Carole Douglas - Dancing with Werewolves

"No, she's boffing some record mogul."

"She's craaaaazyy,” wailed a fan.

"If it's anybody in the band, it's Envy. All that evil green costuming."

"That why you're wearing poison green tonight?"

I had to fight to keep in the frontlines, which I needed to do to be seen as a major Cocaine freak. Personally, I'd never gotten the point in writhing around for the attention of some unreachable star. I thought briefly of Ric, who was plenty sexy without having to sell it, and was squeezed back a whole row in position when I didn't concentrate on keeping my hard-won place, so I had to elbow forward again.

These fevered close quarters were forging a mob. When the band members strode on stage one by one, everybody jumped up to see them. I found myself pushed forward into the second row. Oh, good. We'd be able to see their feet and feel their sweat.

Then the fireworks started. I saw the giant dragon heads descending. Wasn’t that in Revelations? The Devil coming down as the Dragon? Snow the Devil? Somehow I didn't think so. Or maybe so. As he slid down the head of one of the dragon's two heads to the stage in his patented entrance, I felt my silver beads elongate into a long strand, circle my throat once like a choker, then dangle into a long loop down between my breasts to my belly button. Every bead was as cold as ice. Or sleet. Or Snow.

The distraction allowed the surging groupies to push me another three rows back. Damn it! This groupie routine required the chutzpah and concentration of being in an estate sale line.

I wormed my way forward as the instruments warmed up to ear-splitting level. I was back in row two, where I wanted to be: too far to be swept up in Snow's Brimstone Kiss, right in the middle of the action to register on the minds of the Cocaine groupies, to be seen as one of them. To join their club and pick their brains. What was left of them.

The music revved up. It was overwhelming down here in the mosh pit. My bones vibrated to the beat. Every time some nice hefty middle-aged lady tried to squeeze me out of my row I pushed back, with interest.

Time ceased. It was all deep bass vibrations and amped-up raw rock music. Snow looked cool in his open Byron shirt and seam-splittingly tight white leather pants. I had to admit he was a riveting performer, his voice hard-driving sandpaper on the hard rock stuff, then slow, low, and sincere on the ballads. Right. That's when the women switched from screaming that drowned out even their idol's voice to moaning and swooning.

It was a long two-hour set. For me. During the intermission, the women babbled all around me, their milling tension holding me upright when I was about ready to sit down on the cold concrete to rest my bones and eardrums. Except I'd have been stomped.

The second set went much faster, Lust and Envy bracketing Snow with their colorful writhing forms. By then I didn't envy them their proximity to the kingpin and I was as incapable of feeling lust as a loaf of Italian bread.

After the encore, I was embraced by the hysteria and a wave of screaming and pushing women as Snow bent to the mosh pit to sweep up a few lucky fans for the Brimstone Kiss. Didn't that name imply the Devil? Wickedness sells. Or pseudo-wickedness.

I fought to keep my second tier position and actually glimpsed the idol up close. He wore numerous white silk scarves around his neck, the better to snare the chosen groupie. One swooped up the woman in the poison green outfit. The scarf lingered behind, the only material token of her Brimstone moment.

Everyone around me was surging forward. The mob was literally pushing me up, like a buoying wave. My God, I was next in line! A loop of silk chiffon snared my neck. I was pushed up, up toward Snow's ice-god face and hair. No! I was here to infiltrate the fans, not ace them out. I grabbed the sides of the scarf, feeling a cold slither as the silver necklace became a wrist to elbow bracelet on my right arm. I stared into a tiny reflection of myself on curved black mirror shades. I felt my mind, my essence yearning toward my medium, silvered glass.

The scarf slithered around my neck, ebbed away. I fell back hard, aware of glittering black sunglasses looking elsewhere. Another woman was lofted on the wave of raving humanity and claimed a kiss from those frost-white lips. She shrieked in bereavement as he moved on.

"Oh, you poor thing!!!" A woman was weeping and embracing me. "You almost made it. It's so tragic. So close."

Right. I almost made it. An excellent position for me in the Cocaine groupie world. Almost favored. And in. In like…Lilith?

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 gaming tables and the rest rooms, where they probably surveyed their tragic, bereft faces in the mirror and gave them soul kisses.

Horse hockey! I caught up with the crew that had made for the Inferno Bar.

"…hung like a horse," one of the losers was saying.

Ludicrous. I was an objective reporter. You can't, uh, snow me. Hung like a hunky mortal man, if I had to make a guesstimate. That I could was a bit annoying.

"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 on me, stroking my wig in 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, steam heat."

Man, this was easy; I had them swooning on their bar stools. I ordered an Albino Vampire to up the ante. They hadn't realized that option existed, so I was swarmed.

"It's a house drink," I said, "really smooth and creamy."

It hurt not to claim credit as I watched the cash register ca-ching at a rapid rate as Albino Vampires were served all around.

A hard-faced brunette wiggled onto the bar stool beside me after pushing off a blitzed blonde to make room for herself. "You're new in town."

"Right."

"Do you know about the Club?"

Yeah. You put it on your steering wheel to keep creeps from stealing 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 from Kansas. AC/DC meant alternating current or alternative lifestyle. The latter meaning was a code word for folks who swung both 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 Millennium Revelation.

AV/DC, on the other hand, might mean Albino Vampire/ Doting Cows.

The brunette pressed a card into my sweaty palm. "We meet every night. Have a few drinks. Dance. Watch Cocaine impersonators. You might 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 my mirror?

Naturally I showed up at a gathering the next night in a one-story shop near downtown that had obviously gone belly up. Times were tough even in Las Vegas. This felt a lot like going to an AA meeting, not that Alcoholics Anonymous had ever been my thing. I'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 dominate Las Vegas off the Strip with a Capital S.