Maybe they should have been.

  Too late now.

  Goggles still pressed tight to my face, I dipped my head below the surface and steeled myself for what I was about to see. Maybe, just maybe, this thing would pass me by, whatever it was.

  Except all I saw was teeth.

  Massive teeth. And an open maw so wide and dark as to suggest I was plunging into a bottomless cave. What in the hell was this? A megalodon? Like the monster movie featuring the giant prehistoric shark? Yeah, maybe. Wait... the triangular head. And the long neck. Since when did sharks have necks? They didn’t.

  All of this occurred to me instantly as the creature rushed up at me in a wash of bubbles.

  My last thought was that this could be something prehistoric.

  Whatever it was, didn’t much matter, not with its jaws rushing up at me. Not with the dead look in its dinner plate-sized eye. One never wants to see such eyes. More than likely, it will be the last thing you ever see.

  And it should have been for me.

  Except I had one last preservation instinct.

  I didn’t turn and swim away. Doing so would have been my death... likely resulting from me being chomped in half.

  Something in my head—a voice that didn’t seem to be my own, a voice that seemed also familiar, one that brought back childhood memories of hearing something similar caution me from getting into a friend’s car just minutes before it crashed—told me to swim down.

  Down toward it.

  Straight down, in fact, into its open mouth.

  And as it rushed up at me, I nodded to no one in particular, and did just that. I kicked my flippers as hard as I could. I’m a good swimmer. A damn good swimmer. I know how to get leverage and use my body to make changes in direction quickly and efficiently. Well, I had never moved quicker than this.

  And so, I shot downward.

  Down into its open mouth and many rows of teeth.

  Down into Stygian blackness as the jaws closed shut behind me, nicking my foot, and losing my left flipper in the process.

  But that was hardly the worst of my problems...

  Chapter Sixteen

  What in the hell did I just see?

  Again, it reminded me of the thing I had seen in Loch Ness, back on our big family trip. Except we had gone back in time millions of years, nearly a hundred million years, in fact. Lord help anyone who accidentally pulls on the very same ‘time thread’ Allie had snagged in the middle of the loch. Truly a tear in the fabric of time.

  What we had seen—a plesiosaur, I believe it’s called—looked similar to this. Except this sucker was bigger by two or three times. Big enough to swallow a great white whole, let alone a six-foot dude and one of his flippers. Yeah, I had seen the flipper float off. It was the very same one I’m holding now in my hand.

  The vision had ended with his disappearance—mostly because that’s when he had lost the flipper. One thing I sensed was his resolve to swim down the creature’s throat, rather than being bitten in half. I had been inside a massive creature myself—a demon, in fact—and I had cut out its black heart. I knew it was possible to survive inside something; of course, I had been immortal and not super worried if I wouldn’t make it out alive. At the time, I had been determined to kill the demon and stop a war.

  Roy was very much human, though an excellent swimmer. Not sure if the swimming would help him, other than to launch him down into the creature’s mouth, and hopefully, past all those sharp teeth I had seen. According to his sister and Allie, the man had succeeded in staying alive this long. So that’s a relief. But how was he drinking and breathing? And why couldn’t Allie actually see him? She had thought the creature might be magical somehow. I didn’t know or really care. Just as long as he was alive.

  With nothing left to be gained from the flipper, I returned it to the captain, and drove a half block over to the Newport Pier.

  I had an appointment with a mermaid to keep.

  With a few minutes to spare, I grab a cronut from a local doughnut shop. Not sure if I’m a fan of the cronut, which seems a bit of an outdated fad at this point. But the shops displayed it proudly up front and I figure, what the hell. Personally, I like a good ol’ fashioned French cruller. Any flavor of frosting will do: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, maple, whatever. No frosting works, too, but what’s the point? There’s something about that rich, soft, choux dough that lights me up. And thank God I can eat food again, even if the flavor isn’t 100% there.

  Better than nothing.

  The cronut is passable. Should have gotten a damn cruller. Le sigh.

  I head out onto the pier. I’m ten minutes early. Again, not sure how a mermaid swimming over a thousand miles can accurately predict her ETA. Then again, what the hell do I know? Mermaids are new to me, though not to Kingsley. I wonder where they lived? Surely near the water. What state? Had he lived in Washington, too? Boy, there is still so much about Kingsley I need to know. Luckily, we have centuries to dig deeper. Then again, for creatures who will live for centuries and millennia, does the past matter all that much? I mean, there is just so much history at that point. Hmm. Will Kingsley and I even last that long as a couple? I see no reason why not... but together for hundreds of years? Wow, that’s enough to make anyone pause.

  And I do just that... pause near a group of fishermen. The croissant/doughnut fiasco obviously didn’t satiate my true needs: psychic energy.

  With a few minutes to spare, I siphon energy from their auras, which I can see as plain as day, despite it being day. Sure, at night or inside, the light body that surrounds that physical body would have been much brighter, but the brightness of the aura isn’t what matters. It’s the crackling energy within that I seek.

  As I do so, the aura itself bends my direction. Small trails of light make their way from them to me. Not sure where my body collects the energy, but I suspect it enters somewhere near my head area. How and where is of little concern to me. All that matters is that the system works nicely, and I no longer have to drink filthy animal blood or hurt people in the process. The only damage are yawns from the fishermen.

  Now full and humming with energy, I decide to try something. After all, I had been thinking about it for a few days now.

  I focus my attention on the fisherman closest to me. The day is bright and cool. It’s windy here on the pier, which is why most of the fishermen are wearing light jackets and beanie caps. A ball cap would likely blow off. Oops, I’m not wearing a jacket or sweater, bare arms exposed. Sometimes I forget to play the part of a human. I’m just not cold.

  The guy is about thirty, maybe twenty-eight. I guess he has nowhere to be, because he’s hunkered down, surrounded by fishing gear, and looks happy as a clam, though he’s still yawning away. Yeah, he was one of my targets. I like to hit multiple people and not take too much from any one person. He’ll quit yawning soon enough.

  At present, his head is down, and his chin is pressed into his jacket. He’s focused on something around his navel, sort of in a meditative state, while he waits for the fish to bite. He’s perfect. Head is likely somewhat clear. Can’t really stay that focused on nothing without slipping into a near-trance.

  Look at me, I command him.

  He doesn’t move. In fact, he huddles deeper into his foldout chair. Wind whips strands of hair from beneath his beanie cap. He yawns again. His fishing pole sits idly in an aluminum tube affixed to the pier. The line is taut. Somewhere down there, a fishy is considering his offering (bait). So far, no takers.

  Look at me, I command again.

  How did I mind control before? It sort of went hand-in-hand with telepathy. Truth is, I never thought much about how it worked. Slipping into someone’s mind was a thing that just happened. Now, I felt distinctly outside of his mind.

  Maybe the ability is truly lost.

  Maybe.

  I am still a vampire. Mind control is an asset to creatures such as me.

  But I’m not a blood vamp anymore.

  So what?

  I still need to take from others. As such, the ability could still be there, dormant. Then why did I lose it to begin with? Well, maybe it did go hand-in-hand with Elizabeth. Maybe her considerable power made the mind control just that much more powerful? Maybe I didn’t have to learn to use it at all. Maybe I had just piggy-backed off her strengths.

  Maybe I just had to learn it from scratch... using my own abilities, and not hers.

  Let’s call that a working theory.

  Yes, mind control sometimes made me feel like a monster. But I always made it a point to not abuse it. I was a good blood vampire, even if it had driven Elizabeth crazy. However, mind control had made my life significantly easier, especially as an investigator.

  I focused on a spot just inside his ear and thought the words:

  Look at me, dammit. Now.

  The wind picks up. My own hair is flapping crazily. Even the fishing lines all seem to vibrate in the gust. A small cloud moves over the sun, casting us all briefly in shadow. The bench I’m sitting on is old and covered in seagull poo. I had found a small, clear spot. I didn’t dare move from it.

  As the cloud moves past the sun and light shines down on the pier once again, the young man shakes his head ever so slightly, rubs his scruffy chin, and turns and looks at me.

  Sweet mama.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Roy

  It’s all too terrifying to process in the moment: massive teeth everywhere, a triangle-shaped head, a long neck.

  Really, really long neck.

  The very thing I find myself tumbling down, head over feet. Like a pinball stuck between bumpers, I ricochet down the meat tunnel. Trampoline-tight flesh insulates what’s clearly a bony throat. I imagine something akin to a giraffe or a brontosaurus, though closer to the plesiosaur in Loch Ness.

  You know, if it exists.

  And I’m thinking it might.

  Back to my waterslide from hell, I manage to quit tumbling and find myself in a free fall—along with enough water to fill a swimming pool. Luckily, I had taken a big gulp of air just prior to my mad dash into the mouth of doom. One other thing I’m good at: holding my breath.

  So, I do just that. It’s about the only thing I have control over—that, and shielding my face with my forearms and elbows as I fall.

  I finally splash down into a pool of tepid water laced with pockets of icy cold. More water pours down on me until finally, even that stops. When it does, I gasp for air and am damn relieved to discover there’s a little of it down here... wherever “here” is.

  The creature’s stomach?

  Yeah, probably.

  So that just happened.

  I know, of course, that I’m in trouble, in more ways than one. First off, there is no way I am going to climb back out of that esophagus, not with all of those quivering muscles ready to swallow me back down. Second, it’s pitch-black in here, though my dive watch does give off a faint glow.

  Unless I am mistaken, the creature is presently swimming down in a sustained dive. I know there’s a sort of sea cliff off the coast of Southern California, one that allows for extremely deep dives.

  Then again, I could be in bed having the mother of all bad dreams.

  God, how I wish it was so.

  But no dream of mine had ever had this much realism—and this much continuous, moment-by-moment cohesion. Had this been a dream, surely by now I would be riding atop the creature, or talking to it, or finding out that I wasn’t in a foul-smelling stomach but in Dracula’s lair... or at a Costco.

  You know, the typical craziness of most dreams.

  But there’s been no break in this scene.

  I’m really here, I think. I’m really inside this thing’s stomach, whatever it is.

  Not that I would live to tell the tale, but wow, do I have a story to tell. That, and it’s quite obvious that those old wives’ tales told by sailors are true. There really are monsters in the oceans.

  I can attest to that. Boy, can I.

  Speaking of smells... wow. Foul doesn’t come close to describing it. Putrid, perhaps. Did this thing ever digest its food, or did it just sit here in its gut? Scratch that, the longer it takes to digest, the better for me. Last thing I need is to find myself deep in its intestines, getting broken down by whatever digestive juices this thing’s stomach squirts.

  Speaking of which, something seems to be heating up my dive suit, and wow, my nicked foot stings like a mother. Did I lose a toe? Or more?

  No wonder. I am suddenly certain I’m swimming in a combination of fresh and old seawater and bile.

  And whoa! What just bumped against my hip?

  It had been alive, I was sure of it.

  I yelp and move out of the way, my feet finding purchase on some type of floor. The creature’s stomach lining, surely.

  A sudden jolt slings me to the side, slamming me against a slimy wall. I’m presuming the creature doesn’t like the sensation of me walking on its stomach, despite the water/bile combo keeping most of my weight buoyed.

  A splash. A few splashes. The creature’s sudden movement awakens whatever other creatures have lain dormant in here, accepting the imminent death-by-stomach-acid that awaits them. Still, their thrashing is languid, half-hearted. Judging by the warmth that spreads over my wet suit and the stinging pain in my foot, they are in for an agonizing demise.

  And so am I, quite frankly. Probably better to have been munched in half than be digested.

  But, I’m alive and not too injured. I have my wits about me, and even a little bit of light from my watch. Meaning, I have a fighting chance. At least, that’s what I tell myself now. For all I know, I have zero chance of getting out of this alive.

  Can’t think about that now.

  I hold up my watch with its muted glow before me, and I see nothing but swirling, greenish gas. Okay, gross. There is a lot of space in here—and thus, air. How much oxygen, I don’t know, but I am breathing. I seriously don’t want to suffocate in this thing. With luck, with each of the creature’s gulps, the air might replenish itself. Unless the damn thing belches. If it does... hmm... maybe I could ride that belch out like a surfer rides a wave.

  Maybe.

  For now, I need to get my wounded foot out of this water/acid cesspool.

  As I trudge along the stomach cavity, I come across deceased bits of God knows what. Scratch that, I can see what they are. Chunks of tuna and seal and something that might have been a polar bear. I jump at a sudden thrashing behind me. Something is in its death throes. Or maybe it’s swimming toward me. Wouldn’t that be a kicker—death by being eaten alive, twice.

  I get an idea. I start gathering some of the bio-remains, grabbing hold of a flipper here, a fluke there, a dolphin head, and the torso of what I think is a dead sea lion. I gather them up, using what little glow my watch provides, and make a sort of floating raft of the monster’s dinner remains.

  I climb on top.

  Okay, that works surprisingly well. I should be okay until the creature makes another rapid shift, turn or dive. Hopefully, it is satiated. Hopefully, nothing else comes pouring down on top of my head. Like, say a chunk of whale. That might do me in, burying me under hundreds of pounds of unmovable flesh.

  And so, I sit here on my bobbing raft, confused, shocked, and still in total disbelief. That is, until the pain in my foot brings me back to my senses.

  How the hell am I going to get out of here?

  And that’s when I notice my watch.

  “What in the hell?” I whisper, voice echoing in the fleshy chamber.

  ***

  Sitting on my meat raft, I use some of the seawater still dripping down the esophagus to clean the wound in my foot.

  Turns out it’s not that bad. I got off easy. I could just as easily be cradling a bloody stump. Instead, it’s a clean cut on the side of my foot. Probably needs stitches, and it’s still bleeding fairly profusely. Still, all toes are intact, thank God. I clean it the best I can with what I hope is the cleanest available water and not something mixed with bile. Once done, I ease the flipper off my right foot and slip it over my injured left one, giving it some protection, though I can already feel the blood sloshing around inside the rubber.

  With that done, I turn my attention back to my watch.

  If I’m not mistaken—and maybe I hit my head on a back molar on the way in—but my watch seems to be going backward in time. Obviously, it got bonked on the way in, too, though I don’t remember slamming into anything very hard. True, my trip down the gullet was akin to a water park ride from hell, but I don’t remember actually crashing into anything substantial. I even managed to miss the bigger floating chunks waiting in the stomach.

  I see the watch face hasn’t cracked and is still intact. No damage that I can see, certainly no water under the glass. Though my watch has a digital screen mode, I have it in analog mode right now. And there are my second, minute, and hour hands clearly winding backward—and quickly, too.

  Wait.

  I blink and rub my eyes. Yes, the manual date is flipping backward in time, too. According to my watch, I’m now in the year 2015, now 2014, 2013...

  I watch another year go by, then another, and another.

  What in the H.G. Wells is going on here?

  Something again splashes nearby. Something big. Another splash. Is it coming closer? Crap. I hold my watch out toward the direction of the sound and see something moving through the muck. A triangle slashing through the darkness.

  Unbelievable. A flippin’ shark is coming toward me. An actual living shark... living in this thing’s stomach. Stalking me.

  Lord help me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The restaurant at the end of the pier had been torn down a few months ago.

  From what a chatty old man next to me says, a decision from the city council will decide the fate of this intriguing space. Another restaurant? If so, what kind? Semi-fast food? A nice seafood place, complete with a bar? Or perhaps turn the space into a seafaring museum? His vote is for a quaint little coffee shop, though he could even stomach another Starbucks, just as long as he can sip his coffee, enjoy the view, and stay out of the wind.