I stared at him the way he was staring at my conical brassiere.
"What?" he demanded defensively. "I read Victoria 's Secret catalogues. Better class of model in them than in Playboy these days. That Hugh Hefner was just a wannabe me."
Actually. Howard Hughes, or what was left of him, had a point.
And then he stuck that point, a curling, yellowed fingernail, down my open blouse front while I pretended to wriggle away in delight rather than disgust.
"You're quite the aerodynamic genius, in the air and in the sack," I cooed. "So who did the deed? Who bit you over to the Dark Side?"
"I'd only let a woman. No guy was sucking on anything of mine. She was a beauty. Dark-haired like you. Built. Lips red as roses. I was going to make her a star."
Wow, was that a tired line! I glanced at the hovering nurses, who were clearly slavering over my virgin neck, wrists, and femoral arteries. All brunet. Crimson-lipped, white-toothed. All right out of a Hammer film from the sixties. Vampire High. Rocky Transylvanian Horror Show Mountain High. I'd fit right in if I didn't figure out an escape ploy.
I'd read up on Howard Hughes during my research. He wasn’t in on the founding of Las Vegas, but came along shortly after. And he had indeed been asked by the mob to clean up the situation at the hotel. His playboy days were fading then, and he probably was tending toward the obsessive-compulsive disorders and paranoia that ended with him holing up in a string of hotels he owned, possessed of a germ mania but in a skeletal, filthy, unkempt state himself, with long tangled locks and mandarin fingernails like claws.
His reported death and burial in the seventies and the location and state of his huge assets and will remained lucrative tabloid paper mysteries for years. He could darn well be exactly what he seemed to be: a madman who had made a deal with the undead. The ramifications were mind-boggling.
Meanwhile, I needed to know more.
"Oh, Vampy Boy." I let a false fingernail coil in his iron-gray chest hair. Singular, as in one hair. "Tell me who bit you into eternity? I need a role model."
The cunning eyes in their corroded setting squinted at me. "Looked a lot like you. A Black Dahlia. Dark devilish hair, heavenly blue eyes, wanton red lips. Vida was her name."
Vida. Spanish for "life." She couldn't possibly be-? No. But she could still be…alive, so to speak.
He went on reminiscing. "She worked for the werewolves, but her heart had turned vampire. Liked the kick of giving blood along with her body. I suggested they turn her all the way just for me, so I could pick who'd suck me into immortality."
The selfish bastard!
"Where is she now?" Poor undead woman!
He shrugged. "She had issues. Left for California with some master vamp. Some Podunk town in Orange County, when I could have made her a star here. So. Now I am vampire. Now you will stop asking questions and become my bride. I need another one."
"I don't date older men." But I was wearing all white…even my undies.
A scrawny but powerful arm captured the back of my neck and drew me toward those neglected-knife-drawer teeth.
Around me I felt the busty nurse vampires closing in. Once he got the first bite, they would get seconds. Pickings were lean around here. Sharp nails dug into my nape, Nosferatu on the march.
The nurses were swarming my limbs, pinning down my arms and legs for their master.
I was immobile, helpless, out of options.
Then I felt that familiar, loathed cold shiver streaking up my ankle to my garter belt past my industrial-strength push-up, push-out bra to my neck.
Vampire Empire-builder chomped down hard on the wide silver dog collar suddenly circling my neck. Several rotting teeth shattered to the gum line as he screamed with pain and frustration.
I started kicking and flailing in all directions. The shocked nurses froze, and then zeroed in on the blood pooling at their master's bleeding gums. Periodontal disease is such a golden opportunity for the blood-based set, and there is no loyalty among bloodsuckers.
I rolled off the bed, scrambled to my feet, and dashed back the way I had come, the heel of my hand knocking Gray-suited Man against the white tile walls. In the hall I skipped the elevators and ran clattering down the fire stairs.
Down the last turn I ran into a free-range vampire coming up, unable to wait anymore.
I grabbed the iron railing and kicked hard at his chest, sending him tumbling down like a die cube on a table.
I clattered after him. These sturdy lace-up oxfords were the next best thing to butt-kicking boots. Maybe nurses needed that edge.
He fell into his two buddies, who kicked him aside to come for me. By then I had gravity on my side again, and momentum. I barreled into them, using my elbows, the strongest joint in the human body, ramming into ribs, collarbones, noses. Ordinarily vampires could take all I had to give and break me like a shoetree.
But these guys were so hungry they ignored my defenses and came snapping at my carotid arteries, one on each side. They hadn't seen my silver dog collar in the dark. Between the mythic power of silver and the stubborn nature of Snow's familiar to bend or break to any power, they gashed their mouths into bleeding rivers. I kicked them aside, onto their fallen comrade. Last I glimpsed they were snapping reflexively at each other.
I kept running.
The night was dark and the traffic was nil, but Dolly was waiting in the Araby Motel lot across the street, her headlights on and her engine racing like a Stephen King car.
I made for her and then eyed the dude waiting in the passenger seat. Dude? Dog. Quicksilver sat there panting, his tongue almost touching his gray chest hairs.
I never wanted to think about a gray chest hair again.
But the poor dog had run his pads off to find Dolly, and me, just in time. Now that we were reunited, he went pushing out the passenger door to down some poor wino who had happened along.
Wait! Another wino was grinning vacantly at my window. Thank God I'd left the top up.
Not a wino. A half-were. I opened the heavy door hard into its torso and came out, wishing for a silver bullet. I guess I had one. Quicksilver leapt the broad Caddy hood in one bound and landed claws down on the flattened half-were, tearing out its throat with one shake of his mighty head and jaws.
I fell back into the driver's seat, while Quicksilver snarled and ran down two of three more escaping shadows. All half-weres.
I knew he'd taken out the half-were motorcycle gang at the pet store parking lot, but I hadn't seen the carnage up close, in living color. A rich river of blood was oozing toward Dolly's left front tire.
Quick was plenty busy doing things I didn't want to see, although I couldn't help hearing them. I turned on the ignition and eased Dolly back out of the blood flow. The dog was part wolfhound. What part of that didn't I get? He was born to hunt and kill wolves. To protect flocks. And to him, I was flock. I was lucky to have him. Half-weres were predator scum, not even "unhuman," as Ric put it. I just didn't like to see where those teeth had been.
I had a chance to think while Quicksilver finished doing his business. Expecting a quick exit tonight, I'd left Dolly unlocked with the keys in the glove compartment. Now they were dangling from the ignition. Quicksilver and his clever paws and teeth? Dolly herself? Snow's pretty damn good remote manipulation of silver skills? My life-saving dog collar was now a charm bracelet loaded with tiny vintage Cadillacs.
So, I wondered, was this little mobile accessory of mine the Mark of the Devil, or a protective talisman? And was Snow evil incarnate, or maybe something more interesting? Hair, after all, is a literal "lock" and is associated with my namesake.