Riverwatch (11 page)

The two talked on for another hour before calling it a night, never realizing how close to the truth Jake’s comment had actually been.

Chapter Twelve: Bloodstone

The dream begins innocently enough.

In her sleep, Katelynn moves through an amusement park with Jake at her side. Sights and sounds slip past in a kaleidoscope of activity. Flashing lights, turning wheels, the harsh bark of a carny’s voice. They ride the Tilt-a-Whirl, then the Viking Longboat. Jake wins her a teddy bear by knocking down milk bottles with a softball. It is a typical dream, skipping from scene to scene with no real connectivity, yet somehow making sense just the same.

Suddenly, a flashing red light intrudes from the other side of the carnival. A light so sharp, so insistent, that Katelynn is drawn irrevocably toward it. Jake fades into obscurity behind her as she moves out of his reach. The light draws her forward, and the cacophony on all sides slips away into oblivion as all of her attention is tied up in chasing that insistent beacon.

In reality, Katelynn tosses and turns beneath the sheets, the ruby red stone about her throat pulsing with light.

She sleeps on and the carnival fades away, replaced with a thick gray haze that swirls around her in lazy spirals, shifting and churning. The light shines before her, closer now, hidden somewhere in the depths of that mist.

Katelynn stumbles in after it.

The haze shifts, and Katelynn finds herself standing before the light as it hangs motionless in the air before her. It shines vividly, cutting through the murk, pulsing with an eerie life. Katelynn watches as her arm lifts of its own accord and reaches to touch it…

She soars high above the ground, carried aloft like a glider tossed into a storm. The wind is cool, flickering across her flanks in a silken caress. The sky around her is dark with heavy rain-laden clouds extending out to the horizon, shutting out the afternoon light, for which she is thankful.

The storm comes on fast, without warning, and she rejoices in the opportunities it could bring.

She drops lower, riding one of the storm’s savage currents in a swift, sickening drop that plunges her several hundred feet in seconds, the air screaming past her ears with a shrill, bestial shriek. She recovers easily; swooping along now just above the tree line, following the trail she sees below her, knowing that it was often used by those she sought.

Movement catches her attention.

She shifts lower, mere feet above the ground now, and angles off to the left in order to intercept whatever it is. A moment or two and the thing comes into view.

It is an antelope, with long curving horns atop its head and a brown and golden coat. It is part of a herd, which comes into view as she sails over the head of the first animal. Her presence starts them milling about, nervous but not yet panicked. As a group they collectively wait to see what she will do, watching her closely with upturned heads.

She has better sport this night, however, and she glides over their heads without giving them another thought.

She regains some altitude, and uses the warmer currents to glide and detect movement on the plain beneath. A dark, scorched section of earth can be made out to the west, and she notes it with a sort of grim satisfaction. Her enemies had once lived there, in a great sprawling city that stood as a fortress against her kind, but had finally fallen in a glorious battle. The streets of that city had flown red with the blood from those fed upon that night.

Not long after she passed the city, she spotted what she was looking for. A thin column was moving along the path, at this height little more than specks in motion. She had hunted here before and knew that she had found her target.

She swooped closer, and counted fourteen of the herd moving in tandem the way the Elders had taught them. They found a certain level of protection in this fashion, occasionally managing to fend off an attack with the help of the four-legged animals that traveled with them. It didn’t happen often, but it also didn’t hurt to assess the situation before attacking.

Another of the Na’Karat was trailing this group, she noticed, a large male, hanging off to the side, watching just as she was. From the haste of the group below, they had obviously seen him, and were now trying to reach a sheltered location before he attacked. The fool, she thought. He had allowed himself to be seen too soon and was now simply compounding the error. He would lose his chance if he did not engage soon.

She decided to make her move before he could.

She flew overhead and began to circle the group. Below, the cattle swiftly pulled in their ranks, moving to form a large circle with the weakest in the center and the strong on the rim, just as the Elders had taught them.

It would do them no good.

She spotted a straggler, an offspring by the size, tens of yards away from the group and moving slowly. She smiled, her tongue flicking across her teeth. That would be the one.

She folded her wings and dropped toward the earth.

Her victim was twenty feet from the group when she struck.

Unfolding her wings, she used the resistance of the wind to slow her descent abruptly, so she seemed to appear out of nowhere directly in front of it. As expected, it froze in place for a moment.

That was all the time she needed.

She swung one of her arms around in a blinding fast arc, the talons on the end of each finger extended.

She shrieked with satisfaction as flesh tore, blood flew, and the stench of pain rose into the air…

*** ***

Katelynn awoke screaming in her bed.

She knew instantly she’d had a nightmare; her heart was thundering in her chest and her body was soaked with sweat.

She had only a fleeting recollection of what it had been about, however, and that quickly slipped away as she tried to get herself under control.

She got up and went into the bathroom. Using a facecloth soaked in cool water, she wiped her upper body down and splashed some water on her face. Her heartbeat slowly returned to normal.

By the time she climbed back into bed, the dream was no more. It had slipped away as swiftly as the morning dew under the summer sun.

Five minutes later she was fast asleep.

It had been the first of the dreams, but it would not be the last.

*** ***

Across town, the beast turned in his sleep, his dream disturbed by an unwanted presence.

It lasted no more than a moment, however, and the creature never fully awoke, preferring to sink back into his memories of another time and place.

He gave the presence not another thought.

Chapter Thirteen: Gruesome Discoveries

The ringing of the phone jarred him awake.

"Wilson here."

"Sorry to disturb you, sir. But we’ve got a bad one."

Damon listened for a few moments and then hung up. He was dressed and out the door in less than ten minutes, using both the sirens and lights as he climbed the hills into Harrington Falls. As he made his way down Chestnut Street, it was easy to see the activity that surrounded the house at the end of the block.

The house was a beacon, shining in the darkness, calling out to him, demanding the justice which he could supply, commanding him to avenge those who lay still and silent inside.

Though he was still half a mile away, he could see the house clearly. It stood out from the rest because it was the only one on the block with every window bathed with electric light, like a blazing torch in an empty field, and he moved toward it reluctantly.

The unspeakable had occurred. For the first time in over twenty years, there had been a murder in Harrington Falls.

Damon didn’t want to see what lie waiting inside those four walls, didn’t want to smell the freshly spilled blood or see the wounds, didn’t want to stare into lifeless eyes and wonder what they had seen in those last few precious moments before death.

Despite his resignation he continued on, if for no other reason than it was his job. There was no one else to do it.

He’d only gone to bed moments before the call had come, and as he put down the receiver he realized he hadn’t been surprised to learn that someone had been killed. All evening since leaving the office he’d been nervous, watchful, unable to relax and settle down the way he usually did after a day’s work, his conversation with Strickland replaying over and over again like a Top Forty record in his mind. It was almost as if he’d been expecting something to happen.

When he arrived he could see the house was set back from the street on a thickly wooded lot. In the drive were several police cars, their blue lights flashing, giving the house’s white paint a sickly glow. Two ambulances were parked at the curb.

The house was a split-level, as were many of the others in this neighborhood, though some work had been done to subtly alter its appearance. There was a small addition, probably a den or TV room, jutting out from the rear left corner, and from this a wide latticed porch extended around to its opposite corner on the front. The original windows facing the street had been taken out, and two large bay windows had been installed in their place, looking to Damon like the bulbous eyes of some giant fly.

The Sheriff looked away, suddenly uncomfortable.

For just a moment, he’d been struck by the uneasy feeling that he was being watched.

His attention turned to the thick row hedges that lined the path from the front door to the drive, and the manner in which the pines in the back yard crept across the rear of the property. Both areas would provide fine places for concealment for anyone trying to approach the house undetected, and he made a mental note to have the boys check them for any sign that the killer had indeed been there.

Deciding he couldn’t postpone the inevitable any longer, Damon resigned himself to what lay ahead and walked to the front door.

Inside was chaos.

The living room was in shambles. A recliner had been overturned, its leather upholstery slashed. Cushions from the sofa and loveseat were strewn about the room, ripped as well, their white foam interiors spilling out around the jagged tears. It looked as if someone had taken the same knife to the heavy drapes too as they now hung in ragged strips. The floor was littered with chunks of ceramic and glass; all that remained of what Damon guessed had once been a pair of table lamps.

Two technicians were moving about the room, pausing now and again to scoop some object into one of the many clear plastic envelopes that jutted from their pockets.

One of them looked up and waved a hand in the direction the hallway was leading, and Damon followed it to a stairway that led to the second floor.

At the top, Deputy Frank Castiglioni stepped out of the shadows to greet him. Frank was a ten-year veteran of the force, and one of Damon’s most hardened and experienced officers.

"Sheriff," he said in greeting.

"How’s it going, Frank?" Damon noticed his fellow officer was pale, his voice slightly off key. Behind the man’s back, where he obviously hoped Damon wouldn’t be able to see it, Castiglioni’s right hand was shaking violently.

"Is it bad?" he asked.

The other man swallowed once, hard, and then nodded. He tried a weak smile but failed to bring it off.

Damon laid a comforting hand on Frank’s shoulder, and then moved past him. He stopped at the entrance of the room just beyond, his bulk framed in the narrow doorway.

What he saw in front of him made the bile rush to the top of his throat, and for a moment he thought he might be sick at a scene for the first time in many years, but after a moment or two the sensation passed.

"Holy Mother of God."

What he saw here was far, far worse than what he’d expected.

The room was a slaughterhouse.

Blood was splattered everywhere; on the floor, on the ceiling, on the walls. It was as if someone had taken buckets of the stuff and merrily splashed it around.

Pieces of bloody human flesh were likewise cast about, scattered across the floor and atop various pieces of furniture.

A hand, with only three fingers intact, dangled from an open dresser drawer, the missing digits ripped off at the first knuckle.

A foot, still clad in a blood-stained slipper lay in the middle of the floor, the shinbone was shining whitely through the torn and bloody flesh.

Many of the other pieces were unrecognizable as to what part of the body they had originated from, a fact which Damon found increasingly disturbing as his gaze kept returning to them repeatedly, his mind trying to discern what they once might have been, so as to give order to the chaos.

What he took to be glistening lengths of rope dangled about the curtains that concealed the surface of the king-size bed, reminding him of the tinsel he used to decorate his Christmas tree every year.

Curious, he stepped closer, only to realize with rapidly escalating horror that they were actually human entrails.

In the back of his mind an evil little voice began singing, "A Slinky, a Slinky, a wonderful, wonderful toy, a Slinky, a Slinky, they’re fun for a girl and a boy."

Vomit surged back up into his throat, and this time he barely managed to choke it back down, leaving a foul taste in his mouth that matched nicely with the reek of death that hung in his nostrils.

In all his years of police work, he had never seen anything so vile.

So twisted.

So undeniably evil.

Conflicting emotions ran through him as he stared down at the carnage before him, the sickness he felt warring with his need to study the scene and understand just what had happened.

Anger reared its ugly head, and he let it come, knowing it would help calm nerves that were dangerously close to the breaking point. Anger would get him past his revulsion, would allow him to look at the situation objectively. He clung to it, wrapping it around him the same way a child might envelope itself in a comforting blanket on a cold winter’s night.

I’ll make the bastard who did this pay, he vowed to himself, and felt a little better for the thought.

For the first time Damon noticed a police photographer was in the room with him, had indeed been clicking away the whole time Damon had been standing there, ignoring his presence, wanting to finish up and get the hell out of there.