Couldn't count on Hector Nightwine for the job; he had an addictive profit motive. I'd need my new beau, Ric Montoya, to make sure I was dead and buried and kept that way. Ric had his unusual ways with the dead, but our relationship is anything but lifeless.
Bela was waiting, polite, his caped back to me, bare gray hand still extended. The other wore a white glove.
I put my own pale hand into that dead, ashen flesh. Icy. Icky.
Dracula turned slowly to face me, his arms lifting his cloak into black wings again. With those "wings," he clasped me to the formal front of his evening dress, the starched white shirt. His cloak curled around me, enclosing me in the scent of mothballs, must and cold decay.
With a swoop and a whoosh, I felt us break the "ground barrier" and fly through the window to soar into the warm night air. His arms remained around me, but the cloak folds unfurled, fanning out like giant wings as we sped through the night sky. I eyed the gorgeous glitter of Las Vegas a hundred and fifty stories below.
Being in Dracula's arms felt like waltzing with a marble pillar; his skin and bones formed one hardened, heartless surface. It was odd to fly vertically, as if we stood on an invisible floor, but it certainly eased my horizontal phobia, if not the acrophobia any human being with a brain would feel in this situation.
The wind chilled my ears. I curled my toes to keep my mules from falling off and braining some unlucky tourist below.
I distracted myself during the terrifying flight by wondering who could send Dracula as an errand boy. Certainly not mobster Cesar Cicereau of the Gehenna Hotel-Casino and werewolf syndicate. I wasn't sure from our last encounter whether he now preferred to forget me instead of tearing my throat out, but I was pretty sure he'd never want to hire me.
The Strip lights below had dimmed. We were dropping toward a square black blot in the lightscape. I squinched my eyes shut, sure we would smack hard into that rectilinear bull's-eye.
Instead my soles touched roof, the dangling heels first, then the toes. Note to self: Never wear mules for night flights with the dead. Nun-like lace-up oxfords would have been better. At least Drac and I were once more on solid ground.
But whose solid ground?
Dracula slowly loosened his custody, but kept his hands on me, now both gloved-how did he do that?-in a waltz position. Did every supernatural in Vegas want to cha-cha-cha with me?
Listen, pal, Irma tried to tell him, these Irish gams only do jigs, not waltzes with weirdoes. She was wrong about that; I'd waltzed with Snow, weird only in the ancient demonic definition of word. He was the sexy longhaired rock-star owner of the Inferno Hotel and purveyor of the "Brimstone Kiss," an after-show perk he bestowed on groupies who became enslaved at one touch of his ice-white lips. Rumor had it he was an albino vampire, the obverse of my current partner. Both of them were deeply unwanted on my dance card, even though Snow's lock of white hair-turned-silver-familiar was still guarding my throat.
Dracula swept me into a stately gliding circle. "A little movement warms the blood after a chilling night flight."
That line was almost worse than his classic "I do not drrrink…vine."
"I'm not dressed for the Creature Feature Cotillion," I told him. "Let's go see the Master."
"He is not so civil… and dashing as Dracula."
"But he is the Master, right? You don't want to cut him out."
Dracula's face gleamed with anticipation. Then the calculated look faded. "I live only to serve. For now."
Master, whoever he was, had better watch his front, especially the carotid arteries.
Despite the probable danger, this outing was fascinating to an investigator. I considered CinSims as animated movie posters, in a way, able to walk and talk, but that was it. If I'd thought about it, they could do a lot more or they'd never be in demand at brothels. Although I'd heard that some human sex partners could be pretty lifeless…
Luckily, I'd lost my virginity right here in Sin City, with a guy who could tease an orgasm out of a corpse. I was only slightly harder to win over. During those literally magical minutes, Ric and I had accidentally tapped the borrowed emotions of the Sunset Park lovers killed during their most ecstatic moments. A little paranormal passion by proxy had not hurt one bit.
But I didn't know that CinSims could freaking fly! And with me along. Apparently, if the CinSim was gifted with paranormal skills in the originating film, those abilities carried over to the zombie reincarnation. That made the rumors of a brewing CinSim insurrection pretty scary. I mean, think: Godzilla loose on the Strip.
"I must leave you," Dracula announced dramatically, bowing to kiss my hand. "My task is done."
With that he walked to the end of the flat roof and jumped off.
"Wait!" I ran to the edge, seeing mostly dead black below, with a smattering of streetlights and signs.
Then I spotted the large humped figure rushing straight down like a beetle, just as Jonathan Harker described his host's creepy manner of egress from his Transylvanian castle in Bram Stoker's classic novel. I watched Dracula's form become one with the dark street below. And where, pray, was I to go?
The usual answer to that in an uncaring world was, "To Hell!"
And in post-Millennium Revelation Las Vegas, it was all too often the literal truth.
Chapter Two
I explored the roof on foot, vertical and a slave of gravity again, thank God.
The surface tar was overlaid with gravel. Occasional air-conditioning units poked up in knee-high hummocks just the right height to trip me in the dark. They were humming away, so the building was in use and occupied.
I circled until I found a larger hummock, the sort of inset entry you find to a storm cellar in Kansas. What it was in post-Millennium Revelation Las Vegas, I hadn't a clue. It could have been the low road to a crypt.
Okay. What does the alert investigator do? She walks down into the dark and finds out.
Mules, do your duty! Irma offered a small cry of encouragement to my footwear. Iam so glad we are not wearing your Wicked Witch of the West spike heels for this outing.
Listen to the born spike freak, I sassed her back. You'd wear heels to a golf course.
The steps were steep and I hadn't thought to bring along a high-beam flashlight. What woman would expect Dracula to dump her off in the dark like undelivered mail, without even one courtly swipe at her circulatory system?
But once on level flooring, my humble mules were able to shuffle me into a vaguely lit area. The metal door to the service stairs was chained shut with a sign reading Building Condemned: Do Not Use affixed with rusted screws. A search revealed no other access but an air conditioning shaft grille. Spotlighted by a distant neon sign, I could see it was enameled white, but now grimed a dusky gray. I was able to shake it free after further loosening the screws with my fingernails. What shoddy maintenance work! Probably hadn't been inspected in decades.