Moon River (9 page)

The world might forget this young jogger, but the earth never would. Perhaps this was its way of remembering the dead. Or not, I don’t know. I was just a mom. Albeit a freaky mom.

I stepped into the frenzied energy, and, as I did so, I caught a faint feeling of fear, of pain, of confusion...and of excitement. The excitement was not from the victim. It was from the killer.

I paused on the trail, turning slightly, feeling the mass of energy around me. Psychics can tap into such energy, read it like a book. I was not a real psychic. Refer back to my mom comment. But I am real freaky, and sometimes I get psychic hits with the best of them. The hair along my arms and back of my neck prickled. I kept turning slowly, tuning in, locking in.

I knew the girl had no memory of what had happened to her. Her last memories were, in fact, a crazy mess of pain and fear and dying. Whatever had hit her, she couldn’t see it, or never had a chance to see it.

My inner alarm system remained quiet. Whatever had been out here a few nights ago wasn’t around now. Perhaps it was time to take another look around. So, I closed my eyes and reached out around me, expanding my inner sight as far as it would go.

I saw nothing human, although I saw plenty of glowing life forms, ranging from mice to a young deer. That I suddenly imagined myself pursuing the deer and feasting upon it might have had more to do with my recent viewing of the
Twilight
movies, than any bloodlust.

Still, I idly wondered what the deer’s blood would taste like. Probably warm and delicious. I rarely, if ever, feasted on a living animal, and wasn’t about to start tonight—Oh yes, I’d almost forgotten that time I had gone to a castle in Switzerland on a business trip and was accommodated, but I hadn’t killed for my supper...someone had done it for me.

Try it,
came a sudden thought. A very distant, faint, small thought at the far reaches of awareness. It sounded like my own thoughts, admittedly. Like something that had originated within me, but I knew, somehow, that it wasn’t mine. It was too firm. Too controlling. Too evil.

It was her.

The entity that lived within me. I was sure of it, and it was, I was certain, the first time she had ever directly communicated with me.

I snapped back into my body, as a cold shiver came over me. The image of the grazing deer disappeared in a literal blink. I rubbed my arms and then my temples and wished like hell I hadn’t just heard those two words. I wished like hell she would stay far away, or stay buried. I did not want to have to listen to her, too.

Indeed, hearing her now, her words rising up from the depths of my subconscious, hit too close to home.

Now she was pissing me off.

More importantly, though, hearing a second set of thoughts in my head, thoughts that sounded far too similar to my own, felt a bit like I was going insane.

As I stood there in the woods, feeling the scattered energy of a heinous murder around me, seeing animals I shouldn’t see, hearing sounds I shouldn’t hear, and hungering for something no sane person should ever hunger for, I knew I was fighting a demon of another kind.

My own personal demon.

No, I wasn’t talking about her, the entity buried within me.

Ever since I first woke up in the hospital bed seven years ago, back when I first felt the changes coming over me, back when I first knew that I would never be normal again, I also wondered something else.

I wondered if I had gone insane.

At what point I had gone insane, I didn’t know. Maybe I’d had enough of my kids fighting. Maybe I’d had enough of Anthony’s skid marks. Or of Danny’s cheating. Or of life itself. Maybe I had checked out long ago, mentally, that is. Maybe my mind was long, long gone.

And hearing a second voice in my head seemed to confirm that. Seemed to confirm my worst fears.

I didn’t want to go insane. I didn’t want to lose my mind.

I took a few deep, shuddering, worthless breaths...breaths that served no purpose other than to calm me down. Except the first few didn’t do anything for me, but the next batch did. Finally, finally, I felt myself calming down. I reminded myself that I’d been hearing voices in my head for over a year now, ever since I’d first heard Fang’s whispered thoughts.

This was no different, right?

But it
was
different. It was very different. Fang’s thoughts sounded like Fang. I heard his inflections, his tone, his distinct voice inside my head.

These thoughts...

Well, these thoughts sounded like me. Just like me. As if they were my own.

Except, of course, they weren’t.

Deep breaths, Sam.

Breathe, breathe.

Good.

Very good.

I turned in a full circle, hands on hips, breathing and calming down and saying anything I could think of to not lose it right here in the woods above Hollywood.

As I did so, as I calmed my mind, as I did my best to get something out of my head that might never leave my head—Lord help me—I found myself particularly tuned into the chaotic energy around me.

Most curious, I was tuned in holistically, from seemingly everywhere at once.

I forgot about the voice in my head, the demon within me. I forgot that just moments earlier, I’d nearly gone into a full panic attack.

Instead, I saw the scene play out before me.

Not like a movie, exactly, but close. Perhaps a badly edited movie that jumped forward and backward in time, with a wildly swinging camera.

I saw her murder.

All of it.

* * *

She is running alone. I see this in real-time, as if it’s happening now.

Panting, careful of her footing, looking at her wristwatch, looking up into the sky, clearly aware that it is getting late, clearly aware that she might be in a vulnerable position.

I see the shadow keeping pace behind her, too.

It is a smallish shadow. A lithe figure. Dressed all in black and wearing a hoodie. Tendrils of blond hair peek out, flap about.

She is moving far too quickly for human eyes to follow her, detect her. Except that a human’s eyes aren’t following her or detecting her. These are Nature’s eyes. The land’s eyes. Moving fast or slow, supernatural or not, it was obvious to me, as I stood there on the trail, tuned into the scene, that nothing escaped the eyes of Mother Nature herself.

The scene continued playing out before me:

The jogger is fleet of foot, stepping smoothly over roots and rocks, brushing past overgrown shrubs and through high grass. She pumps her arms rhythmically, breathing evenly through pursed lips.

She is unaware of the creature following, a creature that pauses every so often but keeps to the shadows.

A creature who undoubtedly assumed she was going undetected, unaware that her every movement was being forever recorded into the land, seared into the soil.

The female jogger hears something, and pauses, cocking her head to one side, and that’s when her stalker attacks.

It’s not pretty. It’s violent and hard to watch, even for me. Especially for me. The force of the attack drives the girl to the ground. Something dark and shadowy and evil seems to be clinging to her. Not quite clinging...
attached
. The girl fights at first, but mostly, she screams, and soon she’s not screaming anymore, but jerking violently, all while the little shadow stays on top of her, clinging like a hungry parasite.

It’s over quickly.

I listen to the wet sounds of feeding and chewing and soon the little creature stands...and wipes the blood from her mouth.

This is the first time I get a clear look at the face inside the hoodie, a face that’s illuminated by millions of particles of light.

I recognize her immediately.

I am most curious, however, at the identity of the person who’s approaching from the shadows. Shadows that are alive with light, at least to my eyes.

A tall man is standing there, watching her, head cocked to one side.

I know him well, too.

Chapter Seventeen

I was flying.

These days, I’d learned to pack my clothing into my pants themselves, tying off the whole shebang at the ankles like a makeshift duffle bag, all of which now dangled from one of my longish talons.

That I had a longish talon was still something I wasn’t entirely used to, and if there was any upside to having something dark and evil living within me, this was it:

Flying.

Okay, kicking ass wasn’t bad, either. I was stronger than most men—many men combined, in fact. Truth was, I wasn’t entirely sure just how strong I was. I suspected I could channel—or perhaps funnel—whatever amount of strength I needed for any given situation.

And, if someone put a gun to my head (a gun with silver bullets, of course), I would admit that being psychic and reading minds had its upside. So did having an inner warning system, which had alerted me many countless times to potential trouble...and saved my ass countless times, too.

As I flew over Griffith Park, beating my wings slowly, languidly, feeling the rush of wind on my face—or the creature’s face I had temporarily become, I suddenly realized
why
I had such gifts. Why I was so powerful. Why I could fly and read minds and do all the crazy things I do.

These weren’t gifts. No.

These were tools.

Tools to keep
her
alive. To keep her host healthy and viable. To keep me from dying off too quickly. So that she could grow stronger. So that she could plot and scheme.

Bitch.

Beneath me, the park gave way to the glowing dome of the Griffith Observatory, then over the Greek Theatre, then finally down along bustling Hollywood Boulevard. Yes, even from up here, I could see the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and its many brass stars embedded in the sidewalks. If I looked hard enough, I could even make out a name or two. In fact, I might have just seen Cher’s.

Lucky me,
I thought. Raptor-like vision and yet, as the creature, I could read.

Had anyone bothered to look up, they wouldn’t see much. Just a shadow passing beneath the smattering of stars, briefly blotting out the celestial lights. Perhaps a stray strobe light might fall across me. This was, after all, Hollywood. But mostly, I was high enough and dark enough to go unnoticed, which I did, looking down at the mortals who went about their lives, idolizing stars, dreaming of stars, never guessing that something now flew among the stars themselves, directly overhead.

I banked to starboard and headed for the LAPD station, where I’d left my car earlier today.

As I flew, I turned my thoughts toward the person I had seen feasting on the young woman...and to the person I had seen step out of the shadows.

I had put off thinking about it.

I didn’t want to believe it.

But I had seen him clearly. He was wearing his own hoodie, and his eyes glowed softly from within the dark depths. Not all vampires could see the flame just behind the iris. I could. Again, lucky me.

Fang’s eyes had been glowing softly with twin flames of fire as he watched from the tree line. He did more than watch, of course. He soon came over and knelt next to the dead jogger, and when he lowered his face to her neck, I snapped out of the reverie.

But not before I’d seen Detective Hanner smile broadly, her lips coated with fresh blood. Another bitch.

I continued along, banking again and headed toward downtown.

Once there, I circled high above the police station, wondering if I would show up on any radar, but doubting it. I found an alley not too far away, and dropped down into it.

Yes, there was a bum sleeping in it. No, he didn’t wake up, even when a hulking, winged creature settled in next to him, a creature that I now knew was summoned briefly from an alternate world.

So weird,
I thought, as I focused on the naked woman in my thoughts...the woman who was the real me.

She stepped forward, and I gasped, and the sensation that came over me was not entirely unpleasant. No, I didn’t go through a physical transformation. My bones didn’t break or elongate, and I didn’t twist and writhe in pain, all of which, I was sure, made for good TV or movies.

I’d come to understand the process of transformation as the slipping into and out of existence, slipping into and out of this world and another.

And, naked as the day I was born, as I unwrapped my clothing, I suddenly wondered where, exactly, I disappeared to. Where did this body go?

If I summoned the winged creature from another place and time, did I, perhaps, switch places with it? I doubted it, but now I suddenly wanted to know.

Where did I go?

I would tackle that question another time.

For now, I had Fang on my mind, and in my heart. Seeing him again, even as he approached a murdered woman, even as he gazed down upon her dead body with hunger in his glowing eyes, brought back a very intense feeling within me.