I’m not sure I can handle your memories, I thought. I kinda have a lot to juggle on my end.
So it seems.
What is a demon? I suddenly asked.
A lost entity, one that has been lost for so long that it chooses to never, ever find itself.
Were they good once?
It’s hard to say, Sam. They are from God, so, of course they were once good.
Because we’re all one and all that jazz?
Exactly. But not all entities evolve. Some choose to do the opposite.
To devolve?
Something like that. But if you ask me, I secretly suspect such entities are fulfilling a role for God.
So, they were created on purpose?
Perhaps, perhaps not. I do not know. I am only postulating an hypothesis.
And since when did giant flying vampire bats postulate hypotheses?
I might be the first.
I laughed, then thought: Perhaps they were created to be a foil?
Or to show us darkness.
Because without darkness...
You cannot see the light, finished Talos. But make no mistake, Samantha. Demons are real. They are powerful. And they are everywhere.
Gee, thanks for that pick-me-up.
There was a long silence as I continued up the coast, now flying high above Santa Barbara. I would have to circle back soon, but not yet. In the far, far distance, I caught sight of something else. A shadow moving through the heavens. A shadow in the shape of a...
No, I thought. That can’t be.
But it was, I certain of it.
It was a dragon.
Chapter Twenty-three
We were in my minivan.
I’d forgotten that this evening was “ghouls’ night out” as Allison liked to call it. I’d compromised with her and now here we were on a stakeout together...and she wouldn’t stop talking.
“Stakeouts,” I said, “are generally done in silence.”
“That was a rude thing to say, Sam. Besides, tonight was ghouls’ night out—”
“Will you quit saying that?”
She continued, without missing a beat, “—and you know damn well I look forward to this night all week. Besides, it’s also been a week since, you know.”
Yes, I knew well. It had been a week since I’d last fed from her wrist and I could feel the effects. A little lethargic. A little less than what I knew I could be. True, I’d drunk my fill of cow and pig blood from my supply in the garage, but it wasn’t the same. That was equivalent to living on McDonald’s. Eventually it wore you down and sapped your energy. Sadly, normal food didn’t help. At all. I could eat ten scones from Starbucks and still feel depleted. I needed blood, and I needed it about every other day.
Yeah, a true ghoul, I thought.
I heard that, came Allison’s thought.
“You caught me,” I said. “And we’ll take care of that later.”
That being, of course, me drinking from her wrist, usually from the same old scar. Luckily for her, she healed almost instantly as soon as I pulled away from her. Vampire saliva had that effect.
We were sitting in the front seat of my minivan, parked in the same spot down the road, in front of a house that mostly appeared empty, which was why I had chosen it.
“Is he always this busy?” asked Allison.
“Not so far,” I said.
Indeed, we saw the silhouette of a man—Gunther, no doubt—flashing back and forth behind the glass of his front door. We saw lights turn on and off. At one point, we heard him in the garage.
“So, what do you think he’s up to?”
“Hard to know,” I said.
“The full moon is in, what, three nights?”
“Two,” I said. “Sunday night.”
“Why don’t we, you know, confront him? Before he hurts someone else?”
“And make him tell me what I need to know?”
“Well...” she thought about that. “Yeah, I guess.”
“If he’s a werewolf—and it’s looking more and more like he is—then he’ll be as strong or stronger than me. Besides, if I confront him, he could go into hiding, or disappear altogether.”
“So, you’re waiting to flush him out, or catch him in the act.”
“Something like that.”
“To think there are actually these things running around at full moons, hungry for people.”
“Most aren’t running around at full moons. Most are responsible. Most don’t want to get caught. Most lead fairly normal lives and want to continue leading them.”
“Like Kingsley,” she said.
“Right.”
“And maybe this guy, too.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“So, you’re saying that they practice safe transforming?”
Sometimes Allison, despite her neediness and clinginess, made me laugh, which I did now. “Responsible transforming, yes.”
“I can see the public service announcement now,” said Allison and adopted a mock announcer voice: “Transform safely and comfortably in a padlocked cell deep beneath your home...”
“The More You Know...” I said.
Now, we were both snickering, although I really didn’t feel like snickering. Not after seeing what I had seen last night: Vlad Tepes, the escaped demon, and my son staring at me, although that last one could have been my imagination. Still, the laughter felt good, and it might have been my first laughter in the last 24 hours.
When we were done, we both smiled at an old lady walking her labradoodle past our parked minivan. She gave us a good, hard look, and I waved to her and smiled. So did Allison. The old lady didn’t smile back.
“She’s going to be trouble,” said Allison.
“Probably,” I said.
“Then why don’t you do your vampire-mind-trick on her? Or whatever you call it.”
“I don’t call it anything. Besides, I already called the Orange Police Department days ago. They know I’m in the area doing surveillance.”
“Gee, you private dicks think of everything.”
I was about to comment when I saw it again: a car sporting a mustache attached to its grill, driving slowly by.
“You see that?” I asked, pointing.
“What? The car with the mustache?”
“Yeah, that. What’s the deal with that?”
“I don’t know, but I feel like I’ve seen those before.”
“I have, too. In fact, three of them on this very street.”
“Three different cars?”
I nodded and thought about that and nearly Googled it again when Allison suddenly turned and faced me. My friend was quite lovely. Dark hair, almond-shaped eyes, caramel skin. She reached out and took my cold hand. I flinched involuntarily, as I always do when people touch me.