Sam sat, the woods seemed to extend for miles out from the road, though he knew that just a few hundred yards away they suddenly dropped off at the edge of the Quinnepeg River. Next to the shoreline loomed the Rock, though they couldn’t see it from the street.
'I don’t know about this anymore, Jake. It seems kind of crazy to me.'
Jake wasn’t pleased. 'I thought we agreed.'
'We did.' Sam agreed. 'It’s just the rest of the plan that bothers me. Sure, we might actually see this thing, but then what? What happens if it discovers we’re up here? Have you thought of that? Gabriel didn’t give us information on how to stop the Nightshade. I don’t particularly like the idea of trying to fight it off with my bare hands!'
'It’s not going find us.' Jake said as he climbed out of the Jeep, looking back in through the open door. 'We’ll be hidden in the trees, well out of sight. All we’ve got do is hang around long enough to see if it’s still in the mansion, and then we’ll get the hell out of here and call in some help.'
'Like who?' Sam wanted to know, making no move to get out of the car.
'How the hell should I know?' Jake replied in exasperation, and shut the door in Sam’s face.
Sam watched as Jake crossed to the other side of the road, stepped over the old stonewall that lay crumbling at the edge of the trees, and disappeared into the darkness on the other side.
The silence that settled on the Jeep in his passing seemed to weigh heavily on Sam. Fear had come to replace the anger he felt earlier when they’d decided on this course of action and seemed to settle about his shoulders like a wet cloak. Being alone in the dark was not the best idea at the moment. Should he stay here, and hope the Nightshade didn’t see him hiding in the car, or join Jake and pray it never looked in their direction? Neither alternative held that much appeal to him. It only took him another second to make up his mind.
Sam opened his door and got out of the Jeep. 'Hey, Jake!' he hissed into the darkness. 'Wait up!'
Ten minutes later they were settled in on the top of the Rock, doing their best to blend in with the landscape. The stone they sat upon was wet with the evening’s condensation, and its coldness quickly sapped the heat from their bones. The wind whistled lightly through the trees around them, rustling the leaves, sounding like voices calling out to them from the darkness. Below, a thick fog lay a few inches above the water, swirling about in the light breeze like ghosts dancing in the night. None of this made Sam feel any better about his decision to leave the Jeep.
Sam glanced out over the water. From where they sat the tall spires of Riverwatch were clearly visible in the light of the moon. It was there that they suspected the Nightshade had been hiding since the most recent killings.
They sat quietly in the darkness, ignoring their discomfort, lost in their own thoughts until Sam broke the silence about half an hour into their watch.
'I think I have it figured out.'
In the dim light Sam could see Jake’s head turn toward him. 'Have what figured out?'
'Why there’s been no evidence of Gabriel’s version of history.'
'Why’s that?'
'Because mankind just hasn’t recognized it for what it was when we saw it.'
Jake chuffed, a trait he’d probably picked up from Loki. 'Run that by me again.'
'Think about it. If these things were supposed to have had their own civilization like Gabriel said, there should be some kind of physical record of their existence, right? I mean, if we can find evidence of man’s earliest ancestors walking across the plains of Africa, then there should be some clues left behind that these two great races inhabited the world before we did. Hell, Gabriel even bragged about the Elders’ great cities. Why isn’t there any evidence of them?
Jake pondered this for a moment. 'Beats me.'
'Maybe there is evidence. Think about it, Jake. How many unexplained coincidences and unsolved mysteries are there concerning the ancient world? Hundreds, right?' Sam’s voice started to rise in excitement.
'So?' replied Jake. He wasn’t sure where Sam was going with this. 'And lower your voice, will you?' he added irritably.
'I’m talking about hard, substantive evidence that Gabriel’s story of the Age of Creation is true. Evidence that’s always been right under our noses, we just didn’t recognize it.'
'Like what?'
'Like who built the statues on Easter Island, for instance. They’ve stood there for centuries, yet no one knows one iota about the people who built them or why they were built in the first place.'
Jake stared at his friend in disbelief, though the darkness prevented Sam from seeing his expression. 'That’s your evidence? A bunch of lousy statues no one knows who built is your proof that some highly developed civilization ruled the earth before we did? Don’t you think that’s pushing things?'
'But that’s just it, Jake. It’s not the only evidence. It is just one example. There are others just like it. Look at the pyramids. Even today, with all of our modern technology, we still couldn’t replicate even one of those pyramids and get it as mathematically precise as the Egyptians did, and they used only their hands. And what about the Mayans and the Incas? Two incredibly advanced civilizations with both a spoken and written alphabet long before our ancestors in Europe had learned the value of writing. Both groups also had enough respect for geometry and astronomy to create a calendar that many argue is even more accurate than the one we use today. How else could they have done it, Jake, if not with a little help from someone else, like the Elders?'
Jake was interested now. Sam was actually making some sense. He remembered such theories had been evoked in the past, though they usually revolved around some extraterrestrial intelligence landing in flying saucers for a neighborly visit. Such ideas had always been scoffed at, with valid reason, in Jake’s opinion. But Sam’s idea struck a little closer to home. A prehistoric, intelligent race of 'others,' for lack of a better term, was just as good a theory as any other for explaining how man had managed to rise from naked, bestial savagery in such a short period of time, if you looked at things on the cosmic scale. It seemed impossible for them to have done it on their own. Jake turned back to stare out into the night, pondering this new twist.
Sam’s mind was still going a mile a minute, as he sought to collect his thoughts into a coherent argument. Everything suddenly made sense, and one simple answer could explain hundreds of mysteries.
'But why don’t we have any relics, any ruins, from these people? Every other civilization has left something behind, some record of the past, why not this one?' asked Jake.
'There wouldn’t necessarily be any ruins left. It’s the way they did things back then. Look at Troy, for God’s sake. That’s a perfect example. By the time Heidelmann actually found the place, he found not one city, but twenty-two cities, each one built on the ruins of the others, the materials of the former scavenged to form the building blocks of the next. Maybe that’s why some of the earliest human establishments were built where they were; they were building on the ruins of the civilization they remembered of old.'
Jake wasn’t buying all that, however. 'There’d still be something left, Sam. Some reference, some clue that they’d been there before us.'
'But there is, Jake! What’s the one constant myth that can be found in hundreds of cultures? The myth of a great and shining civilization destroyed by some tremendous cataclysm in the earliest days of recorded history. Atlantis.'
'Can’t you see it, Jake? Those last violent days, as the race you’ve nurtured grows into adolescence while your own dwindles into its final days, your ranks and those of your enemies diminished beyond recovery by centuries of warfare?'
Sam began pacing back and forth across an exposed portion of the Rock, no longer, hiding, completely in view should anyone be looking in their direction.
Knowing that in his excitement Sam had forgotten what they were doing here and their need to remain undetected, Jake turned to tell him to shut up and sit down.
The words froze on his lips.
From over Sam’s shoulder, Jake could see a long, dark shape diving out of the night, its form darker than the darkness it descended from, silhouetted in the light of the stars it blotted from view.
The sight shocked Jake into immobility.
Down, down it came, traveling dozens of feet in seconds, hurtling toward its target, Sam’s unprotected back.
Jake tried to yell, tried to scream, to break the paralysis that gripped him, as raw, undiluted fear squeezed
