CHAPTER ONE

My eyes can’t see,

What is wrong with me.

My world is spinnin’ round,

And I’m lost again.

Lost again.

Life don’t care if you’re scared. (face to face)

Life don’t care if everybody’s dead. (face to face)

Los Angeles.

The city has many names. The Lady of Light, The City of Angels, are simply two of them. But those two catch the nature of the city quite well. From a view above, the lights of the city, which never sleep, spread out across the hills and through the Valley like the trailing wings and gown of an angel. And like a woman, the city can be fickle, oh so incredibly fickle…

I like the city best during the middle of the night, or the very early morning. There is a hush that hangs over it, as though it were draped in soft velvet, the pile deep, as though you could dig your fingers into it like thick fur, pulling it to you, clasping it close to your body for comfort, safety, satisfaction.

The sky in the early morning hours is a myriad of dark, rich colors, from the dark midnight blue of the dome above your head, to the richly intense indigo purple at the horizon, framed between the up-stretched tops of palms, their fronds graceful in the motionless air. Out to the sides and somewhat above the horizon the faint bands of color begin; a streak of burgundy, a blush of crimson, and perhaps even a blurred smear of a deep orange.

The air is still, quiet, as though the city held its breath, waiting for dawn to appear over that horizon before it can truly spring into life with the thousands of people rushing… rushing for work, rushing to dazzle, to weave illusion worthy of the greatest of mages, for Hollywood dwells in the city as well… rushing to breathe… rushing to death.

How do I know this city so well? Because I live here. I see the darker underbelly, the glittering tinseled icing, and the thick morass in between.

My name is Leigh Bain. I’m a private investigator. I chased a suspect here before I finally managed to kill him. I’d not intended to kill him as I did. I’d wanted to bring him in for a proper trial, but he didn’t allow me that option.

In those last moments, when he held the stake poised over Leon’s chest, muscles tense in the infinitesimal seconds as he raised that shaft of polished, pointed wood to bring it plunging down through the heart of the man I love; I tightened my grip on the short curved sword I’d drawn, then swung hard in a glittering arch that took the man’s head off his shoulders.

Leon gasped, as the stake fell harmlessly against his chest, and the bad man… had simply crumbled into dust, scattering across Leon… and my feet. It was poetic justice that the villain had suffered the fate he’d intended for my honey.

Right now, you’re probably wondering if I’ve gone a bit mad… But no, not really. The bad guy was a vampire. My honey, Leon, is also a vampire, but a good one! My mother was part Sidhe and my father, I’d discovered less than a year ago, was a shape-shifting dragon. So I’m not quite human myself.

Leon convinced me to move here from Atlanta, Georgia and here I stay.

The actual move took me the major part of a month. I’d driven back to Atlanta after my sojourn in Los Angeles, so that I could close or arrange for the sale of my condo, the Dojo where I taught the ancient martial art of swords called Iaido, and my private investigator office.

Oh, I wasn’t getting out of the business… It’s what I do and I’m good at it. A new friend offered me a partnership with his P.I. firm in L.A.; so I had a job waiting for me when I arrived back in the glittering West Coast city.

I also had a place to live. Leon owned a small two-bedroom house in Santa Monica. At least it had been small when I’d left for Atlanta, but I’ll get to that part.

Back in my condo in Atlanta, I called Betty Cutherbertson. She worked in the small Realty office in Ludowici, Ga. Yeah, it was a quite a distance, but she’d been superb when I’d needed to sell the house of my late boy-friend Darian. He was one of the people killed by the nasty bad vampire I’d finally dusted in Los Angeles.

So I called, and I packed, and I made arrangements. I also started to wonder if I was losing my mind. I’d been back in Atlanta only a few days when the first dead animal showed up on the front entrance of my condo. It was a squirrel.

I’d opened my front door, heading out to the local storage facility to purchase more packing boxes, and the small, limp animal lay just across the threshold. I barely managed to catch myself in time to avoid stepping on it. Making a face, I set my sandwich sized purse and car keys on the floor of the foyer, going to the kitchen for a paper towel.

Wrapping the poor little animal up in the paper sheet, I closed and locked the door behind me, then looked for the maintenance man. He was sitting at the desk in his small office storage space. I often wondered how he managed to accomplish anything with his feet always on his desk, but the postage-stamp yards stayed neat.

“Carl, I found this poor little dead squirrel on my doorstep. Can you bury him somewhere for me please? Maybe a neighbor’s cat killed him… If you know of any of them that let their cats wander around, you might let them know what their ‘little darlings’ are doing.” I offered the paper towel wrapped bundle. Carl looked at me like I was trying to hand him a live, spitting cobra.

“Uhhhh, you can just toss it in that trashcan around the corner, Ms. Bain.”

“Carl. It might be simply a squirrel, but it deserves better than a trash can! “Geeze! It’s dead already. I even wrapped it up. Just take it and bury it, okay?”

Rather grudgingly, Carl hefted his skinny butt from the chair and grasped the edges of the paper, quickly laying it on the ground. Only then did he reach for a shovel. “Alright. I s’ppose I can dig it a little hole somewhere if you insist.”

“I insist. And check on the neighbor’s cats. I’d hate to walk out the door and step on something like this.”

That accomplished, I once again headed for my car.