There's nothing like being naked in the desert.
Seriously. With my clothing folded on the hood of my van, I stepped across the cool dirt, picked my way through a tangle of elderberry and carefully stepped around a patch of beavertail cactus. I moved past the general area where the body had been found and headed deeper into the empty hills.
The desert scents were heady and intoxicating. Sage and juniper and creosote. Pungent, sharp and whispery. The desert sand itself seemed to have a scent all its own, too. Something ancient that hinted at death, at life, of survival and of distant memories. This place, so close to civilization, yet so far removed, too, smelled as it had for eons, for millenniums. The sand, I knew, was sprinkled with the bones of the dead. Dead vermin, dead coyotes, dead anything and everything that ever ventured into these bleak hills.
I continued through the empty landscape. I was alone. I could sense it, see it, feel it.
I moved over springy, green grass that stood little chance once the brief winter rains ended, once the heat set in again. Southern California is mostly desert, and never is it more apparent than in these barren hills.
The moon was nearly full. Uh oh. That meant Kingsley would be, ah, indisposed for a few days.
My body felt strong. As strong as the wind that had now whipped my hair into a frenzy. Sometimes I felt elemental, too. Tied to the days and nights, to the sun and earth. Tied to blood.
Elemental.
Like a dark fairy. A dark fairy with bat wings.
I headed deeper into the desert, following a natural path that might have been a stream bed in wetter times. The rock underfoot was loose, although I rarely lost my balance. Down I went, down the slope, following the rock-strewn path, until before me a deep blackness opened up. A ravine.
I stopped, breathing in the cool, desert air, although these days I no longer needed much air. I opened and closed my hands, feeling stronger than I ever had. Then again, I always feel like that, each and every night. Stronger than I ever had.
I continued on, skirting a copse of stunted milkwoods along the edge of the ravine. I felt a pair of eyes watching me. I turned my head, looked up. There, a coyote sitting high atop a nearby boulder, eyes glowing yellow in the night. Its eyes, amazingly, like Kingsley's. Now I saw more movement from around the boulder. Heard claws clicking, scratching. More coyotes. I could smell them, too. Intoxicatingly fresh blood wafted from their musky coats. They had just feasted on a recent kill.
My stomach growled.
I cursed and moved on as the pack watched me silently, warily, keeping their distance. Soon, I reached what I had been searching for: the cliff's edge. Here, light particles swirled frenetically, seemingly caught in the updraft of wind gusts that moaned over crevasses and caves and outcroppings of rock.
My toes curled over the edge. Loose sand and rock tumbled into the ravine. Behind me, I heard the coyotes turn and leave.
I listened to the wind moving over the land, to the insects scurrying and buzzing, to my own growling stomach. I inhaled the last of the lingering, haunting scent of blood before the coyotes were too far off for even my enhanced senses.
I looked out over the ledge. The cliff dropped straight down, disappearing into blackness, although I could see an outcropping of rock about halfway down. I would have to avoid that.
I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. If my life hadn't been so weird over these past seven years, I might have been surprised to find myself standing naked at the edge of a cliff, in the high deserts outside of Orange County.
But now weirdness was the norm, and so I just stood there, head tilted back a little, hair whipping in the wind, hands slightly outstretched, until the flame appeared in my thoughts.
Within the flame appeared something hideous...and beautiful. The creature I would become.
With that thought planted firmly in mind, I leaped from the cliff's edge and out into the night.