carving a deep furrow in his left cheek.

As quickly as it had come, the beast disappeared back into the concealing darkness.

The pain was sharp, and Jake could feel the blood flowing freely down his face, but he could tell that the wound wasn’t bad. Another inch or two and it might have been a different story.

“Jake! Over here!”

Glancing in the direction of the sound, he saw Sam treading water several yards off, closer to shore.

“Look!” his friend cried, and pointed toward the shoreline.

High above, Moloch caught a rising thermal and drifted with it, watching his prey in the water far below. His eyesight was exceptional, and he had no trouble picking out the heat of their bodies despite the camouflaging coolness of the water around them.

There was no hurry. He would take his time, for he got a perverse sort of pleasure out of playing with his prey.

The humans, as he had learned they now called themselves, had aroused his curiosity. They would never be more than cattle to him. But it was obvious that they had come a long way since he had hunted their kind in the rich, verdant forests they had begun to settle many centuries ago. They had taken to heart many of the lessons the Elders had taught them and had spread in numbers Moloch never would have dreamed possible. That made them more interesting as prey; still no match for one of his kind, but interesting nonetheless.

Especially these two.

It almost seemed as if they had been waiting for him. As if they knew he would be coming.

How is that possible?

The information he gleaned from his first kill told him that humans had long since forgotten the winged predator that once hunted them in flocks. Time had erased their fears, changing memories into myths. Those myths were altered so heavily as to be almost unrecognizable. The Na’Karat had ceased to exist for them.

What are these two doing here?

Moloch was merely curious; the truth mattered little. The end result would be the same. As the thrill of the hunt rose in his breast, he cast aside his ruminations and turned his attention once more to those floundering in the water below.

Jake peered in the direction Sam had indicated. The fog was thick in that area, and while Jake was thankful for its presence since it helped hide them from the vicious presence above, he cursed it for hiding whatever it was Sam was pointing at.

“What?” he called softly. “I don’t see…” But then he did. Out of the gloom at the edge of the river he could just barely make out the crumbled remains of a small structure. Looking at it, Jake realized that if they could reach it, it might provide enough of a shelter to protect them from the creature’s attacks.

“Can you make it?” he asked Sam. Even from where he was he could see the savage gashes the beast’s claws had torn in Sam’s leather jacket, and he could only imagine the condition of the flesh beneath. The pain had to be severe, and Jake knew that Sam’s swimming was probably opening the wounds even farther.

Staying there was not an option, however.

Apparently Sam had come to the same conclusion. “Do I have any other choice?” he replied, smiling weakly.

As Sam headed in the direction of the structure as swiftly as the cold and his injury allowed, Jake hesitated a moment, casting his gaze heavenward, wondering just where in hell the creature was. The fog, earlier an ally, was now their enemy, hiding the beast from sight. He strained his ears, but the thick fog deadened all but the loudest noises. Even the sound of Sam swimming several yards away came back sufficiently muted as to be easily missed.

Let’s hope that thing’s hearing sucks,Jake thought to himself grimly as he struck out after Sam.

The object of Jake’s attention was at that moment soaring high above the river, leisurely preparing for another attack. Moloch was in no hurry; the cattle were trapped below, floundering about in the cold waters of the river. Even from far above he could smell their fear.

He’d missed twice on purpose, playing with them in the same fashion in which a cat will tease its prey, letting fear and adrenaline push them closer and closer to the edge. He knew he could catch them whenever he wanted; he might as well enjoy the game for a while longer.

He glanced down at the water, his heat-sensitive vision easily picking out the two forms below, thrashing toward shore.

His tongue danced over his teeth, and Moloch grinned to himself, his mouth salivating in anticipation of the hot, living flesh to come. With one final glance downward, he folded his wings and dropped like a stone toward the water below.

They were only ten yards from shore when Moloch struck again. This time, Jake was alert and waiting. He recognized the sudden tension in the back of his mind as an instinctive warning signal and reacted quickly.

“Dive!” he cried, and instantly followed his own command, praying as he did so that Sam could follow suit. Sucking a quick lungful of air, he hurled his body beneath the surface of the water, kicking desperately, clawing with his hands for more depth. A small voice in the back of his mind whispered that Moloch’s plunge from above would in turn propel him a long way beneath the surface, and if they weren’t deep enough, they stood little chance of surviving.

The water was dark as pitch at midnight, impossible to see in, and after a few seconds Jake stopped trying. The lack of his most commonly used sense disoriented him, so he was surprised when his outstretched arms encountered the slime-covered mud at the bottom of the lake.

Too shallow!his mind screamed at him, irrationally begging him to go deeper.

There was nowhere else for him to go.

Jake stayed down as long as he could, skimming the river’s bottom, fearful of resurfacing, uncertain as to what awaited him above.Did we make it in time? Are razor-sharp claws even now reaching down through the gloom above, ready to rip through my skin, shredding it from my bones? Has Sam gotten away or is his blood staining the water crimson? There was no way of knowing for sure except by surfacing, something his oxygen-starved lungs were ordering him to do.

Jake gave in to the demand.

Unable to see, the ascent was as harrowing as the descent and seemed to take twice as long. For a moment Jake wondered if he’d gotten turned around somehow, if he was actually swimming laterally instead of vertically. The fear grew as his lungs struggled to inhale; the moment stretching into what seemed like infinity, until he broke the surface with no more warning than when he’d touched the bottom. His mouth sucked in great whooping lungfuls of air, unmindful of the noise he was making in his need to assuage the burning in his tissues.

Amazingly enough, Sam was there as well, no more than a few feet away.

“Thank God!” his friend exclaimed when he saw him, the fear in his eyes easing slightly. Jake knew exactly what he was feeling. Facing this thing together was bad enough, but doing it alone would be infinitely worse.

For his part, Sam was amazed they had survived this long.

They had been lucky.

Sam was acutely aware that luck had a way of running out when it was needed most.

He glanced around, looking for the Nightshade. As far as he could tell, the sky above them was clear. The fog was still around them, but was getting noticeably thinner. A slight gray tinge had begun to seep into the sky, and Sam found himself praying the dawn would come soon.

They had only moments to get out of sight before the Nightshade regained enough altitude to begin another attack, and Sam was certain they’d already used a good portion of that time regaining the surface.They had to keep moving!

Despite his exertions, the pain in his shoulder began to abate, no doubt a result of the temperature of the water. The cold had slowed the bleeding as well, for which he was grateful.

Jake could see the structure clearly now. It was the remains of a boathouse. While it looked like it might offer them some protection, it was still several yards away and would require effort to reach.

There was no time to waste. Ignoring what was left of the pain in his arm and the deep cold that was slowly working its way through the rest of his limbs, Sam doggedly resumed swimming, heading for what he hoped was safety.

Two of the four walls remained standing, the others having succumbed to the ravages of time and weather, collapsing inward against the others to form a ragged lean-to. The roof had collapsed down over the walls as the wood beneath decayed. Most of the dock on which it stood had long since collapsed as well, submerging the lower third of the structure beneath the waterline.

Looking at it, Sam felt his heart sink.

What he had hoped would be strong enough to protect them from the beast’s attacks didn’t even look strong enough to survive being touched. The dock itself didn’t look any better; at any minute what remained might collapse the rest of the way into the lake.

When they reached it, they discovered that there seemed to be room for them to hide beneath it. It appeared they could swim underwater and come back up inside the boathouse, safe from view from above, hiding in the pocket of air trapped beneath what remained of the roof.

They wasted no time debating it. Jake dived beneath the surface with Sam quickly following, determined to occupy their makeshift sanctuary as quickly as possible.

They resurfaced, relieved that their suspicions had been correct. By clinging to what remained of the dock support pillars, they could gain a small measure of rest for their weary limbs, but both knew they couldn’t remain in the water for long. If the Nightshade didn’t get them, hypothermia would.

The morning around them was quiet. Other than the barely heard sound of the river gently lapping at the remains of the dock, no other noise reached their ears.

Where the hell is that thing?Jake wondered anxiously.

At that moment, Moloch was circling the river, rage burning like an inferno in his breast. Only moments ago he had them trapped. Nowhere to go, no room to run, no means for them to escape. Yet that was exactly what seemed to have happened. They had inexplicably disappeared from sight.

Moloch was furious. Never before had the cattle outsmarted him. He would not let these two be the first.

He swept down low across the water, swiveling his head to and fro as he searched the bank near where he’d made his last attack. He searched for both a trail through the weeds to indicate where they might have gotten out of the water and for the heat residue left behind by their bodies in passing, but he found neither. The frigid temperature of the water and the rising sun to the east worked against him in this endeavor.

It would be dawn soon. Moloch hated the sunlight; too much of it affected his vision, blurring everything with the sudden avalanche of heat, making it difficult for him to see. While he could still rely on his other senses, he did not like to be placed at so clear a disadvantage. With the gray light of dawn slowly beginning to filter into the sky, Moloch knew he did not have much time unless he wished to be seen during the day. Tiring of the low-level passes across the water, Moloch swept toward the remains of a small structure against the shoreline and settled tentatively atop the peak of its roof, relaxing comfortably once he determined that despite the groaning it made it would not collapse beneath his weight. He lowered his wings to his sides so he could listen to the night around him without distraction.

Through the holes in the roof, Sam watched as the Nightshade lowered its frame upon the roof above them. Sam froze, not daring to move, even to breathe, the fear like a grapefruit stuck in his throat. He was terrified that the beast would hear them.

A sound suddenly intruded on the silence, a deep, rhythmic drumming from somewhere close. Sam frantically swung his head around, seeking the source, praying that it wouldn’t draw the Nightshade’s attention. He was surprised to see that Jake seemed to be ignoring it, his attention on the dangerously sagging structure around them, and it took Sam another moment or two of confusion before he realized that the sound was the drumming of his own heart in his ears.

Jake, too, was worried, but for an entirely different reason. For one long moment he had been certain the rotting structure would give way when the beast had landed above, plunging it down into their midst. The roof had held firm, though, and now they were trapped not an arm’s reach from the very creature hunting them.

Now what?he asked himself.

He had no ready answer.

A quick glance in Sam’s direction confirmed his worst fears. His friend’s face was drawn and pale from the blood he had lost, his lips blue from the cold. If they didn’t get out of the water soon, Sam would be finished.

He began carefully examining their surroundings. Maybe there was something that could be used as a weapon, something that could hold the creature off long enough for the two of them to climb out onto the shore.

A few minutes were all it took to dash such hopes. There was nothing but water and rotting wood, slick with many years’ accumulation of lake slime.

The boathouse groaned as the beast shifted its weight.

Glancing up in dismay, Jake wondered if the damn thing was just going to hunker down and wait them out.

If it did, the wait wouldn’t be a long one.

Luckily for them, that proved not to be the case.

Moloch didn’t know that the prey he sought was scant inches away because the high, thick scent of the marshy shore hid the usually strong scent of the humans and the lapping of the river against its banks masked any telltale sounds they might make. The rising sun in the east forced Moloch to abandon the chase. He took one last look around the immediate area and unfurled his great wings. Anger coursed through his veins like quicksilver as the realization struck that the humans had escaped. Never before had such a thing occurred. It was obvious to him that the humans had grown more cunning during the years of his confinement, and he vowed not to let them outwit him again. For the time being, he would return to his haven in the garret across the river to await the setting of the sun.

It didn’t really matter that they had escaped; they would not go far. When night once again spread its glorious wings across the world, he would find those two humans.

When he did, he would kill them.

Slowly.

With that satisfying thought in mind, Moloch leapt from the roof, a few quick thrusts from his wings carrying him up into the brightening sky and across the river to the mansion.

Beneath the boathouse, Sam’s strength finally gave out. The pain and the cold had taken their toll. With dismay he watched as his fingers lost their grip on the support piling, and his body slipped down beneath the surface.

Frantically, Jake grabbed for him, his fingers snaring the folds of Sam’s jacket. He hauled him above the surface and close to his side, keeping Sam’s head above the water through sheer adrenaline-driven strength.

The two of them stared fearfully overhead, every nerve in their bodies tight with anticipation as they waited for the wood above them to splinter beneath the awful force of the creature’s blows, waited for the descending claws to savage their unprotected flesh.

No attack came.

Was it waiting for them to make the next move? To dash out from their protective cover, so it could cut them down in the open?

Still, nothing happened.

“Where is it, Jake?” Sam asked, his fear giving back a little of his energy, enough so that he could cling to the pilings unassisted again.

“I don’t know,” Jake whispered in reply. He hung there in the water, listening intently for some small sign that might detect the presence of the beast.

Nothing came to him.

He glanced up at the roof and noticed something different.

It was easier to see.

Not by much, but certainly better than it had been several moments before. A gray light was seeping through the holes in the roof, allowing him to make out some details of the structure and to see Sam’s face more clearly.

Had the rising sun driven the creature off, like some vampire out of legend? Or was it now crouched above them, out of sight, trying to fool them into believing it had taken off? Maybe it had left, yet was only circling high above, ready to plunge down as they emerged from the water and stood exposed on the bank?

As he debated the question, the light coming in through the roof grew discernibly brighter, and in the end it was this fact that Jake used to make his decision. Jake decided that if the beast were still on the roof waiting for them, then the light would in some way be blocked by its bulk. At the very least, it would throw a shadow that they would be able to see. Therefore, the creature must have taken to the air. If that was true, and they moved quickly, they might just be able to get out and onto solid ground before it attacked.

It was only a slim chance, sure, but it was all they had.

Jake hoped they could pull it off.

He explained his idea to Sam, who by know was too weak to protest even if he’d wanted to. Jake slipped his arms under Sam’s and around his chest.

“All right,” he said to his friend, “a quick breath, then down we go. I’ll do all the work, you just hold on. Okay?”

Sam nodded.

“I’ll get us to the surface. Once we’re there, get yourself another deep breath, just in case that thing is waiting for us and we need to dive again. If we do, I’ll get us back here under cover, and we’ll think of something else.”

Jake paused, looked Sam over, then said, “Are you sure you can do this?”

“Let’s do it already.”

Behind him, expression hidden from view, Jake smiled.

Maybe they’d get out of this alive after all.

Breathing a silent prayer that the beast had truly left, Jake said, “Okay. One. Two. Three.”

Each took a deep breath, and they dived.

31

REPERCUSSIONS

“We’ve got to go back.”

From his seat at the kitchen table, where Katelynn was disinfecting the wounds on his shoulder and preparing to cover them with a heavy padding of surgical gauze, Sam looked over at his friend.

“What?” he asked, incredulous.“What?”

Jake turned to face him. “We have to go back,” he said more forcibly this time. The shocked, vacant expression he wore since they escaped the creature was gone from his face, and in its place Sam could see the first shining gleam of determination that he knew from past experience always meant trouble.

Sam wasn’t going to be persuaded. As a matter of fact, he’d had just about enough of Jake’s bullshit.

“No way, Jake. Not on your fucking life. Time to let somebody else take care of the mess. Gabriel was crazy to think we could handle it!”

Jake shook his head in denial. “We’ve got to stop this thing. We’re the only ones who know about it.”

Sam snorted in disgust. “So we tell someone else. Anyone. The cops, the National Guard, I don’t really care.” Sam seemed to remember that that had been the original plan. Prove it exists, then get someone else involved. He said so to Jake.

Jake didn’t immediately answer, so Sam took his silence for agreement and turned his attention back to examining the cuts on his shoulder. The Nightshade’s claws had sliced through his leather jacket and left four deep furrows across his shoulder and three inches down his back.

He winced as Katelynn began applying the bandage, and turned to watch her to take his mind off the fact that he’d come within inches of dying. She kept her mouth shut during the exchange between him and Jake, and upon seeing the look on her face, Sam instantly knew why.

She was pissed. Angrier than he’d ever seen her, in fact. She’d been at Jake’s house when they’d returned, pacing the front walk in sharp, hard strides, but on seeing their condition she’d followed them inside and simply begun tending them without a word. Now her wall of calm seemed to be eroding, and Jake’s comments just made the stones start falling faster. Sam spared another glance in Jake’s direction and discovered to his dismay that his friend had retreated a thousand miles away, if the dazed look on his face was any indication.

A sudden pain flared in his shoulder, and he flinched.

“Hold still!” Katelynn said sharply, gripping his arm tightly in order to reinforce her words.

“That hurts,” he replied through teeth clenched against the pain, but he did as he was told. He knew he wasn’t about to get any sympathy from her. She said that they were liable to get killed if they went, and they had certainly come awfully close to making her prediction come true. Katelynn didn’t like it when her advice was ignored.

Jake broke Sam’s thoughts.

“Fine. I’ll go alone.”

Sam surged to his feet, ready to tell Jake what a thickheaded fool he was, but Katelynn beat him to it.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” she screamed at him suddenly. She moved closer, still yelling, each word seeming to Sam like a hammerblow directed at Jake’s head. They madehim flinch, and he wasn’t even the target of her attack.

“Haven’t you figured it out yet? This… thing… kills people! That’sall it does. Kills people! It’s stronger than you, faster than you, and about four hundred times deadlier than you. You almost got yourself killed. Now you want to go back and try to fight this thing? How? With what? Haven’t you had enough already?”

Katelynn was standing directly in front of Jake by the time she finished, her hands clenched into fists at her sides as if to prevent her from physically beating the idea out of him. Sam waited for Jake to blow his cool in return, to lash back at her in self-defense; but, after several long, tense moments, when he finally did answer her, his voice was calm and even.

Hearing that tone, Sam knew they’d lost, even before his friend’s words had sunk fully into his mind.

“You’re right, Katelynn. This thing, this Nightshade, does kill people. It’s killed six in the last few days alone. Six that we know of. Who knows how many others? No one else in this town will believe us if we tell them. That’s why it’s up to us. We’ll get the pistol from my trailer, search Riverwatch until we find where this thing goes to rest during the day, and then put a couple of bullets through its head. End of story.”