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 flame-thrower or shoulder-launched missile and doubted Damon did either. Sam supposed he could use a hand weapon, like a fire ax; 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 ax 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. The day was growing late.
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.
39
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 was sketchy and full of speculation. Of immediate concern was whether or not the serial killer police had believed dead in July 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 the 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 Sam 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 Sam rose 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 found.
“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 of the one Katelynn had, a matched pair. If I’m right, we can still use 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 markedEVIDENCE . 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.