Riverwatch

Chapter Thirty-eight: 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, 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 down 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 gave it to Jake when 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 flamethrower or shoulder launched missile and doubted Damon did either. Sam supposed he could use a hand weapon, like a fire axe; 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 axe 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. It was late and the sun was setting.

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.