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Chapter Forty-Nine

The winners clung together, weeping, unable to leave the foot of the deserted stage

The losers ebbed away to the Inferno Bar, or to the ga tables and the rest rooic, bereft faces in the ht up with the crew that hadlike a horse," one of the losers was saying

Ludicrous I was an objective reporter You can’t, uh, snow uessti

"My God, that scarf! I’d give anything to have it around my neck I bet it feels just like his hair"

One of the true believers focused onin a creepy way "You felt it The scarf What was it like?"

I wanted to say "China-silk import chiffon, really cheap"

I said, "Like air, clouds, stea on their bar stools I ordered an Albino Vampire to up the ante They hadn’t realized that option existed, so I armed

"It’s a house drink," I said, "really smooth and creaister ca-ching at a rapid rate as Albino Valed onto the bar stool besideoff a blitzed blonde to ht"

"Do you know about the Club?"

Yeah You put it on your steering wheel to keep creeps fro your car "Club?"

She leaned way nearer than I needed There were vampires, and there were vamps "Club AV/DC"

Okay I wasn’t born yesterday even if I was fro current or alternative lifestyle The latterboth ways Bisexuals Also nowadays, bi-humans or unhumans Different strokes for different folks, and very different folks, but this gender preference stuff had all gotten a lot more complicated after the MillenniuhtCows

The brunette pressed a card into ht Have a few drinks Dance Watch Cocaine iht like the scene"

No, I needed to research the scene "Thanks! Impersonators?"

Her breath riffled the phony hair around my neck "You won’t need to lose out on any Brimstone Kisses there"

My blood, predictably, ran cold Was she was hinting that an illegal vampire club had attached itself to a star? Snow

Is that what had made Lilith a shadow in ht in a one-story shop near don that had obviously gone belly up Ti to an AAI’d covered the organization as a reporter I found the religious bent hokey but it had worked for a lot of people, including the TV station owner The news biz still ran on eighty-proof for blood

The Cocaine Club occupied an end spot in the usual one-story strip shopping centers that doht a covered casserole, as requested, even though I had to buy it at Albertson’s deli and heat it in the cottageAnything to look properly doirls hormones off I set the casserole, Velveeta and e alu here Yeah You could smell Albino leather here like perfumed pheromones

The women-and the attendees all oender- had that frantically worn look of desperate housewives They were the sa women who had made ro o Given the usual eneration, and child support, I could get these babes’ fantasies

On the other hand, despiteto think I really liked , Quicksilver enerous day, my un-American Idol Snow and could cut theht circuressive chick whose shoulders would rival a defensive lineman’s It had been listed on the card: brimstoneslutscom

"Definitely It’s an online world I hear you alernails tapped the table as I poured stea amber liquid into my Styrofoa the real Snoould touch on a bet

"That’s okay, honey There arehand-clutch alether, thanks to her painted claws

"What exactly does a Brimstone Kiss do?"

"Take you to paradise"

"What kind of paradise?" I was not the type to take even a free pass to heaven One never knehat one was getting

"I don’t know! The recipients are all too incoherent to say Pleasure Central, I guess And nobody comes back down to write memoirs"

Hearsay I was all for nirvana, but I had to have a free sa with a lot of questions

Most of them were for Snow, if he would answer Or if I couldto pick up a pattern Then Now

Christopher Christophe Krzysztof, maybe Who knohat other variations?

My chared into a silver circle of lips Cold silver lips

I suppose Snohere I was going around Las Vegas, knehat I was doing

Whoever he was, Christopher or Christophe, he was a co froive So he was just Cicereau in mime make-up as far as I was concerned

Iafter the shohen the sweat of perfor liquidity of the Brimstone Kisses were history I wondered if he was affected at all, felt anything profound himself Nah Most womanizers weren’t that sensitive

I donned a royal blue poplin suit I’d used for attending political lunches for WTCH-TV and hot pink fifties pumps The silver familiar apparently approved of the footwear, because it i to become a slender ankle bracelet Call my look Business Brazen

Nick Charles offered me an Albino Vah-octane oral stiht

Snoed up in black this tilasses Maybe he homed in on my silver accessory, which still sported buttoned lip charathered ot right to the point

"Why do you do it?" I asked

"Dance?"

"Snow all those wo"

"Who says I’ht like you A little"

He stepped back and stood apart froant open posture of a dance that had frozen in time "I like you A little"

"Then we’re even"

"No Never even" He sallop around the dance floor I felt quite breathless, but then I always felt breathless with Snow

"Are you Christopher?" I asked in hard inquiring reporter mode

"Who is Christopher?"

"A saint"

"No"

"A sinner?"

"So Not a user"

He was too right I tried another tack

"I’ for a killer"

"You’re a hunter And a victi I really wanted to knohat his third evaluation of roupie wanted a Brimstone Kiss So of course I couldn’t let on

And I was a woman who needed answers To puzzles, to people, to unhumans

"Snow You both hinder and help me Why?"

"Perhaps you need both"

"That answer stinks!"

"Then why are you here?"

"I need to knohat Las Vegas vahter in the late forties"

"You want ?"

"Your perennial caution flattersis, you don’t want to work for it You don’t want to cheat me out of it, you just want me to hand it to you"

"I don’t want that I need that I don’t have ti concepts Close, but very different, after all What if I said that I needed you to beg for what you want?"

"I’d say, Styx it!"

He laughed "You’re clever, if lazy Your blundering investigation happens to have hit upon the moment when the olves won the Werewolf-Va-buried secret"

"I don’t like either side"

"I’ is ht You have knocked over all ive you what you want, although it most certainly will not be what you need"

Sootplaces, as it was intended to

"I knoho she was, the dead girl in Sunset Park," I added Fiercely

The fact was, I cared about who she was And I cared about who she could have been had someone not decided to staple her sternum with silver bullets Even if she had been a olf Everything alive started out as innocent and trusting and helpless and deserving as any human baby Even wolves Maybe even me

Not Snow

"You knoho she was," Snow repeated, sounding interested and alert Obviously, he didn’t, and wanted to "Can you prove it?"

Dammit, no But soon "Yes"

"Then you need to have proof of her partner in crime, and punishh the tourist-clogged casino

I trotted behind to catch up Interesting No one reacted to hi with the hoi polloi, he was invisible Except to me

He didn’t take me to his office, but to a private bullet elevator to the sky

Could you say Hyatt? The elevator was all glass outside and all ht of Snow reflected into eternity unnerved me more than visions of Lilith and ic and turned the surface to a golden autuolden Lhasa apsos and taffy-colored spaniels capering

Sno that and touchedyou what you want"

He’d made me think that I was a sell-out I felt tears as hard as a ive for thison his inner knowledge of Las Vegas I’d rather be working this out with Ric I should have told hi But Lilith’s trail was my own particular obsession, and Snow understood obsession, at least fro the object of it

The double doors to his do black-and-white presence and I was the huer froe haunches before the door

"Grizelle, uest and I need privacy and a couple of your best Albino Varowl almost deafened me, but its stripes becareen eyes tilted and shrank A black woman over six feet tall with snohite hair and emerald eyes stood before us, her ebony skin tattooed with charcoal stripes like watered silk and barely covered by a high-fashion black leather lar and about eight thousand dollars But ner for it

"Sure, boss," the were-tiger bitch said, eyeingant she’d like to use to spice her cocoa

Beyond the doors everything hite except for the black nightview from a wall of s Whereas the Paris restaurant ’s fra fountains, this penthouse looked down on the periodically exploding artificial volcano at Steve Wynn’s Treasure Island setup Fire, flae and crimson daers

Snow’s Man in Black outfit made him the central attraction even in his colorless color sche belt and I noticed with surprise for the first time that his chest was hair-free, but was emblazoned by a vertical and horizontal slash of feathered scarring, as if a lightning bolt or Jack Frost had struck hier of God casting hi had been lounging, languid, and an easy er of God

Lucifer would have been active Aggressive All pride and archangel flight against the light It would have taken a divine body blow to send hi into Hell, or into Hell on earth He would bear divine scars for his rebellion

I was unaccountably curious about those marks, but they were not my mission here and now

Grizelle, indeed lean and lanky in her huht in a silver tray with two Albino Vampires on it I didn’t reflect in the tray, and she smirked as I observed that Were my powers al’s faht-hand assistants didn’t like me

But then, whoever had, and I’d survived thens inlike any busy chief executive taking five

"Right The Inferno has a history in Las Vegas It was just cut short"

"The founding father disappeared You were right He was a vampire I find it hard to believe he ever becairl, a mixed-blood Mafia princess-"

"Soirls Must make them feel potent"

Snow’s lips twitched, rather than slasses his eyes were the usual mystery

"And vampires like to prey on the innocent," I added "Makes them feel bad"

"Quite true Opposites attract The alliance of olves and mob bosses was unfortunate for the Blood Immortals They must sleep, and sleep makes one vulnerable"

I could second that statement Sometimes I wished I never slept, never dreaht hours like ordinary humans"

"You’re not an ordinary human, if you boast about that"

"No Are you?"

"Mostly"

"What parts are not?"

I didn’t answer because I didn’t know "Can I prove who the dead man in Sunset Park was?"

"Have you talked to the coroner?"

"Not yet I don’t knohat to ask him"

"Ask if the male victim’s heart had mesquite slivers in it"

"A stake?"

"Or your lover’s dowsing rod splinters The wands peel free of bark when they dowse That very power drives deep beneath the surface, finding and altering, perhaps"

"You’re saying Ric accidentally staked the inal cri Not all of us know our oers Not all of us control our powers"

I sipped the pallid cocktail It was delicious, if I did say so myself, down to the liquor-soaked cherry in the bottom, which was still sweet

Ric Did he dowse for e what the rod found? "Not all of us know our oers" Snow had seemed to sweep Ric and myself up in his mystic trail of bewitch the identity of the dead couple in Sunset Park achieve anything?" I asked

"It in you Hector Nightwine’s regard It will upset various powerful and vicious personages around tohich will make you someone to reckon with, and possibly destroy"