Samantha Moon: First Eight Novels, Plus One Novella (117 page)

And more and more something else.

One of them.

I knew this because no human stood on the ledge of their hotel balcony, with arms spread, head tilted back, naked as the day they were born, reveling in their freedom, knowing that an even greater freedom was about to come. A freedom from gravity.

As I stood there, the wind whipping my hair into a frenzy, I wasn’t thinking of my kids or Kingsley or Fang or anyone. In fact, I wasn’t thinking at all. I was only
feeling
, only
sensing
.

The wind, the heat, the smells, the sounds.

I felt elemental. Animalistic.

I didn’t feel like a mother or a friend or a lover. I didn’t feel human. I felt, instead, deeply connected to the Earth, a part of the Earth, a part of its elements, its raw material.

I tilted my head forward, knowing that I had to either jump or go back inside. Sooner or later, the cops would be beating down my door. A naked woman on a balcony’s ledge was bound to draw some attention.

And I sure as hell wasn’t going back in.

The flame appeared in my thoughts. A single, unwavering flame, and within the flame was a creature that should have looked hideous to me, but didn’t. It was a creature I felt an extreme fondness for. A love for.

It was, after all, me. In a different shape.

A very different shape.

I lowered my arms and looked down. There was nothing to hinder my drop. No buttresses or projecting balconies.

Just a straight drop.

And so I did just that, tilting forward away from the ledge.

Dropping.

Chapter Eleven

As I fell, as the warm desert wind thundered over me, the winged creature in the flame rushed toward me, filling my thoughts.

I shuddered violently—but kept my eyes closed as I continued to plummet.

I was bigger now, I could feel it, but I hadn’t yet fully transformed. I didn’t dare open my eyes, knowing the closing of my eyes, the flame, the image...and faith were all part of this process.

I continued to fall, knowing my body was changing rapidly. Metamorphosing. I also knew that the speed of my metamorphosis was contingent on the circumstance. A shorter drop would result in a faster transformation.

Now, I could feel my arms growing, elongating, feel my body becoming something greater than it was before. Denser, heavier. My awareness of my own body expanded instinctively, exponentially.

I was no longer what I was.

No, I was something much, much bigger.

Much greater.

My wings snapped taut, catching the air, manipulating air, using the air, and now I wasn’t so much falling as angling.

I opened my eyes.

Before me stretched the Vegas Strip, in all of its glittering, neon, sinful glory. I flapped my wings hard, instinctively, gaining altitude. Instinctively.

Keeping to the shadows in a city that never sleeps and never turns off was no easy task. And so I took it up another hundred feet or so, flapping my wings, catching hot drafts of sinful air. Yes, the wind was warm and dry and not very different from the air in southern California. That would change in a few months. In a few months, Las Vegas would go from temperate to nuclear.

Too hot for even the undead.

I flapped my wings casually, cruising above the glittering city. I circled once around the superheated laser beam emitting from the Luxor. I continued on, moving north over a cluster of world-famous hotels. The Bellagio with its intricate fountains, the Paris and its Eiffel Tower replica, the Mirage and its gardens, Treasure Island with its pirate ship.

And one flying monster. I wondered idly if the Excalibur needed a real-life dragon. It could supplement my income.

So far, people weren’t pointing into the sky and scattering like frightened rabbits before a hawk’s shadow. That was a good thing, I guess.

I caught a warm updraft and spread my wings wide and hovered high above the city of sin, staring down, using my supernaturally-enhanced vision to see not only the multitudes crowding the sidewalks, but their actual expressions. Most looked tired. Most looked drunk. There were many groups of young people, no doubt celebrating twenty-first birthdays. A handful of older types wore shorts and T-shirts and sandals. One woman was walking through the crowd bare-chested, high as kite, although not as high as
this
kite. People stopped and stared at her breasts, but for the most part, she was ignored.

Welcome to Vegas.

I saw young men handing out flyers to strip clubs. Most people tossed the flyers aside, which cluttered sidewalks and gutters, pushed along by the warm spring breeze.

I had seen enough of the lights, the gaudy hotels, the plaid tourist shorts, the filth, the degradation, the glitter—and beat my massive wings as hard as I could and shot up into the night sky. I continued flapping them, forcing the rapidly-cooling air down below me. I rose higher and higher, so high that Vegas itself was nothing more than a pinprick of light.

A
bright
pinprick of light, but a pinprick nonetheless.

Here, on the outer edges of the atmosphere, where little or no oxygen existed, I flapped idly, serenely, holding my position. My mind was mostly empty. Mostly. Images of Kingsley flitted through. Of my son with his growing strength. Of my daughter who seemed to understand that something very strange was happening in the Moon household.

I would have to tell her, too,
I thought.
Tell them both. Everything.

Up here, far above Earth, it was easy to forget that I was a mother, that I had responsibilities. Up here, high above the Earth, it was easy to forget who I was. Up here, drifting on jet-streams and updrafts, buoyed by winds unfelt and unknown by anything living, it was easy to forget I had once been human.

The wind was cold. But not so cold as to affect me in any way. I merely acknowledged the cold, like a scientist noting the cancerous effects of the latest sugar substitute in lab rats.

I spread my wings wide and rode the wind, rising and falling, listening to it thunder over my ears and flap the leathery membranes that were my wings. I did this for an unknowable amount of time, hovering high above the Earth, correcting my altitude ever-so-slightly with minute adjustments to my wings, turning my wrists this way and that, angling my arms this way and that.

This way and that, adjusting, correcting, hovering.

Later, I tucked my wings in and shot down, aiming for the bright speck of light, perhaps the brightest speck of light ever.

Las Vegas.

Chapter Twelve

I alighted on the balcony.

There, I merged with the serious-looking, dark-haired woman in the flame and, after a moment of slight disorientation, found myself standing naked again on the balcony of the MGM Grand Hotel. I often wondered what the transformation process looked like to an outsider. Did I contort and jerk like they do in the movies? Or did I transform in a blink of an eye? I always sensed that my transformation took only a few seconds, but since my eyes were always closed and focused on the flame, I would probably never know. Maybe I would transform for Kingsley one night.

Yeah, I’m a freak.

I donned the white robe I had left draped over the railing and stepped back into my room. I was just tying the terrycloth belt when I paused. My inner alarm didn’t necessarily go off, but it perked up. A slight buzzing just inside my ear.

Someone’s here,
I thought.

A shape appeared in my thoughts, something glowing—and it appeared, I was sure, directly behind me.

I was moving in an instant, turning, swooping low to the ground, and slammed into whoever was behind me so hard that I drove him into the drywall.

There, I held them up while plaster dust rained down over his shoulders and down onto my raised forearms.

A man. A very beautiful man.

Who gazed down at me with a bemused expression. He was, of course, not a man at all. He was an angel. My one-time guardian angel now turned rogue, so to speak.

I eased my grip and Ishmael dropped lightly to the floor. He shook his head and dust and smaller chunks of wall fell from his long, silver hair and broad shoulders. “Do you greet all your guests this way, Samantha?”

I dusted off my own arms. “Well, let’s just say I haven’t had a lot of luck in hotel rooms.”

If not for a slight prickling of my inner alarm, I would have been completely off-guard. And these days, with my ever expanding extra-sensory perception, someone catching me off-guard was getting harder and harder to do. Unless, of course, that someone was a rogue angel, who seemed to be making a habit of catching me unaware.

“
Not as unaware as you might think, Samantha,” he said. Unlike other immortals, Ishmael had access to my thoughts. No surprise there, since he’d been my one-time guardian angel. He finished dusting himself off and looked at me. “For the first time, you sensed me nearby. That’s quite an accomplishment, and a credit to your growing powers.”

Still, I didn’t like the implications of that statement. “So you’re around me often?”

“What can I say, Samantha? Old habits die hard.”

“
So, you’re often around me?” I repeated, digesting this news.

He nodded. “Myself, and others.”

“What others?”

“
You know some of them.”

“
Sephora,” I said, recalling the entity I had communicated with last year through automatic writing.

“
Yes. Her and others like her.”

“
Spirit guides,” I said, recalling one of my conversations with Sephora.

“
Spirit guides, deceased relatives, angels. What some would call your soul group.”

“
And you.”

“
Not officially,” he said. “Not anymore.”

“
Not since you fell.”

His eyes flashed briefly. “Not since I
chose
a different path.”

Although I couldn’t read his thoughts—which seemed damned unfair to me—I could clearly see his aura. And it pulsated around, intermixed with rich color...and deep blackness.

What had once been pure white light—loving light—was now being slowly overrun with coils of blackness so deep that it gave even me the creeps. Even now, something dark and slithery wound around his narrow torso. I watched, fascinated, as it worked its way, around and around, to eventually plunge into his heart region. I was reminded of something monstrous rising up from the ocean depths, something that had no business seeing the light. I shuddered.

“
I repulse you,” he said. The sadness in his voice was obvious.

“
What gave it away?” I said.

I suddenly wanted a cigarette.
Needed
a cigarette. I headed over to my purse, found the pack of Virginia Slims, and lit up.

Ishmael watched my every move closely. I sensed that he was used to watching me closely. That he had always watched me closely. From either afar, or nearby. He had been, after all, my guardian angel.

Of course, I use that term loosely.

That he failed his job miserably was an understatement. That he had done so purposefully was reprehensible.

“Reprehensible is such a strong word, Samantha,” he said. “I needed you to be immortal. It was, after all, the only way we could be together.”

“
You put me in harm’s way. You put my kids in harm’s way. You put anyone who ever crosses paths with me in harm’s way.”

“
Only if you do not learn to control who you are, Samantha.”

“
And I suppose you’re just the one to teach me?”

“
I can help you, Sam.”

“
Didn’t you cause this mess?”

“
I did it for love—”

“
Shove it,” I said, shaking my head.

His clothing, I noted, seemed to shift in color. One moment, his slacks were beige, then brown, then tan. Or maybe I was just going crazy.

“Not crazy, Sam. My clothing is an illusion, of course.”

“
Of course. That doesn’t sound crazy at all.”

I exhaled, and looked at him through the churning cigarette smoke. He was a beautiful man. Perhaps the most beautiful I’d ever seen. Too beautiful.

“And what about the rest of you?” I asked.

“
Illusion, of course. But I see I have chosen a favorable form.”

“
Why are you here?”

He continued smiling, and the darkness that swarmed around him—the black snakes and worms and creepy-crawly things—seemed to grow in numbers. It was as if I was seeing evil multiplying before my very eyes. Deepening, propagating. I shivered.