NECROM

Gibson blinked. This was the last thing that he had expected. "A party?"

"It's a very exclusive party. It's being given by one of the local power moguls."

"You want me to come right now?"

"Unless you want to stay here with the whores."

Gibson was becoming a little bemused. "No, no. I'll come to a party."

"You'll need a tux."

What the fuck was going on? "I don't have a tux. In fact, what you see is what I've got. I didn't exactiy pack for this trip."

Nephredana started on her second industrial waste. "Actually, I took the liberty of picking one up for you. I think it'll fit."

Gibson shook his head. All this was a little overwhelming when added to the rest of the day.

"Okay, so let's go to this party."

It was while they were both finishing their drinks in preparation for leaving that Gibson noticed Zazsu's pimp coming through the crowd with a look of vindictive anticipation on his face. His hand was going to the breast pocket of the silk suit. It came out holding a straight-edge razor. Nephredana had her back to the man and saw nothing of this. Gibson opened his mouth to yell a wanting but, in the same instant, she turned.

The pimp reached out to grab her arm. "I want to talk to you."

All Nephredana did was raise her right index finger. The man stopped dead in his tracks, and Gibson had never seen such an expression of pure terror as the one that came over the pimp's face. The razor dropped from his hand and clattered to the floor. He stood stock-still for a couple of seconds and then started to vibrate, as though in the grip of some violent palsy, all the time making small whimpering noises.

Nephredana glanced at Gibson. "In thirty seconds, he's going to have a fatal heart attack."

"You're going to kill him?"

"He pulled a razor on me, didn't he? Twenty seconds."

The pimp's face was going through progressively darkening shades of purple, and he was making noises as though he was about to swallow his tongue. The rest of the people in the bar stood silent and still, mesmerized by the spectacle of the vibrating pimp.

"Fifteen seconds."

Sweat was pouring down the pimp's face, and his eyes had rolled up into his head. One of his rings was shaken loose from his hand and bounced on the floor beside the razor.

"Ten seconds."

Somehow Zazsu seemed to break free from the spell that gripped the barroom. "Please! Don't kill him."

Nephredana looked at her pityingly. "Don't you whores ever learn? The asshole's probably better off dead. He's no use to you."

But she lowered her finger and the unfortunate pimp dropped to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The entire crowd in the barroom continued to stare as if hypnotized, except Zazsu, who crouched beside the man, sobbing and demanding that he speak to her.

Nephredana turned to Gibson. "Okay, let's get out of here."

Gibson had his hand in his pocket clutching the gun, but no one showed any signs of wanting to stop them from leaving. Indeed, the only sounds were the groans coming from the pimp on the floor and Zazsu's sobs. As he and Nephredana moved toward the door the customers stepped back like zombies opening a path for them.

The black Hudson was waiting at the curb outside the bar, gleaming with rain and reflected neon, apparently unchanged by its transition from dimension to dimension. A trio of punks were trying to peer in through the smoked windows but they scattered when Nephredana glared at them.

Gibson glanced back at the entrance to the Radium Room. "That was some trick you pulled in there."

Nephredana hurried round to the driver's door of the car. "You learn a few things over eighteen thousand years." She opened the door and slipped behind the wheel and leaned across to open the passenger door. "We shouldn't linger, though. The block I dropped on them will wear off in a minute or so."

Gibson climbed into the car and slammed the door. Nephredana eased the Hudson into gear and pulled away from the curb. Gibson took a last look at the Radium Room, half expecting an angry mob to come surging out of the door. "What did you do to that pimp anyway?"

Nephredana shrugged, concentrating on the traffic. "Just tweaked his nervous system."

"Was he really going to die?"

Nephredana nodded. "Oh, sure. In another five seconds if I hadn't stopped sticking it to him. The stupidity of prostitutes never ceases to amaze me. It's been the same since the invention of currency and it never changes. You'd think, after all this time, whores would come to realize that just because they're fucking for money, there's no need to give it all to a goddamned asshole of a man."

Gibson made a mental note never to do anything that Nephredana didn't like. The idea of being vibrated into a heart attack didn't appeal to him at all.

Since there was no sign of either Slide or Yop Boy, Gibson could only assume that Nephredana had been sent with the wheels to fetch him to wherever the party was. He looked around the interior of the Hudson and discovered that there was something a little weird about it. It appeared to be a good deal larger than the outside of the car would warrant. Sure, it was a big, old-fashioned sedan, but on the inside it was about as spacious as a small RV. He surmised that it was a piece of demonic spatial trickery, and he was a little surprised at the ease with which he was coming to accept these things, things that just a few days earlier would have boggled his mind and maybe scared the hell out of him.

They seemed to be heading out of the city. After passing through the intersection with the gold statue, they took a broad avenue lined with soot-caked, leafless trees and equally dirty official-looking buildings. From the avenue, they came out onto a steel road and rail bridge across the river. This was the first that Gibson knew about Luxor having a river.

Nephredana turned on the radio and got something that sounded a lot like John Coltrane playing " My Favorite Things."

Gibson smiled. "There's a lot of jazz in this town."

Nephredana nodded. "Luxor's a good town if you like saxophones." She pointed into the rear of the car. "Your tux is back there, in the box on the seat; why don't you climb into it."

"Right now, while we're driving?"

"Don't tell me you've never changed your clothes in a moving car."

"Sure, but…"

"So get to it. You don't want to arrive with your party clothes under your arm."

Gibson clambered into the back of the car and spent the next few minutes struggling into his evening suit and remembering how the back of a moving car is always a less than ideal dressing room. Now and then he glanced up to see if Nephredana was watching him in the rearview mirror. She didn't appear to be, and he could only imagine that after eighteen thousand years she had seen enough male nudity to be no longer interested. He managed to dress himself completely with the single exception of the tie. Gibson had never learned how to tie a formal bow. Nephredana glanced back. "How are you doing?" He scrambled back into the front passenger seat."Okay, apart from the tie. I never was able to get the hang of these suckers." Nephredana looked at him as though he were an idiot. "I'll do it for you when we get there. You'd better stash that gun of yours in the glove compartment. They may have metal detectors at the entrance to this bash and it'd be embarrassing if you were caught with a piece."

Gibson's hand went unconsciously to the pistol in the waistband of his tuxedo. He had transferred it from the pocket of the look-alike's suit while he'd been changing. "How did you know I had a gun?"

"You telegraphed the fact when that pimp came at us in the bar, and I assumed that you'd keep it with you."

"No magic?"

"No magic."

"I'd be happier if I had it with me after all that's happened."

Nephredana treated him to a look that brooked no further argument. "Stash it."