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. It had been caught off guard, unsuspecting, and the Elder’s mental barrage began to knock down its internal defenses, threatening to kill it by sheer force of will. It 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. He 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.
Katelynn did not understand what was going on.
What am I doing here?
Gabriel watched the Nightshade recover from his attack. The beast’s tongue flicked out over its teeth, and the Elder knew the end was near. He had exhausted his strength in that last-ditch effort to destroy the Nightshade, and knew he would not survive long at the creature’s hands. That Moloch intended to make him suffer as long as possible was entirely too clear.
Gabriel had no intention of allowing that to happen.
As the beast stalked closer, Gabriel summoned what little strength he had left. He did not have the energy to project another attack at the beast, but there was another way out, one he’d longed to use for centuries.
Moloch moved closer, coming around the side of his bed.
That close, Gabriel could smell the stink of his fetid breath, and hear the rasp of claws on the linoleum floor.
The beast’s long forked tongue flicked out, tasting the air, searching for the fear that should have been coming off its opponent in waves.
Gabriel waited patiently, letting the beast think it had won, letting it gloat in its success, for by doing so he gained another moment to prepare.
He had to be certain he had the strength to succeed with his plan. If he did not, he would be too weak to do anything more. He would be helpless in the hands of his ancient enemy.
Katelynn moved closer to the bed, and glanced down as her hands found the safety rail. She was shocked by what she saw. Her hands had changed; had become hideous. They were scaled like a lizard’s and a dark gray-green in color. Each one had four fingers; three rising together from the top of the palm, the fourth opposing them, much like the talons of a bird. Each finger, in turn, had four swollen, misshapen knuckles the size of walnuts, topped with long inwardly curving claws that shone like ivory in the room’s dim light.
Katelynn’s mind whirled at a frantic pace, trying to explain what her eyes were seeing. Then, like a dash of icecold water thrown in her face, her subconscious dragged from its depths the memory of her other dreams, making her accept what was happening.
With a small gasp of horror, she understood.
She was no longer in her own body, but had somehow been transported inside something else and was looking out through its eyes instead of her own!
While she could feel her madly accelerated heartbeat, she could also feel that of the creature in whose body she rode, a heartbeat that was deeper and more powerful than her own, one that beat at a much slower rate.
If she concentrated, as she did now, she could dimly perceive the other’s thoughts as well.
A wave of hatred so vile that it made her want to retch rolled out of the form she was inhabiting. That Gabriel knew her in this form was beyond a doubt; there was hatred and recognition in his eyes. As her mind struggled with a thousand questions, she felt herself speak, the voice in her ears like crushed gravel.
“Time to die, old fool,” she said.
Leaning close, Moloch opened his mouth to reveal the many rows of scalpel-sharp teeth.
Using the last of his strength, Gabriel reached deep inside his body and simply ordered his heart to stop.
He died with a smile on his face, knowing he’d cheated the Nightshade out of the final victory.