Moon Child

One moment Kingsley was pummeling the son-of-a-bitch, and the next the French bastard was gone, having squirmed his way free, moving quickly.

Now the two men faced off. Kingsley, I saw, was badly beaten up, his clothing completely shredded. For all of Kingsley’s might, he couldn’t keep up with the speed of the Frenchman.

"Until we meet again," said the Frenchman, and in a blink, his clothing, including that damn bow tie, burst from his body. Before us was a massive winged creature. Next to me, Leland squeaked loud enough to be heard in the physical world and huddled next to me, afraid even in death. Kingsley stood unmovingly before the winged creature, taking great, heaving breaths.

A moment later, the creature’s monstrous wings flapped once, twice, and then he was airborne. A few flaps later and he had burst through the top of the dome, raining wood and brick around us. Kingsley immediately shielded me, protecting me with his thick body. As he did so, blood from his wounded face dripped over me.

He looked down at me with wide, amber eyes. "I’m so sorry, Samantha. I’m so very sorry."

And that’s when I blacked out.

Chapter Forty-eight

I saw the yellow light first.

Two glowing disks that hovered in front of me. One of the lights was picking at me, digging into my shoulder, causing me excruciating pain. It was the pain that had forced me back to consciousness.

I opened my eyes slowly and saw two faces hanging over me. One of them belonged to Detective Hanner, my female vampire friend, and the other was an unknown man. The unknown man was finishing up working on my shoulder. He picked up a metal dish and held it up, rattling it. Hanner peered inside. "Good work, doc."

He said, "I would normally be stitching her up but, as you can see, her wound is already healing."

"Again, thank you, doctor. Speak to no one as you leave."

"Of course." He nodded, grabbed a small handbag, and left through the back door of an ambulance.

"This is beginning to be a habit," said Hanner. She was, of course, referring to one of our last meetings when she and I had ended up in an ambulance outside of an Indian casino in Simi Valley. "And don’t try to speak, Sam. Doctor Hector tells me that your throat is shredded to hell. Even for us that will take a few hours to heal. Oh, and don’t worry. He’s on our payroll, so to speak. So your secret is safe with him."

Full comprehension of where I was or what was going on hadn’t fully settled in. I heard voices everywhere. Shouting. One woman crying. A man crying, too. Sirens.

"You see, there are a few carefully selected mortals out there who work with us. The good doctor is one such man."

Why he would help, I had no idea, but I couldn’t think about that now. She saw my eyes shift towards the sound of nearby crying.

"Yes, we’re still at the Mission Inn. The boy you saved is with his parents, and we can only thank you. You are proving to be quite the superhero, Samantha." She leaned over and inspected my throat. "Nasty business, made worse because it was a silver bullet. But it will heal soon enough."

I heard more sirens, some nearby, and she saw the alarm in my eyes. "Not to worry, Sam. We’re already forgotten by the Riverside Police. I have a few talents of my own, and one of them is, let’s just say, persuasion. As far as the police are concerned, we’re just another ambulance waiting to help."

I soon recognized another voice from outside, coming closer.

Hanner reached over and patted my knee. "I imagine you’re going to want to speak with Kingsley." She smiled warmly and touched the back of my hand. "Well, you know what I mean."

As she left, Kingsley Fulcrum and his massive bulk eased into the ambulance.

Chapter Forty-nine

"Doctor Hector tells me you can’t speak, maybe that’s just as well," said Kingsley. He had eased down at the foot of the gurney. I think my end of the metal bed had risen an inch or two.

Kingsley was hunched into a sort of cannonball, his meaty knees up around his chest. He looked uncomfortable and didn’t seem to know what to do with his thick arms. He was dressed in another shirt, clearly one that wasn’t his own, since that had been bloodied and shredded. His own wounds had long since healed.

He reached out and touched my right ankle which was poking out of the thick blanket covering me. I flinched and withdrew it. He nodded to himself. "I deserved that. I deserve, in fact, for you to never talk to me again. I should consider myself lucky that I have you here, alone, in this small place, so that you are more or less forced to hear my apology."

I was still in some pain, as the effects of the silver bullet still lingered. Perhaps there were trace elements of silver still lodged in my muscle tissue? Lord, I hoped not. Or, more than likely, my actual muscles and tendons and flesh supernaturally mending themselves.

Lord, I’m such a freak.

Kingsley’s longish hair spilled over his collar. Known as a maverick lawyer, Mr. Fulcrum propagated the image by keeping his hair long and thick and lustrous. Then again, maybe his flowing locks were a result of his own particular wolfish condition. Now, for the first time in a long time, Kingsley looked at me so tenderly that my heart heaved.

"You took a helluva beating tonight, kid. I’m sorry you had to go through that alone. I should have been there earlier to help." He made a move to pat my ankle again, but stopped himself. This time I wasn’t so sure I would have moved my leg. "You deserved better. You deserved a friend who supported you through thick and thin, good and bad. Who am I to tell you how to run your life, how to deal with your dying boy? Who am I to play God from afar? You made the best choice you could, and I should have been there to support you. My God, I’m an ass, and I almost lost you forever because of it. Look at you, babe. You can’t even talk. Your poor throat. And you did this all to help another boy, risking life and limb and the very medallion you need to help your son, and I couldn’t even be there for you."

Now I did something that surprised even me. I leaned forward and took his warm hand. It took both of mine to comfortably hold one of his, and we gripped each other like this for a few minutes.

I wanted to tell him that he did come, that he did help me, that he did save my ass, but I couldn’t speak, nor could I penetrate Kingsley’s thoughts. An immortal, he was closed to me.

He chuckled lightly, running his thick thumb over the back of my hand. "I bet you’re wondering how I came to be there on time. Well, the on time part was dumb luck. The being here part, not so much. I realized I had made an egregious error when I had mentioned the medallion to Dominique." He caught my raised eyebrows. "Oh, you didn’t know his name?"