I pushed away from Sansouci, took a deep breath, and waited for him to face me. Quick came to my side, giving that low gargled growl that meant business.
"They're gone." Sansouci sounded as surprised as I must have looked.
And he looked human again, his face everyday stoic, handsome enough to set Irma's heart a-pitter-patter.
Mine was still doing the tarantella in my chest. "You looked like a vision from a nightmare."
He shrugged his big shoulders modestly-complimented!
"Not your nightmares, Delilah, but I'd bet you have some doozies. We just encountered something new under the Las Vegas sun. Or moon."
He glanced at the sky. The moon had waned to half.
"Then these creatures weren't-"
"Not werewolves. Demon pariah dogs, maybe," he said. "At best."
"And at worst?"
"Some new deadly shapeshifters in town. Stronger than wolves even. I'd guess some freakish hybrid. Jackal or hyena in them, maybe."
"Those are native to these parts?"
"No more than you are."
"And you have no idea who, what or why?"
"I'm not the intrepid investigator. You need me any more?"
I wanted to flash on that last assumption, the implication that I'd needed him at all. "Nope. We're fine without you."
"For now." He bent to take my hand. Quick leaped up, growling. But Sansouci only raised it to the pale moonlight. "One scratched your wrist. Better have that tended by a more-than-mortal doctor. Never know what hidden dangers supernaturals may be harboring. I doubt they disintegrated. They were just called off. For a while."
He bent to kiss the top of my hand. I smelled his breath as his smile seemed to graze my face, my lips. It reeked of white chocolate and raspberry and scotch, not blood. As if none of this furious slaughter had happened.
I turned to regard Quick, who was licking his silver ruff into place and looking super satisfied. When I looked back, Sansouci was gone.
I held up my wrist. The skin was already red and puffy, infected. God knows what venom those bloodthirsty scavengers carried.
Quick's front legs stretched up my body so he could wrap his long, warm tongue around my wrist, as if following Sansouci's directions. Who's the best holistic healer in Las Vegas? Dr. Doggie Howser.
My skin felt a rush of heat, followed by icy cold. My wound had been cauterized, then flash-frozen in an instant, like a CinSim zombie. A subtle green tinge to my vision vanished, I'd taken it for a ring around the moon, not a noxious fog rising from my wound.
"Are you all right?" I asked my wonder dog.
Quicksilver's snout wrinkled with distaste, and then his long pink tongue rolled out for an evening stroll as he grinned.
He was fine. Sansouci was fine.
Too bad I wasn't fine. I was puzzled and worried. And the top of my hand still tingled from a bloodless kiss of Albino Vampire.
Chapter Twenty-three
I drove Dolly home to the Enchanted Cottage, downed a couple of Darvons and gave Quicksilver a midnight bath in the Jacuzzi tub. He loved the jets.
He seemed to take my checking for wounds as an extra thorough petting, grinning and panting and wagging his tail. He was, miracle of miracles, free of fang marks, so I towel-dried him and let him go rinse his mouth of jackal or hyena or whatever hair and blood at the kitchen water bowl.
I cleaned the dog hair out of the drained tub, refilled it, and took a long soak in fresh, steaming hot water, letting my aching belly, back and thighs sink against the pummeling jets. Not my time of the month to play Superhero Street, even if I was used to toughing it out through the paralyzing pain. A career woman didn't want to look wimpy on the job. I particularly didn't dare look wimpy on this job.
While wrinkling in the tub-the silver familiar retreated into a thin metal ribbon holding my hair up out of the water-I thought about Sansouci's startling confession.
Why would he tell me that? He was betraying his boss/master, Cesar Cicereau. Was he planning to break the agreement of sixty-some years ago and desert Cicereau and the Gehenna? Was it part of a vampire comeback? Or was it what he said it was? He thought he could use me to topple the werewolf mob.
I shuddered to consider what he really was: a daylight vampire. Able to withstand sunlight, fuck as well as suck, and do both delicately enough to leave a woman healthy and hearty and ready for the next round.
It was no secret why he enjoyed being so cooperative. I'd finally faced myself in a mirror enough to understand what I hadn't back in Kansas. I was a natural-born Goth girl, with death and resurrection built-into my dramatic black-and-white coloring. Most ordinary girls figure out pretty young what their type of look is, and who their type of guy is. What attracts what. I'd been repulsed by the half-breed, pushy, hungry vamp boys I attracted, but had finally encountered a mature vampire with a smooth barside manner.
I was a slow learner, but I was making giant strides.
Okay. So Sansouci might be attracted to me. That might mean I could use him.
It didn't mean for a moment that he wouldn't try to use me, whether I survived it or not.
Sitting by my laptop on the bedroom dressing table-even my increased makeup use was still light enough that I used the surface as a computer desk-I sipped a glass of the Bailey's Irish Cream I'd saved for cramp and cram nights since college and cruised the Web for scavenger dogs.
I came up with jackals and hyenas. Both were native to the African and Indian continents. Jackals were sand-colored, sharp-eared and foxy, smaller than wolves. What had attacked me and Quicksilver were clearly hyenas, which I'd thought as the third-world version of wolves. No such luck.
Hyenas were bigger, stronger and weirder. They had a bear-like look because their rounded ears and small heads seemed out of sync with their thick, solid bodies, and their back legs were shorter than their front ones.
The weird part was that these heavy-set creatures- who could go carnivore or scavenger-were considered to be related to dainty, agile critters like meerkats and mongooses.
In fact, they were such formidable beasts I was awed.
Quicksilver and I had beaten them back, even with an assist from Sansouci in full fang, not that I'd gazed long on his handsome face in carnivore mode.
The spotted hyena seemed to be the variety most partial to digesting all my most inedible parts outside the Dead Zone. Although the hyena bite is bone-crushing and bear-trap strong, the beasts' best survival weapon is industrial-strength stomach acid that can turn bone, gristle, tooth, claw and hoof to liquid nutrition.
And then there's that eerie, taunting, ghostly laugh. Some African tribes thought the hyena laughs were calling the name of their next victim.