Riverwatch

by Joseph Nassise

  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.

  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.

  Chapter Thirty-nine: 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 sketchy and full of speculation. Of immediate concern was whether or not the serial killer police had believed dead in June 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 t
he 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 him 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 him Sam 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 now .

  "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 to the one Katelynn had, a matched pair. If I’m right, we can still 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 marked ‘Evidence’. 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 smiled crossed his face.

  Inside the bag was a red stone identical in shape and coloration to the one Katelynn had until recently been wearing. 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 marked ‘Interrogation’. 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.

  "Damn it!" 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 now, 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. Just as you lost Jake."

  It wasn’t fair to play on her emotions like that, but Damon was getting desperate. He agreed with Sam; they needed to find this thing 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."