Chapter Eighteen

It was midnight, and I was sitting in my minivan with my laptop near the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel. No, I don't normally hang out at the Ritz Carlton, but this was as good a place as any for what I was about to do.

Orange County's only five-star hotel sat high on a bluff, which, if you asked me, looked exactly like a cliff. Anyway, I was parked in the guest parking lot in the far corner of the far lot. I doubted I had attracted much attention. Just a small woman in a big van.

A small woman who was about to get very naked.

My windows were cracked open and far below the steep cliff - I was going with cliff - was the pleasant sound of the surf crashing along what I knew were mostly smooth, sandy beaches.

I briefly thought about what I had gotten myself into, and the further away I was from Stuart and his heartbreak, the more I realized how crazy my idea had been.

Think about it, Sam: you promised to deliver one of the West Coast's most notorious gangsters to a mild-mannered widower - for a one-on-one smackdown.

Yeah, I've had better ideas.

Of course, as things presently stood, Stuart would never see justice. Or, if he did, it might be years before Blum was locked behind bars again, and that's if the feds could pin anything on him, which I seriously doubted. After all, Blum had been in prison awaiting trial when the plane went down.

A hell of an alibi.

And so what do you do, Sam? You offer to deliver a murderer to a man who's only outstanding physical attribute was perhaps the world's most perfectly bald head?

Stuart was a slight man, to say the least. Jerry Blum would no doubt kill the grieving widower with his bare hands. In fact, Blum had probably done exactly that throughout his career in crime.

And that's if you managed to somehow even get to Blum.

It's good business to under-promise and over-deliver. Well, in this case, I had over-promised...and might just very well deliver a murderer.

Great.

I shook my head. I've had better plans.

Jerry Blum needed to go down. One way or another. Having Stuart face the gangster was probably not my best idea, but it was the best I could come up with at the time. For now, I would let the details of the showdown percolate for a few days and see what else I could come up with.

I drummed my long fingers on the steering wheel. I might be a smidgen over five feet, but God blessed me with extraordinarily long fingers. Was it wrong to really love your own fingers?

Of course, now my fingers and thumbs were capped by very strong-looking nails. Not claws, per se, just ten very thick, and slightly pointed nails. Okay, fine. They were claws. I had fucking claws.

Sometimes I hate my life.

Earlier, I had made a few phone calls to my contacts and I had gotten the address to Jerry Blum's lavish Newport Beach fortress. The gangster lived on a massive estate overlooking the ocean. In fact, it was a tiny island just off shore, but not too far offshore. A bridge connected the island.

Now, with my laptop glowing next to me, I used Google's satellite feature and studied the lay of the land from above, memorizing the various features of the island. There weren't many. The sprawling home spanned the entire north end of the island from side to side, leaving only a few acres of trees along the southern tip. For me, the trees were a good thing.

Birds get lost in trees.

But do giant vampire bats?

Once I had the images locked in my brain, I powered down the laptop and scanned the area. All was quiet in this remote section of the Ritz Carlton parking lot. I quickly stripped out of my jeans and blouse and everything in-between. It was the in-between stuff that left me feeling especially vulnerable. And although I had been sitting in my seat for nearly a half hour, the vinyl was still cold to the touch, probably because I was cold to the touch, since my body heat had gone the way of the dodo bird.

Just as I got down to the bare minimum, a family of four pulled up in an SUV that was big enough to lay siege to Idaho with. I crouched low in my seat, willing myself invisible. A few minutes later, the family piled out and headed up to the hotel, and when they had disappeared from view, I cautiously stepped out of my minivan.

Naked as the day I was born.

I quickly padded across the smooth concrete, stepped over a guard rail, and worked my way through some scrubby bushes until I was standing at the edge of a very steep cliff indeed. Whoever calls these "bluffs" can bite my ass.

Up here, staring down, the ground looked impossibly far. A faint line of foaming waves crashed rhythmically against the polished beaches. I could see two people walking near the surf, holding hands. And if they should happen to look up, they might see something very, very bizarre. Something that would no doubt give them nightmares for the rest of their lives.

Then let's hope for their sake they don't look up.

I took a deep breath, filled my lungs with oxygen I really didn't need, closed my eyes, and leaped off the cliff.

Chapter Nineteen

I jumped up and out as far away from the cliff as I could.

For one brief second I was majestically airborne, face raised to the heavens, just your everyday naked soccer mom doing a swan dive off the Ritz Carlton cliffs.

The night air was alive with crackling streaks of light, flashes of energy and zigzagging flares of secret lightning. At least secret to mortal eyes.

I hovered like this briefly, suspended in mid-air, looking out over the black ocean....

And then I dropped like a rock - head first, arms held out to either side. An inverted cross.

The wind thundered over me. The face of the cliff swept past me in a blur - hundreds upon hundreds of multicolored layers of strata speeding by in a blink.

I closed my eyes, and the moment I did, a single flame appeared at the forefront of my mind, in the spot most people call the third eye. The flame grew rapidly, burning impossibly bright, filling my thoughts completely, consuming my mind. And within that flame, a vague, dark image appeared. A hideous, ghastly image.

I continued to fall. Wind continued rushing over my ears, whipped my long hair behind me like a black and tattered cape. The sounds of the crashing waves grew rapidly closer. Too close. Soon, very soon, I was going to crash-land at the bottom of the cliff, splattered across the piles of massive boulders.

Would I die? I didn't know. I also didn't want to find out.

The shadowy image took on more shape, its grotesque lines sharpening. I felt an immediate and powerful pull toward the beastly image.

The image grew rapidly, consuming the flame. Ah, but it wasn't growing, was it?

No. Indeed, I was rushing toward it.

Faster and faster.

And then we were one, the beast and I.

I gasped and opened my eyes and contorted my body as great, leathery wings blossomed beneath my arms. The thick membranes instantly snapped taut like a parachute. The gravitational force on them alone should have ripped them from my body.

But they didn't rip; indeed, they held strong. My arms held strong, too.

I slowed considerably, but not enough. The boulders were still rapidly approaching, the wind screaming over my ears, blasting my face. I instinctively adjusted the angle of my arms - and now I was swooping instead of falling.

And shortly after that, I was flying.

I swept above the boulders, just missing them, and now I was gliding over the smooth shore, flashing over the heads of the couple walking hand in hand.

They both turned to look, but I was already gone. Just a great, black winged mystery against the starless night sky.

I flapped my great wings again and gained altitude, and I kept flapping until I was high above the dark ocean.

Chapter Twenty

I flapped my wings again and rose another couple hundred of feet. I had about ten miles to go to get to Newport Beach. Would have taken me about twenty minutes along the winding Pacific Coast Highway. But as the crow flies, only a few minutes tops.

Or as the "giant vampire bat" flies.

I soon found myself in a fairly warm jetstream that hurled me along with little effort on my part. Far below, as I followed the curving sweep of the black coast, an array of lights shown from some of the biggest homes Orange County had to offer.

Six years ago, just after dusk, I had been out jogging along a wooded path in Hillcrest Park in Fullerton. The wooded path was one of the few such paths in Fullerton. Probably not the best time to be jogging in the woods (or what passed as woods in Orange County), but I was a highly trained federal investigator and I was packing heat.

I never saw it coming. Hell, I never even heard it coming.

One moment I was running, alert for weirdos and tree roots (in that order), and the next I found myself hurling through the air, and slamming hard against a tree trunk.

Close to blacking out, I sensed something moving swiftly behind me. I tried to reach for my gun in the fanny pack, but something was on me, something strong and terrifying.

Before my vision rapidly filled with black, I was aware of two things: One, that I was going to die tonight. And, two, the beautiful gold and ruby medallion that hung from my attacker's neck.

* * *

The wind swept over my perfectly aerodynamic body. A foghorn sounded from somewhere. I was unaware that the beaches of southern California had foghorns, or even fog for that matter.

I banked slightly to starboard by lowering my right arm and lifting my left. A seagull was flying just beneath me. It didn't seem to notice me, and together we continued slightly northeast, following the coast.

I had been partly correct, of course. In a way I had died that night.

Died and reborn.

And the medallion, through a series of unusual events that I'm still not quite sure what to make of, later came into my possession. As recently as six weeks ago, in fact.

Vampires and medallions are such a cliche, I thought, as I slowly began my descent. As I did so, I recognized the glittering Newport Bay and its equally glittering pier.

Then again, maybe the vampire who attacked me invented the cliche.

Hell, maybe he was the reason for it.

* * *

Two joggers had found me in the woods. I learned later that the joggers had initially reported me as dead.

I awoke the next morning at St. Jude's Hospital in Fullerton, surrounded by friends and family and police investigators. Federal investigators, too, since these were my colleagues.

There had been a single ghastly wound on my neck. Whatever had attacked me had violently torn open my neck and nearly removed my trapezoid muscle.

I should have been dead.

There was no sign of sexual assault. Nothing had been stolen. Even my gun was still in my fanny pack. I was also shockingly low on blood. The only explanation that seemed to fit was that I had been attacked by a coyote, which are fairly common in those parts of northern Orange County. The loss of blood was unusual, since there had been no large quantities of it found at the scene. Again, that was attributed to the coyotes, which could have easily lapped up my hemoglobin.

And since when did coyotes prefer sucking blood to eating raw meat?

They didn't, but there was no other explanation. Yes, I reported seeing the medallion. I reported being thrown against a tree, too. These reports were largely dismissed. Sure, my detective friends joked lightheartedly about being attacked by a vampire, but the jokes were forgotten as soon as they were made.

The attack made the local papers, and there was a witch hunt on the local coyote population. Many were regrettably killed.

My neck and shoulder had required hundreds of stitches. Doctors had spent hours on it. They were expecting serious issues with infection, and I was placed in a rigid neck brace. Two days later they released me.

And that's when things started getting weird.

The morning after I was released, I noticed two things: the incessant itching under my bandages had stopped, and I was experiencing no pain in my neck at all.

With Danny watching cartoons with little Anthony, then only two years old, and Tammy at school, I went into the bathroom and shut the door and took my first look under the bandages.

And what I saw was the beginning of my new life.

I was healed. I was impossibly healed. I was supernaturally healed.

I had been sitting on the edge of the bathtub with the bathroom door locked, when Danny knocked on the door and asked if everything was okay, and I said yes. But I wasn't okay. Something was wrong, horribly wrong.

He paused just outside the door, where I could clearly hear him breathing as if he was standing next to me. How could I hear him breathing from behind the door? And did I just hear him scratch himself? When he finally walked away, shuffling down the carpeted floor, I heard every step. Clearly. As if he been walking on hardwood floors.

Confused and alarmed, I crawled into the empty bathtub and hugged my knees tightly.

* * *

And later that day, as I nervously hid my healed wound from Danny - and alternately wondered why I was feeling a very strong need to stay away from direct sunlight - I also had my first craving for the red stuff.

What the hell was happening to me?

Chapter Twenty-one

From the sky, Jerry Blum's estate was easily one of the biggest for miles around. And in Newport Beach, that's saying something.

His estate was, in fact, an island all to itself, an island that was accessible via bridge from Balboa Island.

An island within an island. Cool beans.

Balboa Island wasn't a real island, though. It was just a long peninsula filled with inordinately large homes and hip bars and restaurants. I suppose calling it Balboa Long Peninsula just didn't quite have the same ring to it.

Still, those living on Balboa Island were living a lie.

Just sayin'.

Not so with Jerry Blum. He really did live on an island - an island all to himself, complete with a private bridge that arched from near the southern point of Balboa Island.

A handful of small planes buzzed around me, some beneath and some above. I doubted I was being picked up on any radar. A creature who didn't have a reflection, probably didn't return radar signals, either. And if a giant bat-like blip did show up on their radars, then that would certainly give the air traffic controllers something to chew on.

That, and nightmares.

I swept lower, tucking my arms in a little, angling down toward Jerry Blum's private island. Wind blasted me as I raced through the sky. A thin, protective film covered my eyes. Vampiric goggles.

Whoever had created this thing that I sometimes turn into had done a bang-up job. Someone, somewhere had put some serious thought into this thing.

Who that person was, I didn't know. Why I was created, I didn't know. From where this dark flying creature came from, I didn't know.

But I knew I wanted answers.

Someday, I thought.

For now, it was time to go to work.

Hey, even giant vampire bats have to make a living.

* * *

I found a large tree on the grounds and settled upon a thickish branch. From here, I had a good view of the rear and east side of the house.

Sometimes I wondered if I had really died that night six years ago. Maybe this was death. Maybe death was living out a nightmarish fantasy that couldn't possibly be real. Maybe death was full of wonder and fantasy.

The thick branch creaked under my considerable weight. How considerable? I didn't know, but if I had to guess, I would say that I weighed over five hundred pounds.

Big girl.

The massive estate was quiet, although men in shorts and Hawaiian shirts routinely walked the grounds. A high wall encircled the property, and barbed wire ran along the top of the wall. There were security cameras everywhere, but I didn't worry about security cameras. Two big Lincolns sat to either side of the main gate. No doubt men with guns sat in those cars. Beyond the backyard fence was the bay, and beyond that was Newport Beach itself. Wooden stairs led down from the backyard to a boat house and private pier. A sixty-foot yacht was anchored next to the boat house. The yacht looked empty, although there were a few lights on inside it here and there.

I sat unmovingly on the branch for a few more hours. My great, muscular legs never once went to sleep or needed adjusting. I suspected I could have sat perched like that all night. Or until the sun came up or until the branch snapped off. Whichever came first.

But Jerry Blum's house was quiet tonight. No doubt he was off somewhere honing his racketeering and murder skills. Perfecting the fine art of gangstering.

I'll be back, I thought, and leaped off the branch and shot into the air.