I was dressed in full jogging gear, sweats and sweatshirt. No reflective shoes. I had been pulled over once too often by cops who had advised against a woman running so late at night. I wondered if they would give the same advice to a vampire. Anyway, I kept to the shadows, avoiding the cops and everyone else.
I kept up a healthy pace. In fact, my healthy pace was nearly a flat-out sprint. An un-godly pace that I could keep up for hours on end, and sometimes I did. Sure, my muscles hurt afterward, forcing me to soak in my hot tub. But I love the speed.
Harbor Blvd sped past me. I breathed easily. The air was suffused with mist and dew. My arms pumped rhythmically at my side, adding balance to my churning legs. Harbor was empty of all traffic and life. I made a right down Chapman, headed past the high school and junior college. Streets swept past me, I dodged smoothly around lamp poles, bus benches, and metal box thingies that had something to do with traffic lights. I think. Anyway, there seemed to be a lot of those metal box thingies.
I didn't need water and I didn't need to pause for air. It was an unusual sense of freedom. To run without exhaustion. The city was quiet and silent. The wind passed rapidly over my ears.
I was a physical anomaly. Enhanced beyond all reason. My husband once called me a super hero after seeing an example of my strength and marveling at it.
There was a half moon hanging in the sky. I thought of Kingsley and his obsession with moons. It stood to reason that a werewolf would be obsessed with moons. I ran smoothly past an open-all-night donut shop. The young Asian donut maker looked up, startled, but just missed me. The smell of donuts was inviting, albeit nauseating.
A werewolf?
I shook my head and chuckled at the absurdity of it. But there it was, staring me in the face. Or, rather, he had stared me in the face. So what was happening around here? Since when was Orange County a haven for the undead? I wondered what else was out there. Surely if there were werewolves and vampires there might be other creatures that went bump in the night, right? Maybe a ghoul or two? Goblins perhaps? Maybe my trainer Jacky was really an old, cantankerous leprechaun.
I smiled.
Thinking of Kingsley warmed my heart. This concerned me. I was a married woman. A married woman should not feel such warmth toward another man, even if the other man was a werewolf.
That is, not if she wanted to stay married. And I really, really wanted to stay married.
Perhaps I felt connected to Kingsley, bonded by our supernatural circumstances. We had much in common. Two outcasts. Two creatures ruled by the night, in one way or another.
A car was coming. I ducked down a side street and moved along a row of old homes. Heavy branches arched overhead. With my enhanced night vision, I deftly avoided irregularities in the sidewalk�Dcracks and upheavals�Dplaces where tree roots had pushed up against the concrete. To my eye, the night was composed of billions and billions of dancing silver particles. These silver particles illuminated the darkness into a sort of surreal molten glow, touching everything.
I turned down another street, then another. Wind howled over my ears. I entered a tougher part of town, running along a residential street called Bear. Bear opens up to a bigger street called Lemon. I didn't give a crap how tough Bear Street was.
Yet another side benefit: unlimited courage.