TV reporter. I slung it across my body and stuffed my cell phone. ID and some cash inside so my hands would be free in an emergency. Unfortunately, it had no space for wooden stakes or garlic garlands. But if someone found my body, I'd at least have a chance to be properly identified.
Of course, if I wound up dead, I hoped somebody would make sure I wasn't resurrected-even if my future as a Lilith stand-in was worth a fortune.
Couldn't count on Hector Nightwine for the job; he had an addictive profit motive. I'd need my new beau, Ric Montoya, to make sure I was dead and buried and kept that way. Ric had his unusual ways with the dead, but our relationship is anything but lifeless.
Bela was waiting, polite, his caped back to me, bare gray hand still extended. The other wore a white glove.
I put my own pale hand into that dead, ashen flesh. Icy. Icky.
Dracula turned slowly to face me, his arms lifting his cloak into black wings again. With those "wings," he clasped me to the formal front of his evening dress, the starched white shirt. His cloak curled around me, enclosing me in the scent of mothballs, must and cold decay.
With a swoop and a whoosh, I felt us break the "ground barrier" and fly through the window to soar into the warm night air. His arms remained around me, but the cloak folds unfurled, fanning out like giant wings as we sped through the night sky. I eyed the gorgeous glitter of Las Vegas a hundred and fifty stories below.
Being in Dracula's arms felt like waltzing with a marble pillar; his skin and bones formed one hardened, heartless surface. It was odd to fly vertically, as if we stood on an invisible floor, but it certainly eased my horizontal phobia, if not the acrophobia any human being with a brain would feel in this situation.
The wind chilled my ears. I curled my toes to keep my mules from falling off and braining some unlucky tourist below.
I distracted myself during the terrifying flight by wondering who could send Dracula as an errand boy. Certainly not mobster Cesar Cicereau of the Gehenna Hotel-Casino and werewolf syndicate. I wasn't sure from our last encounter whether he now preferred to forget me instead of tearing my throat out, but I was pretty sure he'd never want to hire me.
The Strip lights below had dimmed. We were dropping toward a square black blot in the lightscape. I squinched my eyes shut, sure we would smack hard into that rectilinear bull's-eye.
Instead my soles touched roof, the dangling heels first, then the toes. Note to self: Never wear mules for night flights with the dead. Nun-like lace-up oxfords would have been better. At least Drac and I were once more on solid ground.
But whose solid ground?
Dracula slowly loosened his custody, but kept his hands on me, now both gloved-how did he do that?-in a waltz position. Did every supernatural in Vegas want to cha-cha-cha with me?
Listen, pal, Irma tried to tell him, these Irish gams only do jigs, not waltzes with weirdoes. She was wrong about that; I'd waltzed with Snow, weird only in the ancient demonic definition of word. He was the sexy longhaired rock-star owner of the Inferno Hotel and purveyor of the "Brimstone Kiss," an after-show perk he bestowed on groupies who became enslaved at one touch of his ice-white lips. Rumor had it he was an albino vampire, the obverse of my current partner. Both of them were deeply unwanted on my dance card, even though Snow's lock of white hair-turned-silver-familiar was still guarding my throat.
Dracula swept me into a stately gliding circle. "A little movement warms the blood after a chilling night flight."
That line was almost worse than his classic "I do not drrrink...vine."
"I'm not dressed for the Creature Feature Cotillion," I told him. "Let's go see the Master."
"He is not so civil... and dashing as Dracula."
"But he is the Master, right? You don't want to cut him out."
Dracula's face gleamed with anticipation. Then the calculated look faded. "I live only to serve. For now."
Master, whoever he was, had better watch his front, especially the carotid arteries.
Despite the probable danger, this outing was fascinating to an investigator. I considered CinSims as animated movie posters, in a way, able to walk and talk, but that was it. If I'd thought about it, they could do a lot more or they'd never be in demand at brothels. Although