Riverwatch

Chapter Thirty-six: 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 that extended from the streetlamps behind him did not reach that distance.

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 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 its quiet, he informed himself. Of course it’s quiet. It’s close to eleven p.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 beating of his heart.

The darkness and the silence pressed in on him now, 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, it almost pitched him 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 these 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 and 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 heavier 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 face down 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 to carefully 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 now 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, twisting his body around to see behind him despite the pain, 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.