Samantha Moon: First Eight Novels, Plus One Novella (96 page)

Chapter Three

At 3:30 p.m. on an overcast Tuesday afternoon, lathered in Aveeno SPF 100 sunscreen, I dashed out my door and sprinted across my front yard as if my life depended on it.

And I’m pretty sure it did.

Despite the gray skies, the thick jacket, and the layer of greasy sunscreen, my skin still felt like it was on fire. My garage is not attached. Back in the day, my ex-husband didn’t think we needed an attached garage. Houses with unattached garages were cheaper.

Thanks, asshole.

Of course, little did he know that one day the sun would be my enemy and I would have to endure daily torturous mid-afternoon sprints.

Anyway, at the garage, I fumbled with the Masterlock until I got the key in and opened the sucker. I noticed my hands were already shaking and reddening. Any longer and they would begin blistering.

I’m such a freak.

I yanked open the garage door far harder than I probably should have. The thing nearly tore off its rusty tracks. Once open, I dashed inside and breathed a small sigh of relief, even though there was never really any relief for me. Not during the day, at least. Not when I should be sleeping in a dark room with the blinds pulled shut and dead to the world.

I started the van, cranked up the AC, and let it cool my burning flesh. Finally, I backed out of the garage and headed for my kids’ school.

Just another day in the neighborhood.

* * *

After picking up the kids and spending the evening helping them with their homework, I called up a new sitter I’d been using lately, a very responsible sixteen-year-old girl. Luckily, she was available, and when she arrived, I hugged my kids and kissed them and told them to be good. Mercifully, neither shuddered at my cold touch. Cold lips, cold fingers and cold hugs were the norm in our family. Still, Anthony promptly wiped his kiss off.

“Gross, Mom,” he said, never taking his eyes off his video game, giving it far more concentration than he ever did his homework. As an added precaution, he absently raised his shoulder, using it to wipe his cheek clean.

Now, with the sun mercifully far behind planet Earth, I found myself heading east on the 91 Freeway. Me, and nearly all of southern California, too. I settled in for the long commute, tempted, as usual to pull over and take flight.

Instead, I sat back and turned up the radio and tried to remember what life was like before I became what I currently am.

But I couldn’t. At least, not really, and that scared the hell out of me. My new reality dominated all aspects of my life, all thoughts and all actions, and as I followed a sea of red taillights and bad drivers, I realized my humanity was slipping further and further away.

I hate when that happens.

Chapter Four

The crime scene wasn’t much of a crime scene. It also wasn’t too hard to find. At least, not for me.

Using Sherbet’s notes, I soon found an area of road that had recently seen a lot of activity. The dirt was grooved deeply with tires, and there was even some crime scene tape left behind in one of the sage brushes.

I parked my minivan off the side of the winding road and got out. Yes, there are actually winding roads in southern California. At least, up here in these mostly barren hills. Winter rain had given life to some of the dried-out seedlings that baked during the spring, summer and fall seasons, which, out here in the high desert, was really just one long-ass summer. The stiff grass gave the hill some color, even at night. At least, to my eyes.

I shut the door and beeped it locked. Why I beeped it locked, I didn’t know. I was alone up here on the hillside, parked inside a turnout, hidden in shadows and what few bushes there were.

Which made it even more remarkable that the body had even been found in the first place.

According to Sherbet’s notes, a city worker making his routine rounds had come upon the body. He might not have found it, either, if not for the turkey vultures and the foul smell.

Predictably, it hadn’t been a pretty sight.

Like the others, this one was rolled up in a dirty sheet and tied off on both ends. The same type of sheet, every time. A sheet commonly sold at Wal-Mart, of all places. The vultures had gotten through the sheet, using their powerful beaks. Apparently, they had made a meal of the intestines, but that’s as far as they got before the worker showed up.

I had seen a handful of corpses back in my days as a federal agent. But, mercifully, I had never seen a human body eaten by vultures. I was glad Sherbet spared me the photos.

Yes, even vampires get queasy.

The air was cool and crisp. I was wearing jeans and a light jacket, although I really didn’t need a jacket. I wore it because I thought it looked cute. Really, when you’re as cold on the inside as the weather is on the outside, jackets are a moot point.

Unless they’re cute.

The air was heavy with sage and juniper and smelled so fresh that it was easy to forget that bustling Orange County was just forty-five minutes away.

I studied the crime scene. It was a mess. What few plants there were had been trampled. Footprints everywhere. Tire prints. And deeper gouges into the earth that I knew were from the Corona mobile command. A trailer they hauled out to process evidence, or as much as they could, right there on the spot. I even found two deep ruts in the road that I seriously suspected were from a helicopter’s skids. It was a wonder the rotor downdraft hadn’t erased all the other tracks.

I scanned the area, looking deeper into the darkness than I had any right to see, seeing things that I probably shouldn’t. I’m talking about energy. Spirit energy. Even in the desert I sense and see energy. Small explosions of light that appear and disappear. These are faint. Mere whispers.

What I wasn’t seeing was perhaps more telling. There was no lost spirit here. No lost
human
spirit.

Which told me something. It told me that I was either completely insane and lost my mind years ago and was currently babbling away at some mental hospital, or that the victim had been killed elsewhere.

I was hoping it was the latter. Although, trust me, there were times I actually hoped it was the former.

Anyway, what I didn’t see is the bright, static energy that often makes up a human spirit. That is, one who has once lived and passed on. The newer the spirit, the sharper they come into focus. I’ve gotten used to seeing such spirits these days. I’m a regular Sylvia Browne, although you won’t find me on Montel Williams. At least, not yet. Maybe if he asks nicely.

Then again, I had a tendency to not show up in photographs or video.

So much for my talk show circuit,
I thought, as I circled the area where the body had been found. As I did so, the wind picked up, lifting my hair, flapping my jacket.

I tried to get a feel for the land, for what had been here. For
who
had been here, but these psychic gifts of mine were relatively new and I was only getting fleeting images. One of those fleeting images was that of the body still lying undisturbed on the ground, wrapped in the dirty sheet.

I went back to the spot where the body had been found and knelt to examine the ground. There was nothing left of the crime scene, of course. The investigators had been all over it.

Most telling, there hadn’t been any blood. As I knelt in this spot with my eyes closed, feeling the wind, hearing the rustle of dried leaves, I heard something else.

A voice. No, a memory of a voice. A hauntingly familiar voice. Deep and rich. Telling someone to dump the body here. Good, good. Let’s go.

And that’s all the psychic hits I got.

No, not quite. Another memory came to me. Another image. A snapshot, really. I saw a bag. Lying deep in a deep ravine.

Except there were damn ravines everywhere. Hell, there were ravines within ravines. I only had to think about it for a second or two, before I started stripping out of my clothes.

Right there at the crime scene.

Chapter Five

There’s nothing like being naked in the desert.

Seriously. With my clothing folded on the hood of my van, I stepped across the cool dirt, picked my way through a tangle of elderberry and carefully stepped around a patch of beavertail cactus. I moved past the general area where the body had been found and headed deeper into the empty hills.

The desert scents were heady and intoxicating. Sage and juniper and creosote. Pungent, sharp and whispery. The desert sand itself seemed to have a scent all its own, too. Something ancient that hinted at death, at life, of survival and of distant memories. This place, so close to civilization, yet so far removed, too, smelled as it had for eons, for millenniums. The sand, I knew, was sprinkled with the bones of the dead. Dead vermin, dead coyotes, dead anything and everything that ever ventured into these bleak hills.

I continued through the empty landscape. I was alone. I could sense it, see it, feel it.

I moved over springy, green grass that stood little chance once the brief winter rains ended, once the heat set in again. Southern California is mostly desert, and never is it more apparent than in these barren hills.

The moon was nearly full.
Uh oh.
That meant Kingsley would be, ah,
indisposed
for a few days.

My body felt strong. As strong as the wind that had now whipped my hair into a frenzy. Sometimes I felt elemental, too. Tied to the days and nights, to the sun and earth. Tied to blood.

Elemental.

Like a dark fairy. A dark fairy with bat wings.

I headed deeper into the desert, following a natural path that might have been a stream bed in wetter times. The rock underfoot was loose, although I rarely lost my balance. Down I went, down the slope, following the rock-strewn path, until before me a deep blackness opened up. A ravine.

I stopped, breathing in the cool, desert air, although these days I no longer needed much air. I opened and closed my hands, feeling stronger than I ever had. Then again, I always feel like that, each and every night. Stronger than I ever had.

I continued on, skirting a copse of stunted milkwoods along the edge of the ravine. I felt a pair of eyes watching me. I turned my head, looked up. There, a coyote sitting high atop a nearby boulder, eyes glowing yellow in the night. Its eyes, amazingly, like Kingsley’s. Now I saw more movement from around the boulder. Heard claws clicking, scratching. More coyotes. I could smell them, too. Intoxicatingly fresh blood wafted from their musky coats. They had just feasted on a recent kill.

My stomach growled.

I cursed and moved on as the pack watched me silently, warily, keeping their distance. Soon, I reached what I had been searching for: the cliff’s edge. Here, light particles swirled frenetically, seemingly caught in the updraft of wind gusts that moaned over crevasses and caves and outcroppings of rock.

My toes curled over the edge. Loose sand and rock tumbled into the ravine. Behind me, I heard the coyotes turn and leave.

I listened to the wind moving over the land, to the insects scurrying and buzzing, to my own growling stomach. I inhaled the last of the lingering, haunting scent of blood before the coyotes were too far off for even my enhanced senses.

I looked out over the ledge. The cliff dropped straight down, disappearing into blackness, although I could see an outcropping of rock about halfway down. I would have to avoid that.

I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. If my life hadn’t been so weird over these past seven years, I might have been surprised to find myself standing naked at the edge of a cliff, in the high deserts outside of Orange County.

But now weirdness was the norm, and so I just stood there, head tilted back a little, hair whipping in the wind, hands slightly outstretched, until the flame appeared in my thoughts.

Within the flame appeared something hideous...and beautiful. The creature I would become.

With that thought planted firmly in mind, I leaped from the cliff’s edge and out into the night.

Chapter Six

I arched up and out.

I hovered briefly in mid-air at the apex of the arch, my arms spread wide, my hair drifting above my shoulders in a state of suspended animation.

From here, as I briefly hovered, I could see Lake Mathews sparkling under the nearly full moon. I could also see the barb wire fence, too. Only in southern California do they surround a lake with barb wire. Beyond, the cities of Corona and Riverside sparkled like so many jewels. Flawed jewels.

And then I was falling, head first, like an inverted cross. The bleak canyon walls sped past me, just feet away. Dried grass swept past me, too. Lizards scuttled for cover, no doubt confused as hell. Dry desert air blasted me, thundered over my ears.