Full disclaimer with the prologue. In short, not mine, not making money, don't sue.

Apologies for taking so long to update. I have no excuse other than life as an assistant college professor has turned out to be far more time-consuming than I thought it would be.

R&R please, let me know how I'm doing!

The candle tumbled end-over-end once before dropping to the forest floor. The weather had been unseasonably dry and the pine needles and leaves that littered the ground provided excellent tinder. The ground burst into flames.

Deciding that being in the dark was better than burning down several acres of ancient redwoods, Carl quickly stamped out the fire before it could spread. He then quickly sized up his predicament.

It wasn't a wolf; even European wolves weren't that large. Werewolves were, but a werewolf would have attacked by now. Among supernatural beasts, werewolves weren't experts in strategy.

The creature was larger and more feline. Or, rather, roughly feline. The creature melded with the shadows in the forest so well that Carl couldn't get a good look at it. It could be a mountain lion, though far larger than any mountain lion on record. At the very least, he was about to be mauled by a mountain lion that could smirk.

If that bit of info made it back to his fellows at the Vatican, he'd never live it down. Provided, of course, that he also made it back.

"Right then," he said, fumbling with the duffel bag, thankful it was still open. Most of the weapons had been attached to the mule, but he knew there had to be something in the bag that would be helpful in fending off the creature.

He didn't have much time to inventory the bag's contents. There was a sound like fire crackling and the creature leaped forward.

Carl grabbed the first thing his hand made contact with in the bag - an odd-shaped hunk of something in a glass beaker. Once, it was intended to be a new resin compound and virtually indestructible. Now it was permanently adhered to the insides of the beaker, unless he could come up with the chemical reaction to reverse the process. Which wasn't likely, since Carl was the one who had designed the process to be irreversible in the first place.

The creature caught the object in mid-air effortlessly, biting down with powerful jaws, shattering the glass beaker. It dropped to the ground. The creature landed, rustling the leaves, but making no sound. In reversed direction in one movement, not turning on its hindquarters but, instead, melting into the ground and reforming facing the opposite direction.

The large black quasi-feline was certainly not of Earthly origin.

It was also not smirking anymore. In fact, it was outraged. Perhaps it wasn't used to its prey fighting back. In one smooth motion, bounded two steps and then leaped.

With no time to run, Carl shut his eyes, waiting for the impact.

A crossbow bolt whizzed out from the shadows. Then another, and another, each in rapid succession. The bolts were well aimed and struck the creature in the chest in mid-leap. Four bolts were buried to the shaft in what should have been the creature's heart. It thudded to the ground...

...and it vanished.

With a brief crackling sound and without rustling the leaves, the beast was gone. All that remained in the spot where it had fallen were the crossbow bolts, lying innocently on the forest floor.

Van Helsing stepped from the forest, crossing quickly to where the stunned friar stood motionless.

"Carl?"

Slowly, Carl opened his eyes, first one and then the other. "Yes?"

"Are you alright?"

"Yes. I..did..did you see-" he stammered but Van Helsing cut him off.

"What was that?"

"Indistinto natoturas," he answered. "Shadow creatures. Sentries. But that's...it's..." He had read a dozen books and letters pertaining to the current mission and not one mentioned anything about a vanishing preternatural cat. "It shouldn't be," he finished. "They shouldn't be here. It doesn't make sense."

"Does everything have to make sense?"

"Well, yes, it does. In its own way."

Van Helsing shouldered the crossbow and stared at the patch of ground where the creature had vanished moments earlier. "Let's go find that doctor. We've lost our advantage."

"We had an advantage?"

"Surprise. But now they know we're here."

"Doc, you here?"

A male voice called out impatiently from the front parlor.

"Yes," Sophia yelled back, dropping the sheet back over the face of one Simon Roberts, M.D., formerly of Redding. For Dr. Roberts, the trip to Santa Helena was one way. He had been discovered a few miles north of town, in a ditch, split in two. He had been brought to her because the town's mortician had been dead for weeks.

Sophia believed it was a cruel joke by some higher power. After all, Dr. Roberts had been coming to replace her.

The building that now housed the clinic had been an abandoned general store when she and Sam had moved in. Sam had quickly erected partitions in the open central space, creating two exam rooms, a surgical suite, a recovery room with four beds, office space for the both of them, and a waiting area out front.

Amos Cleary, self-appointed town sheriff and mayor, was thumbing through the patient ledger on the counter when Sophia walked into her clinic's waiting area.

"Business is booming," he remarked.

Sophia hung her apron on a peg and reached for the ledger, slamming it shut and placing it under the counter. She wondered where Jenny Tucker, her assistant and the only help she had now, was. The girl wasn't quite right, but she had lost her entire family and Sophia couldn't leave her on her own. Jenny had an aunt in San Francisco who had written that she would wire money for Jenny's stage fare to the city, as soon as she as able to do so.

"So what is it?" Cleary asked, sensing that the doctor's mind was wandering. "Tetanus? Typhus? I can handle an epidemic, if I know it's an epidemic."

"I don't know what it is, Amos. It might be tetanus but if it is, it's unlike any case the medical community has seen before. I'm doing all that I can, but as long as that...thing is out there, this won't stop."

"Excellent observation, Doc." Cleary smiled, emphasizing the word "Doc" in such a way that Sophia wanted to take a scalpel to him.

"What do you want?"

"I want to check on my bandito."

Sophia frowned, wondering what angle Cleary was playing. The previous night, two of Cleary's deputies had brought in a young Hispanic male, late teens or early twenties, with the same bite wounds as all of the others.

"He's asleep," she replied, then added. "It's early, but he seems to be doing well, so far."

"He now has a name." Cleary pulled a folded sheet of paper from his coat. "Miguel Jose Pietro Nogales. Age nineteen. Killed six men, wanted in two states."

Nineteen. Sophia wandered about the young man's parents, his family, about the families of the men he had killed, and what had driven him to murder. His age didn't surprise her, though, she realized coldly. She thought it likely that nothing would surprise her again.

"...here for the competition." Cleary was still speaking. "I have ten contestants, each paying a five hundred dollar entry fee. If he'd known what was waiting for him, he may have stayed to face the gallows in Arizona." Cleary paused and smiled. "Now I'm short a contestant. How about you, Doc? I'll give you the bounty on the Mexican and you can use it as your pay-in."

Sophia just stared at him. She wanted to order Cleary out of her clinic, appalled that he would suggest she take part in what could only be a suicide mission.

And yet.

And yet...some part of her, a part that was growing stronger, wanted to avenge Samuel's death, to hunt down the creature responsible and kill it. It was a foolish, insane idea. It wouldn't give her any satisfaction. It wouldn't bring him back.

Sophia felt hot tears welling up in her eyes. "Get out," she whispered.

"Think about it," Cleary said as he headed for the door.