Chapter 1

One minute I'm bending over to unlock my car door, I smell something foul, and then all I see are exploding stars. Now I'm scrunched up in a tiny, noisy, black hot pit.

Where am I? I could probably figure it out if only my head would stop pounding...

Whoa, just fuzzed out. I'm back now, still in the hot black place with the constant roaring, but the headache is gone. Thirsty as the devil. Muscles are cramping and there seems to be dull pointy things under me.

Managed to get a look at my watch. Crystal is cracked. Must have taken a harder fall than I thought. Dimly, I make out the face - 3:45. About eight hours I've been here...

Blacked out again. Only 15 minutes this time. My head is clear and I realize that I'm in a car trunk. By the smell, it's my own car.

I feel the car turn and the ride gets really noisy and rough. As the dust starts to filter into the trunk, I realize that I'm on a dirt road.

The $64,000 dollar question is ' "Why grab me?" Why kidnap an old newspaper hack. It's not like I've run with any major stories recently- okay, okay - in the last 5 years, and I really haven't pissed off anyone recently. Fer chrissakes, I dig up dirt and weird items for supermarket tabloids.

I'm still wracking my brain for an answer when I feel the car slow and stop. The silence is broken only by the pinging of the cooling car engine. Then I hear the doors open and footsteps coming to the rear.

My stomach tenses as the trunk lid is raised. "For better or worse, here it comes," I think. One look at my captors' faces and I know -- Yep, it's worse.

Gnarled foreheads, big teeth, bad breath ... vampires, two of them. But I'm still alive, so that means they have more control than I've seen in the past. But, now I know how take-out sushi feels like when you open the bag.

Incredibly strong hands lift me out of the trunk, and I take the opportunity to study my captors. My newshound instincts kick in: Male, mid to late twenties, one Caucasian, one latino/asian, medium height, yellow eyes, fangs. Gonna be a loooong night.

"Come on meat, get moving," the white one slurred.

"Where?"

The white one's pointing hand is punctuated by a strong shove from his buddy.

Stumbling, I head toward what looks like a sheer cliff about 500 feet away. The uncanny coolness and dryness of the air tells me we are in the deep desert, probably the high country. By the looks of sky, about two hours until sunrise.

Definitely not good. I wonder if I'm to be their bed time snack as we reach the cliff wall. Looking up, I can make out that the darker shadows above me are openings in the cliff. This must be some type of Indian cliff dwelling.

I step into what appears to be a cave lit by torches. The back of the room is curtained off with thick fabric. I am shoved through the curtain into the larger part of the cave. This section has been prepared for human (inhuman?) occupation. Looking around, I see that the room has been decorated in an understated, lavish style with large elegant furniture. Across one wall is a massive bookcase that must be thirty feet long and 8 feet tall. A reading desk with an opened volume sits in front of the bookcase.

I pick up the book and look at the title, "The Translated Work of the Apostle Judas Iscariot." Definitely some heavy reading here. Glancing at the bookshelves I realize that I am looking at some of the most arcane occult titles that I have heard of. Let's see, The Book of Uncounted Sorrows, Nosferatu - The Untold Story, Lycanthropy and You, Taming the Beast Within, Witchcraft for Dummies, Dr. Spock's Guide to Child Rearing ... definite demonic volumes.

Hearing a slithering noise behind me, I turn around to see an honest-to-God throne. The strange thing is that although the room is well lit, shadows seem to pool around the throne. And the slithering sound that I heard is coming from the throne. I am in deep, deep doo-doo.

"We have brought him as you commanded, sire," said white fang.

"Excellent, excellent. Good work boys," came the hissing reply. The voice was a combination of a beautiful deep tenor, and a rattlesnake. Weirder and weirder. The figure moved away from the throne. Moved, not walked. Looking down I realize that the figure has no legs, correction one leg. One long, long leg. Correction, not a leg, that's its body. (I must have been hit harder than I thought.)

The figure is wearing a long hooded cloak that trails on the floor and extends a scaly hand toward me.

"Mr. Kolchak, allow me to introduce myself. I am Richard Wilkins, at your service."

Gliding over to a small table, he picks up my wallet and starts rifling through it. "I see that you are still with the Independent News Service in Chicago. I thought that service was bought out and closed down by an Australian concern after you reported that the aborigines were involved in some sort of demon worship scam."

"Uh, yeah, but the Enquirer resurrected us about a year later. Said that the public can take Elvis shopping at a 7-11 better than demon worship," I stuttered.

"Actually, the abos weren't into demon worship, that was their effort to do a mind melding to regain control of their hunting grounds from the foreign invaders. If you hadn't interrupted, they would have succeeded."

How did he know this? I never wrote about it. I had gone to the Outback after hearing about animals doing strange things; water buffalo behaving like tame dogs, birds flying in delta formations, etc. What I found was evidence that the abos had a semi-telepathic link with each other and the animals. A Wise One had arisen, and convinced the rest of the bushmen that if they united, they could push out the white colonists by using the animals as a living bulldozer.

Unfortunately, while trying to get a picture of the event, I fell out of a tree into the middle of the melding.

"Please, Mr. Kolchak, sit down. You and I have much to talk about. That's all for now, boys. Why don't you get a snack before turning in, and make sure you brush your teeth. Can't have you getting cavities, you know."

Normally this conversation would have had me in stitches, except that it was being held between an eleven foot talking something in a hood and two vampires. I guess some things just go beyond strange.