Samantha Moon: First Eight Novels, Plus One Novella (18 page)

You did!?
came Fang’s immediate response.

Yes!

You figured this out on your own?

Yes.

But how?

I told him the sequence of events leading up to my decision to leap from my balcony. Or, rather, my
impulse
to leap from the balcony.

I am sorry about your marriage, Moon Dance. Maybe someday you can marry me. I promise to be accepting.

I’m not in the mood for jokes, Fang.

No joke.

Then I’m not in the mood to be propositioned.

Sorry.
He paused, then typed:
What was it like, flying?

Heavenly. Rapturous. Nothing like it in the world. I will definitely be doing that again.

What exactly did you turn into?

Something scary. Something nightmarish.

But you were still you, right? You could think, feel?

Yes, I never left. It was still me, just in the skin of something horrific.

Describe it.

I did, as best as I could. I told Fang that there was really very little of me I could see, other than the image I had in my mind. The image was scary enough.

What am I?
I asked him when I was through.

You are a vampire, Moon Dance.

But am I even one of God’s creatures? Am I something evil? Am I even truly alive?

Do you feel alive?

Yes.

Do you feel evil?

I thought about that.
I feel like such an aberration, a mistake. Something forgotten. Something to be ignored. Something to fear.

Moon Dance?

Yes?

We all feel that way. You are just different.
He paused.
Do you believe in a Creator?

I paused, then wrote:
I don’t know. I believe in something.

Well, do you think that Something has suddenly decided to ignore you because you were attacked and changed into something different against your own free will?

I don’t know, Fang.

There was a long pause.
I don’t. I don’t think a god of creation has suddenly decided to ignore you, Moon Dance. I think, in fact, you have been granted a rare opportunity to do things some people have never thought possible, to express yourself in ways that many people will never, ever experience. You could choose to see this as an opportunity or as a curse. Do you choose to see the good or the bad?

So there is good in me?

More good than most.

So I have not been forgotten?

Who could forget you, Moon Dance?

Thank you, Fang. Thank you for always being here for me.

Always. And Moon Dance?

Yes?

Take care of yourself. There are people out there who love you.
A long pause. I waited.
And I am one of them.

Thank you, Fang, that means a lot. Goodnight.

Goodnight, Moon Dance.

46.

On a Thursday night just a little past 9:30 p.m., Detective Sherbet picked me up outside the Embassy Suites. A light rain had been falling and I hadn’t bothered with an umbrella.

“Trash night,” he said when I slid in next to him. Sherbet was driving a big Ford truck with tinted windows. “Hey, you’re all wet.”

“
I enjoy the rain.”

“
So enjoy the rain with an umbrella. You’re getting my leather seats all wet.”

“
Get over it. It’s just a truck.”

“
It’s not just a truck. It’s my baby.”

“
There’s more to life than trucks.”

“
Someone in a bad mood?” he asked.

“
Yes.”

He grinned and pulled out into traffic. The truck had a throaty roar. The detective, I quickly discovered, drove like a mad man. He pulled into traffic with reckless abandon, confident that his truck could survive any impact. I found his driving exciting. Maybe I was a closet adrenalin junkie.

“So do you have termites or something?” he asked after a cacophony of horns had subsided behind us.

“
Excuse me?”

“
Is that why I’m picking you up at a hotel in Brea? Does your house have termites?”

“
Oh,” I said. “Sure.”

“
Speaking of Brea, did you hear about the flying creature last night?”

“
No.”

“
Police call centers got swamped last night. About a hundred total. Apparently something dropped out of the sky and swooped down the middle of Downtown Brea.”

“
Maybe it was a bird,” I said distractedly. I didn’t feel like talking. I was missing my children, and could not fight the horrible feeling that they were forever lost to me.

“
This was no bird.” He chuckled and made a right onto State College Blvd. A minute later we were waiting at a stoplight to turn left onto Imperial. Through the side window I noticed a few teenage boys gawking at the truck.

“
The boys love your truck,” I said.

“
They should. It’s bitchen.”

I laughed, despite myself.

Sherbet continued, “Witnesses say it was black and massive and flying almighty fast.”

“
What happened to it?”

“
Made a right onto Brea Blvd and was gone.”

“
Did it at least use its turn signal?”

The light turned green. He gunned the truck as if he were in a drag race. He looked over at me and smiled. “You don’t seem to believe any of this.”

“No,” I said. “Do you?”

“
Hard to say. A hundred witnesses is a lot of witnesses.”

“
Mass hallucination?” I suggested.

“
Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe they really saw something.”

Sherbet pulled behind a long line of cars waiting for the freeway on-ramp. I had the distinct—and exciting—feeling that Sherbet would have preferred to go
over
the cars.

“
You hungry?” he asked suddenly.

“
No.”

“
You sure? You look like you could eat.”

“
I’m sure.”

He pulled out of the line of cars, hung a suicidal turn back onto Imperial Blvd, and headed into a nearby Wendy’s drive-thru.

“That was frightening,” I said.

“
Then why are you smiling?” he asked.

“
I guess I like frightening,” I said.

He ordered his food and pulled up in line. He said, “The wife tonight made a German dish called
machanka
. She thinks I like it. I haven’t had the heart to tell her that I quit liking it fifteen years ago.”

“
You must love her.”

“
With all my heart,” he said.

“
Lucky her,” I said.

“
Lucky
me
.”

He got his food. Two bacon burgers, an order of fries, and a king-sized Coke.

“That’ll kill you,” I said.

“
True,” he said. “But on the flip side: no more
machanka
.”

Shoving fries into his mouth, he recklessly made a left into traffic, into a break of traffic that was virtually non-existant. He looked at me and grinned around the fries.

I grinned, too.

Soon, we were heading south on the 57 freeway.

47.

It was after 10:00 p.m. when we parked on a street that ran perpendicular with Horton’s massive Gothic revival.

A thin sheet of rain obscured the street. We sat in the cab of his truck with the engine and wipers off. Moving wipers attracted attention, as did an idling car. So we ate in the cold and wet. The house before us was massive and brooding. Its towering gables spiked the night sky. Hawthorne would have been pleased. The truck’s tinted glass made the world darker than it really was. I liked darker.

After a moment, Sherbet shook his head. “Who could live in something like that?” Sherbet shuddered. “Like something in a fucking Dracula movie.”

“
I like it,” I said.

“
Why does that not surprise me?”

“
What does that mean?” I asked.

“
Nothing. Just being a wise guy.”

Sherbet was still sipping on his king-sized Coke. Occasionally some of the sips turned into loud slurps. The remnants of his greasy meal were wadded into a greasy ball and shoved into the greasy bag. The strong smell of burgers and fries suffused the interior of the truck cab. My hungry stomach was doing somersaults.

Easy, girl.

“
That your stomach growling?” he asked.

“
I don’t know. Haven’t noticed.”

He shook his head and slurped his Coke. The street was mostly empty. Occasionally a big car would splash past, and since tomorrow was trash day, most of the residents already had their trash cans out by the curb. Rick Horton’s trash cans were nowhere to be found.

“Maybe he forgot tomorrow was trash day,” said Sherbet.

“
Maybe.”

“
Maybe he’s one of those procrastinators who runs out just as the trash truck pulls up, dragging their trashcans behind them, beseeching the truck drivers to wait.”

“
Beseeching?” I said.

“
It’s a word.”

“
Just not a word you often hear from a cop with a dollop of ketchup on his chin.”

He hastily swiped at the dollop, but missed some of it. He licked his finger. “You have good eyes,” he said.

“And you have a bad aim.” I used one of the napkins to clean his chin.

The rain picked up a little. The drops were now big enough to splatter. Overhead, the weeping willows wept, bent and shuddering under the weight of the rain.

“I could use some coffee,” the detective said. “No telling when this guy is coming out with his trash.”

So we got some coffee at a nearby Burger King. Or, rather, Sherbet did. He bought me a bottled water.

“You’re a cheap date,” he commented as he mercifully decided—at the last possible second—that an incoming bus was too close to dash in front of.

“
And you’re the reason fast food establishments stay in business.”

“
On second thought,” he said. “I would never date someone as grouchy as you.”

“
It’s been a bad week.”

“
Wanna talk about it?”

“
No.”

He didn’t push it. We pulled back up in front of Horton’s Gothic revival. Nothing much changed. Horton still hadn’t taken out his trash, which was, at least tonight, the object of our interest.

So we waited some more. Investigators are trained to wait. We’re supposed to be good at it. Waiting sucks. The interior of the truck was filled with the soothing sound of rain ticking on glass and sheet metal. I sipped some water. Sherbet was holding his coffee with both hands. Steam rose into his face. A light film of sweat collected on his upper lip. The coffee smelled heavenly. Coffee was not on my list. Rivulets of rain cascaded down the windshield. The shining street lamps, as seen through the splattered windshield, were living prisms of light. I watched the hypnotic light show.

“
What’s it like working for the feds?” Sherbet suddenly asked.

“
Safe, secure. Often boring, punctuated with the occasional thrill. My days were endlessly fascinating. I loved my job.”

“
Do you miss it?”

“
Hard to say. I miss the camaraderie of my partners. My job now is a lonely one. When I get the chance to work with someone else I often take it.”

“
Even with an old dog like me?”

I looked at him. The truck was mostly silent. I heard him breathing calmly through his nose. Could smell his aftershave. He smelled like a guy should smell. Moving shadows from the rain dribbling down the windshield reached his face. The man seemed to like me, but he was suspicious of me. Or perhaps just curious. As a homicide investigator, he had his own highly-attuned intuition, which worried me because I was obviously causing it to jangle off the hook. But I had committed no crime, other than draining a corpse of blood, which I didn’t think was a crime, although I’d never perused the penal code for such an article.