'You two okay?' the Sheriff asked.
Katelynn nodded, as did Sam. He was still a bit surprised to find himself alive and didn’t trust himself to speak.
'How badly are you hurt?' Katelynn asked Damon.
He grimaced with pain as he moved, but said simply, 'I’ll make it,' and changed the subject. 'We’d better check on the status of our weapons.'
Katelynn’s warning had allowed Damon an extra second to set his knapsack down on the rooftop before Blake’s charge had reached them, so the bottles of homemade napalm inside were still secure. Those inside Sam’s pack had been less fortunate; he’d been wearing the pack strapped across his back when he crashed into Blake and the resulting fall had broken them all.
'Why don’t you take this, Sam?' Damon said, holding out the pack to him. 'That way my hands will be free.'
Realizing Damon’s pistol was their only means of defense now that the rifle was gone, Sam didn’t disagree. He slung Damon’s pack loosely over one shoulder then they headed across the rooftop.
Damon moved slower than the others and was therefore a step or two behind them when they reached to door to the tower and stepped inside.
Damon called out to tell them to wait, but the heavy iron door suddenly swung shut in his face seemingly of its own accord, cutting him off from the others.
No sooner had it done so than a loud cry of surprise and fear reached his ears from the other side of the door.
The sound galvanized Damon.
He yanked open the door and moved quickly inside the room, his pistol held out before him and the pain in his side momentarily forgotten.
On the opposite side of the room the Nightshade stood waiting.
Chapter Forty-one: Illusions
Katelynn and Sam were nowhere in sight.
The room was empty, except for the Nightshade.
Damon stared at it, taking in the details. It seemed larger than before, but that could have been a result of his fear.
The beast caught his gaze and stared back.
Damon could see the cold gleam of intelligence and hatred shining forth from those yellow eyes.
The room spun for a moment, and Damon swayed dizzily in response, his grip instinctively tightening on his weapon lest he lose it. He briskly shook his head, trying to shake off the feeling, and then looked across the room to assure himself of the beast’s position.
To his horror, two other Nightshades had joined the first.
As he watched, the beasts began to spread out around him, moving swiftly in an attempt to cut off his retreat.
Damon glanced swiftly around, trying to keep all of them in sight at the same time, aware that if they rushed him, he wouldn’t be able to defend himself. He couldn’t cover all sides, and when he turned to deal with one, another would try to close in on him from behind.
Where the hell are Sam and Katelynn? he thought. They’d come in only seconds before him, and he hadn’t hesitated when he’d heard Katelynn’s cry. Could the beasts have taken them so swiftly?
Yet, there were no bodies, no blood. Except for Katelynn’s cry, there hadn’t even been sounds of a struggle.
So where in hell were they?
One of the beasts took a step forward, forcing Damon to turn toward it to cover the threat, and behind him he heard an answering scrape of claws on stone as another of the creatures took that opportunity to advance a little closer to his back.
Damon swiftly turned to face this new threat, his heart hammering wildly. Other than the door through which he’d entered, now guarded by one of the beasts, the only other way out was directly opposite him on the other side of the room.
Unfortunately, he’d have to go through three of the beasts to reach it.
A thought struck him. Could Sam and Katelynn have already gone through the other door?
Damon estimated the distance from where he stood to the door to be about thirty feet. Maybe they had already passed through the other door before the Nightshades had decided to show themselves, and Katelynn’s cry had not been cut off by an attack but rather by the slamming of the heavy wooden door as it swung shut behind them.
Movement to his left forced him to spin in that direction and he was forced to put the others out of his mind.
As he twisted around, doing what he could to keep them all in sight, Damon considered rushing the beast behind him and getting back out onto the rooftop, then just as quickly dismissed the idea. He would be leaving the others completely at the mercy of these beasts, and he wasn’t about to abandon them if there was even a chance that they were still alive.
His decision meant he was going to have to not only hold the creatures at bay but also destroy them somehow in the process.
He just wished he knew how.
Katelynn didn’t understand what was happening.
When she and Sam had entered the room and found the Nightshade waiting for them, she’d let out a not altogether involuntary cry of surprise, which had served to bring Damon rushing into the room behind them.
From there, everything stopped making sense.
Damon had stepped into the room, gotten maybe ten feet past the door, and had frozen in place, staring at the beast in what appeared to be dread fascination. Expecting him to start shooting, she and Sam had moved off to Damon’s right, out of the line of fire.
Damon had done nothing.
He’d simply stood there, staring, his mouth open in astonishment.
This had gone on for a moment or two when Katelynn decided she had to do something.
So far, the Nightshade had ignored the two of them, its attention transfixed on Damon. Katelynn thought it had recognized the pistol in Damon’s hands as a weapon, and had decided that he was the obvious, immediate threat. While Sam was armed, nothing he carried could be immediately identified as such, and Katelynn’s hands were empty.
It seemed the beast had written them off for the time being.
She called out to Damon, trying to get his attention off the beast, which obviously had some sort of hold over him.
Damon either did not hear her, or chose not to acknowledge that he had.
Sam added his voice to her’s, and although the creature flicked its ears in their direction it did not move or shift its gaze from Damon’s form.
Katelynn broke from Sam’s side and headed into the center of the room, not yet knowing exactly what she intended to do but knowing she had to do something.
Damon must have caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned in her direction.
And pointed his pistol directly at her.
Damon caught motion out of the corner of his eye and turned to the right to meet this new threat. One of the smaller Nightshades that had up until now kept against the wall was coming toward him. He didn’t want any of these things anywhere near striking distance. Despite this one’s small size, there was still no question that its
