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.