"I wasn't a vampire myself at that time. No one believed in vampires then. But I did believe in the future of Las Vegas, although I didn't openly invest until thirty years later-in the seventies. Obviously, a lot was going on here in Vegas in the 1940s and 1950s that no one had a clue about until after the Millennium Revelation. I want to know who that slain vampire was. I want to know who put thirty silver dollars in the grave and why. The answers are worth a nice sum to me, Delilah Street, and I will keep my creatures' fangs off you if you achieve my objectives."
"Off me and mine."
"Not including Nightwine."
I shrugged. Hector was my boss, but something of a voyeur and an epicurean ghoul. He'd done quite well here since the Millennium Revelation and I suspected he could protect himself equally well.
"I don't know what you have against Nightwine, but he's not on my personal five fave call list."
"Nor anyone's. So, who is?" Hughes eyed me slyly. "I suppose that big bad doggie of yours."
I nodded. "How do you know about him?"
"He trashed the Lunatics. They're still whining about it. You think a domestic dog taking out a motorcycle gang of half-weres in a parking lot doesn't get on the weird-news Internet? And I suppose you'd want me to spare that big bad ex-FBI man."
How the hell did he know about Ric? I wasn't going to satisfy him by asking.
Meanwhile, the nurses had crowded closer, sighing while sucking air through their fangs. "Fox Mulder," they wailed hungrily.
Honestly, women in all forms are just too inclined to be groupies!
"Forget The X-Files," I told them. "That was fiction and is now only reruns and DVDs. Ric is real life." I eyed them all and then Hughes. "And I want him to stay that way."
"That certainly is something to bear in mind," Hughes noted.
"So… do you have any clues who the dead vamp might be, or who he might have been allied with?"
Hughes folded his age-spotted, blue-veined scrawny claws on the immaculate white bed sheet. It was like viewing leprous orchids in the snow. "I didn't come here to buy up the Strip until the seventies. So I have no clues. Not a one. That's your job, Delish Delilah. And keep in mind, if you fail to find out anything useful, all those no-fang concessions are off. Including on you."
He loomed up from the bed like a striking cobra, the IV stand at his side crashing over to spray both the nurses and sheets with watery pink blood.
I jumped back and off, streaking away through the outer chambers containing germicidal lights and sprays. The startled human-for-now attendants jumped out of my way. I banged through doors until I was in the truly deserted run-down part of the derelict hotel building.
Just what I needed: a notorious, undercover vampire as my first client.
Chapter Three
From my previous fact-finding mission here, I knew I had to get down ten floors and through a ring of decadent vampire druggie-guards to reach the main floor and exit the building.
My silver familiar, which had remained dormant around my throat all through my adventure with Hughes Tool and Vampire Company, crept down my right arm to curl around the bases of my fingers. The silver metal thickened into rings and then grew two-inch diamond-dusted spikes on each finger: the glitzy Vegas version of brass knuckles.
Well! How had Snow's unwanted gift known to produce the glittering knuckle spikes? They echoed the diamond-dust-embedded nail file points I'd used to hold off group-home, half-vamp bullies years ago. Eerie.
Snow had sent me the lock of his albino hair as a play on my name and his enigmatic powers. I couldn't resist petting it in memory of my lost white Lhasa apso's flowing coat. Like a striking serpent, the soft tendril of hair had morphed into a hard silver bangle on my arm with a permanent lock on me, unable to be sawn or burned off. Whether or not the silver familiar taunted me by migrating to various body parts and becoming simply decorative jewelry, changed into protective adornment or transformed into instant weaponry, I resented being protected at the cost of being invaded.
Once again the mobile parasite had worked its bizarre mind-reading magic. Silver knuckles were even better than brass for punching my way through the house vampires at the 1001 Knights Hotel.
It was just like a heartless businessman of Howard Hughes's ilk to have me dropped into his lair, then force me to fight my way out of it. Cesar Cicereau, the werewolf mob alpha boss, wasn't very likeable, but he had a heart as big as the Tin Man's compared to Howard Hughes.
I decided to take the stairs. I'd have the advantage of height when I ran into the vamp patrol. The cowboy heels on my mules were good and thick-great for kicks and full-body shoves. I knew from my last visit that, to conceal his presence, Hughes employed deliberately lame, tame vampires as derelict as the building. Still, even debased vampires were unhumanly powerful.
Of course there was no way to avoid announcing my descent as my shoes clattered down the dozens of concrete steps. The 1001 Knights Hotel, Howard Hughes's hidden headquarters, was supposedly abandoned and ripe for razing. I wondered if it was just Hughes's economic clout or some eerie supernatural mojo that kept this prime property at the south end of the Strip off the rebuilding market and looking deceptively empty.
A savage cry announced a vamp in a burned leather coat charging up the stairs. I grabbed a railing with my left hand, kicked out my right foot, aiming at his throat, and flashed my spiked silver brass knuckles across his brow bone.
The blood ran down in sheets, blinding him as he tumbled backward…
…into a second vamp, who pushed him aside and down like deadwood.
I hadn't expected the blinding flood of blood, but I suppose well-fed vamps are like ticks, gorged and ready to burst.
This new guy's fangs were already rusted by an evening meal too. He seized my kicking foot and tried to twist my leg. I grabbed the railing with both hands and pushed out that leg with all my strength. That knocked him back, but I was going to land supine on the concrete steps, the edges slamming my spine in a couple places, both blows likely to hurt like hell, not to mention paralyze.
I pedaled my legs to give my feet some sort of traction on the stairs. A mule went flying off and upward, right into the snarling vampire mouth. I saw teeth fly, maybe even fangs. The vamp howled and covered his bleeding mouth, backing up too far and falling. The stair edges wouldn't wound his immortal body.
But I was upright again and ran down after the tumbling defanged vampire. It would have been a smooth descent, except something hit me hard in the back. I was stumbling down the stairs faster and faster, out of control, my hands ripped from any grasp I got on the railing as soon as I found it.
I heard a disgusting slurping sound behind me and realized the pursuing vamp was licking my blood off the metal railing. I wished this was happening in the middle of a Kansas blizzard and his blood-sucking tongue would stick to the icy metal…