His grip loosened, and Gabriel slumped back against the pillows. “That was to prove their undoing, their downfall.”
Sam was eager to hear more. “What do you mean, ‘their downfall’?” he asked. “Did man turn against them? Destroy them?”
“Not directly. You see, there was another race competing with the Elders for supremacy. These winged, vaguely reptilian creatures were the antithesis of the Elders, full of cruelty and rage, but no less intelligent. They preyed on the lesser races. They called themselves the Na’Karat, but it was their habit of swooping down out of a dark night sky to attack their prey that earned them the nickname, ‘Nightshades.’ They hunted many different kinds of creatures, but enjoyed hunting primeval humans more than any other type of game. Man had more intelligence, and therefore had a richer, deeper notion of fear, and it was fear that the Nightshades were after. They fed on the meat, but it was the fear that sustained them, fear that fulfilled their warped sense of spiritual need.
“Where the Elders sought to help the humans, the Nightshades wanted nothing more than to allow them to wallow in their primitiveness. They were cattle, nothing more, and the Nightshades treated them as such, herded and corralled and hunted for the sustenance they could provide.”
“So, what happened?”
“War happened, Sam. War. The Elders couldn’t sit idly by and watch this occur. They went to arms against the Nightshades and swore the conflict would not end until the humans were freed and allowed to prosper as befitted an intelligent race. Where once was peaceful coexistence, now was racial hatred. Vast armies marched out of our great cities.”
“Armies led by those who would later become legends—Michael, Uriel, even Gabriel—marched onto the fields of battle. Down out of the sky came the ’Shades to greet them, in numbers so vast the brilliant blue above was blotted out by their forms.”
Sam could see it all in his mind’s eye, his writer’s imagination filling in the details. He saw the armies of the Elders marching off to war, their raiment golden in the sunlight. He imagined heroic stands against incalculable odds, the armies of good triumphing over those of darkness, conveniently forgetting that war is never that simple or bloodless.
He realized suddenly that it had gone quiet. Gabriel was sitting and studying him. Sam felt uncomfortable under the intensity of that gaze, but he wanted to hear the end. “Who won?” he asked.
Gabriel smiled a tight, bitter smile in response. “No one won, Sam. Battle after battle raged, the best of both races lying to rot in the bright sunlight of fields strewn with the dead. Cities crumbled under the onslaught and the dark caverns of the Nightshades were taken and destroyed. The numbers on each side dwindled. Yet still they fought on in their stubbornness, the war continued not for the noble reasons it had begun but out of pure hatred and vengeance for all those who had fallen before. Every man, woman, and child on both sides joined in the struggle. Before long, what had once been a glorious civilization was a decrepit ruin. The few surviving members on either side saw the destruction and mourned for what had passed from the world. They kept on fighting until there were too few remaining for the races to survive. Both the Elders and the Nightshades dwindled in number, bled into extinction by their own foolishness. Out of the ashes of their conflict came man, for he had watched and learned as the battle raged. Freed from the one predator that had effectively culled their numbers, humans multiplied rapidly. The wisest of them remembered the lessons that the Elders had taught them and slowly led the others in that long climb toward civilization.”
At that moment Sam’s beeper went off, signaling that another patient somewhere on the floor needed him.
“Damn!” he swore, not wanting to leave.
As if sensing Sam’s thoughts, Gabriel smiled, and said, “Go on, Sammy. It’s all right. I’m sure we’ll speak of this again some other time.”
Sam thanked him for the story and slipped out the door, his thoughts on the Elders and the sacrifice they might have made for mankind had the tale been true.
Behind him, in that last, lonely room on the left, the final member of an all-but-forgotten race smiled another tired smile.
It was done.
The seeds had been sown.
All that was left was to see if they bore fruit.
After all that had happened that day, Jake didn’t feel like being alone. Sam was at work, so hanging with him and talking it all over was out of the question. While Sam was allowed visitors, especially during the night shift when no one else was around to tell him differently, Jake didn’t feel like making the forty-five-minute ride into Glendale.
A quick glance at his watch told him Katelynn would be home by then, so he turned his Jeep in that direction and drove across town to her place.
As he neared the top of her walk he realized that she was sitting in the large swing on her front porch.
“Hi. You look tired,” she said, as he sat down next to her.
“You have no idea,” he replied. “Hey, is that new?” He pointed to the red gemstone she wore on a gold chain about her neck.
“Sam’s friend, Gabriel, sent it over this afternoon with a note saying it was his way of saying thanks for spending time with him this morning. I called and told him I couldn’t accept something so obviously expensive, but he sweet-talked me into keeping it.” She smiled. “So what the heck. How did the morning go? What happened when the cops showed up?”
“That’s the weirdest part, Katelynn. The sheriff answered the call himself. Turns out he is a pretty decent guy. After taking down our story, he asked me to lead him underground to where we had found the body. We climbed through the hole Kyle made in the wall and found ourselves in a large stone chamber. Inside, Kyle’s body was lying at the feet of this massive stone gargoyle. Ugliest mother I’ve ever seen.” Jake shivered, remembering. “While the sheriff was looking at the body, I poked around and found another door on the side of the chamber. The whole situation must have gotten to me, because I opened it without even thinking about the fact I was disrupting a crime scene. The door led into the cemetery nearby. It turns out that the brick barrier in the tunnel was actually the rear wall of a mausoleum that belonged to Sebastian Blake, and the door I’d found was the outside entrance.”
Katelynn’s eyes gleamed with interest. “How do you know it is Sebastian’s tomb?”
“His name was carved right over the doorway.”
Katelynn thought about that for a few moments, trying to put it into perspective with what she already knew from her research. The wild story Gabriel had told her reared its head again, but she wasn’t ready to believe something that crazy.
At least not yet.
“A secret tunnel from the house leading to the family crypt? Sounds like one of Sam’s novels, Jake.”
“No kidding. The sheriff was ticked that I opened the door, but he got over it pretty quickly. I think he was as spooked as I was over the whole thing.”
“What do you think happened to Kyle?”
“I don’t know.” Jake chuckled. “Sam would probably tell you that an ancient curse had just arisen to claim its first victim.”
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.
12
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 continiuty, yet somehow making sense just the same.