Chapter Four

"It is common knowledge that vampires can control others with their minds," said Fang.

"But I'm not trying to control you," I said.

"Yet," he said. "But if I find myself suddenly giving you a pedicure, I might suspect otherwise." He winked.

I lifted my hand. "Trust me, there isn't a file strong enough for these nails."

"Let me see your nails, Moon Dance."

"No."

"Please."

I sighed and held out my hands. He took them gently and did not flinch at the extreme cold of my flesh like most do. Indeed, shivering and smiling, he seemed to revel in the iciness. He next tapped the tip of my index finger. I felt like a horse being sold at auction. "You could disembowel a rhino with these things."

"Or a bartender who lets my secret out."

He grinned again. "I didn't realize how feisty you were, Moon Dance."

"We never had this much at stake, Fang."

"We both hold equally damaging secrets. I, too, am trusting you to keep my secret safe."

"You're a convicted murder and an escaped prisoner."

"And you're a blood-sucking fiend."

I studied him. The corner of his mouth lifted in a small smile, along with some of his beard. "Fair enough," I said, sitting back. "So what's this mind control business you're talking about?"

He finished his drink and waved the waitress over. I had barely touched my own wine. When she was gone, he sat forward, resting his weight on his sharp elbows. "You have already mentioned your sixth sense, Moon Dance. You have even mentioned that you felt it is getting stronger."

I nodded; it was.

He went on, "Well, your sixth sense is a little more far-reaching than you have thought; at least, that is my understanding."

"How far-reaching?"

"Telepathy. Hypnosis. Mediumship."

"One at a time," I said. "Hypnosis?"

"You've seen Dracula, right?"

"Maybe."

"Did you read the book?"

"No."

"A vampire whose never read Dracula?"

"I've been busy raising kids and trying to keep a husband happy. At least I'm batting .500."

He smiled sadly. "I'm sorry he hurt you, Moon Dance."

"So am I."

"Want to change the subject?"

I nodded.

"Back to mind control. Dracula, you see, has the ability to induce hypnosis with just his gaze. You might want to look into it."

I shook my head at his silly pun. "Fine. What about mediumship?"

"That's speaking to the dead, either to those who have passed on or still linger."

"Linger?"

"Ghosts, Moon Dance. You should be able to see ghosts."

I scanned our surroundings. The electrified air, usually so alive with light filaments, seemed particularly erratic in here. To my eyes, the streaking lights zigzagged even more crazily, sometimes coalescing into bigger shapes. As I scanned the air around us, Fang continued speaking.

"You are a supernatural being, Moon Dance. A supernatural being in the world of mortals. You should be seeing things I could never, ever imagine."

The squiggly lights in the bar flashed and zigzagged like thousands upon thousands of electrified fireflies. I watched as they whipped crazily around a nearby stairway, a stairway that led up into the black depths. The flashing lights began gathering together, collecting other squiggly lights. I had seen such things before but had dismissed them. They were just strange lights, right? Nothing more.

"Creatures of the night seem to attract each other, Samantha, whether they know it or not...or whether they want it or not. It is not a coincidence that the werewolf came into your life. Soon, I expect others like yourself to make appearances."

"Like myself?"

"Vampires, Moon Dance. You cannot be an island for long. Not in this world of fantastical creatures."

I continued studying the glowing object at the foot of the stairway. More light gathered around it. Now, if I looked hard enough, I could see shoulders, hips, and a head forming. Even what appeared to be longish hair. And then, amazingly, the light creature turned toward me. I couldn't see its features, but I sensed its great pain. And then, buried deep in my mind's eye, I saw a flash of a knife's blade, heard a strangled cry, then weeping, and then...nothing.

"I see a ghost," I said. "There by the stairway."

I saw Aaron turn out of the corner of my eye. "I don't see anything, Moon Dance. But I'm not surprised. This is supposedly one of the most haunted buildings in Fullerton."

And just like that the vaguely humanoid column of light dispersed, scattering into a thousand glowing, fluorescent shards of energy.

Son of a biscuit, I thought, reciting my son's favorite expression.

After a moment, Aaron Parker looked back at me. "So does it feel strange finally meeting me, Moon Dance?"

"Yes and no. A part of me wants to run back to my computer and continue this conversation there. I felt safe there. I felt open. I felt free to be me."

"You don't feel free now?"

"I don't know how I feel, to be honest."

"Do I feel a bit like a stranger?" he asked.

I nodded and I felt the tears come to my eyes. "Yes."

"A stranger who knows your deepest and darkest secrets."

I nodded, suddenly finding it hard to speak.

He said, "Do you regret meeting me, Moon Dance?"

I sat motionless for a long time before I reached out and took his warm hands in my mine. As I did so, he curled his long fingers around mine. "I don't know," I whispered, and it was perhaps the hardest three words I have ever spoken.

He continued holding my hands. Now he rubbed his thumb along my knuckles. His thumb was rough, calloused. He was a grease monkey, no doubt. Tending bar at night, fixing up his classic muscle car during the day.

Fang tilted his head slightly. "Grease monkey is not a politically correct term, Moon Dance. We prefer to be called lubed primates."

I snorted. "Sounds like a bad porno."

"There are no bad pornos, Moon Dance."

"Eww, and you just read my thoughts."

"Yes," he said. "I heard a few snatches here and there."

"So how is it that you can read my thoughts?"

"I don't have all the answers, Moon Dance."

"Well, give it your best shot, big guy."

He stared at me long and hard. As he did so, his tongue slid along his lower lip and seemed to be searching for something that was not there. I sensed his great sadness for what was lost. I suspected I knew the source of his sadness.

Finally, he said, "We are connected, Moon Dance. Or, more accurately, you have allowed me access into your mind."

"So I can turn it off?" I asked.

"I don't see why not," he said. "And you're right, Sam, I do miss them every day. More than you know."

His teeth, of course.

Chapter Five

Instead of going home, I went to a place I was familiar with: The Embassy Suites in Brea. My home over the past month.

I parked the minivan in my old spot, and shortly said hello to Justin who was working the front desk. He smiled and nodded and seemed to have forgotten that I had checked out a week earlier. Of course, just last week, when I had busted my husband for running an illegal strip club in Colton, I had dressed the part of a stripper. I might be little, but I'm a curvy thing, and Justin the night clerk hasn't looked at me the same since.

I felt his eyes on me all the way to the bank of elevators. At the ninth floor, I found a locked service door I had seen many times in the past. A service door I had taken note of. Why? Because the plaque on it read: Roof Access. Maintenance Personnel Only.

I glanced up and down the hall, took hold of the locked doorknob, and turned steadily until the inner mechanisms shattered in my hand. The knob broke off.

God, I'm a freak.

I pushed the door open, and, after wiping the knob with the hem of my shirt, tossed it in the corner of the stairwell. Next I stepped over a low gate and quickly headed up a metal flight of stairs, taking them two at a time and noticing how strong my legs felt. The door at the top of the landing was locked as well. But not for long.

As pieces of the broken door knob fell away at my feet, I stepped out onto the roof.

Immediately, wind buffeted me. The waning moon was higher now and shone through a thin layer of pathetic-looking stratus clouds. Mostly, though, the sky was clear, and I could even see a star or two.

At the service door, I quickly removed my clothing and naked as the day I was born, moved across the dusty roof, avoiding, of all things, a broken beer bottle.

Hell of a party up here.

Now standing at the roof's edge, I stared down at the city of Brea, which shone before me like a brilliant constellation, providing me a view that the heavens could not. At least, not the heavens here in Southern California. Thousand of lights winked and sparkled. Some were brighter than others - street lamps, perhaps. Others were barely discernible - bathroom nightlights and perhaps the glows of Kindles and Nooks.

Whatever those were.

The wind was at the edge of the building. It rocked my naked body. But I had no fear of falling. My hair whipped around my head like so many serpents. Medusa would have been proud. Or envious. I breathed slowly, deeply, each intake spiced with exhaust and tar and the sage from the nearby foothills.

The world lay at my feet. The normal world. Where people prayed to God and Jesus, where people worried about their kids' health and Charlie Sheen's career, where life went on steadily and predictably.

Life hadn't gone so predictably for me. Life had hung a hard right turn at "predictable" and detoured through a forbidden forest where the Headless Horseman was real, where werewolves existed, where a mother of two could be changed forever into something nightmarish.

I took in more air and lifted my face toward the heavens. The day's latent heat rose up from the roof's surface, warming my eternally cold buns. I heard honking and tires squealing. The crash of a fender-bender.

Oops.

I heard a baby crying from the hotel below and the steady hum of a hundred or so air conditioners powering through the warm night. The building beneath me seemed alive, vibrating and swaying slightly. Or perhaps that was just my imagination.

I stood there for a heartbeat longer.

And then spread my arms wide and jumped.

Chapter Six

The drop down from this hotel was always a little dicey, although jumping from the roof gave me some extra wiggle room. But not much.

I arched up and out over the roof...and seemed to pause briefly at the apex of the arch. From here I had a glimpse of an ambulance flashing down Birch Street, heading away from me. But there was no sound. No sirens. No honking. Nothing. Time and sound always seemed to subside in these moments.

These wonderful, exhilarating moments.

Now I tilted forward, arms outstretched. A falling, inverted cross.

I picked up speed.

Hair whipping behind me like a failed parachute. Wind thundering over me. The hotel rushing past me.

Someone was standing at the hotel balcony, smoking a cigarette. He never saw me. Or maybe I didn't register in his conscious brain. Maybe tonight he would dream about a curvy, black-haired woman plummeting past his balcony, arms outstretched, and naked as all get out.

I was rapidly running out of floors.

A single flame appeared in my thoughts. The flame burned bright, seemingly in the center of my forehead, no doubt in the region the New Age gurus call the Third Eye. In the center of the flame was a winged creature that would have given anyone nightmares.

Except that winged creature was me.

It was my monster familiar. It was my monster alter-ego. It was one hell of a wicked-cool looking creature.

And it was me.

It waited in the flame, its wings tucked in, elongated head cocked slightly to one side. It always waited for me, ready at my beck and call. My own personal flying demon.

Except I was that flying demon.

As the floors swept past me and the concrete sidewalk rapidly approached, I felt myself being pulled to that creature, drawn to it powerfully, supernaturally, miraculously.

The metamorphosis happened in an instant.

The flame disappeared in an explosion of light and when I opened my eyes again, a pair of massive leathery wings - which attached to my wrists and ran down below my knees - snapped taut, slowing my decent. The gravitational force on my wings was incredible, but this new body of mine was more than up to the task. My arms held strong.

I adjusted my arms and angled forward, sweeping nine or ten feet over the ground and just missing a handicap parking sign. It rattled angrily in my wake.

Now I flapped my wings. Yeah, I know. A crazy statement. But these are crazy times.

At least, for me.

I flapped my wings and quickly gained altitude. I found the effort of flying easy. My shoulders were powerful. The thickly membraned wings caught the wind and forced it down and behind me. The sound of my beating wings thundered everywhere at once. Anyone nearby would have heard me. They would have looked up...and seen something they wouldn't soon forget.

My body was aerodynamic and pierced the wind effortlessly.

I continued rising above the glittering city of Brea. Yeah, it was cold up here, but I was perfectly adapted for that, too. Thick skinned. Insulated. Perfectly adapted or perfectly created?

I didn't know which. And I didn't care.

I rose higher and higher. The thrill of weightlessness was so exhilarating that it drove all thought from my mind. Wind whispered over me, seemed to part for me, opened for me new sights few people would ever see or experience.

And still I climbed.

The temperature dropped exponentially. I plunged into a roiling cumulus cloud and the world briefly disappeared. I was surrounded in ice crystals which was at once serene and mildly disorienting. I shook my great head where the crystals had collected. They broke free and fell away.

The cloud opened and soon I was flying parallel with it, rising and falling with its amorphous contours, like a fighter plane over a desert floor. The movements of my wings were minute, so minute I wasn't consciously aware of making them. The moon shone over my shoulder, reflecting brightly off the cloud's pale surface. My shadow kept pace, rising and falling. A monster's moon shadow. Wings outstretched, flapping almost lazily, I was a massive creature.

The sky above me was clear, filled with millions upon millions of glittering stars. I focused on one such star and flew toward it. What would happen if I just kept on flying? No doubt the deep vacuum of space would wreak havoc on my flying. With no air, I would float aimlessly and endlessly.

I shuddered at the thought.

The cloud dispersed and a great sweeping hillside appeared beneath me, dotted with brightly lit homes. I thought of Fang. The man was a killer, of that there was no doubt. He was also a fugitive. Once, long ago, I had made an oath to uphold the law and bring such fugitives to justice.

But that was then....

...and this was now. Now, I had some dirty secrets of my own, didn't I? Now I had taken one life and was responsible for a second.

Victims of circumstance, Fang had said. I agreed to an extent. Victims were not given a free pass to hurt others.

I flapped my wings languidly, riding along a powerful jet stream, which propelled me forward powerfully, effortlessly. Fang, aka Aaron Parker, aka Eli Roberts (his assumed name) was a beautiful man. There was a reason my sister seriously had the hots for him.

I nearly laughed at the thought that this flying creature could have a sister. And then I almost laughed at the thought that this flying creature could laugh.

Life is weird.

The clouds below opened and I saw a small plane flying beneath me, buzzing laboriously even as I flew effortlessly and silently. Its lights flashed, in accordance to aviation law. There were no laws for giant flying monsters. I was beyond law. I could give a damn about laws, anyway.

To an extent.

I still had a life to live and children to raise and food to put on the table. By necessity, I had to play by the rules of man.

Yes, Fang was a beautiful man. He was also my closest friend. But everything had changed, hadn't it? He was no longer my anonymous friend who I could open up to about everything. He had a face. A history. A troubled history.

He was also, of course, a world-class stalker.

And a killer.

Shit.

Below, I spotted the Hollywood sign, the word so tiny that by all rights I shouldn't have been able to read them. But I could. Giant vampire bats had eagle-like vision.

I dipped a wing and turned to starboard slowly, a great arching turn that took a full minute. The sky was my playground. The clouds my jungle gym.

I completed my turn and innately headed home, following an inner guidance system that was so inherent that I didn't doubt it or question it.

It's good to be me sometimes.

I headed back to the Embassy Suites.