Riverwatch

Chapter Eighteen: To Protect and Serve

"I hate this," Deputy Steve Bannerman mumbled beneath his breath.

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

Until the killings started.

Now these shifts were the worst.

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

It did not make for a relaxed evening.

"Did you hear the latest?" Jones asked his partner.

"No, what?"

"They found a scene right out of a Black Mass this morning at Hudson Blake’s mansion."

"You’re kidding me."

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

"What?"

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

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

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

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

Bannerman got out and looked back.

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

It wasn’t moving.

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

Drawing his weapon, Bannerman moved forward.

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

The body did not move.

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

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

A deer.

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

"What is it?’ Jones called out nervously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pain suddenly overwhelmed Bannerman.

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

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

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

Bannerman screamed again in pain.

"Christ," Jones swore, "What do I do? What do I do?"

The decision was taken from him.

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

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

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

He needn’t have bothered.

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

Bannerman was beyond pain.

Jones didn’t hesitate any longer.

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

He almost made it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her turned his head.

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

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

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

The beast seemed to smile in response.

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

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

The beast pounced.

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

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

Eventually, they stopped.

Only to be replaced by something far worse.

The sound of a large animal feeding.