Moon Shadow Read online

  A moment later, my clothing exploded from my body. I lost more workout clothes that way.

  I gasped and arched my head back and felt myself become something much, much more—and caught my backpack with a curved, black talon. I thrust my wings and, just missing the concrete, flew low to the ground. I beat my wings again and again, and swept straight down the center of Imperial Boulevard, gaining speed and altitude.

  And loving every second of it.

  Chapter Ten

  Hello, Talos.

  Hello, Samantha Moon.

  I was flying high. The full moon appeared and reappeared through the stratocumulus clouds, blasting its reflected light over me. For someone who hated the sun, I sure didn’t have a problem with reflected sunlight. I knew, deep down, it wasn’t so much the physical light—after all, I lived easily within a lighted home at night. I knew, in fact, it was what sunlight represented: life, joy, community, love, companionship, support, working, playing, existing. All of which the creature within me shunned.

  Samantha Moon, I repeated in my thoughts. I didn’t know giant vampire bats were so formal, Talos.

  I didn’t know I was a giant vampire bat.

  Wind didn’t so much as blast me, as flow over me. The body I became—Talos’s body—was perfectly, wonderfully, ingeniously aerodynamic. I glanced down at myself, over the thick skin, the thick, leathery wings, my massive claws far below—claws that had dismembered a demonic entity a few years ago.

  I just always thought...

  I know, Samantha.

  But you never corrected me.

  There was no need to correct you, Samantha. Your interpretation was close enough. What I am, exactly, was far less important than you wrapping your head around our connection.

  Well, I have wrapped my head around it. I love our connection. I love this body swap thing that we do. This merging that we do. I love that I can be you, and you can be me, if that’s how it works.

  Indeed it does. In a way.

  I tried imagining my physical body on another world, in, possibly, another dimension, too. Then I nearly became dizzy. Not good when flying.

  And what am I doing in this other world? I asked, as I flapped a little harder, gaining altitude and speed. In your world?

  We are sitting together on a rocky crag.

  Like before?

  Like always, Samantha. You wouldn’t fare very well in my world, I’m afraid.

  What do you mean?

  I live in a challenging world, to say the least, at least, for land dwellers.

  I knew that Talos and others like him were nearly immortal. I knew they were advanced spiritually, beyond our world. I knew they lived in peace, and I knew they lived in cities among the clouds.

  Yes, all true, Sam.

  And as I thought these thoughts, a mental picture appeared in my mind, and there I was, sitting naked on a rocky precipice, high above the clouds. Talos was sitting next to me, perched on a rocky overhang, wings tucked in at his side. My perspective was from his perspective, as he saw me. My arms were hugging my bare legs as I peered down, down over the ledge, down into the swirling misty depths.

  Is that where your city is? I asked.

  No, Sam. Look up.

  And now, my perspective changed as Talos looked up and there... rising high above me, supported by structures that seemed oddly organic and rocky and fabricated all at the same time, were massive edifices mushrooming up into the clouds. They were of different levels, different shapes, different sizes. But all composed of the same organic material.

  We work with the planet we live on, Sam. We worked together. We construct together, and the planet yields to us what we want.

  Winged shapes crisscrossed the sky. More creatures like Talos. Other creatures, too. Smaller animals. Oddly shaped, multi-winged animals. Hundreds of flying creatures, dotting the sky above.

  You said man lived on your planet, I thought. In one of our previous conversations.

  He lives below, Sam. Within the earth.

  Why?

  He so chooses.

  Do they look like me?

  Close enough.

  I thought about all of this as I continued flapping Talos’s massive wings, catching the air, holding it, and pushing it behind me. A wonderful sensation. Below me, the city lights of Earth faded into rolling hills, as I left Orange County behind and headed over the Santa Ana Mountains.

  Why are you sitting next to me? I asked. You know, in your world?

  I’m keeping an eye on you, Samantha Moon, came his gentle words, and I sensed some mirth behind them.

  Can I move around in your world?

  Yes.

  But I haven’t yet mastered being in two places at once.

  Not yet. It is a little like walking and chewing gum.

  Because my focus is primarily in this world, on us flying, I thought.

  Very good, Sam.

  But if I were to land, and take my focus off flying, and put my focus on myself in your world...

  You could move about.

  But not safely?

  Probably not without my help.

  This is hurting my head, I thought.

  My head, too, thought Talos, and I sensed a smile behind his words.

  Will you show me your world?

  Someday, Sam.

  I took in a lot of air, using Talos’s great lungs, filling his chest, my chest, our chest completely. As I did so, I held the air, held it and was aware of it, and then let it loose again. It came out hot. Very hot.

  Are you a dragon, Talos?

  Oh, yes.

  A real, honest-to-God dragon?

  Close enough to one, Sam. And so are you. We are, together.

  I took in more air, held it, felt it brewing in my chest. In fact, I felt great power within my chest. I felt heat and gathering energy. I almost didn’t dare ask the question, but yet here it was:

  Talos, can I...?

  Oh, yes, Sam. Oh, yes...

  I felt the air churning inside my lungs, churn and heat and broil and metamorphose into something else, something not of this world, something alchemical and magical and exciting.

  And when I opened my mouth, when I exhaled this roiling, burning air within, something orgasmic happened. Something explosive. Something terrible and beautiful and deadly. Something I wasn’t entirely prepared for.

  Fire erupted from me, and it kept on erupting as I continued to breathe out, crackling and snapping and charging through the air before me.

  Chapter Eleven

  I breathed fire tonight, I wrote.

  Is that a euphemism, Moon Dance? If so, you can keep your sordid sex life to yourself.

  Sordid?

  All that howling and panting and clawing.

  Kingsley isn’t a werewolf when, you know...

  I wasn’t talking about him, Moon Dance.

  I shook my head and called him an asshole and he sent me back an “lol” which, in our newfangled world, meant that he had, apparently, laughed out loud. I secretly questioned most laughed out louds. Were people really going around and laughing that hard over texts and emails... and, in this case, IM messages? Call me a cynic, but I thought “LOLs” were making liars out of most everyone.

  What’s this breathing fire business, Moon Dance?

  I told him about it. I told him about my gradual realization that I had been misidentifying Talos all along. What I had thought was a giant bat was, in fact, a dragon.

  A fire-breathing dragon, I added.

  There was a short pause, and then his name began flashing on my screen, signifying he was typing away over there. These days, I didn’t worry so much about waking up Fang—or keeping him up after a long bartending shift. Now, as a fellow creature of the night, he was always up. Always wide awake; that is, until dawn, when sleep overcame both of us.

  Fang had always wanted us to work. Fang, unfortunately, was a little creepy, although I adored him immensely. Then again, I’m a little creepy, too. Truth was, Fang was a cutie
when he wasn’t busy stalking me or killing girlfriends or prison guards...

  Okay, that might be a little unfair. All of that had been in the distant past. These days, I knew Fang ran a blood bank. A very different kind of blood bank, where he paid mortals good money for their blood—and even paid some of them to be feasted upon directly by high-paying clients. As far as I was aware, no humans had been killed in the making of his business. Fang had quickly developed the ability to manipulate memory, and so most mortals went away thinking they’d really donated to a legitimate blood bank. All pretty much on the up and up. Anything less, and Fang knew he would have a problem with me. Not too long ago I’d shut down another type of blood bank... one where the donors weren’t so willing, and they most certainly didn’t walk away with a wad of cash. Most, of course, were hung from meat hooks where they had been drained dry.

  Anyway, gone were the days where Fang lived in his tiny one-bedroom apartment, supporting himself with bartending tips. No, he was a real player in the blood trade... and had generated a lot of money. Blood money, as it were. In every sense of the word. Last I had heard, he was living in a familiar Gothic mansion in downtown Orange, the same mansion a client from Kingsley’s past had lived in, a client I’d been certain was responsible for shooting Kingsley five times in the head. I had been wrong, of course. But that was another case for another time.

  I always suspected you turned into a dragon, Moon Dance. There have been rumors and sightings of dragons for centuries, millenniums. There is always something to such legends. But you always seemed so sure that you were, and I quote, “a giant vampire bat.”

  How the hell would I know any different? I wrote. I’ve only been recently communicating with Talos, and it never occurred to me to ask what, exactly, I was turning into. I mean, I knew I turned into something massive and winged. I just never thought of asking for a name.

  What was it like, breathing fire?

  Honestly? I wrote, and found myself truly LOL-ing on my couch. Kind of orgasmic. It felt so... fucking good coming out of me. It was a true release. Like it had been building up and needed an outlet.

  You make it sound kind of fun. And sexy.

  I giggled on my end. Or GOL’d.

  Oh, yes, I wrote.

  Few of us can turn into such creatures, Sam. In fact, I am only aware of a handful.

  I think, I wrote, they choose us more than we choose them.

  They, being the dragons?

  I wrote yes and added: They do it for the experience, and they do it to help us, too. In fact, if I am correct, they are here to combat the darkness within us. Maybe combat is too strong of a word. To add balance, perhaps.

  Like your librarian friend.

  Yes, like Maximus and the other alchemists.

  Maybe it’s a case of keeping your enemy close, wrote Fang.

  Can’t be any closer than switching bodies.

  Is that what you do, switch bodies?

  Close, I wrote. We can be in two places at once, and often, we can combine bodies.

  So, if I am correct, your human body gets transported instantly to another world?

  Something like that, I wrote. But in Talos’s world, we don’t merge. Not yet, and perhaps not ever.

  What happens when he’s, say, in mid-flight and you summon him?

  I asked him that. It’s why I see the flame. He sees the flame, too, and knows I am calling on him. He will find a safe place for us to integrate, often high upon a rocky precipice.

  So weird, Sam.

  How often have we said that? I wrote.

  Too often, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.

  You really do love being a vampire, I wrote. It wasn’t a question.

  More than you can possibly know, Moon Dance. He paused, then wrote: How are you and the wolfman?

  We are happy. We are together. We might even be falling in love.

  Oh, joy.

  Don’t be a sourpuss, I wrote. Are you dating?

  Occasionally. Mostly, I work. There was a pause. I miss you, Sam.

  We’re talking right now.

  I miss seeing you in the bar with your sister. I miss your smile and sometimes, the tragic look in your eyes. I miss lighting up those eyes with a joke or a drink or both. I miss watching you.

  You’re getting creepy again...

  You know what I mean, Sam. I knew what you were. I knew why you were drinking the kind of wine you were drinking, and I knew why you never ordered appetizers. I knew why you looked tired before sunset, and why you suddenly looked so alive just after.

  I exhaled on my couch, looking at his words. Of course, I hadn’t known that our cute bartender was also the same Fang I’d often IM’d with. He had found me through various clues in our conversation, and eventually, had gotten a job at the very bar I frequented. Which got me thinking: had I dropped such clues on purpose?

  I wrote: I think our friendship was based a lot on you watching me, Fang. Watching me without me knowing it.

  Of course, he hadn’t been a threat; at least, not to me. Never once had my inner alarm system warned me about him.

  Not true, Sam. We spent many months and years getting to know each other. I loved everything about you. I still do.

  Fang had, of course, nearly destroyed our friendship by going behind my back and teaming up with a woman who, eventually, not only had kidnapped my sister but had killed my ex. A woman who’d plotted to kill me, too. Of course, Fang had been under the control of a very, very old vampire who’d had the rare ability to control other immortals. A vampire Kingsley had disposed of.

  Fang’s end goal had always been to be a vampire. Growing up with two exceptionally long canines, being harassed and bullied along the way, and then developing the mother of all psychoses—a love for real blood—had ended badly for him and especially for his girlfriend, whom he’d drained of blood, effectively killing her. Fang’s murder trial had been a sensation, and his ultimate escape from a high-security insane asylum had dominated the news for weeks. Finally, he’d managed to elude capture, and his story went away. Which is where I came in, years later.

  I like our friendship, Fang, I wrote.

  I do, too.

  But you want more, I added.

  Is that so wrong?

  No, of course not. It’s always nice to be wanted by a cute boy.

  He gave me a capitalized “LOL” signifying that he’d really let loose with a guffaw. I wondered, just how hard did one have to guffaw to be deemed worthy of an LOL?

  I am more than a boy, Sam.

  In lots of ways, he wasn’t, but I didn’t tell him that. He seemed stunted at times. He seemed stuck in that ten-year-old’s body, with his grotesquely deformed teeth, who dreamed of being a real vampire—only to discover that vampires really did exist. Who dreamed of acceptance and friendship and love.

  Back in the day, I would have been worried about Fang picking up my thoughts... back when he was still mortal. But now, our thoughts were shielded from each other, which was a relief to me. No wonder why vampires hung out with other vampires and other creatures of the night.

  It’s late, Fang.

  Although, of course, early to the rest of the world. By my inherent clock, the sun should be rising in less than thirty minutes. I might have a ring on my finger that helped me withstand the sun, but there was no denying the need for sleep at dawn.

  Are you mad, Sam?

  Mad that someone has feelings for me? Never. But sometimes, feelings need to be checked. I’m in a relationship now. A healthy one. A happy one. One that, I think, might be going somewhere.

  Going where?

  We’ll see.

  Marriage?

  Now, I nearly lol’d him, but the thought had crossed my mind. The big oaf—that is, Kingsley—seemed to be dropping hints these days. I wasn’t entirely against the idea. I was... intrigued to say the least.

  We’ll see.

  I wish nothing but the best for you, Sam.

  I know.

  But
if you marry the bastard... I don’t know if I can still be your friend.

  You will, I wrote. It’s just hard imagining it now. Besides, it may not happen.

  Good night, Moon Dance. No snoring... you might just burn up your sheets.

  I gave him a hearty LOL, which was well deserved because I’d just snorted embarrassingly. Good thing I was alone. Was there such a thing as SOL?

  Anyway, when I was done snorting out loud, I shut my laptop and headed to the bathroom. I didn’t wear much makeup these days—mostly because I couldn’t see my face—although a little blush never hurt, especially when one had the complexion of a whiteboard. When I was done removing my makeup, I brushed my teeth and walked through the empty house. Truthfully, I got a little weirded out standing in front of an empty mirror.

  Anthony and Tammy were with Mary Lou, as they often were. I tended to work the night shift. Someday soon, my kids would be old enough to take care of themselves. Anthony was already strong enough, certainly. And no one, but no one, was sneaking up on my daughter, not with her radar-like telepathic powers. Apparently, I was raising the X-Men. Complete with my own Wolverine.

  Speaking of which, I wondered how Kingsley was doing. It was not yet dawn, so he would still be in his wolfie state. I wondered if he got tired of all that growling and pacing and feasting. Was he, even now, sitting up in his cell, just counting down the minutes until dawn?

  I finished my home reconnaissance and spit the toothpaste in the sink, rinsed my mouth and spit that out, too. Long ago, I’d gotten used to making sure all the toothpaste was spit out. Even if a little bit found its way down my gullet, it hurt like hell. Now, thanks to the ring, I had gotten careless. I rinsed and swished and spit, and was soon lying in bed, on top of my blankets. Yes, I am often cold. No, blankets did nothing for me.

  I didn’t read myself to sleep or watch DVR’d episodes of Modern Family in bed until my eyelids got heavy and I finally dropped off to sleep.

  No. Sleep started the instant the sun rose—as it was starting to do now—and it came over me rapidly, overwhelming my senses, my mind, my body, my entire being. A complete and total shutdown of all that I am. It was a form of micro-death. Yes, I could fight it if I wanted to, thanks to the day ring. I could even force myself to stay awake. But giving in was so much easier.