Finally, he said, "We are connected, Moon Dance. Or, more accurately, you have allowed me access into your mind."
"So I can turn it off?" I asked.
"I don't see why not," he said. "And you're right, Sam, I do miss them every day. More than you know."
His teeth, of course.
Chapter Five
Instead of going home, I went to a place I was familiar with: The Embassy Suites in Brea. My home over the past month.
I parked the minivan in my old spot, and shortly said hello to Justin who was working the front desk. He smiled and nodded and seemed to have forgotten that I had checked out a week earlier. Of course, just last week, when I had busted my husband for running an illegal strip club in Colton, I had dressed the part of a stripper. I might be little, but I'm a curvy thing, and Justin the night clerk hasn't looked at me the same since.
I felt his eyes on me all the way to the bank of elevators. At the ninth floor, I found a locked service door I had seen many times in the past. A service door I had taken note of. Why? Because the plaque on it read: Roof Access. Maintenance Personnel Only.
I glanced up and down the hall, took hold of the locked doorknob, and turned steadily until the inner mechanisms shattered in my hand. The knob broke off.
God, I'm a freak.
I pushed the door open, and, after wiping the knob with the hem of my shirt, tossed it in the corner of the stairwell. Next I stepped over a low gate and quickly headed up a metal flight of stairs, taking them two at a time and noticing how strong my legs felt. The door at the top of the landing was locked as well. But not for long.
As pieces of the broken door knob fell away at my feet, I stepped out onto the roof.
Immediately, wind buffeted me. The waning moon was higher now and shone through a thin layer of pathetic-looking stratus clouds. Mostly, though, the sky was clear, and I could even see a star or two.
At the service door, I quickly removed my clothing and naked as the day I was born, moved across the dusty roof, avoiding, of all things, a broken beer bottle.
Hell of a party up here.
Now standing at the roof's edge, I stared down at the city of Brea, which shone before me like a brilliant constellation, providing me a view that the heavens could not. At least, not the heavens here in Southern California. Thousand of lights winked and sparkled. Some were brighter than others - street lamps, perhaps. Others were barely discernible - bathroom nightlights and perhaps the glows of Kindles and Nooks.
Whatever those were.
The wind was at the edge of the building. It rocked my naked body. But I had no fear of falling. My hair whipped around my head like so many serpents. Medusa would have been proud. Or envious. I breathed slowly, deeply, each intake spiced with exhaust and tar and the sage from the nearby foothills.
The world lay at my feet. The normal world. Where people prayed to God and Jesus, where people worried about their kids' health and Charlie Sheen's career, where life went on steadily and predictably.
Life hadn't gone so predictably for me. Life had hung a hard right turn at "predictable" and detoured through a forbidden forest where the Headless Horseman was real, where werewolves existed, where a mother of two could be changed forever into something nightmarish.
I took in more air and lifted my face toward the heavens. The day's latent heat rose up from the roof's surface, warming my eternally cold buns. I heard honking and tires squealing. The crash of a fender-bender.
Oops.
I heard a baby crying from the hotel below and the steady hum of a hundred or so air conditioners powering through the warm night. The building beneath me seemed alive, vibrating and swaying slightly. Or perhaps that was just my imagination.
I stood there for a heartbeat longer.
And then spread my arms wide and jumped.
Chapter Six
The drop down from this hotel was always a little dicey, although jumping from the roof gave me some extra wiggle room. But not much.
I arched up and out over the roof...and seemed to pause briefly at the apex of the arch. From here I had a glimpse of an ambulance flashing down Birch Street, heading away from me. But there was no sound. No sirens. No honking. Nothing. Time and sound always seemed to subside in these moments.
These wonderful, exhilarating moments.
Now I tilted forward, arms outstretched. A falling, inverted cross.
I picked up speed.
Hair whipping behind me like a failed parachute. Wind thundering over me. The hotel rushing past me.
Someone was standing at the hotel balcony, smoking a cigarette. He never saw me. Or maybe I didn't register in his conscious brain. Maybe tonight he would dream about a curvy, black-haired woman plummeting past his balcony, arms outstretched, and naked as all get out.
I was rapidly running out of floors.
A single flame appeared in my thoughts. The flame burned bright, seemingly in the center of my forehead, no doubt in the region the New Age gurus call the Third Eye. In the center of the flame was a winged creature that would have given anyone nightmares.
Except that winged creature was me.
It was my monster familiar. It was my monster alter-ego. It was one hell of a wicked-cool looking creature.
And it was me.
It waited in the flame, its wings tucked in, elongated head cocked slightly to one side. It always waited for me, ready at my beck and call. My own personal flying demon.
Except I was that flying demon.
As the floors swept past me and the concrete sidewalk rapidly approached, I felt myself being pulled to that creature, drawn to it powerfully, supernaturally, miraculously.
The metamorphosis happened in an instant.
The flame disappeared in an explosion of light and when I opened my eyes again, a pair of massive leathery wings - which attached to my wrists and ran down below my knees - snapped taut, slowing my decent. The gravitational force on my wings was incredible, but this new body of mine was more than up to the task. My arms held strong.
I adjusted my arms and angled forward, sweeping nine or ten feet over the ground and just missing a handicap parking sign. It rattled angrily in my wake.
Now I flapped my wings. Yeah, I know. A crazy statement. But these are crazy times.
At least, for me.
I flapped my wings and quickly gained altitude. I found the effort of flying easy. My shoulders were powerful. The thickly membraned wings caught the wind and forced it down and behind me. The sound of my beating wings thundered everywhere at once. Anyone nearby would have heard me. They would have looked up...and seen something they wouldn't soon forget.
My body was aerodynamic and pierced the wind effortlessly.
I continued rising above the glittering city of Brea. Yeah, it was cold up here, but I was perfectly adapted for that, too. Thick skinned. Insulated. Perfectly adapted or perfectly created?