No, this was a warm spring Vegas night. And blood would be hot too…
At the bottom of the stairs, the blood-blinded vamp was waiting for the others to catch me as I tumbled into them.
I got both feet-one bare-on the same step, bent my aching knees and jumped as high and far as I could. I almost cleared the rapacious welcoming committee, feeling their filthy, clawed hands clutching at my legs as I sailed over. Then something incredibly fast and hard slammed me back… oh, no!
Back into my attackers!
I landed on them hard, sinking into their bones and muscles, their clawed hands closing on my arms and scratching my throat.
But before the lifting hands could capture me, something bit them off at the wrist. Blood, who knows whose, that filled those undead veins spewed over me like warm syrup on a buttered pancake.
White fangs snapped as I heard bones breaking.
Not my own.
That realization got my body going, arms and legs flailing to gain balance, struggle upright and get running again. A last bolt of energy sprang me forward, away from the building's covered driveway toward the street.
I finally collapsed at the curb, panting like a winded marathon runner, too exhausted to move.
Something was coming up behind me. I could barely manage to move, but I did not want to become a half-vamp-something, according to rumor, a single bite would accomplish. Two more and a reciprocal sip from my killer's immortal veins, and I'd be turned. Or so they said. I figured that three vamps were still ambulatory and fanged enough for the job.
I reared up as best I could, teeth gritted, fist extended. Wait! Where were my silver "brass" knuckles? The damned familiar had run out on me! My wrist sported a wimpy charm bracelet now. Damn Snow to Hell!
My redundant curse forgotten, I gazed into two burning blue eyes and a jaw full of grinning white fangs.
The jagged teeth were clamped on some disgusting amputation, black and burnt and dead as… as shoe leather.
I pulled farther back, took a deep breath.
Oh.
Quicksilver was sitting there, panting hotly and smiling that wolfish grin, my lost leather mule firmly in his teeth. Cinderella had never had a handier Prince Charming.
Good doggie, Irma said.
Quicksilver dropped the shoe when my right hand reached for it, and began laving my bleeding hand with his huge pink tongue. Dog saliva heals doggie wounds over time. Quicksilver saliva heals human wounds instantly, as Ric and I had found out.
In seconds, we were both on our feet, me fully shod, my hand on Quick's wide leather collar. I realized the bracelet familiar now boasted canine figures and that a matching silver-studded dog collar had been coiled protectively around my neck for some time. This was the first occasion that my silver familiar had revealed a split protective personality.
Dracula's sleep spell on the wolf part of Quicksilver had probably evaporated the moment Drac dropped me on Howard Hughes's roof. We were a paranormal K-9 team. My dog could track me through a swamp or a thunderstorm and probably thin air. He was an awesome animal. I'd seen him lick Ric's barbed-wire-shredded hands whole in a couple minutes. Now my once-scraped palm was flexible and smooth. Nice trick.
"Good dog! Good boy." That was hardly sufficient praise, but we humans have talked down to animals for so long it's a hard habit to break.
Meanwhile, I jumped with my two shod feet into the roadway, tried to grin as innocently as Quicksilver, wiped the blood off my pants and looked for a cab to hail.
No way was I walking all the way back to Hector's estate.
Chapter Four
I ended up having to call a cab from the office of the Araby Motel, a cheesy place opposite the 1001 Knights Hotel.
The driver was snotty about giving a dog a ride, so Quicksilver had a good run home. Luckily, we'd been on the south end of the Strip and Hector Nightwine's estate wasn't that far away for Quicksilver.
In fifteen minutes the four charging bronze horsemen of the Apocalypse that guarded the gates loomed into the headlights.
The cab driver was happier cruising along to my more modest entry area down Sunset Drive to let me out. Quicksilver was waiting there for me to disengage the security system and open the gate. He was just being polite. He could scale the eight-foot wall, but didn't like to alarm the main house.
After our unexpected nocturnal adventure, I made sure he had fresh water and some doggie treats and left him with a puppy biscuit sticking out of his awesome muzzle like a small green tongue-tip.
Upstairs, on my way to my interrupted beauty sleep in my bedroom, the meager light caught my image in the long mirror at the hall's end.
I nodded at myself and moved on, absorbed.
Wait!
The self I'd nodded at was nude!
I ducked back into the hall.
Yup, the nude "me" in the mirror was as whitewashed as my pale Black Irish skin was in the light of day. The tangle of black on my head repeated at the crux of my legs. Sure, I'd seen myself nude in a mirror before, but always critically: pale skin that would burn but not tan, the fairly tall frame with too much breast and hip. I was an unfashionable hourglass. That's why vintage clothing looked cool on me. I'd always loved the looks of female Silver Screen stars. To paraphrase Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, "They had faces then." They also had busts and hips, S curves and sensuous thighs. But this image wasn't me. It was me in a separate semblance. This was Lilith. Maybe I could tell by her faint blue aura. Or the tiny blue topaz stud in her nostril. Look at her and see me, once removed.
I blushed to view my body objectively. I was used to seeing myself as deficient: lacking relatives, lacking a home, an identity, a positive body image, a Blue Fairy with a star to wish upon…
I forced myself to confront what usually made me cringe.
"Are you me?" I asked.
My mirror image didn't answer, but her mouth moved as if she was interrogating me.
"Lilith?" I hadn't meant to sound either tentative or desperate. But I did, both.
Seeing this double of me on network TV is what brought me to Las Vegas to put up with such things as Count Dracula as an alarm clock.
Her mouth mimicked my word. Lil-ith.
"Are you dead?"
She winked at me. Assumed a fashion model pose.
"You'll never make it in the rag trade, Lil," I told her. "Too busty."
She stuck her tongue out at me.
Nothing in the magic mirror had ever interacted so boldly with me before.
"Why don't you speak?"
She shrugged, lifted her dark eyebrows. Eloquently, she asked without words. Why speak?