"I'll be the guy who wants to try dowsing indoors," he said.
We shared a cozy corner at a plastic table in the urban New York City-themed food court with plastic chairs and food and knives and forks. Surrounded by faux brick walls with acres of iron fire-escape ladders, I told Ric about my strip mall attack the night before. I needed answers.
"So who were those matted men who tried to make hamburger patties of me?" I asked him. Maybe not so surprisingly, he knew.
"Nasty customers, a rogue gang of rabid half-werewolves. They'd been vampire-bitten in their human forms. It makes their own bites poisonous, even lethal, if you get enough, and they remain half-changed all the time. Not all the half-weres go rogue, but when they do you don't want to mess with them."
"Why aren't there billboards warning against them, like they used to do with AIDS?"
A few years after the Millennium Revelation, an inoculation had made AIDS and all sexual diseases history, at least in the Western world. It drove religious fundamentalists crazy to lose such a sure-fire deterrent to sex, and it made AIDS as legendary as the Black Plague.
"They're an animal form of AIDS, all right," Rick said, "but this is all top secret. It would kill the tourist business if it got out. The big hotels have security teams to take them out if they come too close, but the half-weres are cagey. They make lightning raids, usually at lower-end businesses, sometimes to steal. Sometimes to enlarge the pack."
"What do you mean 'enlarge the pack'?"
He leaned over the plastic table to brush my hair off my shoulders, just for the heck of it.
"Brides," he intoned like Bela Lugosi, following up by leaning way too close and kissing my neck. I laughed, but I didn't mind "necking" with a man who didn't need to tap my jugular like a keg at a frat party.
"Listen, Del. " Ric's voice did a hot blowjob on my neck. "Werewolves run this town."
"You're kidding! These are the only ones I've ever seen,"
"Because they're stuck in mid-change. Frustrates the hell out of them. Most of our regular werewolves are no worse than the mob bosses who founded Las Vegas in the forties."
I stared at him.
"Sure, those old mob guys were pretty bad, but they mostly killed each other. With bullets. Now that whole mob thing has gone corporate. With the Millennium Revelation it became obvious to some of us in law enforcement that werewolves had worked their way up the management ladder in Vegas. Figures. Unlike most supers, they only go feral three nights of the full moon a month, give or take a little waxing or waning. They pass as human and deal as humans most of the time, no more ruthless or crooked than the real thing."
"Amazing. In Kansas we only had the occasional were-cow."
This time he laughed. "I think that I shall never see, a were as weird as…Elsie?”
"So I'm from a farm state. I guess I'm just a hick."
He brushed his lips over my neck again, paused to suck a little. A little bit more. A lot.
"No hickeys," I told him. "I've had it with a lifetime of passes at my jugular vein. You swear you're not a vamp in disguise?"
"I'm not a vamp, in disguise or out. Look. You're an investigative reporter. You have a professional need to know these things. The moon will be full tomorrow night. You should see a cross-section of our werewolf population, not just the Wild Bunch."
"Yeah?"
"I'll take you there."
"I'm not sure I want to tangle with those things again."
"No, it's perfectly safe. Los Lobos. A salsa club. We'll go dancing. Werewolves love to dance."
"Dancing?"
"Yeah. Clubbing."
"Sorry, I'm Black Irish."
"Whatever that is, I'm more than okay with it."
"We Irish don't dance."
"You ever see any of the eighty-one touring companies of River Dance?”
"Yes."
"That's not dancing?" he asked.
"Only with our feet." I pushed my arms stiff against my sides, made a poker face, did one tiny jig step at the ankles under the table. God forbid anyone should see me cutting loose. "It's inbred. Sorry."
He didn't discourage easily but leaned closer, nibbling on my earlobe. All lips, no teeth. What a relief.
"That strait-laced Irish jig of yours is a cousin to the flamenco, one of the sexiest dances on earth. We Spanish can speak with our feet, as well."
"Salsa's like flamenco?"
"Nope. It's a lot easier…and looser."
"I can't see werewolves without going to a dance club?"
"It's the only place you can eyeball the full range of werewolves, the wonder of the change. Come on, it's a hot underground club and even a few gutsy tourists get there. Aren't you up to confronting what the Polyester Set is?"
That last dig did it.
He was still in sell mode. "The moon is just about to pop into full. I'll pick you up tomorrow night at nine."
"So late?"
"We want to be there at midnight, when the wolves run."
"Three hours to kill?"
"Los Lobos has knock-out margaritas, a mariachi band to die for, and killer appetizers."
I wasn’t crazy about all those lethal figures of speech, but Ric was inviting me into an element of his culture, if not his world (I hoped). His equally inviting voice and eyes made it hard to say no. Someday soon maybe I wouldn’t be able to say no to him about something way more serious.
The next day I hied to the Fashion Show Mall on the Strip and hinted to saleswomen older and bonier than I was where exactly I was bound. They winked and sold me a three-tiered indigo silk skirt with flounces at the bottom and a mesh camisole to match, plus a black lace mantilla for a shawl.
At home, I pulled my Wicked Witch of the West fifties plastic-and-rhinestone heels out of their box. Weird how everything vintage had survived the weather witch's insty tornado. Maybe old, pre-Millennium Revelation things didn't do post-Revelation hexes. The clear plastic heels twinkled with aqua rhinestones and the vamp (excuse the expression, it's a shoe thing) outlined my toes and instep with flamboyant rhinestone coronets.
Overdressed? Maybe. But then, could I really compete with Ric, who was a dandy sartorial blend of a young Tom Wolfe (ouch, wrong family name) and early Prince?
Before I left, I checked myself out in the full-length mirror at the end of the hall. The lighting here was dim, but the rhinestones on my shoes sparkled. I squinted. Wait! The rhinestones looked red, not blue. In fact, my whole figure looked angular and black and I had a green face and damned if I wasn’t seeing the real Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz wearing Dorothy's ruby slippers. Nightwine's "enchanted cottage" was getting to my imagination.
I stamped my foot in spunky Dorothy fashion. "Get out of my mirror, you mean old witch!"
The figure wavered as if under water and I saw it had been myself, the way you can look at something very familiar and see it completely differently. A red nightlight from down the hall must have reflected in the rhinestones on my shoes. The light was so low that my clothes had lost their color, that's why the nightlight. I shook off my sense of seeing someone else look back at me. I didn't want to start the evening spooked.
Plenty of time for that later, my pretty, Irma warned me with a sinister giggle borrowed pitch-perfect from the Wicked Witch of the West.
Quicksilver, in the background, was bewailing my abandonment at the quaint cottage that was Hector's guesthouse and my new digs. I stood on Sunset Road, waiting for Ric. I didn't want to introduce Ric and Quicksilver at the front door, which the dog guarded like the drawbridge to the Tower of London crown jewel collection. Not that I minded that after glimpsing Las Vegas after dark. The older Corvette that cozied up to the curb was low, sleek, and colored bronze. As in "bronze god," no doubt. Ric leaned over to open the passenger door.