I caressed his face once he was seated, and felt his lips kiss my fingertips in passing. At least he was conscious. At least I have fingertips. Tears seared my cheeks.
Above us, the sloppy-drunk moon was grinning down. The moon had to answer for a lot of crimes against persons tonight.
When I lowered myself into the driver's seat and started the powerful engine with a peace-shattering rumble, I could turn on the interior lights. I could see his face well now, but not his hands.
"How bad?" I asked. "The cuts."
Ric winced. "To the bone, I think."
"Madre de Dios! You must have the cajones of a chupacabra."
His look was rueful but his skin-tone was a sick sepia color. "That street Spanish book is improving your vocabulary, mujer mia."
Mujer mia. Woman mine. All right. What was I going to do about this? Ric's hands. With which he dowses for the dead. No more. Those hands, with which he dowses for my heart. No more.
"How do I drive this thing? I haven't driven stick shift for almost ten years."
Ric smiled, palely. He told me what to do and I did it. A couple minutes later we were barreling down a narrow mountain road in the dark in third gear. I tried to coast and ride the brake, but momentum pushed us faster and faster.
I looked in the rear-view mirror. The steel-toothed grille of a HumVee was barreling wildly down the mountain road after us. Suddenly I didn't dare brake at all anymore. I steered for my life. Our lives.
The needle pushed up to ninety as we slithered down that mountain road. I was trapped in a nightmare video game, moving my eyes and arms by raw instinct. Dodging and swerving until we skidded onto flat straight highway, where I put the car into fourth gear and spurred the Corvette up to one-twenty in no time. The highway was flat and straight and no lumbering HumVee would catch this baby now.
Maybe a state trooper would spot us and pull us over, then see the emergency and escort us, siren shrieking, to safety.
No. No one was out here in the desert tonight but ghost wolves and werewolves and zombies, oh my. Also a lot of enemies and damn few and very dicey allies. Now no one could help us but me.
Chapter Fifty-Six
The bright lights of Vegas in the distance seemed to mock our dark, desperate circumstances. I tried to take Ric's mind off his injuries by keeping him talking.
"How did you know where I was?" I asked.
His head lay against the headrest as he watched the off-full moon race us through the blue-tinted glass roof panel.
He smiled, thinly.
"When I could check my cell phone, I found your message and was alarmed enough to go to your guest house on Nightwine's premises."
I smiled. Premises. He still talked law enforcement despite being a free agent now.
"It's a cottage."
"Whatever, it still has the Hound of Hell for an unwelcoming committee of one. He was howling and snarling and bounding at the front door. I was standing there about to get out a credit card to B and E into the place-"
"Break and enter? Could you?"
"Sure. This CinSim in black tie and tails who talks like a British butler shows up, only he's American. He lets me in, then orders 'Master Quicksilver' back from the door and into the closest corner to be 'a good bad dog.' Then he tells me he's 'most concerned.' Seems a cousin of his at the Inferno has a friend who sometimes hangs out at the Gehenna. He told him that 'Mr. Cicereau and some of his less savory associates have taken our Miss Street for a ride' out to someplace called the Starlight Lodge near the Paiute Golf Club on Spring Mountain, and that it would 'behoove' me to look into that 'post haste.' "
"The butler dude was Godfrey, Nightwine's major domo. He looks after everything around the estate, including me."
What I don't explain, because I can't just yet, is how and why the CinSims have a secret communication network. Nor can I imagine why an Inferno CinSim would haunt the rival Gehenna, but I know who it was. That farewell butt pinch on being escorted from Cicereau's office makes sense now. My really, really secret admirer and the CinSim tattletale had been Claude, the Invisible Man. Curiouser and curiouser.
"I'm glad you looked me up," I told Ric, eyeing his face as the city streetlights swept it rhythmically.
His normally warm complexion was still a cold gray color as the Corvette slowed to the speed limit and lurched onto Sunset Road under my iffy in-town shifting, although the knack was coming back fast. I knew if I pulled up to an emergency room Ric would never forgive me and I didn't know where any were in this town, anyway.
There was no place to go but home.
Wait! Shouldn't that mantra be: there's no place like home?
I finally punched in the security code to my private entry gate and drove into Nightwine's ultra-secure estate. Ric could barely walk into my enchanted cottage, and I could barely hold him up. Like head wounds, hand wounds bleed profusely, and the flesh on Ric's hands had to be hash.
Not one freaking grumpy helpful domestic dwarf was in sight. Things could be worse. I was alive when I wasn’t supposed to be, but the only person I deeply cared about was damaged beyond repair.
Ric swayed as he stood in the entry hall, dripping blood on the slate tiles. He was still shaky, more cream than coffee in his face color.
Before I could install him on the couch and call Nightwine to send a doctor, I heard a thump at one of the cottage's windows. Next came a scrabbling sound, and then Quicksilver bounded into the main room, limping and looking ragged.
Not another victim to tend simultaneously!
Before I could even acknowledge his presence, Quick made one great arching leap toward Ric, knocking him onto his back on the floor. Ric lifted his crossed arms just in time to keep Quicksilver from lunging onto his neck, taking the brunt of the dog's weight on his forearms.
Oh my God! Two wounded alpha males, still at each other's throats! Just what they, and I, didn't need!
"Get this monster off me, Del!" Ric yelled through gritted teeth. "This damn dog has never liked me and now that I'm down-I can't use my hands to fight him off!"
I was crawling on top of Quick, grabbing for the dog's massive shoulders, ordering him to leave Ric, to get off…! Bad dog!
Quicksilver ignored me. He was too busy sniffing at Ric's bloody hands, a true bloodhound, and whimpering at me in-between, licking my hands with soft wet swaths of tongue. One canine swipe managed to give Snow's bracelet such a thorough slobbery bath that it migrated to my upper arm and coiled there like a scared snake.
I grabbed Quick's collar; if I half-throttled him the dog would have to back off.
My fingers curled around the thick black leather, over the round silver medallions circling it like little moons. Before my eyes, those medallions, as liquid as quicksilver, changed shape, going slightly off circle. Like they were…waning. With the moon! Of course! Quick probably did have wolf in him. Which made him…what? Lethal?
Before I could get clear on what this might mean, the silver snake on my upper arm split into dozens of hair-fine chains and slithered back down to my wrist, binding my hands. Why? I didn't know, but I sensed intent and urgency. Was this familiar mine, or Snow's? For me or against me? It had never hurt me, although it had taunted me. Okay, so who am I to argue with a silver-tongued Devil?
"Ric! Give Quicksilver your hands." I can't believe I'm urging this.
"Are you crazy?"
"No. Maybe. Moon madness. Give Quicksilver your hands. That's what he wants, what he needs."
"Del, he wants to eat me!"
"He's not that kind of wolf. He's a wolfhound. Unless you're a closet werewolf, let him at you."