Riverwatch

“No. That’s stupid and too dangerous,” said Katelynn, doing her best to regain her composure. “Let’s take Gabriel’s tape to Sheriff Wilson. Sam was supposed to meet with him later this morning anyway. Wilson will believe you. He has to!”

Jake shook his head. “The tape doesn’t prove anything, Katelynn. It’s just the disjointed ramblings of a sick old man on the brink of death. We don’t have time to gather the type of proof we need to convince anyone else, let alone the sheriff. We don’t have time. Every minute we delay is another minute someone else might lose their life. I couldn’t live with that. Could you?”

Katelynn started to cry halfway through Jake’s explanation, and by the time he finished speaking she turned and moved away from him, tears streaming silently down her cheeks. Jake started to reach out to her, apparently thought better of it, and let his hand fall softly back down to his side. He turned to face his other friend.

“Sam?” he asked, and the rest of the unspoken question was clear in his eyes.

He did not want to go alone.

A moment ticked by, neither of them moving, their gazes locked, unspoken words flying between them; memories of all the times they’d stood against whatever was the enemy, imagined or otherwise, memories that only a deep friendship could ever supply.

Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, Sam shook his head.

No.

Not this time.

Jake held Sam’s gaze a moment, then looked away. Crossing the room to the door, he opened it and, without turning, said, “Give me two hours. It won’t suspect that I’d come right back after it. It will still be thinking it scared us off. Now’s my chance to catch it off guard. Two hours. If I’m not back by then, well, then I’m probably not coming. Go to the police and tell them everything you can. They won’t believe you, but at least we will have done our best to warn them.”

Without another backward glance, Jake stepped outside and quietly closed the door after him.

32

ATTACK PLANS

Outside on the steps, Jake hesitated a moment, torn between his desire to go back inside to talk his friends into coming with him and the need to protect them from what he was about to do. Deciding that it just might be best if he went at it alone, he turned away and moved down the drive to where he’d parked the Jeep. Loki came running out of the early-morning light, having followed him out through the doggie door in back. Jake let the dog into the Jeep, then climbed in after him. He took one last look at the closed front door, then started the car up and pulled away.

It took only a few minutes to reach the construction site. He stopped at the end of the drive and headed for his trailer. Jake knew that very soon it would be full daylight. For that he was glad. Knowing that his friends would have continued trying to talk him out of going, Jake had already decided that his best chance of going after the beast was when it returned to its lair. That was the time to strike, when it felt safe, when its defenses were down. Believing itself to be protected from harm by secrecy, it would be totally unprepared for an attack.

So attack he would.

He pulled the key ring off his belt and unlocked the trailer door. He moved quickly, having already decided exactly what he would need on the drive over, a vague plan being slowly formulated as he raced through the quiet city streets, intent on his mission of destruction. Moving inside, he marched over to his desk and slid open the top drawer, withdrawing the 9mm Beretta lying there.

Jake crossed over to the storage closet that dominated one whole end of the trailer and unlocked it. He was more convinced than ever that the Nightshade had taken up refuge in the Riverwatch estate, and that was Jake’s destination as well. He was fairly certain the electricity would still be on; it was, after all, the scene of a current police investigation, but the last thing in the world he wanted was to get over there and find himself trapped in the dark with that thing, so he was taking no chances. From the closet’s third shelf he took down a large Coleman lantern and an extra bottle of propane fuel. He checked to make certain that both the lantern and the propane bottle were full, then shut and relocked the cabinet.

At least I’ll get a good look at the thing,he thought with a touch of black humor, smiling grimly at his own joke.

He turned back to the door, surveying the small, cluttered room around him as he did, wondering if there was anything else lying around that might be useful.Just what the hell do you take on a monster hunt? he asked himself sarcastically.

Your will,a voice said in the back of his mind. He quickly left before the voice made him lose his nerve altogether.

Once back in the Jeep, he gunned the engine, swerving around the dirt lot that formed Stonemoor’s makeshift parking area and rushed back down the drive, not stopping at the end but turning directly onto the road without slowing, knowing the streets of Harrington Falls would be empty at that hour.

It took him only a few minutes to reach the stone arch that formed the gateway to the Riverwatch estate. He stopped and took a moment to mentally prepare himself.

If you’re going do this thing, Jake, do it right,he told himself, and took several deep breaths to slow his breathing and get his heartbeat back under control.Won’t do you any good to go in there half-cocked. That will only get you killed.

He decided to leave the Jeep there, at the base of the drive. When he was ready, he climbed out. Loki tried to follow him. Jake had allowed Loki to come along because he intended to use the canine’s keen instincts to help track down the beast, but now, at the moment of choice, he had a lastminute change of heart. Jake shooed the dog back inside the vehicle, not wanting to endanger his closest companion.

“I’ll be right back, Loki,” he said soothingly, and turned away from the dog’s whining, his heart breaking with the thought that he might not see his friend again. He took some comfort in the fact that Sam or Katelynn would care for the Akita as if he were their own, and that got him focused again on the problem at hand.

The rising sun was reflecting off the waters of the river as Jake started walking up the drive.Just how intelligent is this thing? he wondered, a bit uneasily.Does it already know I’m here? Is it going to be waiting for me inside the mansion? The answers to those questions could mean the difference between life and death.

Equipment in hand, he began walking up the drive toward the mansion, the road stretching out before him. By the time he reached the wide wooden steps that led onto the veranda, he was grimly resolved to carry out his task or die trying. He didn’t believe the beast would give him a second chance, so he determined it was all or nothing. He’d said his good-byes, at least as much of a good-bye as he’d ever give, and he was certain that if he failed to return Sam would go to the cops, the newspapers, and everyone else he could think of in a wild attempt to get someone to listen. If they failed to pay attention, then Sam would be sure to get himself and Katelynn as far out of town as possible. Knowing those he cared about would escape even if he didn’t, Jake felt some of the tension leave his frame. He was in no way certain he would succeed, but at least things would be taken care of in his wake.

The steps loomed up before him, and Jake cast aside such thoughts, clearing his mind as much as possible, readying himself for the coming confrontation. At the foot of the steps he stopped and looked up.

The twin elms that lined the drive draped the mansion in their shadows, lending it a dark, brooding presence all its own, as if it were a living, breathing thing that gaped at him; the dark windows like eyes that sought him out where he stood. They seemed to stare disapprovingly in his direction. It was as though the structure was watching him and didn’t like what it was seeing. He looked quickly away. His gaze came to rest on the pools of darkness that crept out from beneath the porch. This was no better, as his fear-filled mind began to imagine it saw movement there beneath the wood.

In that moment, Jake thought about turning around, getting the hell out of Harrington Falls altogether, and running for the other side of the country just as fast as he could, but his reasoning of a few moments ago quickly rose up and cast the idea back into the depths from which his mind had dredged it.

I am going in there, I am going to do what has to be done, and that is that.

Do your best,Jake thought in defiance, and stepped onto the first riser of the veranda.

In the silence after Jake’s departure, Sam and Katelynn stared at each other, uncertain of what to do next.

Katelynn broke the silence first, “Do something, Sam!”

He just looked at her, saying nothing.

“Come on, Sam! Don’t just sit there. You’ve got to stop him. He’s going to get himself killed!”

Sam knew it was useless, that once Jake made up his mind about something, nothing short of a bullet to the back of his head was going to stop him from doing it. The panic-stricken look on Katelynn’s face made him realize that he had to at least make an effort.

But he was already too late.

Even as he turned toward the door, the sudden roar of the Jeep’s engine could be heard outside. Opening the door, Sam was in time to witness Jake’s brake lights disappearing around the corner at the far end of the street.

He felt a hand on his good shoulder and turned to see Katelynn behind him, the anguish plain on her face. They had no idea where Jake was headed, and neither of them could summon the courage to meet him at Riverwatch.

Katelynn spoke softly, “Oh, Sam, what are we going to do?”

He didn’t know. Unless they did something, however, there was a very good chance that Jake was going to become the Nightshade’s next victim.

An idea suddenly reared its head.

“Stay here,” Sam told her, and disappeared back inside the house. A few minutes later he reappeared, carrying his backpack.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Sam tossed the backpack onto the rear seat of his car and climbed in behind the wheel. Katelynn quickly followed. When Sam pulled out and headed down the street, she said, “Riverwatch is the other way, Sam. Where are you going?”

“We’re not following Jake,” he replied. “We’ve got an appointment with someone else.” He handed her a piece of paper.

In the light from a passing streetlamp, Katelynn recognized it as a page torn from the phone book. A name and address about halfway down the page was circled in red ink.

The name was Damon Wilson.

At that moment, Damon was seated in his study, staring at the pages of the reports in front of him without really seeing them. He didn’t need to; he’d read through them so many times over the last few weeks that he practically had them memorized, even down to McClowski’s spelling errors.

Nothing in them told him what he so desperately needed to know.

What was killing the citizens of Harrington Falls?

After three frustrating days of relentless investigation, he was no closer to the truth than when he’d started. It was wearing on him. By day he was short-tempered and mean, taking out his frustrations on his staff in one fashion or another. By night he was an insomniac, words and phrases from the investigation scrolling through his mind. On the rare occasions he did sleep, he was tormented by nightmarish visions of the victims themselves, torn and mangled. He’d taken to downing several shots of Scotch before heading to bed, hoping the liquor would deaden the memories enough so that he could get some rest.

It was a vicious cycle with no end in sight, and Damon knew that unless he found some answers soon, something, somewhere, was bound to break, and it would probably be him.

Damon turned, glancing out the sliding glass door behind him. Through the glass he could see that it was well past dawn.

He breathed a sigh of relief at the sight.

For days, the dark had been bothering him.

It had gotten to the point that he couldn’t look out the window at night without growing uncomfortable. It sat there on the other side of the glass, black and thick, watching, waiting, looking for the smallest opportunity to break into the light and snatch another life out from under his very nose.

Damon turned away from the door, intending to return to the papers in front of him, when the sound of car doors slamming reached his ears.

He glanced at the digital clock on the other side of the room—7:30A.M .

Who the hell?

Maybe there’s a break in the case,he thought suddenly.Maybe they didn’t want the information to go out over the radio for fear of the press catching wind of it. While he knew it was wishful thinking, Damon’s steps grew lighter, a sense of heady anticipation welling inside him.

The bell sounded, and its echoes hadn’t even faded before he slipped the lock and opened the door.

“Mind if we come in?” Sam asked the sheriff. “We really need to talk to you.”

Without a word Damon stepped back, allowing Sam and Katelynn room to step inside. After Sam introduced Katelynn, Damon indicated the hall that led to the living room and they all headed in that direction.

Katelynn took a seat on the sofa, Sam beside her, and, without thinking, Damon chose the seat across from them, the coffee table like an unconscious dividing line between them. It was only after he sat down that Damon felt the first traces of the adversarial nature of their choice of seating, a feeling that grew as his police instincts recognized he’d been right; Sam and his friends did know something about what was happening in Harrington Falls.

Damon spoke first. “I know I suggested you make an appointment to see me this morning, Mr. Travers, but I didn’t expect to see you this early,” he said lightly, hoping to dispel some of the tension he could feel slowly enveloping them. “What can I do for you two?”

He watched as they glanced at each other, saw Katelynn nod to Sam, and so wasn’t surprised when it was the latter who addressed him in reply. The ball had quite clearly been dropped into Sam’s court.

“Sorry it’s so early, but we needed to speak to you.”

Damon nodded for him to continue.

“I, we, need to tell you a few things, but before we do, we need to get your promise that telling you won’t cause us further trouble. If we don’t get your word on that, I’m afraid we can’t continue.”

Puzzled, Damon stared at the two of them for a moment without answering.Just what have they gotten themselves into?

Cautiously, Damon said, “As long as whatever it is doesn’t break the law and would therefore violate my oath as an officer, I guess I can agree to that.”

Sam hesitated, and glanced at Katelynn.

“I think that’s the best we’re going to get, Sam. Tell him,” Katelynn replied, and Damon was surprised to hear the pain and resignation in her tone.

Turning to the sheriff, Sam said bluntly, “We know what has been committing the murders.”

So shocked was he at the announcement that Damon didn’t pick up on Sam’s choice of words. He leaned forward eagerly in his chair. “Who?”

Taking a deep breath, Sam told him.

About the statue.

About Gabriel and his tale of the Age of Creation.

About the Nightshade and the attack at Riverwatch.

He told him everything they knew. When he was through it all, Sam told the sheriff where Jake was headed and what his friend intended to do.

Then he sat back and waited for a response.

For his part. Damon had been running a gauntlet of emotions ever since Sam had started speaking. Now, forty-five minutes later, he didn’t know what to think. He’d started with disbelief, moved to sarcasm, then developed a deep-rooted conviction that they had both gone crazy. As Sam had continued speaking, this gradually gave way to a surprising sense of belief.

As crazy as it sounded, God help him, it also made a weird kind of sense.

Provided you believed in monsters.

“What, exactly, is it you want me to do?” Damon asked Sam.

“Go with us to Riverwatch. That’s where Jake is headed. If my story is true, you’ll get your shot at the killer that’s been terrorizing this town. If it’s not, I apologize for wasting your time.”

Damon thought about it for a few minutes.What would it hurt to go with them? he asked himself. It was likely they really had seen something out by the river; Sam had not displayed even the slightest sign of lying, something Damon’s trained eyes would have detected instantly. And the fresh wounds on his back and shoulder were certainly proof they’d run into something. It was entirely possible that they had seen the animal Strickland had been talking about after the autopsies, and had simply let their imagination run away from them.Could he blame then for that, considering the present circumstances?

Damon didn’t think so.

If there was a chance they had actually seen the thing, he was duty-bound to look into it.

Besides, it was the only lead he had.

“Okay. I’ll go with you.”

He stood up and moved to the gun cabinet on the opposite wall. Taking the key ring from his belt, he unlocked the doors and selected a high-powered rifle from the rack within. He reached inside a second time and filled his pockets with spare ammunition for the weapon. If it turned out that Sam was right, Damon did not want to be caught unprotected.

When he was ready, he turned to face them.

“Let’s go have a look at this thing,” he said.

33

FIRST STRIKE

Jake stared at the Nightshade with a mixture of awe, fear, and dreadful fascination. It was hanging before him, suspended by its feet upside down from one of the ceiling rafters in the garret, its claws gripping the rough wood securely, its body swaying slightly in the light breeze that entered through the open window. The low light from the lantern glistened off the creature’s form, the beast’s scaled hide wet with the dew that gathered during the early-morning hours. He could see that it was large, probably over six feet when standing. The multiple folds of its wings meant they would probably be something over ten feet when fully extended. Now they curled gently about the creature’s body like some kind of protective screen, making it seem that the beast had wrapped itself in its own awesome embrace. The Nightshade’s head was tucked down against its chest, the edges of its wings against its temples, and Jake was suddenly glad that he wasn’t going to get a good look at the creature’s face.

Jake set the lantern down slowly, gently, taking care to be as silent as possible, not knowing how good the creature’s senses actually were.Does it know I’m here? he wondered.Can it sense me? Smell me?

With his right hand Jake reached behind his back and slowly withdrew the pistol from the waistband of his jeans, never once taking his eyes off the beast. So far it hadn’t moved; that was good.Maybe I was right, he thought to himself with sudden hope,maybe the damnable thing goes into hibernation during the day after feeding so much at night. Maybe I’ll be able to end this right here, right now, before it even has a chance to defend itself.

Adrenaline kicked and surged through his system, forcing him to take a more secure grip on the pistol as his hands began to sweat. Slowly, he shifted into the classic shooter’s stance; legs slightly bent and shoulder width apart, left hand cupped over the bottom of his right, arms extended before him. His sneaker scuffed the floor as he shifted weight and instantly he froze; but the beast never moved, never even flinched. After a long, fear-filled moment, he released the breath he had been holding and prepared to fire.

He surveyed the beast’s form for a moment, settling on the head as his best possible target. He knew he had to make the first shot count, hoping it would be enough to slow the creature down long enough for him to empty the whole magazine into the thing. If nineteen bullets weren’t enough to stop it, then there wouldn’t be much else that he could do except to say a quick prayer and run like hell for the staircase behind him.

The Nightshade still hadn’t moved.If it was going to wake up, it would have already done so, he told himself.

Steadying his aim, Jake crouched slightly lower in his stance and locked his arms in their current position. He drew in a deep breath and slowly began letting it out, squeezing the trigger as he did so, the motion one long steady pull just the way he’d been taught at the range, his eyes never leaving the target.

The creature opened its eyes and looked at him in the same instant that the gun fired.

The Nightshade took the shot high in the space between its shoulder and its neck, snapping its head back with an audible crack. As force of the shot slammed its body against the wall, its feet suddenly lost their grasp on the crossbeam overhead, causing it to drop to the floor.

Jake adjusted his stance, sighted, and fired again before the sound of the first shot stopped echoing around the small room, putting the second bullet cleanly into the side of the beast’s head. The passing slug tore a hole through the creature, taking a large chunk of skull with it as it tore its way back out, spraying the wall and floor with a grisly mixture of blood and bone.

Silence filled the room as the echo of the two gunshots faded away.

Jake held his ground, waiting for the beast to move.

It’s dead, it has to be. Nothing can take that kind of damage and survive,he thought to himself. Even so, he held his ground, his breath frozen in hopeful anticipation, the adrenaline surging through his body like a raging river.

The minutes slipped away.

Neither he nor the beast moved.

Jake waited a full five minutes before lowering his arms, his muscles shaking with the sudden release of tension and the overload of adrenaline in his system. It seemed he suddenly remembered to breathe again, and the air came rushing into his lungs.

Relief flooded his system.

Then the sudden rasp of a claw on stone sent his heart slamming into overdrive.

The Nightshade was moving!

The beast had pushed upward on its arms while at the same time drawing its feet underneath itself for support, forcing its body up into a crouch, its claws scraping the floor as its limbs fought to obey the commands its damaged brain was sending out to them. Yet that wasn’t what made Jake stare in dumb amazement; it was something far worse.

The Nightshade’s skull was slowly beginning to heal right before his eyes.

The bullet had left an exit wound the size of a grapefruit, as he knew it would. The edges of this cavity were slowly drawing themselves together, new flesh and bone flowing out of the skull like clay, mating themselves to the other sides and knitting them together. In a matter of moments there would be no evidence that the wound had ever existed.

And then the beast again opened its eyes.

In the space of a second, Jake realized two things with cold, hard certainty.

The first was that the creature was laughing at him.

The second was that he was about to die.

It was a testament to his stubborn pride that the first fact unfroze him from his pose of immobility and got him moving again, his right arm swinging back up, his finger tightening on the trigger even before the gun was in line with its target.

Unfortunately, this time the Nightshade was faster.

Jake managed to get off one shot, the slug slamming into the creature somewhere between its left shoulder and rib cage. Then the beast’s clawed hand smashed into Jake’s own, leaving bloody furrows down the length of his forearm and knocking the gun from fingers that had suddenly gone numb from shock and pain. Without any hesitation, the same arm that had struck him seconds before came back around in the opposite direction, this time striking the side of his head with the back of its hand, the blow hard enough and strong enough to knock Jake clear off his feet and halfway across the room.

The Nightshade moved closer, and suddenly it did laugh, the sound striking Jake like ice pouring into his veins, causing the hair on the back of his neck to rise in response.

The laugh was low and chilling, and utterly inhuman.

Unless he did something, and did it quickly, Jake knew he was going to die.

He could clearly see that his left leg was bent at an unnatural angle just below his knee. Moving caused whitehot pain to flare in his leg, and he had to clamp down his teeth to keep from screaming aloud.

The creature was halfway across the room by then, no more than ten feet away. Its arms were outstretched, its hands, if you could call them that, clenching and unclenching in what Jake imagined was anticipation at sinking those great claws into his unprotected flesh. As it approached, the Nightshade unfurled its wings like a cobra spreading its hood. Their length cast him in shadow as they blocked out some of the light from the lantern on the other side of the room, the sound of their movement like the rustling of reeds in the gentle spring breeze by the riverside.

The sound was anything but reassuring.

Knowing that he had only seconds before the beast was upon him, Jake gritted his teeth against the pain he was feeling and tried to gather his good leg underneath him, using the wall against his back to support his weight as he pushed himself into a semistanding position.

By the time he managed to accomplish that, the beast stood before him.

Jake stared into the creature’s inhuman eyes and fear washed over him in a wave.

But the stubborn side of him, the one that had forced him to try to shoot the beast even after he’d seen it heal itself, that side again rose and coaxed his courage back out of hiding.

If he was going to die, at least he would do it on his feet, facing whatever was to come. His left hand tightened into a fist at his side, a meager defense considering what he was facing, but reassuring in its own, simple way.

All right, you bastard,he thought fiercely,let’s see what you’ve got.

As if in answer, Moloch reached out swiftly and grasped both of Jake’s shoulders in his iron grip. He dragged Jake closer, a hideous smile splitting his mouth open to reveal the double rows of needle-sharp teeth that lined his jaws.

The pain from the motion of his broken leg was too much for Jake.

Darkness closed in around him.

Out of that darkness came a voice, a voice full of menace and hatred, a voice that scurried up his spine with millions of tiny, ice-cold feet to reverberate against the walls of his skull with enough intensity to cause physical pain. It was a voice that was felt, not heard, directly inside his mind.

“You are cattle,” said the beast, with the confidence of a predator trying to explain to dull-witted prey. “You have always been cattle. That is your rightful place. Watch!”

Suddenly the darkness was swept aside, to be replaced by visions of violence and gore, of a land and a time long since forgotten and passed behind. Jake’s senses were overwhelmed by the blood and sudden violence, by the smells and sensations that came through the tide of the Nightshade’s memory. They were so real, so vivid, a drama of such scope that he was not only an observer but also a participant, locked within the creature’s mind.

As he hung there, desperately trying to fathom a way out of his predicament, the beast’s voice echoed inside his mind.

“Cattle! If it were not for the meddling of the Elders, things would not have changed; the balance would not have been disrupted. Now you can find no solace amongst them. This time, things will return to the way they were supposed to be.” His tone turned to one of grim satisfaction. “Cattle you were, and cattle you shall become again.

“There are none left to oppose me!”

Moloch leaned forward, his mouth opening wide to reveal those rows of gleaming teeth. A forked tongue flicked out to dart here and there about Jake’s face, leaving trails of glistening mucous where it came in contact with his flesh.

Moloch’s vile laugh filled the tiny room.

Jake stared death in the face, and realized that he no longer had the strength to resist. The pain in his leg was overwhelming, and it had quickly sapped what little strength he had left, so that all he was able to do was hang limply in Moloch’s grasp and meekly wait for what he knew was to come.

As the beast’s jaws came slowly closer, Jake braced himself for the pain. The mocking scorn in the creature’s laugh told him it would be anything but swift and painless.

The teeth descended.

Katelynn was riding in the back of Damon’s Bronco, listening only vaguely to the conversation going on between Sam and Damon when it happened. Her left hand held the necklace Gabriel had given her, sliding the stone back and forth on the gold chain as she gazed out the window nervously, praying they would be on time. When the stone first glimmered with the faint flickering of red light from deep within, she didn’t immediately notice. It was only several moments later, when the faint glow suddenly flashed into blazing incandescence in the blink of an eye, filling the backseat with its eerie red glow, that she did.

Katelynn felt a faint tickling in the back of her mind, a sensation she barely noticed over her surprise at the light emanating from the stone. When that tickle turned abruptly into pain, like two great icy hands squeezing her mind between them, she realized that she was in trouble. By then it was already too late, for she only had time to gasp softly in pain before the darkness that had begun swimming on the edges of her vision rushed in like the swell of the tide, and she lapsed into unconsciousness without uttering a word.

The first sign that Sam and Damon had that anything was wrong came when they felt something violently strike the back of their seat. Turning to investigate, Sam almost caught Katelynn’s next kick full in the face. As it was, he was struck high on his shoulder with enough power to elicit a sharp grunt of pain.

“Holy shit!” was all he managed to utter in surprise.

The rear seat was filled with a deep scarlet glow that sprang from the stone clenched tightly between Katelynn’s fingers, a bright, lurid light that made everything it touched seem to be drenched in a thick tide of blood. In the middle of it, Katelynn thrashed back and forth violently, lashing out with her feet, slamming her sweat-drenched head from side to side against the leather of the seat, obviously in the grip of some kind of bizarre convulsion.

For one long moment, Sam could only stare.

The sheriff glanced back over his shoulder and, seeing the weird light and the seizure that held Katelynn securely in its grip, he reacted with the quickness of years of training.

He skidded to a stop on the shoulder of the road abruptly enough to toss Sam against the security of his seat belt. Damon was out of the car and opening the rear door to get to Katelynn before Sam even realized they had stopped.

For her part, Katelynn felt a sudden, sickening swirl of light and color, and the sensation of falling down a long dark well, where she found herself looking through the eyes of the Nightshade.

Directly into Jake’s face.

He was there, no more than three inches in front of her, and she could tell by his position that the beast must be holding him in its grasp. Jake’s face was covered with a fine sheen of sweat, his brow contorted with pain. The Nightshade continued to stare directly into his face, so Katelynn was unable to see the rest of Jake’s body to determine how badly he was hurt, but at least he was still alive.

The question was, for how long.

The two of them stood that way for what seemed like hours to Katelynn, but what in reality was only a few seconds, before Jake’s eyes suddenly popped open and she found herself staring into their depths. Her heart cried in anguish at the intense pain she could see reflected within them; he was suffering, there was no question of that. Along with the pain, Katelynn could see the blaze of his anger and determination; a wave of emotion that caused those usually gentle eyes to go icy blue with resolve. Jake was still fighting, but Katelynn wondered how much longer he could keep it up.

They had to get there in time!

Suddenly, she sensed a third presence in the link, one that emanated from the Nightshade itself. It was aware of her presence in return, might have even pulled her into the link intentionally, for the waves of anger and fury that were directed at her almost swamped her.

A realization came to her; the necklace worked in both directions! As long as she had it, the beast could seek her out in turn, at any moment, anytime it liked, and could pull her into the twisted depths of its mind.

Before she could react to that knowledge, the beast suddenly plunged both her and Jake into the well of its memories.

She came to in the back of the Bronco, with the doors open on either side and Sam and Damon leaning in to help her. When they saw that she was conscious they released her and backed up slowly, the concern on their faces evident.

“Sam!” she cried, grasping his arm tightly. “We’ve got to keep moving. The Nightshade has Jake!”

Sam didn’t have time to answer. Damon was already sliding behind the wheel, and Sam had to hustle to keep from being left behind. In seconds the car was moving, speeding toward Riverwatch.

34

A FIERY END

In the end, it was Loki who saved him.

Jake was unable to move, frozen in place by the pain radiating out from his left leg and the mental weight of knowing that no matter what he did, he wouldn’t be able to stop the beast.

As those savage jaws descended, Jake gave himself up for lost and sent a quick prayer skyward that his friends would take his death as a sign to get out of town as quickly as they could.

As he felt the Nightshade’s hot, fetid breath on his face and heard the rumble of eager anticipation in his ears, Jake turned his face away, unable to face his own destruction. In doing so, he caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye and watched in spellbound fascination as Loki hurtled through the doorway, aimed for the Nightshade’s back.

Loki’s form seemed to glide through the air in slow motion, all grace and power, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a vicious snarl of ferocity and rage, 140 pounds of solid muscle aimed at the thing that threatened his master.

As Loki reached the zenith of his leap and arced downward, his paws extended before him to absorb the impending impact, Jake found the energy to wrench free from the creature’s grip and fall to the floor.

He was just in time.

The Nightshade’s jaws snapped shut with an audible clack in the space where Jake’s face had been only seconds before.

The beast whipped its head around, following Jake’s motion instinctively, and in the cold gleam of its eyes Jake could see the raw, undiluted hatred as the beast realized that its prey had managed to elude its fate.

Before it had time to act on that knowledge, however, Loki slammed into it from behind, driving its body against the wall with incredible force.

Something snapped with a loud crack, and the beast roared with pain.

Jake moved along the wall, away from the vicious confrontation happening behind him. Pain welled up from his leg, and his feet didn’t want to cooperate with what his mind was telling them to do, yet he managed to put several feet between him and the Nightshade. A voice in the back of his mind was wondering just how Loki had managed to get loose from the Jeep; but he ignored it, knowing he was still in incredible danger and needing to concentrate on finding a means of escape.

He had to find some way to stop the beast long enough that he and Loki could get out of the confines of the garret and into the rest of the house, where they might be able to lose the beast and escape with their lives.

Behind him, the beast roared in anger. The answering snarl of fury let Jake know that Loki was still alive and fighting.

He looked around desperately, trying to find something to stop the beast, even if it was for only a short time. His glance showed Loki standing a few feet away snarling, his back to Jake, his legs tensed and his belly slung low to the ground. It didn’t appear as if the Nightshade was afraid of the dog in any way, though Loki must have hurt it since the creature stood with its right side forward, favoring its left. From where he stood Jake could see that the beast’s left wing hung limply at its side, and he wondered if that was what he had heard snap when the creature had been forced against the wall. Was it really that fragile?

As he watched, Loki dashed in at the beast, keeping low, snapping at its legs the way a wolf will worry the legs of a deer. Every time he would rush in, the creature’s claw would lash out in a vicious strike. Jake knew that if the beast managed to connect with even one of those blows, Loki would be in trouble.

Jake had to find a weapon before that happened.

Had to.

But where?

The only objects in view where those few things he had brought with him, along with several rotting beams that had broken away from the room’s walls. The gun had proved useless, and the short pocketknife he always carried would be as effective as throwing stones.

A sharp squeal sounded from behind him, and Jake knew he was about run out of time. The beast had scored a blow, and it was just a matter of time before Loki jinked when he should have jagged and ended up a bloody ball of fur on the floor.

Jake’s gaze fell on the Coleman lantern, and he knew he’d found what he needed.

* * *

Swerving into the drive, Damon slammed on the brakes just in time to avoid smashing into the back of Jake’s Jeep. Before the car had even come to a full stop Sam was out the door, running over to his friend’s vehicle. Katelynn and Damon joined him there a second later.

A great, gaping hole could be seen in the Jeep’s wind-shield. Shattered glass covered the hood as if something had burst free from the inside.

Some of the shards were edged with drying blood.

Without a word Damon walked back to the Bronco and opened the back, removing the rifle from the rack he kept there. He chambered a round, and the sound was strangely loud in the still morning air.

He smiled grimly.

“Let’s go,” he said.

The lantern stood on the other side of the room near the doorway through which he’d entered. Jake dragged himself across the room, scooping up the pistol as he went by, ignoring the searing flash of pain that radiated from his injured leg. Gun in hand, he reached the opposite wall and picked up the lantern.

A glance across the room told him he didn’t have much time. Loki was still harrying the beast, barking up a storm to confuse it; but his motions were slower, weaker, and with each attack he came that much closer to the beast’s claws. It would only be a matter of time before another blow connected. Jake could see a wide wound in Loki’s flank where the first blow had struck, and the brilliant red of the dog’s blood was shocking against the pure white of his fur. He would need extensive care at the hands of a good vet if they got out of this alive.

Whenthey got out of this alive, Jake corrected himself.

With his right hand he twisted the fuel knob on the lantern, turning the gas up as high as it would go, then yelled to get the Nightshade’s attention.

“Hey, asshole! Over here!”

For just an instant, the creature took its eyes off Loki and looked at Jake.

That was all the two of them needed.

With a snarl, Loki dashed in under the reach of the beast’s deadly claws and sank his teeth into the soft underside of the creature’s knee, severing the muscles there as neatly as if it had been done with a knife, pulling the beast down and off its feet. It crashed to the floor. At the same time, Jake hurled the lantern at its head as hard as he could.

The Coleman smashed into Moloch’s shoulder just as his arm came up and around to brace his fall, trapping the flaming lantern between wing and chest.

The Nightshade let out a howl of pain and anger.

Damon, Sam, and Katelynn dashed up the stairs and into the house. From high above, the sounds of the conflict drifted down to greet them, and Damon wasted no time rushing up the stairs in hot pursuit.

“Come on!” Damon called to the others as he reached the final staircase, but there had been no need, for Katelynn and Sam were right on his heels.

At that moment, a shot rang out from above.

Once the beast collapsed onto the lantern, Jake called out to Loki to heel. At once the dog stopped his attack and backed away, snarling all the while, clearly unhappy but obeying his master, as always.

Jake loved him for it.

Moloch used his good wing to push himself partially off the floor, his injured arm and leg hanging limply at his side. As he rose, Jake could see the lantern on the floor beneath him; the beast’s weight had smashed the glass but hadn’t smothered the flame.

As Moloch roared out his challenge, he called on his power, ordering his tissues to begin healing ravaged bone and muscle.

In that moment of hesitation, Jake saw his chance and took it.

Raising the pistol in his right hand, he took aim at the cylinder of gas that fed the lantern and fired.

The sheriff entered the garret ahead of the others, and what he saw there froze him in his tracks.

A great hulking beast was slowly dragging itself to its feet on the other side of the room, and as Damon stopped in the entryway, it turned its yellow eyes on him and snarled in rage. The intelligence and hatred in those eyes caused the blood to freeze in Damon’s veins. It was clear the thing was injured, yet even as he watched, it seemed to be gathering strength, using one of its long, winged arms to push itself up off the floor and into a semierect position.

Off to Damon’s right, Jake Caruso lay on the floor with his arm outstretched and pointing a pistol at the beast. Jake was slumped against the wall, one leg twisted at a peculiar angle. Between him and the beast crouched a dog, torn and bloody from the fight, but still in the game.

The sudden sound of Jake’s second shot made Damon jump.

Jake stared in dismay as the shot went wide, the recoil pulling the gun to the left so that the bullet slammed into the wood floor with a report barely audible over Moloch’s snarls of anger.

The beast was slowly getting up, moving away from the lantern.

Jake couldn’t let that happen!

He fired again, peripherally aware of movement on his left but ignoring it, concentrating on getting the shot where he wanted it, praying for it to connect before the beast got too far away. He gripped the butt of the gun as tightly as he could to prevent as much drift as possible; praying, praying, needing the shot to be true, knowing if it wasn’t he might not get another chance.

His second shot went wild as well.

Oh, Jesus!he thought, watching in horror as the beast climbed to its feet, the damage Loki had done to its hamstring by then completely healed so it could support itself on both legs, its wing slowly knitting itself back together as well.

Jake realized that in less than a minute it would be completely healed.

Suddenly other shots rang out in the room, and Jake watched in awe as the power of the impact drove the beast right back down to its knees, huge chunks of flesh ripping out of the side of its head and shoulder, the gun obviously in the hands of someone who knew how to use it, the sound of the shots echoing around the walls of the small chamber.

Jake twisted to see the sheriff, Katelynn, and Sam framed in the doorway, the former pointing a very large rifle at the beast while chambering another round.

Their gazes met, and Jake could see the fear and horror in the sheriff’s eyes, the disbelief being shoved aside in favor of action; the mind’s need for survival waiting until later to rationalize the presence of the deadly thing before them.

Their weapons went off in unison this time.

Damon’s shot took the Nightshade high in the side of the head, driving it backward, just as Jake’s struck the gas canister of the Coleman lantern with a metallic whine.

The resulting spark ignited the propane inside, setting it aflame with a loud thump and miniexplosion. Burning fluid splashed over the beast’s neck and shoulders as it was forced down by the power of Damon’s rifle.

Amazingly, within seconds, the Nightshade’s whole head was ablaze, covered with the burning fluid.

A loud, piercing scream of pain came from the thing’s mouth as it struggled to its feet. Loki was barking furiously now; Sam was at the door screaming, “Kill it! Kill it!” and Damon was readying his rifle for another shot, when suddenly the fire that was consuming the beast leapt to the rafters above. The flames spread quickly on the dry and rotting wood.

Within seconds, that entire side of the room was a raging inferno.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Katelynn yelled to them over the hideous cries of the beast, and she rushed over to Jake and grabbed him under his good arm. Supporting his weight, she began dragging him toward the door and out of the room. Sam rushed over to help while Damon let loose with another shot.

Before Jake knew it, the four of them of them were rushing down the narrow staircase, the eerie cries of the beast being drowned out by the roar of the flames as they hungrily consumed the fuel on all sides. Loki dashed past and led the way before them, still barking like crazy.

They reached the second floor as the smoke began to flood the hall before them in great, billowing, black clouds. By the time they descended the stairs and dashed across the living room to the front door, the flames were rushing from the room and consuming the third floor in their fiery grip.

The group raced from the house and took refuge behind the vehicles farther down the drive, turning as one to watch the spectacle unfold behind them.

The entire upper portion of the house was in flames, the fire raging out of control as it burned through the wood. The garret was one mass of flames so bright they were forced to shield their eyes to see it. Damon opened the door of the Bronco and slid inside to put out the fire alarm over the police band. The others lowered Jake to the ground, leaning him against the fender so he could see, Loki crouched at his side, refusing to leave his master.

“Look!” Katelynn cried suddenly, and pointed to the upper level, where the wood surrounding one of the windows had burst free and a blazing form stood for a second framed in the light.

It was the Nightshade, its entire form shrouded in flames.

For just a moment it hung there, those eerie cries of pain and anger still issuing forth from its maw, then, with a massive shove of its powerful legs, it launched itself into space.

The beast spread its wings, and those below could see that they, too, were ablaze as they beat frantically for a minute against the air, trying to raise the beast’s form into the sky, yet the beating of its wings did nothing but fan the flames.

With a great cry the thing plunged earthward, a fiery comet on the last leg of its journey, roaring down through the sky, blazing, crashing into the placid waters of the Quinnepeg River.

35

AFTERMATH

“…and I cannot say enough about the bravery and professionalism that these men exhibited in the face of danger. They were a testament to themselves, this town, and this country.”

The news clip jumped from Sheriff’s Wilson’s eulogy to the long procession of fellow officers who had come to pledge their support to the families of Deputies Jones and Bannerman. The line of blue-and-tan uniforms stretched down the street, unquestionably the largest gathering of officers Harrington Falls had ever hosted. The two fallen brothers-in-arms were being recognized as heroes, and the town wanted everyone to know they understood and appreciated the sacrifice that the men had made.

“As you know, these brave officers were slain on duty while trying to apprehend a murder suspect in Harrington Falls, a small town just north of Montpelier. Shortly after their deaths, a confrontation occurred between the alleged killer and Sheriff Damon Wilson, who we just saw delivering the eulogy for these fine men. That confrontation ended in the death of the suspect and the accidental fire that razed the town’s oldest estate, Riverwatch, to the ground. Back to you, Steve.”

Jake used the remote to turn off the television set. All the networks were carrying the funeral. The news channels had been covering the events that had occurred that morning at Riverwatch. Knowing everything the reporters said was false made it a lot less interesting, Jake realized. He shifted in his hospital bed, trying to find a comfortable position. He had been doing so repeatedly for the last three days, since being admitted. Having his leg in traction made getting comfortable difficult. He was fiddling with the straps around his leg when he saw a figure standing in the doorway.

“It’s too bad we just can’t tell them what really happened,” Damon said, removing his sheriff’s hat and entering the room. He closed the door, giving them some privacy.

“They’d never believe us anyway,” Jake replied. “I suspect it was hard enough convincing you.”

“How’s the leg?”

“Okay, I guess. They say I’ve got months of physical therapy before I can even think about walking; but they did say I’d walk again, so it can’t be all that bad.”

Damon took a seat in one of the plastic chairs next to the bed. “What you did was crazy, you know.”

Jake shrugged. “I felt responsible, in a way. It was a member of my crew that released that thing into the world. If I had the slightest bit of common sense, I’d have sealed that damn tunnel up right after discovering it and would have saved everyone a lot of grief.” He met Damon’s frank, appraising stare with one of his own. “What would you have done in my place?” he asked.

“Probably the same thing,” Damon said with a grin. “I just wanted you to know the official opinion before I gave my personal one.”

Jake inclined his head at the television. “Think they’ll buy it?”

Damon understood right away that Jake was referring to the press and, by extension, the public. “We’ve gone through the worst of the scrutiny. The ‘suspect’ I created is strong enough to hold up. We’ll see some problems when they don’t find any remains a few weeks from now when they sift through what’s left of Riverwatch, but I’ll figure something else out by then. We’ll get through it.”

“Thanks for getting me out of there that night. I wouldn’t have made it without you,” Jake told the sheriff.

“The thanks really belong to your two friends. They were pretty convincing.”

At that moment the door to Jake’s room opened and Katelynn came in. She kissed Jake on the forehead, said hello to Damon, and took a seat on the end of the bed.

“You’re not wearing your necklace any longer,” Damon noted.

“Never will, either.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small wrapped package. “I’m not quite sure what to do with it, though. It seems wrong to just throw it away.”

“I’ll take it,” said Jake. “It’ll make a nice reminder of what we went through.”

“What do you think it really is?” Damon asked, referring to the stone’s unique properties.

“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about that for the last few days, ever since Katelynn told me what happened that night in the car. My best guess is that Sebastian Blake created it so that he could communicate with the Nightshade in a closer fashion.”

“Speaking of the Blakes, any word on Hudson?” Katelynn asked the sheriff.

“Nothing,” replied the sheriff. “Officially, we are listing him as missing, but I think that creature got him at the same time it killed his butler. It seems unlikely that he escaped. We’re still looking though.”

They talked for a bit, until it was time for Jake’s next dose of painkillers. Knowing they put him out like a light, Damon and Katelynn said their good-byes when the nurse came, leaving Jake in her care.

He awoke later that afternoon. His room was empty, but a long white cardboard box rested atop the nightstand, wrapped with a blue ribbon. Reaching over, Jake picked it up and set it on the bed beside him. On the outside there was no card; no indication of who sent it or what it contained. Untying the ribbon, he opened the box.

Inside was a cane, carved from mahogany and with a silver handle in the shape of a wizard’s head. A note lay in the bottom of the box, tucked beneath the gift.

“Jake,” it read. “Thought you might need this in the weeks ahead. Sorry I wasn’t there sooner.” It was signed, Sam.

The note was short but explained a lot. Jake hadn’t seen Sam, except for one quick visit, the entire time he had been in the hospital. It was obvious from the note that Sam was feeling guilty about not accompanying him back to Riverwatch.

While Jake hated the thought that he was going to need a cane, he knew that he would have to get used to the idea if he intended to walk anytime soon. “Thanks, Sam,” he said aloud to the empty room, wishing his friend were there.

Downstream from Riverwatch in a small canyon formed by the twists and turns of the river as it flowed down the mountain, something crawled from the depths of the river. It dragged itself into the darkness of the dense undergrowth and slowly began to heal.

36

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

It was a gorgeous night. The air had that crisp, clean quality that comes with the fall. The stars overhead shone brilliantly. It was a good night for a walk, and since Jake’s physical therapy required several of these a day, he had chosen to take advantage of the evening.

From the corner on which he stood, he could see Columbus Park.

His street met the park on the opposite side, and he always ended his exercise by cutting through it.

He passed through the gate and entered the park. In the distance he could just barely make out the dark, squat shapes of the merry-go-round and the jungle gym. The baseball diamond was directly in front of him. A slide and a set of swings were there somewhere as well, he knew, but what little illumination extended from the streetlamps behind him did not reach that far.

From center field to the exit on the far side, the park lay nestled in a darkness broken only by the faint light of the stars above.

A sudden unease about crossing that distance struck him then, and for a moment he considered going back and taking the longer route home.

Get on with it.

Settling the grip of his cane comfortably in the palm of his hand, he started across the park. A wide stretch of grass marked the area between center field and the playground. As he headed across this no-man’s-land, Jake was struck by the sudden stillness of the night around him.

The park was silent.

Utterly, eerily silent.

Not a breeze blew, not a bird chirped. The swings hung still and motionless. Even the street behind him was empty and therefore silent.

Jake’s nerves began jangling like high-tension wires.

This is weird.

Jake stood there and tried to gather his thoughts.

So it’s quiet,he informed himself.Of course it’s quiet. It’s close to 11P.M. on a weeknight in the middle of October.

But why does it feel so empty?he wondered.

He glanced behind him.

The darkness seemed thicker behind him, denser, blackness with blackness, each level somehow more sinister than the last.

No, he wouldn’t be returning in that direction.

“So, it’s the other side or bust. So be it.”

Despite his bravado, Jake wished he’d taken the long way around. Looking ahead of him, it dawned on him that once he reached the playground, he’d be in the dead center of the park.

In the center of the darkness.

His feet started moving almost of their own accord, and this time his pace matched the accelerated beat of his heart.

The darkness and the silence pressed in on him, as if they had gained sentience through the admission of his fear.

By the time he crossed into the gravel of the playground, he’d worked himself into quite a state. His cane had trouble finding a purchase on the rock-strewn ground, and when combined with his nervous excitement, he almost pitched forward on his face. His teeth were chattering from the cold, the sound only serving to remind him of empty rooms full of skeletons, their bones clicking away in the dank darkness that…

“Hold on there Jake!” he told himself, suddenly angry.This is absolutely ridiculous. There is nothing to be afraid of. He knew his imagination had run away with him, and he wasn’t happy about his loss of control. Ever since his encounter with the Nightshade he’d been seeing ghosts in every shadow, demons behind every doorstep.He’d proven the damn thing had been flesh and blood, hadn’t he? Proven it could be killed? It hadn’t been some unholy, supernatural being that couldn’t be stopped. He, Jake Caruso, had stopped it!

Replaced by his anger, the fear slipped away into the back of his mind.

Jake moved on, confident he had gotten himself under control. Off in the distance, he could see the glow of streetlamps from the parking lot on the far side of the park, and it was toward those that he headed.

After only a couple of steps he found his pace quickening.

“Here you go again,” he told himself aloud, his words hanging in the night air.

He didn’t slow down, however. The unease that had been poking away at the rational wall inside his mind suddenly blossomed into a heavy sense of dread. It was gathering momentum inside him with every step he took. He had only one objective in mind, and that was to reach the lights ahead of him. In the lights he’d be safe.

He broke into a shambling sort of run, leaning more heavily on his cane and dragging his bad leg behind him, his eyes trained on the lights before him.

He left behind the slide, the seesaws, then the swings, and was coming up on the jungle gym.

One minute he was running in his lumbering gait, the next, he found himself lying facedown in the gravel, dazed and disoriented.

The pain in his shoulder made itself known just about the same time the first warm trickle of blood oozed around the side of his neck.

Jake pulled himself into a sitting position. Supporting himself with his left arm, he used his right carefully to reach under the edge of his jacket.

Pain tore through him as his hand made contact with his ravaged flesh.

When he pulled his hand back, it was covered with blood.

Carefully, Jake moved the shoulder of his jacket around to where he could see it and stared at the three long gashes that extended completely through the thick material and into his flesh beneath.

He realized then that he had been struck viciously from behind and that it had been the force of the blow that had propelled him face first into the gravel beneath him.

But there was no one behind him.

Maybe it came from above.

He froze at the thought, afraid of the implications.

But it’s dead!one side of his mind cried out.You killed it! You saw its final, blazing plunge into the river three months ago!

But the other side, the logical, calculating side that threw away the emotion and faced the facts as he found them, knew that he was right. Somehow the Nightshade had survived, managed to stay hidden throughout its recovery, and had come back to finish what it had begun back in the garret of Riverwatch.

It had come back to kill him.

The voice of a dead man echoed in his mind.

“When it comes for you, it will come on night’s velvet wings.”

He looked upward, despite the pain, twisting his body around to see behind him, straining his eyes to see into the darkness.

He knew the beast was out there, yet the sky was empty as far as he could see.Why had it not circled around for another attack? Was it out there? Watching? Waiting?

Seeing nothing but blackness around him, he decided he’d stayed in one place for far too long. He located his cane, climbed to his feet, and headed for the lights ahead as quickly as his legs and fear could carry him.

High above, Moloch wheeled about in the sky, watching the human as it climbed haltingly to its feet, making its way across the park.

His bloodlust was high, but there was time.

The human would die.

And then, Moloch would feast.

Folding his wings tightly against his body, he plummeted toward the earth.

Jake was moving toward the edge of the park when the Nightshade suddenly swept into view immediately in front of him, so quickly and unexpectedly that Jake actually took another step before his brain registered the danger.

The beast hung in the air a foot or so off the ground, the steady beat of its great, leathery wings blowing the cold night air into his face, air filled with the peculiar odor he’d noticed the last time he’d faced the beast, the smell of damp wool and wet fur.

For one long moment they stared at each other.

Predator and prey.

It seemed to Jake the moment would stretch forever, leaving them locked in that timeless space between the world and time itself, until with a sudden flash of emotion in those pupils, the beast lashed out with one clawed hand and struck Jake full in the face.

The blow sent Jake to the ground, his head spinning, his mind still trying to come to grips with the fact that he’d been struck. The blow came so fast that he had only seen it when it connected with his face.

The beast had struck with calculated force; Jake knew it could have taken his head clear off his shoulders had it wanted to.

Jake looked up to find the creature standing a few feet away, grinning at him, its razor-sharp teeth glinting in the moonlight.

And then the Nightshade crossed the few feet that separated them and struck again.

And again.

And again. Each time pulling his blows just enough so that his prey was damaged but not incapacitated.

Jake hauled himself up off the ground. His head was spinning, his vision was blurry, and blood was flowing freely across the side of his face in a thick caress.

The Nightshade stood a few feet away again.

Watching.

Summoning what was left of his strength, Jake turned to face the Nightshade, his silver-handled walking stick gripped tightly in his hand as a weapon.

37

REQUIEM

Sam stared down at the body of his friend, rage and despair washing over him.

Jake was dead.

His friend had fought, fought like a demon himself, that much was clearly evident from the tableau laid out before him. Jake’s body lay crumpled where he’d last fallen; one arm lay trapped beneath him, the other flung over his head across the metal rail of the merry-go-round, his outstretched fingers firmly frozen into claws to ward off the evil that had flung him there like a used-up rag doll, discarded like so much waste.

His hands were covered with small plastic bags tied off at the wrists, the crime scene techs having worked quickly to preserve any and all evidence of the struggle, determined to drag from the ruins something to work with, some clue with which to trap the killer. Through the plastic Sam could see the splashes of violet that had dried beneath Jake’s nails, blood left behind from whatever injury Jake had managed to inflict on his attacker.

A technician pushed by, jostling him as he went past, causing him to look over at the expression on Jake’s face.

Raw determination and defiance were etched there for all to see, as if his last act had been to spit in the thing’s face. His lips were pulled away from his teeth, frozen in a vicious rictus of a smile. A smile that even the pain of his death had been unable to erase.

When Sam first arrived, after receiving the call, Damon hesitantly filled him in, letting him know what they had managed to reconstruct of Jake’s last movements and the tragedy that followed.

Apparently he’d been out for a walk, and, as was his habit, he’d chosen to cut through the park instead of taking the long way around. Some hundred yards away from the road, he’d been struck and had fallen; the technicians had marked and measured the spot already, the marks of a scuffle clearly evident in the soft dirt of the ball field. The long ragged track left behind indicated that he’d reinjured his bad leg, dragging it behind him into the grass of the outfield as he tried to reach the safety of the lights in the playground. Halfway there he’d been attacked again, his blood staining the ground where he collapsed the second time. He must have turned to fight at that point, because bright blotches of the Nightshade’s own violet blood colored the grass along with his own. Somehow, and Sam couldn’t understand how, Jake had managed to pull free of the beast one more time, driving his fingers into the soft loam and pulling himself forward, ripping chunks of it free as he dragged himself, vainly believing the light might save him.

It hadn’t.

Moloch had caught him and dashed his body down on the hard, unforgiving surface of the merry-go-round. From the angle of Jake’s body it was clear that he had struck the metal bars from a height, the shock of the landing snapping his spine like a dry twig. From there, the end had come quickly.

They hoped.

The officers were all around Sam now, trying to do their work, so he backed away, his eyes never leaving his friend’s face.

I’ll find it for you, Jake,he breathed silently.I swear to you, I will find it. He turned away then, unable to look any longer, as the medical examiner’s team began loading Jake’s body into the dark plastic of a body bag. Tears welled in Sam’s eyes, spilling down his cheeks. He looked around, into the gray light of the near dawn, wondering where the Nightshade had gone once it had finished with Jake. It was out there somewhere, hiding, waiting for the darkness.

He would find it, wherever it was, even if it took the rest of his life.

Then he would kill it.

He turned and walked away from the gathering group, and found Damon waiting for him by the Bronco.

The two men stood in silence for a minute, then Damon spoke what they both knew to be true.

“It’s back, isn’t it?”

Sam could only nod.

Damon thought about it for several long, silent moments, then said, “Whatever you’re planning, I’m in. I want to stop this thing once and for all.”

For once, Sam had the distinct feeling they understood each other perfectly.

“Where do we start?” Damon wanted to know. “How do we find this thing?”

Sam wasn’t sure. He did, however, have an idea. He just hoped Katelynn was strong enough to go through with it. Jake’s death had driven her into hysterics.

He turned to face the sheriff. “I have an idea of how to find this thing, but I’ll need Katelynn’s help in order to do it. Can you get someone to take me to her home?”

Damon nodded and called to one of his deputies. Turning back to Sam, he said, “When you’re ready, call me at the station. If I don’t happen to be there, have them patch you through to me on the radio, understand?”

“Yeah,” Sam replied, his thoughts already far away as he considered what they were about to do. In less than twelve hours it would be dark again.

They didn’t have much time.

38

HUNTING ONCE MORE

“You’ve got to use the necklace, Katelynn. It’s our only hope of tracking the Nightshade down.”

Katelynn stared at him, hearing his words but not understanding their meaning, as if he were speaking in a foreign language.

After the sheriff’s deputies had dropped him off, Sam stayed with Katelynn throughout the morning and into the afternoon. The sedative Sam had made her take had forced her into a deep sleep, but it hadn’t kept the nightmares at bay. They’d been ghastly images of blood and teeth and claws, a kaleidoscope of pain and horror that threatened to smother her with its loathsome weight, until she came kicking and screaming back out of sleep. The room echoed with her cries. She found herself being held tightly by Sam when she regained her senses, his soothing voice helping to banish the demons.

Sam.

She realized he was speaking to her then, and she focused her attention on him just in time to catch the tail end of what he was saying.

“…and that’s why you’ve got to use it.”

“Use what?” she asked.

“The necklace!” he replied, exasperated. “Haven’t you been listening to what I’ve been saying?”

She looked at him quizzically, then she suddenly understood.

She went pale at the notion, and her body began to shake.

“No way,” she said, her voice a dull monotone. She moved shakily across the room and squatted next to Loki. Damon had dropped the dog off at her place while she’d slept; Loki somehow seemed to sense that Jake was not coming back. Damon had assumed the two might be good company for each other, and he’d been right.

Sam wouldn’t give up that easily, however. “It’s the only way, Katelynn. You’ve got to!”

“No,” she said again, more firmly this time.Doesn’t he understand what he is asking? Doesn’t he realize that whenever I wear it, I am sucked into whatever horrible acts the beast is presently committing? That I can smell the blood, taste the fear, and feel the flesh between my claws?

Does he have any idea just how horrible it all is?

She didn’t think so.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t be asking.

Besides,she thought,we don’t even have the stone. She had given it to Jake when he was recovering in the hospital, and they hadn’t talked about it since. For all she knew he had thrown it away.

She certainly hoped so.

She said so to Sam.

“Fuck!” he cried, suddenly furious. Knowing Jake, the stone could, quite literally, be anywhere.

“We’re just going to have to find it then,” Sam said.

Katelynn couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She turned to face him. “No way, Sam.”

“What do you mean ‘no way’? We have to.”

“I said no. Even if you do find it, I won’t agree to go through with using the stone. I am not touching that thing again. Leave it alone!”

Sensing her agitation, Loki climbed to his feet and licked her face. She rubbed at his fur and watched as he eyed Sam warily. It was almost as if the dog knew what he was saying, and disagreed with the notion, too.

“I can’t leave it alone, Katelynn! The thing that killed Jake is out there somewhere, and I am going to put an end to it!” He turned and kicked out in anger, smashing his foot into the easy chair next to him.

Loki instantly began to bark, and Katelynn had to hold tight to prevent him from lunging at Sam.

“I think you’d better go, Sam,” Katelynn said, while the dog continued to bark.

Without answering, Sam turned and headed for the door.

Out on the stoop, Sam sat down for a moment in Katelynn’s porch swing to try and calm himself down. He knew that his anger was not directed at her, but at the helplessness he was feeling. Jake had been his friend, and in more ways than one he couldn’t stop blaming himself for Jake’s death.

The situation couldn’t have been worse. Even if Sam managed to locate the stone, he didn’t have a clue how he intended to stop the beast. He’d seen that bullets seemed to have little effect, so trying to corner it and blow it away with a handgun seemed to be nothing more than a fancy form of suicide. He didn’t have access to anything like a flame-thrower or shoulder-launched missile and doubted Damon did either. Sam supposed he could use a hand weapon, like a fire ax; maybe cutting it into smaller pieces would prevent it from harnessing its regenerative powers.But what if it didn’t? If he managed to chop off a limb, what would prevent the thing from growing a new one right then and there? Hadn’t it pushed the bullets right out of its body in front of Jake? Even worse, what if it grew a new limb, and the old limb decided to grow a new body?

Sam quailed at the thought.

No, an ax was out of the question.

Which left only fire, something Sam knew could harm the beast. It was obvious that it had survived its previous immolation, but that didn’t mean it would again if they could somehow trap it in the flames and allow the fire time to consume it completely. They had mistakenly assumed it was dead when it had made its plunge into the river three months ago.

Sam was determined not to make the same mistake twice.

Before he could do that, he had to find the beast.

He knew that tracking it could take forever. Jake had guessed correctly that the thing had taken up residence at Riverwatch, but Sam did not expect to have the same good fortune. That was why he needed the Bloodstone. He didn’t know of any other method of contacting the beast.

He’d have to start with searching Jake’s apartment. If he didn’t find it there, he’d try the trailer. And then the Jeep. And then…

An idea drifted out of the back of his mind and he clung to it the way a drowning man clings to a life preserver. He remembered something Gabriel had once said, in that first meeting with Katelynn, about Sebastian Blake’s obsession with the dark forces. He’d read the newspaper accounts of the disappearance of Sebastian’s descendant, Hudson Blake, and wondered for the first time if there had been a modern connection to the beast as well as an ancient one.

Hudson Blake had disappeared in the midst of some sort of occult ritual, his butler an obvious victim of the Nightshade. Could Blake have been trying to control the beast? If he had been, how had he planned to accomplish it?

Sam glanced around, his thoughts churning. The day was growing late.

Sam was running out of time.

He jumped up and walked over to his car. Climbing inside, he started it up, backed out of Katelynn’s driveway, and headed across town.

There was one person who could tell him fully what they’d found at Riverwatch.

That person might also unwittingly hold the answer to their problem of finding the beast before it killed again.

39

MYSTICAL METHODS

Fifteen minutes later Sam was seated outside Damon’s office, waiting for him to return. The desk sergeant had a radio on low, and Sam listened to the news reports as they came in; the reporter’s information on Jake’s death was sketchy and full of speculation. Of immediate concern was whether or not the serial killer police had believed dead in July had returned to Harrington Falls. Since Jake’s earlier involvement had been kept from the media, no one made the connection between the two, believing him to be just another random victim.

Sam knew better.

Come talk to me,he thought silently.I’ll tell you the truth. I’ll give you a story the likes of which you wouldn’t believe. He knew he never could, though. Jake’s death would forever be shrouded in mystery, the file permanently open, the crime unsolved.

Damon came through the door then, followed by a pair of deputies. He saw Sam and nodded in his direction, letting him know he’d be right with him.

From across the room Sam could see the fatigue on Damon’s face, the worry lines cut like canyons in his brow. His eyes were hollowed pits in his skull, and for a moment Sam thought the man was ready to collapse; but when he turned and invited Sam into his office, his voice was firm and steady.

The strength Sam was counting on was still there.

Damon ushered him into his office and closed the door. He crossed the room and slumped wearily into his chair, indicating with a wave of his hand that Sam should take one of the two vacant chairs in front of the desk. When Sam had done so, Damon tossed a thick manila envelope onto the desk.

“I shouldn’t be doing this, but those are the crime scene photos from your friend’s death. They match all the others. It’s the same thing.”

Sam didn’t move to take them. There was no need for a second look. The memory of his friend lying dead would never leave him.

Damon’s respect for Sam rose another notch. He continued, “The damn thing is back. The lab confirms it; same teeth and claw marks, same MO. But we don’t have any idea where it might be now.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Sam replied. He filled the sheriff in on the evening’s events, outlining the use he had intended to make of the Bloodstone, Katelynn’s refusal to have anything to do with the idea, and the fact that he had no idea where the stone might be found.

“What can we do then?” Damon asked.

“We use the other one.”

Damon looked blankly at Sam for a moment. “What?” he asked.

“I said: We use the other one. Do you have an inventory of the items you recovered at Riverwatch on the night Hudson Blake disappeared?”

“Sure.” The sheriff dug around in the stacks of files on his desk until he found the right one. He removed a thick sheaf of paper bound by a paper clip, then selected several pages and handed them across to Sam. “This is a list of everything we took out of the house.”

Sam scanned the list, praying that he was right.

He finally found it about three-quarters of the way down the third page.One small polished red stone on a gold necklace; type unknown. He pointed it out to the sheriff.

“Do you have all of these items here at the station?” he asked, handing the list back.

“Probably. The bigger pieces would have been left in place or are in storage in the courthouse basement, but everything in the specific room where they found the body was photographed, tagged as evidence, and packed up to be brought over to the lab for examination. Most of it is probably downstairs in the evidence locker by now. Why?”

“I think that Blake not only knew about the Nightshade, but that he was trying to contact it. I’m betting that the stone you found is an exact duplicate of the one Katelynn had, a matched pair. If I’m right, we can still use it to trace where the Nightshade has gone.”

Agreeing that it might work, Damon got the keys, and the two of them descended to the basement. Damon walked over to a door markedEVIDENCE . Removing a key from his belt, he unlocked the door and disappeared inside. He returned a moment later carrying a large cardboard box.

“I think it might be in this one,” he said.

He carried the box over to a bench and set it down lightly. Inside were several rows of sealed plastic bags and a sheet of paper. Checking the list in his hand against the one in the box, Damon assured himself he had the right container, then he rifled through it until he had found the bag he needed. He pulled it forth, glanced at it, and handed it to Sam.

Sam stared at what he held for a long moment. A slow, grim smile crossed his face.

Inside the bag was a red stone identical in shape and coloration to the one Katelynn had once worn. This one hung on a long chain of gold.

“Is that it?” the sheriff asked.

Sam nodded.

Damon ushered Sam down the hall and into a small room markedINTERROGATION . He took a moment to make certain the observation room next door was empty, then closed and locked the door behind him. It wouldn’t do to have anyone see them trying this when the rest of his deputies were out searching for the killer. He might know it was necessary, but there was no way he would be able to explain that to anyone else.

He and Sam took seats opposite each other, the stone resting on the table between them.

“How do we do this?” Damon asked, feeling slightly ridiculous but willing to go on despite it.

Sam shrugged. “Damned if I know. Katelynn said that she has never tried to achieve the link consciously. The first couple of times it happened while she was asleep. The next, while she was busy studying in the library. The last was in the car that night.”

He reached out and picked up the stone, letting it hang from his hand. It spun on its chain, casting streaks of crimson light the color of freshly spilled blood.

“Maybe if you just concentrate on it, sort of project your thoughts in its direction?” Damon suggested.

“Worth a try.” Sam cupped the stone between his hands and gathered his thoughts about him like a cloak. He cleared his mind, striving to reach a state of calmness. He breathed slowly; in through his nose and out through his mouth, a deep, slow rhythm. Once he felt ready, he began to form an image of the beast as he remembered it from that fateful night at Riverwatch. He projected as much detail into the image as he could, relying on his recollection of the statue to flesh out the parts he was missing. Then he began to assault the image with questions, variations of “Where are you?” hoping the Stone would form the link they needed to locate the beast.

Nothing happened.

Sam kept it up for several more minutes, while Damon sat quietly on the other side of the table, but nothing happened.

“Here, let me try.”

Sam passed the stone over to the sheriff, who attempted the same thing.

Again, no luck.

For the next half hour they tried everything they could think of to get the stone to unlock its secrets. They projected their thoughts at it. They set it in the center of the table and spoke to it. They held hands and chanted at it.

Nothing worked.

“Dammit!” Sam got up from the table and began pacing, venting his frustration through physical action.

Damon glanced at his watch. “We don’t have time for this, Sam.”

“I know, I know. Okay, maybe it takes a certain type of person to use the stone. Or maybe it needs to be attuned to a particular individual beforehand and we don’t know how to do that. Either way, we’re screwed. Unless this one will work for Katelynn.”

“I can always order her to use the stone,” Damon said.

Sam stopped pacing and looked at him incredulously. “Oh, right. And when she refuses, what are you going to do? Force her to do it at gunpoint?”

For just a moment Sam thought that Damon was going to say yes. There was anger in the man’s eyes, and a level of frustration that Sam could easily identify with. Common sense must have reasserted itself, however. Damon stared at him a moment, then turned away, shaking his head in answer to Sam’s question.

“We’re going to have to convince her that it’s the only way of locating this thing.”

Sam agreed. He didn’t know how they were going to manage it, but it was the only option they had left.

Katelynn had to help.

Surely she’d understand that.

She met them at the door with a wary look, but let them in nonetheless. They moved into the living room, with Damon and Sam choosing seats on one side of the coffee table and Katelynn and Loki seated on the couch on the other.

Damon let Sam do the talking, explaining how they had acquired the stone and what they wanted her to do with it.

She listened to their story, a false veneer of calm plastered across her face.

Then, just as calmly, she told them no.

“Can’t you see we don’t have any other option, Katelynn? You’re the only one who can do this!” Sam said in exasperation.

For the first time emotion flared in Katelynn. “Bullshit! You don’t know that! You don’t know anything; you’re just guessing.” She wrapped her arms around Loki’s neck, a sign of her unease. The dog whined in reply.

Damon nodded, to show his agreement with her statement. “You’re right, Katelynn. We are guessing. It won’t work for Sam or me. It might not even work for you.” He kept his tone calm, reasonable, to help defuse the frustration and anger that was rapidly filling the room. “But what would you suggest we do? We know the stone has worked for you in the past. We don’t have the original, but we are hoping this one will work the same way. We need you to try.”

Sam looked like he was about to speak, but Damon silenced him with a swift glance.

“I don’t want to do it,” she answered stubbornly.

Damon could see she that was starting to break. He let the silence stretch for a moment, then played his trump card.

“If you don’t, someone else will lose someone they love.”

It wasn’t fair to play on her emotions like that, but Damon was getting desperate. He agreed with Sam; they needed to find the Nightshade as swiftly as possible, and Katelynn was the quickest and easiest means.

Katelynn stared at him. He watched the emotions flash across her eyes: anger, fear, pain, worry. For just a moment he felt the power of that emotion jump the distance between them. Then Katelynn turned away, and the link was broken.

No one said anything.

The silence stretched.

Loki whined again and licked Katelynn’s face.

She turned and looked into the dog’s eyes. What she saw there Damon didn’t know, but when she turned back to face him, he knew before she had said a word that she would do it.

“Okay. Give me the stone.”

Sam suppressed a grin and dug the object out of his pocket. He tried to hand it across the table to her, but she refused to take it. He left it lying in the center of the table in front of her.

“It will be okay, Katelynn,” Damon said. “The other times you’ve done this you weren’t prepared for it. You had no one to help you out of the trance if you got into trouble. This time both Sam and I will be here. At the slightest sign that you’re in danger, we will pull you out of it.”

Katelynn ignored him, knowing that while his intentions were good, they would be of no use to her if she did get into trouble. She knew how powerful the Nightshade actually was. She had done her best to free herself of its loathsome grip in the car that night; in the end, she had failed.

Now she was being forced to put herself in danger again, and she wasn’t happy about it. Who knew what kind of power the beast could send back through that link with the stone? And yet, the sheriff was right. She didn’t have much of a choice. To let the thing roam free and continue its slaughter was unthinkable.

She would have to use the stone.

Pure evil seemed to emanate from it, and Katelynn had to force herself to pick it up.

She lay down on the sofa, the stone clasped between both hands. Loki sat on the floor next to her. Sam took a seat on the table itself, while Damon stood behind it.

“If I look like I’m struggling, or in pain, do everything you can to wake me up. Taking the stone out of my hands should do it. Shake me, slap me, do whatever it takes,” Katelynn told them insistently.

They agreed.

With that said, Katelynn went to work.

Much as Sam had done earlier that night, Katelynn set out to clear her mind of all thought, letting a dark, empty void fill her. Instead of concentrating on the stone, however, she cast her thoughts outward, seeking the beast. She pictured it as she’d seen it in her dreams, its long wings stretched out on either side as it soared through the air. She listened for its heartbeat, the three-chambered rhythm she’d heard before. She imagined the caress of the wind across her flanks, and the flicker of her tongue across her teeth…

Abruptly, she made contact.

The Nightshade was crouched atop a high structure, staring out into the night. Through its eyes she could see the university grounds and knew immediately the spot it had chosen for its vantage point.

Keating Hall.

A high stone tower projected up from the building’s roof, and it was there that the beast was perched. Instantly, Katelynn knew that this was the creature’s new lair. The clock tower had been unused for years, and the beast would be free to come and go at will, provided it avoided drawing attention to itself.

Having achieved her objective, Katelynn attempted to abandon the trance.

Her gaze never strayed from the campus grounds.

She struggled harder, willing herself to awaken.

Nothing happened. She remained linked to the beast, trapped within its consciousness.

A strange lethargy began to seep through her. Darkness loomed, then overwhelmed.

Just as quickly, her vision began to return, but she was no longer seeing the dark campus grounds. Instead, she found herself looking into Loki’s face, inches from her own.

The dog growled, deep and low in its throat.

“It’s okay, Loki,” Katelynn tried to say.

No sound issued forth from her throat.

Katelynn began to panic.

The two men watched as Katelynn quickly slipped into her trance. One minute she was with them; the next, lost in whatever realm her consciousness had fled to. Her body visibly relaxed. Her breathing deepened and slowed. Her eyes flickered beneath their closed lids.

Her hands remained securely locked around the stone.

They waited.

Five minutes passed. Ten.

Katelynn remained locked in her trance.

Suddenly Loki jumped to his feet and moved closer to Katelynn. He sniffed at her face, then pulled back to watch her.

Damon and Sam watched as Katelynn’s eyes slowly opened.

Looking at her, the dog growled long and low.

“Did you find it?” Sam asked. “Did it work?”

Katelynn didn’t answer.

She turned her head, slowly looking at Sam, then at Damon.

Loki scampered back, growling again.

“What’s wrong with him?” Sam asked, still not realizing that Katelynn was reacting strangely.

Damon had noticed, however. He’d noticed Loki’s response to Katelynn as well. He didn’t like either one. Something had gone horribly wrong.

The fear rose like a spectre in the night and threatened to overwhelm her. The Nightshade had used the power of the link against her, reversing the connection. The beast had taken control, using its mental powers to assume control of her form.

While the sheriff and Sam were waiting for her to divulge the beast’s location, the beast was using her to spy on them!

It only lasted a moment, but that was long enough.

Just as Damon stepped toward her, just as Sam was reaching out to her, just as Loki was about to attack, the Nightshade released its hold and the connection between them was broken.

Darkness descended in Katelynn’s mind for a second time that night.

Katelynn came to in Sam’s arms, a cold cloth pressed against her forehead. Loki was standing next to the sofa, trying desperately to lick her face while being held back by Damon, who stood with a hand wrapped around the dog’s collar and his gun pointed in her direction.

“Are you all right?” Sam asked, concern etched on his face.

Katelynn didn’t trust herself to speak, so she nodded instead.

Damon still looked suspicious, but lowered his gun nonetheless. “What happened?” he asked.

Katelynn took several deep breaths, doing what she could to get her heart back under control. She was bathed in sweat, her long hair hanging in limp strands about her face. Her hands were shaking when she answered him.

“I found it,” she said. “At the university. It’s using the old clock tower as an aerie.”

“Yes!” Sam cried exuberantly.

Damon had not yet taken his eyes off Katelynn. “And?”

Katelynn continued to meet his gaze. “The link worked both ways this time. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. Before I could get free, it took control of my senses and got a good long look at the two of you. We discovered where it is hiding, yes, but it knows now that we’re coming after it. We don’t have much time.”

Grimly, Damon nodded.

He had suspected as much when the dog had gone crazy, ready to rip Katelynn’s throat out when she opened her eyes the first time.

“What do we do?” Sam asked, his excitement stifled in lieu of what he’d just learned.

Damon turned to face him. “Do?” he asked. “Same thing we had planned to do. We find it and kill it.”

“But it knows we’re coming. We won’t stand a chance,” Sam said flatly.

Damon gave him a steely look. “Do we have any choice?”

40

PREPARATIONS

They moved quickly. While it might prefer to travel at night, that didn’t mean the Nightshade wouldn’t travel by day and simply take to the air, disappearing again, only to find another resting place elsewhere. Who knew if they’d be able to track it down again? The next time they might not be so lucky. They didn’t know the range of Katelynn’s talent. It was also obvious that Katelynn had survived the encounter because she’d already been trying to break contact when the beast had become aware of her presence. What would happen if it threw the full weight of its mental powers at her the very instant she sought contact? Would she then have the power to free herself? They didn’t know and couldn’t take the chance. If they could reach the campus before too much time passed, they might be able to stop the beast from leaving, or at the very least, follow it when and if it did.

“Okay,” Damon said, a look of weary resignation on his face. “We know where it is, but what good does that do us? We still don’t have a clue as to how to stop it.”

When Damon looked up, however, the gleam in Sam’s eyes made it obvious that that might not be the case.

Sam had a plan. Taking a deep breath, he let them in on it.

As Damon sat and listened, something totally unexpected and all but forgotten bloomed in his chest. For the first time since the killings had begun, Damon felt a surge of hope.

When Sam was finished, Katelynn expected the sheriff to object. What Sam was proposing was as crazy as Jake’s original plan of facing the Nightshade on his own. They simply were not equipped to handle such a task. They should be calling in the National Guard, not trying to assault the beast’s latest lair on their own. She waited for Damon to echo her thoughts aloud.

Katelynn was in for a surprise. With a vengeful light in his eye that matched the one in Sam’s, Damon simply said, “Let’s do it.” Using his radio, he called one of his deputies and ordered the man to meet them at the sheriff’s station with the items they needed. Leaving Katelynn’s, the three of them drove to the station, making a brief stop at a gas station along the way.

A short time later, Katelynn and Sam were pouring oldfashioned soap flakes into mason jars and passing them on to Damon, who filled them the rest of the way with gasoline and screwed on spill-proof lids. While Sam and Katelynn packed them carefully into two black knapsacks, Damon moved over to the gun cabinet behind his desk and selected a rifle. Loading up on ammunition for the weapon, he asked them, “Either of you know how to handle a firearm?”

“A little,” said Sam. Katelynn shook her head.

Damon sighed. Weapon in hand, he turned to face them, a grim expression on his face.

“Let’s end this,” he said.

The three of them left without a word to the rest of Damon’s staff; they simply had no time to explain.

Like a flashback to that evening three months before, the three of them climbed into Damon’s Bronco and headed across town as a light rain began to fall.

When they arrived at the university campus, Damon made a quick stop at the security office to obtain the keys to the campus buildings. About once a month he personally patrolled the grounds, seeing and being seen, so the guard on duty found nothing strange in his request.

Once Damon returned to the vehicle, he drove them over to Keating Hall.

The building loomed above them, and the very sight of it sent chills up Katelynn’s spine. She knew what was hiding inside its cold stone walls.It will be a miracle if we make it out alive, she thought.

Sam, on the other hand, stared at the structure with fierce expectation. He, too, knew what awaited them there, but he welcomed the challenge. That thing had killed his best friend, threatened a woman he cared deeply for, and terrorized the town he called home. It was due for a reckoning, and Sam intended to be the one to deliver it.

It was ironic that the Nightshade had chosen this place for the final showdown. Keating Hall had been built in the late 1800s and was constructed in a Renaissance style. It looked like a medieval castle, the clock tower rising over the roof like a keep rising over a castle’s battlements. He had written it into many a short story, the building’s very nature firing his imagination.

Now, fiction would become reality.

Sam was determined to write the ending his way.

Once out of the car, Katelynn and Sam huddled out of the rain on the steps in front of the entrance while Damon retrieved his rifle from the trunk. Damon knew the weapon wouldn’t stop the beast; the night they rescued Jake had proven that. It would slow it down, however, and that’s what the plan called for. Damon was to use the weapon to render the beast momentarily incapacitated, just long enough for Katelynn and Sam to do the rest.

It was a military axiom that no plan survives contact with the enemy, and Damon prayed that just this once, that would prove false.

Damon unlocked Keating’s front door, and the others followed him inside.

The three of them turned on the flashlights they’d brought with them and set off down the hall.

Katelynn’s vision had shown the Nightshade to be inside the clock tower that rose above the main building, so they quickly climbed to the top floor.

Damon held up his hand for quiet and listened to any sound in the silence as the echoes of their footsteps in the empty building died away.

He heard nothing besides their own breathing.

The corridor stretched directly ahead of them. In order to gain entry to the tower, they had to traverse the corridor, exit through the door at the other end, climb the stairs just beyond, cross the roof to the tower itself, go through another door, and climb another set of steps to the chamber at the top. It was there that they expected to find the Nightshade.

They’d be exposed to attack from the front and behind the entire time.

Not a very comforting thought,Damon thought to himself.

A sudden crash of thunder from the storm outside was accompanied seconds later by a flash of lightning. For a moment the corridor before them was fully illuminated. Damon was relieved to see that it was empty.

“Looks okay,” he said to the others. “Let’s go.” He started down the hall.

About time,Sam thought as he set out after Damon, Katelynn between them. He knew Damon was correct in being cautious, but the rage he felt was growing. It was like a living thing inside him, and he fought to control it, for he knew that it could work against him, blinding his perceptions and clouding his judgment.

When they reached the other end of the hall, Damon slowly pushed open the door, looked around, and signaled them forward. Passing through the doorway, they emerged onto the roof.

From where they stood, the tower was directly ahead of them, some fifty feet away. The roof between them was shrouded in darkness, but the tower itself was brilliantly lit by the large spotlights erected along the roof’s edge and shining on the face of the tower itself. The rain dashed down upon the trio and in just a few steps they were soaked through to the skin.

Maybe she caught a flash of movement out of the corner of one eye, or heard the sudden sound of an extra set of footfalls striking the wet stone of the rooftop; Katelynn wasn’t ever certain what made her turn and glance back the way they had come. Whatever the reason, she was in time to discover that there was someone on the rooftop with them.

Whoever it was was running directly toward them.

Her mind registered all this in the space of a heartbeat.

She reacted without thought.

“Behind us!” she cried.

The figure was almost upon them when Katelynn dived to her right.

She acted not a moment too soon. As she fell, she heard the whistle of something slice through the air less than an inch above her head and knew in that instant that she had come perilously close to dying.

The sound of metal striking metal reached her ears and Katelynn looked frantically toward the sound. Sam stood nearby, frozen in indecision.

Damon stood several feet away, facing them but backpedaling furiously as a figure in a hooded robe closed in on him. Damon’s hands were empty; the rifle he’d been holding only moments before now missing.

Katelynn rose to her feet and tried desperately to figure out what to do in order to help Damon.

It was obvious the man was playing with Damon. The newcomer was dressed in the tattered remnants of what once had been a rather luxurious robe, the front of which was discolored with a dark stain. In the man’s hands was a bejeweled sword, something that would have looked more in place in the Smithsonian than on a rain-slick roof in the hands of a madman. The sword came closer with each slash and jab. The sheriff frantically skipped backward, away from its razor-sharp edge.

As the two maneuvered, Katelynn was able to get a good look at the man’s face. It was twisted into an expression of utter fury, his flesh so gaunt it appeared to have been stretched across the frame of his bones. Within this mask eyes gleamed with fanatical hatred.

Despite the man’s appearance, Katelynn had no trouble recognizing him.

Hudson Blake.

Katelynn watched as Blake swung his weapon, and this time Damon proved to be too slow in getting out of the way. A cry of pain filled the air and blood flowed as the sword opened a long, shallow cut on Damon’s ribs as he leapt to the side in an effort to avoid the blow.

Damon’s frantic attempts to avoid the blade by twisting and turning away from it were preventing him from drawing his revolver, leaving him all but defenseless against the attack.

Katelynn knew she and Sam had to do something quickly to help.

She glanced around frantically, looking for a weapon, and spotted Damon’s rifle lying against the roof’s parapet.

She went after it, knowing she had only seconds before Blake tired of the game and skewered Damon.

Sam watched as Blake suddenly switched tactics and thrust his weapon point first at Damon. A cry of pain quickly followed and Sam watched in horror as Damon collapsed onto the rooftop.

The blade of Blake’s sword glistened.

Katelynn swung the rifle in Blake’s direction, her hands unfamiliar on the stock.

The old man was faster than either she or Sam could have ever expected.

He was there in front of her in what seemed like the blink of an eye, his own weapon swinging through the air and colliding with the barrel of the gun just as she got it pointed in his direction.

The force of the blow carried the rifle up and out of Katelynn’s hands. From several feet away Sam watched in dismay as the rifle went over her shoulder, disappearing into the darkness on the other side of the parapet, no doubt headed swiftly for the ground far below.

A wide smile crossed Blake’s face then, and he raised his sword for another strike at Katelynn.

“No!” Sam screamed, suddenly entering the fray by hurling himself directly into Blake.

Sam struck Blake just below his upraised arms, knocking him off-balance. Somewhere in the back of Sam’s mind he registered the clang as the madman’s sword struck the stone beneath their feet instead of Katelynn’s tender flesh.

With Blake locked in his embrace, Sam slammed him against the rooftop.

He landed badly, striking his head against the stone. Dazed, he could not summon the strength to prevent Blake from rolling them over, trapping Sam on the bottom.

Somehow Blake had retained his grip on his sword throughout the struggle and Sam looked up as Blake raised the weapon over his head, the pommel gripped securely in both of the old man’s hands, the sword ready for a sharp downward thrust to finish Sam off.

Oh, fuck,Sam thought, too tired and dazed to offer any resistance.

Two shots rang out and something hot and sticky splashed across Sam’s face, blinding him momentarily.

Seconds later Blake collapsed onto Sam, the sword falling from his grasp to clatter on the stone beside him.

Katelynn was suddenly at Sam’s side, wiping the blood out of his eyes so that he could see. He turned his head and saw Damon crouched a few yards away, one hand holding tight to the bleeding wound Blake’s sword had caused in his side, the other still holding the pistol with which he had just shot Blake. The pistol’s muzzle was held rock steady, not wavering from the old man’s body as Damon waited a moment to be certain he was out of the fight.

When it definitely looked like Blake was not going to get up again, Damon rose from his crouch and walked over to them.

Katelynn helped Sam get out from under the body, glad the man’s head was partially hidden by his arms so that she wouldn’t have to look at what must be a gaping wound in the middle of his face where Damon had shot him. They stood up just as Damon reached them.

“You two okay?” the sheriff asked.

Katelynn nodded, as did Sam. He was still a bit surprised to find himself alive and didn’t trust himself to speak.

“How badly are you hurt?” Katelynn asked Damon.

He grimaced with pain as he moved, but said simply, “I’ll make it,” and changed the subject. “We’d better check on the status of our weapons.”

Katelynn’s warning had allowed Damon an extra second to set his knapsack down on the rooftop before Blake’s charge had reached them, so the bottles of homemade napalm inside were still secure. Those inside Sam’s pack had been less fortunate; he’d been wearing the pack strapped across his back when he crashed into Blake, and the resulting fall had broken them all.

“Why don’t you take this, Sam?” Damon said, holding out the pack to him. “That way my hands will be free.”

Realizing Damon’s pistol was their only means of defense now that the rifle was gone, Sam didn’t disagree. He slung Damon’s pack loosely over one shoulder and they headed across the rooftop.

Damon moved slower than the others and was therefore a step or two behind them when they reached the door to the tower and stepped inside.

Damon called out to tell them to wait, but the heavy iron door suddenly swung shut in his face seemingly of its own accord, cutting him off from the others.

No sooner had it done so than a loud cry of surprise and fear reached his ears from the other side of the door.

The sound galvanized Damon.

He yanked open the door and moved quickly inside the room, his pistol held out before him, the pain in his side momentarily forgotten.

On the opposite side of the room, the Nightshade stood waiting.

41

ILLUSIONS

Katelynn and Sam were nowhere in sight.

The room was empty, except for the Nightshade.

Damon stared at it, taking in the details. It seemed larger than before, but that could have been a result of his fear.

The beast caught his gaze and stared back.

Damon could see the cold gleam of intelligence and hatred shining forth from its yellow eyes.

The room spun for a moment, and Damon swayed dizzily in response, his grip instinctively tightening on his weapon lest he lose it. He briskly shook his head, trying to shake off the feeling, then looked across the room to assure himself of the beast’s position.

To his horror, two other Nightshades had joined the first.

As he watched, the beasts began to spread out around him, moving swiftly in an attempt to cut off his retreat.

Damon glanced swiftly around, trying to keep all of them in sight at the same time, aware that if they rushed him, he wouldn’t be able to defend himself. He couldn’t cover all sides, and when he turned to deal with one, another would try to close in on him from behind.

Where the hell are Sam and Katelynn?he thought. They’d come in only seconds before him, and he hadn’t hesitated when he’d heard Katelynn’s cry.Could the beasts have taken them so swiftly?

Yet, there were no bodies, no blood. Except for Katelynn’s cry, there hadn’t even been sounds of a struggle.

So where in hell were they?

One of the beasts took a step forward, forcing Damon to turn toward it to cover the threat, and behind him he heard an answering scrape of claws on stone as another of the creatures took that opportunity to advance a little closer to his back.

Damon swiftly turned to face the new threat, his heart hammering wildly. Other than the door through which he’d entered, now guarded by one of the beasts, the only other way out was directly opposite him on the other side of the room.

Unfortunately, he’d have to go through three of the beasts to reach it.

A thought struck him.Could Sam and Katelynn have already gone through the other door?

Damon estimated the distance from where he stood to the door to be about thirty feet. Maybe they had already passed through the other door before the Nightshades had decided to show themselves, and Katelynn’s cry had not been cut off by an attack but rather by the slamming of the heavy wooden door as it swung shut behind them.

Movement to his left forced him to spin in that direction, and he was forced to put the others out of his mind.

As he twisted around, doing what he could to keep them all in sight, Damon considered rushing the beast behind him and getting back out onto the rooftop, then just as quickly dismissed the idea. He would be leaving the others completely at the mercy of these beasts, and he wasn’t about to abandon them if there was even a chance that they were still alive.

His decision meant he must not only hold the creatures at bay but also destroy them somehow in the process.

He just wished he knew how.

Katelynn didn’t understand what was happening.

When she and Sam had entered the room and found the Nightshade waiting for them, she’d let out a not altogether involuntary cry of surprise, which had served to bring Damon rushing into the room behind them.

From there, everything stopped making sense.

Damon had stepped into the room, gotten maybe ten feet past the door, and had frozen in place, staring at the beast in what appeared to be dread fascination. Expecting him to start shooting, she and Sam had moved off to Damon’s right, out of the line of fire.

Damon had done nothing.

He’d simply stood there, staring, his mouth open in astonishment.

That had gone on for a moment or two when Katelynn decided she had to do something.

So far, the Nightshade had ignored the two of them, its attention transfixed on Damon. Katelynn thought it had recognized the pistol in Damon’s hands as a weapon, and had decided that he was the obvious, immediate threat. While Sam was armed, nothing he carried could be immediately identified as such, and Katelynn’s hands were empty.

It seemed the beast had written them off for the time being.

She called out to Damon, trying to get his attention off the beast, which obviously had some sort of hold over him.

Damon either did not hear her or chose not to acknowledge that he had.

Sam added his voice to hers, and although the creature flicked its ears in their direction, it did not move or shift its gaze from Damon’s form.

Katelynn broke from Sam’s side and headed into the center of the room, not yet knowing exactly what she intended to do but knowing she had to do something.

Damon must have caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned in her direction.

And pointed his pistol directly at her.

One of the smaller Nightshades that had up until then kept against the wall was coming toward him. He didn’t want any of the things anywhere within striking distance. Despite this one’s small size, there was still no question that its claws were as razor-sharp as the others.

Damon took a step or two backward to widen the distance between them, keeping his target squarely in his sights.

Katelynn stopped in midstride, one foot still raised in the air, as she saw Damon raise his pistol and point it in her direction. This close, the barrel of the gun seemed impossibly wide, and she could almost believe she could look down its length to see the bullet inside.

From the glazed look in Damon’s eyes, Katelynn knew he was not seeing her. His lack of response to her earlier cries suddenly made sense as she realized he was seeing something else, some phantom in his mind that the Nightshade must have conjured forth. That Damon perceived her as a threat was not in doubt; the hand holding the pistol on her didn’t waver an inch. Katelynn slowly put her foot down, and tried to decide what to do.

She looked up, tearing her gaze away from the gun, and searched Damon’s face for any sign of recognition.

There wasn’t any.

She saw only hatred and fear.

In that moment, things went from bad to worse.

From where she stood, Katelynn watched in horror as the doorway behind Damon suddenly filled with a human form. One side of the man’s face was a devastated ruin, the left eye mangled beyond recognition from the bullet that had torn through that side of his face. Blood flowed freely from the wound, mixing with the steady flow that poured out of a similar wound in the man’s upper chest. Despite the injuries, his stance was firm, his smile grim, and in his hands he held the sword.

In the next instant, Hudson Blake extended the sword directly before him and charged at Damon!

Damon saw the beast’s gaze flick past his shoulder and knew in that instant that he’d been trapped. Determined at least to cause some damage before dying, Damon ignored the motion behind him for a second, just long enough to squeeze off a shot at the creature in front of him.

A sharp, cold numbness pierced his back as he pulled the trigger. He watched as the beast before him was thrown backward by the force of the shot, but knew instinctively that he hadn’t hit it in any particularly vital area, the attack from behind having spoiled his aim.

Then a nova-hot blaze of pain surged up from his stomach and caused him to glance down in shock, only to discover half a foot of cold steel protruding from an area just left of his navel. Blood pumped from the wound in a surging, crimson tide and Damon knew his time had just run out.

So be it.

At least he’d take some of them with him.

His gaze fell on the form on the floor in front of him, and he blinked his eyes in shocked disbelief. That wave of chestnut hair, that long-limbed form was unmistakable, and in a corner of his pain-filled mind Damon found himself wondering how he could ever have mistaken Katelynn for a Nightshade. Whoever was wielding the sword chose that moment to yank it violently from his body. He dimly heard the clatter of his gun striking the floor in front of him, and Damon felt the world around him spin as he slipped into a darkness deeper than night.

Katelynn found herself lying on her stomach, gazing at the floor in dazed bewilderment. She was aware of a sharp pain radiating up from her leg, reminding her of what had just occurred. Blake’s attack had spoiled Damon’s aim, so she had taken the bullet in the leg instead of the chest. The force of the blow had knocked her off her feet.

She lifted her head and looked around, discovering that Damon’s gun lay just inches from her. Damon himself lay crumpled on the floor a few feet away, a brilliant crimson stain spreading across the floor around him.

Blake was raising his weapon for another strike, looking more than anything as if he intended to cleave Damon’s head from his body with that one, simple stroke.

It only took an instant for all of this to register in Katelynn’s mind.

Then she reacted.

As Blake advanced the last few steps and raised his sword high over his head, Katelynn lunged out and grasped Damon’s pistol.

Blake started the downstroke of his sword.

As if in slow motion, Katelynn watched the sword cutting through the air, watched as her own arm raised the weapon and pointed it in Blake’s direction.

She had just a fleeting instant to pray, then she pulled the trigger.

The shot took Blake high in the chest for the second time that night, throwing him backward several feet. The sword spun through the air, off to one side.

Katelynn barely noticed.

She was too busy pulling the barrel down in line with Blake and firing again.

And again.

The second shot opened a red wound in his stomach.

The third flung him violently backward off his feet to lie unmoving on the floor.

She inched forward, keeping the gun on him, until she was close enough to see that he was no longer breathing.

Satisfied the son of a bitch wasn’t going to get up again, she turned her attention to the wound in her leg. It was bleeding freely, but not heavily, and she clamped her hand tightly to it while using the other to strip off her belt. She wrapped the belt around her leg just above the wound and cinched it tight. The pain was intense, but she was relieved to see that the wound wasn’t spraying blood the way it would have been had the bullet struck a major artery.

She glanced around for Sam, but didn’t see him or the Nightshade any longer. She then turned her attention to Damon alone.

He hadn’t moved since he’d fallen.

When she dragged herself over to him, she discovered he was alive but unconscious. From the amount of blood staining the floor, however, he might not stay that way for long.

Katelynn stripped off her sodden sweatshirt and was wadding it up to use as a compress when Damon opened his eyes.

“Katelynn,” he gurgled, blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth.

That wasn’t a good sign, she knew.

“Easy, Sheriff. It’s okay.” She rolled him onto his side and pressed the sweatshirt against the wound in his back, where it quickly became saturated with blood.

She rolled him faceup, his weight causing the sweatshirt to become a makeshift compress on the wound.

Her actions had sent pain flaring up her leg, and she was forced to stop a moment in an effort to fight off the gray haze that was threatening to overwhelm her.

Once she had her equilibrium back, she tore the bottom half of her shirt free and pressed it against the wound on Damon’s stomach. It, too, was instantly soaked with blood, but it would have to do. She had nothing else to stop the bleeding. The sheriff’s hand moved to hold the bandage in place, causing Katelynn to look up at his face. His eyes were open but free of pain; he was obviously in shock. He maintained enough control, however, to nod toward the door behind her.

“Sam went on alone,” he choked out.

Fear seized Katelynn’s heart in its stony grip.

Damon indicated the radio on his belt with a feeble motion. “Call for backup. Then follow Sam.” He appeared to want to say more, but choked on his own blood and had to turn away to cough it free. That motion alone exhausted him. He slumped back down, barely conscious.

Katelynn didn’t think he would make it until help arrived.

She took the radio from his belt and pressed the switch. “Hello? Hello? This is Katelynn Riley. The sheriff has been stabbed and needs medical help. We’re at the university, in Keating Hall.”

Questioning voices came back over the air, but Katelynn ignored them. She didn’t have time to answer any of their questions; Sam could be dying as well. She had to try to help him. Taking up Damon’s gun, she left him lying there on the floor and started making her way toward the door.

Inch by painful inch, she closed in on her destination.

Sam had been as confused by Damon’s actions as Katelynn; but he’d kept his eyes firmly on the Nightshade and was in a position to see the beast back toward the door on the far side of the room at the moment of Hudson Blake’s arrival. It was as if the two were working in tandem, and the beast had just left the unpleasant duty to his subordinate.

After all they’d been through, the Nightshade’s dismissal only served to send Sam’s anger past the boiling point.

He knew Katelynn and Damon were in trouble, knew that if he didn’t do something to help them, they probably wouldn’t survive; but he also knew he could not let the beast escape. He chose to act.

He shoved one hand into the pack he was carrying. One part of his mind flashed on the utter insanity involved in attacking a beast of such bloodthirsty savagery with nothing more powerful than glass jars filled with a mixture of gasoline and powdered soap flakes, while the other cocked his arm and hurled the jar at Moloch’s rapidly retreating form.

Sam’s aim was true.

The jar struck Moloch on the wide expanse of his right wing as he was turning away through the door on the other side of the room. The glass broke under the impact, spraying the beast with the gelatinous mixture within.

Sam already had another jar in hand when the beast stopped and turned its attention back in his direction.

Sam immediately threw the second jar, then watched in dismay, as it smashed harmlessly against the stone arch of the doorway, and the beast disappeared from sight.

Without taking time to think, Sam took off after the Nightshade. He’d crossed the room and was reaching for the door when his ears were filled with the explosive echoes of a gunshot. A sharp cry of pain followed immediately thereafter.

Sam knew the source of that cry.

Katelynn.

For just a moment, he almost stopped. Almost looked back to see what had happened, to discern what had caused his friend to cry out in pain. But Moloch had disappeared through the door ahead of him, and Sam knew that if he didn’t catch up with him they very well might lose him.

He couldn’t allow that to happen.

“God forgive me,” he whispered in anguish as he pushed his way through the door without stopping, never once looking back.

Stepping through the door, Sam found himself in the room that formed the base of the clock tower. The walls rose high into the darkness, where somewhere up above the clock and bellworks had once hung. They were long gone, he knew, victims of the ravages of time and lack of money. The stone walls had been designed with great archways to provide access to the roof proper and to let the sound of the bells free of the chamber. From where he stood Sam could see through several of the arches.

Moloch was nowhere in sight.

The room itself was fairly large. The Nighshade could not have crossed it that quickly.

Which meant it had to have gone upward.

As the thought occurred to him a warm breeze danced across his skin, and Sam’s response was near instantaneous.

With reflexes boosted high with fear-induced adrenaline, Sam threw himself diagonally forward, slamming his body violently into the stone flooring underfoot, his right arm outstretched in an effort to protect the mason jar clutched in that hand. Seconds later the Nightshade’s deadly talons raked the air where he’d been standing milliseconds before.

Giving forth a loud, piercing cry, the beast disappeared into the darkness.

Sam scrambled to his feet, using his other hand to pull the roadside flare from his pocket.

The Nightshade will try again,he thought,and this time I’ll be ready.

The attack came only seconds later.

This time Sam knew what was coming, and heard the shrill whistle in the air as the Nightshade’s body dropped from high above.

Sam waited, his body tense with anticipation.

Now he could see the dark form above, growing larger with each passing second as the distance between them lessened.

Still, he waited.

Sam could imagine those claws, stretched out, ready to sink into his skin. Instead of running, he simply raised his arms closer to one another and triggered the flare he held in his left hand.

Then he thrust its burning end into the open mouth of the mason jar he held in his hand.

The mixture inside ignited lightning-quick, and flames shot up out of the jar’s mouth.

Cocking his arm, knowing death was only scant feet away, Sam heaved the bottle with all his might directly at the beast.

The bottle struck the Nightshade in the middle of its chest, shattering the glass and spreading the burning mixture across its flesh.

Screaming in surprise and pain, the beast was diverted from its attack, crashing clumsily into the stone floor.

Sam yanked the last jar from his pack.

The creature was less than six feet away. Its hide was awash in flame, the mixture sticking to its skin and igniting what was left from Sam’s first attack. It screamed again in rage and pain, then slowly began to climb to its feet.

“Die, damn you! Die!” Sam screamed.

Again using the flare as an igniter, he threw the last bottle.

His luck held, the bottle struck the beast across the side of the head, and it collapsed, its body covered with a raging fire.

Sam heard a cry behind him and turned to see Katelynn crawling through the doorway. He rushed to her side but before he could ask her what had happened to her and Damon, Katelynn pointed over his shoulder, and gasped, “Look!”

42

INFERNO

Somehow, the beast had climbed to its feet.

Katelynn and Sam watched in fascinated horror as the Nightshade took one step toward the roof’s edge, then another.

And another.

The flames were burning fiercely, the homemade napalm smeared across most of the creature’s torso. The frantic beating of its wings simply fanned the flames, adding to its own destruction.

But they could see that it wasn’t burning quickly enough.

While the heat was intense, the fire had not spread to the rest of the creature’s body, burning only where the gasoline mixture had soaked into the skin. With its supernatural healing, Moloch would survive the burns if he found some way of putting out the flames before they consumed him.

The beast took a fourth step.

A fifth.

Each step brought it closer to freedom.

Crouched against the far wall, using his body to shield Katelynn from the heat, Sam realized what the creature was going to do. Once it reached the edge of the roof, it would launch itself into the open air. While the wind of its flight might fan the flames, it would also allow the beast to reach the river on the other side of campus. Once there, it could plunge beneath the river’s surface, extinguishing the flames and finding a place to hide. There it would have the safety to gather its strength and slowly heal itself.

Sam knew he could not allow that to happen; they’d gotten two chances at the beast. They would not get a third.

He had to act now.

The creature’s agonized shrieks of pain echoed off the room’s stone walls, nearly deafening in their intensity. Sam pulled Katelynn’s head closer to his own and put his lips next to her ear so she could hear him over the noise.

“Take care of Damon.”

Before she could react, he sprinted across the room at full speed directly at the tall burning figure that was just reaching the edge of the roof.

Halfway in shock from the pain of her wounded leg, it took a moment for Katelynn to realize what Sam was doing.

When she did, she screamed in horror. “Sam! Noooo!”

It was too late to stop him, and deep inside she knew it.

At the edge of the roof, the Nightshade spread its wings wide, preparing to cast itself off the rooftop and escape.

Sam was only a step or two behind it, and with one, great wordless scream of rage and despair, he launched himself at the beast.

In that moment, just before his body collided with the burning form of the beast, Sam realized something.

It was okay to be afraid.

Fear is what makes us all human. It is fear that allows us to rise above ourselves, to reach that much further and that much higher, to strive to achieve just that little bit more. If we had succumbed to our fears, man would never have made it past the ice age. There is too much to be afraid of in our lives; fear of ourselves, fear of others, fear of our emotions and our lack thereof, fear of every action we might take every day of our lives. We rise above that and we move forward, facing our fears with a sense of courage that lives within us all, waiting for the chance to be let out.

As Sam’s body closed the distance that separated him from the beast’s burning form, he was very, very afraid.

But that was okay.

I guess I’m not as much a coward as I thought,he mused to himself, as his body crashed into Moloch’s, the momentum taking them both over the edge of the roof. The intense heat of the flames against his flesh only caused him to lock his arms that much tighter around the body of his enemy, effectively pinning the creature’s wings against its sides.

As they dropped over the edge and the ground rushed up to meet them, over the shriek of the creature and his own wordless cries of rage, Sam thought he heard Katelynn call his name.

In the second before he and the Nightshade crashed to the ground, Sam whispered a single word.

“Good-bye.”

EPILOGUE

Two weeks later.

Glendale Hospital Intensive Care Unit.

Damon was resting in bed watching television when Katelynn knocked on the open door to his room.

“Come on in,” he said, a genuine smile crossing his face, the first in days.

Katelynn crossed the room on her crutches and settled into the chair next to the bed. She was tired; the last two weeks had been a blur of activity as the police and several different agencies worked to understand just what had happened over the last several months. With Sam dead and Damon in ICU, she had been their primary source of information.

“I heard they upgraded your condition enough to let you have visitors, so I wanted to come by and see how you were doing,” she said to the sheriff.

“I’ll make it. They tell me if it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have made it off that rooftop. Thanks.”

Katelynn shrugged, uncomfortable with the gratitude.

In a softer voice Damon added, “I’m sorry about Sam.”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak on that topic yet.

As it turned out, Sam’s action had been a smart one; with the creature’s wings pinned to its body, it had been unable to arrest its fall. The added fuel from Sam’s clothing had helped spread the fire, so by the time the two of them crashed to the ground below in a tangled heap, the Nightshade had become a pyre. The added injury from the fall had been too much for the beast’s regenerative powers. It simply could not recover in time to defeat the flames. The beast perished in a raging conflagration on the ground, which burned for nearly twenty minutes until firefighters arrived on the scene. Since the beast’s remains were so badly entwined with Sam’s, the whole bundle had been transported down to the morgue, where it was still being studied.

The investigation remained inconclusive; awaiting the results of the forensic studies and scientific evaluations. Katelynn told the entire story, as she knew it, from beginning to end, without leaving anything out. She received a number of strange looks from the investigators the DA’s Office sent in until the photos of the scene came back from the lab.

It was hard to argue with black-and-white photographs showing the charred remains of a wing jutting from the back of one of the corpses they pulled from the ground.

“I hear you’re leaving the force,” she said, by way of reply instead.

“It’s true. Even if I could pass the physical again, I don’t want to. After what we just went through, there is no way I could return to a life of parking tickets and speeding fines. What about you?”

“If they let me leave town, I think I’m going to go visit my aunt in California. It’s too cold for me here now.”

Damon knew without asking that she was referring to more than the winter weather.

Neither of them really knew what to say. They had been through something extraordinary, and the wounds were still too fresh, too painful. Maybe in time they would find the ability to talk about it between them, but for the moment idle chitchat was all they could manage.

It saddened Damon’s heart to realize it.

They talked of inconsequential things for a short while, then Katelynn announced that she had to get going.

“Stay in touch, okay?” Damon asked her.

“Sure,” Katelynn replied, and they both wondered if she would.

She clambered to her feet with the help of her crutches and bent to give Damon a kiss on the forehead.

“Get well,” she said, and turned away before he could see the tear in her eye.

As she hobbled toward the door, Damon called out once more.

“Katelynn?”

She looked back toward him.

“Would you mind?” he said, pointing toward the window.

Through the open drapes, Katelynn could see that it was late; very soon the sun would set, and darkness would be upon them.

She nodded wordlessly, and moved to pull the curtain shut, blocking out the sight.

They’d both grown uncomfortable with what the darkness of the night sky might hold.

She suspected it would remain that way for a long time.