Carole Douglas - Dancing with Werewolves

Okay.

There were a ton of Web sites with names like cocainefreaks.com, sevendivinesins.com, and brimstonesluts.com.

That "sluts" group looked promising.

I avoided logging in or signing up, but was still able to peek in on a few discussion chains, message boards, and forums. The subject called "orgasmicidyll" caught my eye, now that I knew the feeling.

"Omigod!" began one gushing entry. "I got it. The Kiss. After the January 16 thshow. First, the Scarf. Like hot freezing acid around my neck. The Kiss was Cold, then Hot, then Searing! I am so totaled! It is better than a jackrabbit vibrator and it lasts, oh, soooo loooong. I live for the next one, if I can be the first and only femme to get a second shot at Sweet Oblivion. Cocaine's got to slip up sometime, and I pray that it's with me."

What the heck was a jackrabbit vibrator? I personally did not expect much from a jackrabbit except long furry ears. I might, now that I'd been in Las Vegas, expect something from…a tiger. Or a lion…or an alpha wolf…or the right unrotted vampire…or an FBI guy. But not from a rabbit of any sexual persuasion whatsoever. Might as well get it on with a rat! But then a lot of women later concluded that they had.

But these Cocaine-aholics were unabashed addicts.

I read a few more entries, trying not to heave at the idolizing prose. "Exquisite. Indescribable. White Lightning. Albino e-XXX-tasy. I'd never had any patience with teases of either gender and Cocaine sure had these poor twits on the ropes.

"The Holy Day," one demented kissee wrote, "was my Independence Day, July 4. I was right in the middle of the mosh pit line. His scarf felt like a falling feather from an archangel's wing and then came the Brimstone Kiss, all pulsing volcanic fury like the Devil's own fiery breath. It seemed to go on forever and I never wanted it to end."

Well, it had, honey. Get over it, Irma seconded me.

All of the groupies used cutesy login names: Cherry Tomato, Hasbeenhad, Candycaine, Powdered Sugar, Kissycat.

I glanced at the signature for the woman who thought being enslaved by a Brimstone Kiss was her Independence Day.

Lilith.

Hey, someone on this list might already have used Delilah even. Both were classical Old Testament names, classical lady vamp names. Didn't mean that I was that Delilah. Or that this Lilith was…my Lilith.

Still, my look-alike Lilith had been working in Vegas. She'd had the opportunity to see the Seven Deadly Sins, even to get caught up in mosh pit gropings. No! I couldn't imagine my look-alike clawing in a mosh pit for a melodramatic smooch from a self-important…freak.

I hated to think so anyway, but I couldn't know for sure. Then something prodded my memory that made my blood chill and set like strawberry Jell-O in all my veins.

"I've been waiting for you," had been Snow's opening line when he came up behind me at the Inferno Bar the first time I'd encountered him.

I'd taken it for a corny pickup line. Now I knew that Snow was a lot of things, most of them scary or despicable, but he wasn’t corny.

He'd mistaken me for Lilith.

And had covered his error so fast and smoothly that I'd never tumbled to it.

"Oooh," warned Irma. "That is one major bad boy! He might have killed Lilith. He had her snowed, for sure. Better stay out of his contrail."

True, but the answers I wanted might lie there too.

I definitely had to consider Snow as the revived Christopher, or a progenitor or descendent thereof. Certainly, he was the force behind the resurgent Inferno, which was a gauntlet thrown down before the werewolf lords who had run Las Vegas since vanquishing or bonding with the human mobsters here in the late forties and fifties.

The only vampire trace that had existed since then was Howard Hughes' investment in the decrepit hotel at the south end of the Strip. So Christophe had come out of nowhere a few years ago, fronting his rock band, collecting his groupies, and bringing the dead and buried concept of the Inferno up from the ashes.

No wonder Cicereau was worried.

So was I.

And there was only one place where I could go to find out the truth and set my worries to rest. And I'd better go undercover.

Night found me back at the Inferno, dressed so no one I knew could spot me, hopefully. And I meant No One. Especially not Snow.

I didn't go to Deja-Vous. The boss man knew everything that happened there.

Estate sales for older folks often sold funky wigs as well as potty chairs, useful for Halloween. So tonight I wore a glossy head of synthetic cinnamon-colored locks, straight and shoulder-length. I'd rustled up some stretchy double-knit nineteen-sixties slacks and a glittery tube-top, and then added gray-tinted heart-shaped sunglasses to subdue the color of my eyes.

I avoided the Inferno Bar and my pal Nicky to cross the dance floor toward the concert stage. I waved my ticket and struggled forward an hour before the show to stand packed with the other Snow groupies in the mosh pit.

The stage was six feet above the seats. Watching the stage from up front was a literal pain in the neck, but the groupies around me were percolating like happy little coffee beans, wired and jumping up and down to survey the bare stage and the instrument layout, to glimpse a roadie moving a mike or placing a water bottle. A lot of them were done up like Goth girls. Purple-and-black witchy wigs, tats, chains, leather, sunglasses rendered them unforgettable, but anonymous. Whatever their fashion statement, all the women sighed and swooned at anything alive on that stage, no matter the gender. Everything was a buildup to the entrance of the Seven Deadly Sins and its lead singer.

"My girlfriend's made it," a wild-eyed blonde next to me said to no one in particular.

"With Cocaine?" a woman behind me gurgled.

"She got the Kiss."

"Ohmigod! When?"

"Two years ago. After the Live Again! concert. She's in the downtown club. I've been coming for three months straight now but I've never gotten close enough to the stage to see more than his hair."

I was impressed. "You must have moved to Las Vegas."

I was met by a circle of shocked gazes.

"Oh, yeah," an older woman said. "We all do. You're not a confirmed Cocaine fan unless you move here to see every one of his performances."

"But your jobs-?"

"They have McDonalds everywhere, honey."

"Don't tell me you didn't move here for him?" another one demanded.

"Well, I did move here-"

I was about to say for other reasons, but these crazed women had no other reasons. If they had known the silver "love beads" around my vintage sixties neck came from the hair of the love object himself they would have torn me apart for souvenirs.

I wanted to feel superior to these obsessed groupies but I was beginning to wonder if maybe there wasn’t something wrong with me to be immune to their idol. Well, mostly immune. And there was something wrong with me. I'd always suspected it and now was coming to admit it. Part of that something was good and strong, and part of it maybe was not very good, and also strong.

Even with the armor of my reporter's cynicism, even with having seen and spoken to-been touched by- Snow up close and personal, I was beginning to feel the fever. The jittery, longing, excited group mania. My feet should have been hurting from standing on carpeted concrete for so long, but I was hopping from burning sole to sole like the rest of them-young, old, and in-between-hopping and hoping and shivering with belly-deep excitement.

"It's him!"

"He always comes on last, idiot! That's only the guy who puts all the different guitars in place."

"The tabloids say he's screwing Lust."