Riverwatch (17 page)

The room was starkly lit with bright fluorescent lights. Three autopsy tables were spaced evenly, a bank of moveable lamps hanging within easy reach over each one. Large drains dotted the floor. Two of the tables were occupied, their contents covered with white plastic sheets. Around the lip of the drain beneath the table containing the larger bundle, Damon could see a thin pink froth left over from when the floors had been hosed down after the morning’s work. His shoes squeaked as they crossed the still damp linoleum.

Strickland was at one of the sinks, washing up.

"Hello, Ed," said Damon, entering the room.

"Sheriff."

Ed dried his hands and then moved to close the morgue’s doors, assuring them of privacy. "I’ve spent the last ten hours doing multiple autopsies, first on the Cummings couple and then on your two officers."

Damon’s jaw clenched at the thought of his murdered men but he did not interrupt the other man.

"In each and every case, I found the same types of evidence, the same confusing issues." He moved over to one of the autopsy tables. A body lay on top of it, covered by a clean white sheet. Reaching up, he switched on the bank of lamps above it, then pulled the sheet down to unveil the remains of George Cummings.

"The reason I called you down is simple." Stirckland hesitated, took a deep breath, and then said, "whatever killed this man wasn’t human."

Damon stared at his friend for a moment in silence and then said, "Come again?"

Ed looked down at the corpse before him, an expression of honest bafflement on his face. "In all my years of pathology I’ve never run across something as strange as this. Every time I think I’m getting somewhere, I find something else which completely shatters my current theory. I haven’t finished all the tests I intend to do, but I’ve got the feeling that once I do, I still won’t know anymore than I do right now, which is practically nothing. There’s only one thing of which I am positive." Strickland looked up and met Damon’s disbelieving gaze, "Nothing human killed this man."

The words hung in the air between them.

Maneuvering the lights down closer to the body, Strickland tried to explain. "First of all, the man’s head wasn’t cut off his body. It was torn off."

He bent over the corpse. "See this ragged tear here?" he asked, pointing to what was left of the man’s neck. The flesh at that point rose and fell in uneven peaks and valleys. "If the killer had used a knife or some other sharp object to sever the head, we’d see a relatively smooth cut."

"What about a saw?" Damon asked. "That wouldn’t leave a smooth edge, would it?"

"No, but it would be a uniform tear. This is too uneven to be a saw blade." He paused and looked up to make certain Damon was following his explanation. When he saw that he was, Strickland continued. "Do you remember a game we used to play with dandelions when we were kids? Something about Momma having a baby and her head popped off?"

"You’re not saying…?"

Ed smiled a strange and bitter smile. "Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Something pulled this man’s head from his body as easily as we used to flip those flowers off their stems."

Damon stared down at the corpse with a whole new sense of horror.

"It gets worse. With the exception of his eyes, still in the head you recovered from the toilet and the intestines you found strung all over the bedroom, all the other soft organs in the body have been removed."

"Removed?" The slight tremor in Damon’s voice suggested he already knew what Strickland meant by the euphemism.

Again the smile. "Removed. Eaten. Devoured. Call it what you will. As far as I can tell, the beast, whatever it is, got his heart, his kidneys, his liver, even his tongue and testicles."
"Oh, God," said Damon, as he fought to make his mind accept what he was hearing.

"My thoughts exactly." Strickland flipped off the lights and covered the body.

Damon finally got his thoughts in order. "How come you’re so certain it’s an animal? Couldn’t a human, albeit a very sick one, have done the same thing? Look at that guy Dahmer. He was certainly capable of something like that."

"Sure, I guess it would be possible. But not in this case. No human left the teeth marks I found."

"Teeth marks?" Damon echoed. He was starting to feel a little slow on the uptake.

Ed moved over to the other table. Turning on the lights and drawing back the sheet as he had before, he exposed Cumming’s head and limbs.

"The bones had been deeply scored at the point of separation from the rest of the limb. My first hunch was that the marks were caused by some kind of tool, maybe a tire iron or an axe, but on closer examination I realized that they were really the imprints left when the beast crushed the limbs between its jaws. Its teeth are curved inward, at an angle, so when they cut through the skin and hit the bone, they leave evidence of their passing," Ed turned the foot so Damon could see the exposed cross-section of the bone, "and if you look closely, you’ll see that the marrow has been sucked out as well. While the creature had less time with Bannerman and Jones, their bodies showed many of the same results."

"Jesus! What kind of animal are we talking about here, Ed?"

The Medical examiner shrugged. "Damned if I know. Something big enough to tackle a full-grown man. Something that’s not only not afraid of him, but also happens to like how he tastes. But I’m afraid there’s more. I found the same strange lack of blood with this body as I did with Halloran’s corpse."

"You’re kidding me, right?"

" ‘Fraid not. No blood, and the veins themselves collapsed throughout the entire system. I can’t explain it any more than I could when I talked to you yesterday. I’ve never seen anything like it."

"So what you’re saying is that whatever killed Halloran also killed the Cummings’ as well?"

"It appears that way."

Damon was perplexed. "Why didn’t it feast on Halloran, too? Why just the older couple and my men?"

"Who knows? Could be for a variety of reasons. Maybe it was just thirsty the first time." Strickland’s weak attempt at humor blew right past Damon. For all he knew, it might not be a joke at all.

"You ready for the rest?"

"There’s more?" Damon asked him, incredulously.

Strickland picked the head up off the table and turned it around so Damon could see the fist-sized hole in the back of the man’s skull.

The white gleam of bone could clearly be seen inside the empty skull cavity.

"It ate his brain, too," Strickland replied.

Chapter Twenty-One: Confrontation

Later that night

Gabriel lay quietly in his room, thinking about the past. Once he’d been young and powerful, but that time had long since faded into dust. His end was approaching, he knew that, and in certain ways he welcomed it. He lifted one frail hand and stared at it, remembering how it had appeared long ago, smooth and strong, a power to be reckoned with, not liver-spotted and weak as it was now. The years had, at last, taken their toll on his physical form.

His mind was as sharp as ever, though, and he decided to make use of its powers one last time before he moved on from this place. Settling back against his pillows, he gathered his strength and with a sharp mental shove cast his consciousness out beyond the walls of the facility in which he lay to the crisp, clean air of the summer night. While the Na’Karat might have the physical power to fly, Gabriel’s kind flew in other, truer ways, and he wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

He soared above the buildings, reveling in his freedom, then swooped down toward the forest floor below. As he did so, a rabbit jumped out of the undergrowth and stopped to feed on a patch of clover.

What would it be like to exist as you do, my little fellow? he asked it silently. To have no responsibilities, no worries, to sleep at night without the burden of suffocating doubts that plague you like a leprous disease rotting you away from the inside out? What would it be like, to think only of the present moment, with no thought or consideration to the future or the past?

The rabbit stiffened suddenly, as if sensing his presence and with a sudden burst of speed it spun to the right and disappeared into the undergrowth.

Gabriel watched it go, following its passage into the woods by listening for the tiny thump of its heart. He wished his furry friend good fortune, and then sent his presence soaring high above the ground to view the world once more in the fashion of his youth, before the coming of man and the war that destroyed his people.

Once his "eyes" had seen enough, he returned to his body and lay there in the darkness of his room, waiting.

Instead of concentrating on the confrontation he knew would soon occur, his thoughts drifted.

An image of a woman formed in his mind. She was beautiful, a golden-haired goddess with eyes of emerald green and cherry red lips.

Ah, Mira, my beautiful Mira! How long has it been? he thought sadly. His heart ached for her just as it had in ages past, when they had walked hand in hand beneath the golden spires of their fair city. He loved her as strongly as he had in the days of his youth. If anything, that devotion had grown stronger with the passage of time, until he felt close to bursting with his longing for her. He could remember her face as clearly now as if he’d seen it only yesterday; he could trace its soft, gentle curves in the air with his eyes and feel the heat of her breath on his lips. He knew it wouldn’t be long before they were reunited, and he secretly longed for his journey through the ages to be over so that he could join her in the afterworld.

Gabriel watched the ticking hands of the clock, and wished they’d move faster.

Eventually he drifted off to sleep.

*** ***

He awoke a short while later, and knew immediately that he was no longer alone.

The sliding glass doors to his balcony hung open, the stiff breeze coming through causing the curtains to billow out into the night.

At the base of his bed stood the Nightshade.

They stared at each other.

To Gabriel, the beast was as foul as the day he had locked it away beneath the earth. The Elder was dismayed to see that it looked as powerful as it had on that long ago night, as if sealing it off from reality had let it gather strength in some mysterious fashion instead of crippling it as he’d intended when he’d created its prison. The beast’s muscles rippled beneath its hide, and its eyes gleamed with cunning intelligence.

Gabriel was suddenly worried that he had waited too long.

There was no way Sam and his friends would be able to defeat it if it was as strong as he feared.

*** ***

Moloch stared at the Elder. Rage and hatred rose in him like a rain-swollen river. Here was the one who had pursued him through the ages. Here was the one who had sought to imprison him forever without shape or substance in a timeless void deep beneath the earth.

Here was his enemy.

The beast almost laughed. The Elder was nothing more than a pathetic husk of what he’d once been, and certainly no match for Moloch’s own powers. Killing him won’t be an effort, it will be a favor.

Gabriel broke the silence, speaking in the old tongue.

"You will regret coming here." He kept his voice firm, but suspected that the beast had already seen his dismay at the other’s apparent strength. He would give no more away than he had to, however.

"I think not."

The Nightshade’s voice was thicker, more guttural than he remembered, and Gabriel found himself wondering if it had sustained some permanent damage from its confinement.

"You will not succeed. The humans are stronger now, more able to face the challenges that life lays at their feet. They will use their technology to destroy you."

Moloch laughed. "I have not been idle since my release. I have watched the cattle. I have seen what they are capable of. I have also learned that they do not believe in anything besides that which they can lay their hands upon. They have forgotten the past and rely too much on the future. I will show them what it means again to be hunted and they will once again remember their fear."

Gabriel had been gathering his strength during the beast’s speech. As the final syllables were falling from its mouth, Gabriel lashed out with the force of his mind in a vicious mental attack.

The Nightshade stumbled under the sudden onslaught. He had been caught off guard, unsuspecting, and the Elder’s mental barrage began to knock down his internal defenses, threatening to kill him with sheer force of will. He was actually forced backward, away from the bed, by the power of the attack.

Gabriel realized that he had the upper hand, and threw more of his reserves in behind the attack, hoping to overwhelm the beast and destroy it before it had a chance to retaliate.

The end was not to be that easy, however.

The beast quickly regained control, snapping its shields into place, protecting itself, locking out the power of the attack. Gabriel tried vainly for several long moments to breach the shields, but to no avail.

At last, exhausted, he was forced to drop the assault.

Shaking his head, Moloch stepped back over to the bed and stared at Gabriel anew. It did not look damaged in any way by the attack, and despair washed through Gabriel for the first time in many years. He had to face the truth; he was no longer a match for the beast.

Unless Sam and his friends could destroy it, the Nightshade was going to win.

*** ***

Katelynn was in the library, reading, when it happened. One moment she was engrossed in the record of life in the 1700s, the next, the world seemed to shrink inward on her, a black haze obscuring her sight. She fought to remain conscious, but it was too late.

She lost herself in the darkness.

When she came to again, she was no longer in the library.

She stood in Gabriel’s room at the nursing home. He was sitting upright in bed, staring at her standing at its foot, an expression of fear and revulsion on his face. He was obviously exhausted, but he seemed to summon his strength as she watched, as if preparing for a confrontation.