Carole Douglas - Vampire Sunrise

“The ex-cop is No-balled Haskell now.”

My jaw dropped, which was an excuse for Ric to soul-kiss me. Quicksilver whined and put a paw on my bare thigh. Velvet paw.

This was getting awkward.

“I need to get my street clothes,” I said for the second time that evening, and on this occasion no jokes were made on my name. “We need to get down to the Strip and away from here.”

“Agreed; much to talk about away from here.” Ric’s fingers traced the snaky metal coils of my cobra bra. “No need for you to change clothes first. Quicksilver and I are experienced bodyguards and what you’re wearing is just right for my plans for the rest of tonight.”

Quicksilver subsided to his stomach, nose on paws.

“I agree you must leave,” came a deep manly voice. “I will escort you out.”

“Shez!” Ric greeted the demon lord with a grin. “You’re looking a lot less dusty and bloody.”

“All of you also.”

Shez handed me a gilt-embossed Karnak shopping bag filled with my jeans, shirt, and shoes along with a supply of carved carnelian bottles of bath products, and an Egyptian-collared cape.

“I retrieved your articles from the area below. I am Shezmou, maker of embalming oils and rare scents. I am also Lord of the Slaughter. I go where I please here and will until the sun sets forever on the world.”

“Good thinking,” I said, gratefully covering my Rio beach condition with the cape. “Thanks, Shez.”

I checked to ensure I still had the vial of my blood I’d snatched from the embalming table and had tucked into my pushed together cleavage, feeling very Jane Russell.

From the dilation of Ric’s pupils, I looked very Jane Russell too.

We rose, all three, and left with dignity and no fear.

We had a god on our side.

HERMIE PRODUCED RIC’S Vette at the drive-up. Shezmou tipped him with a real coin of some kind. It didn’t impress the parking valet demon. Hermie shrugged and bowed us good-bye.

When Ric took the driver’s seat, he tipped the delighted demon a fifty-dollar bill. Quicksilver bounded into the front seat after me, so I was squashed in the middle, sandwiched by my two dearest and now really nearest.

I looked in the rearview mirror. A sedate tourist couple driving an electric-powered Caddy convertible sixty years newer than mine was flagging the Lord of the Slaughter to unload their luggage.

I couldn’t help laughing, as we all left the Karnak, grinning from ear to ear at our escape and reunion, Quicksilver most of all.

It was still dark, so I dug the neon-filtering sunglasses out of the glove compartment and we cruised the Strip in shades like Hollywood celebs.

At the Nightwine estate, Ric pulled his car under the Enchanted Cottage’s porte cochere. We went inside, using the door card in my bagged jeans. We installed Quicksilver by his ever-full food bowl and ever-fresh water bowl in the kitchen.

He eyed us in turn, refusing to indulge. He suspected what was coming.

So did my hormones.

Ric took my hand and led me upstairs. I figured I’d soon have my movie-poster body ravished with Rudolph Valentino moves. Or vice versa. Goodie.

Instead, Ric paused mid-stairway. His cocked knee blocked the stairs and me. Hmm . Did he have something kinky in mind with me over his knee?

Yeah. Talk, he requested. Imagine a guy wanting to talk first.

I mentioned that.

“That’s a talk-killer outfit you’re wearing,” he agreed, pulling me so close his Gypsy leathers creaked, “but I need some answers first.”

I put my arms around his neck and inhaled a heady perfume of leather and bar-smoke and also scented soap traces from both of us. That’s my pseudo-Sinkhole undercover guy, pitted-steel rough on top and civilized silk underneath.

“So,” I said, “do I resemble that naughty magazine cover that gave you a premature kick-start on puberty?”

“ Sí, señorita . First, I want to know how you ended up at the Karnak again to get the temple dancer makeover. Last I saw of my Delilah, she was taking down temples, not sending up temperatures.”

I nuzzled his five o’clock shadow. It wasn’t just makeup. If he skipped shaving twice, Ric was primed to sell men’s cologne in Male magazine.

“It’s all the real thing,” I said, pushing my torso against him so he’d get to the action I needed.

“Why would that old lech Howard Hughes, who I noticed didn’t stick around for introductions after Quicksilver and I arrived, give you highly collectible seduction gear? What were you two doing in the Karnak ’s condo-tower penthouse?”

“Details, Ric. You don’t want to lose the moment with details.”

I’d pushed off him so he could fully appreciate my outfit. I felt the silver familiar slipping its form as hip chain, so my torso had started quivering even before Ric touched my skin.

He wet his forefinger ( swoon ) and slowly dragged it across the filmy skirt’s top just beneath my bared navel.

“Details,” he mocked me. My insides clenched with excitement while his finger pushed into my outie. “Your costume could use a little ring here.”

As his forefinger continued its effective navel engagement, a blue-topaz-studded silver ring snagged the tip.

He frowned. “When did you get that piercing?”

“When you weren’t looking close enough, obviously, amor.”

Damn silver familiar was now butting into my romantic interludes instead of hiding out as a discreet toe ring.

“I’m looking close now,” Ric said. “What’s going on? You at the Karnak again. You in Hughes’s harem?”

“I had a misstep in a mirror gone bad. Last night I finally tracked Lilith through the Snow groupies. She and I had a brief one-on-one in a dark alley. Didn’t go well and the Karnak hyenas had tracked me there. I jumped through a reflecting glass door. Knocked myself out in a travel agent’s office, I think, and ended back at the Karnak.”

I made a face, remembering awakening to a situation so like my recurring nightmare.

“Hughes had somehow grabbed Shez after the pillars fell, so was keeping an eye out for me too and got me to the safety of his penthouse.

“Frankly, Ric,” I said, not meaning it, since I was going to skip the weirdness of Frankenstein’s experimental embalming operation until I knew more about it, “I’ve worked for Hughes before. He claims he bought the Karnak before he discovered the vampire empire underneath. He’s a nonpracticing vamp himself and finds intimate relations too unsanitary to do more than lust and look. He hopes to convert all vampires to his IV-based sustenance system.”

Ric snorted his opinion of that experiment.

“He’s also a CinSim buff like Hector.”

“And you.”

“And me. Hughes adopted Shez as a personal wine and bath steward. That’s how I got the Queen of the Nile makeover. You don’t like?”

Ric decided more torture was needed. He wet his forefinger in my mouth (quasi-come! ) to shut me up. Then he traced my bare and ticklish midriff up to the bottom coil of my Hollywood vamp bra. I was writhing like the gold serpents, as much to avoid giggling as to invite more exploration.

His finger followed the coil on my right breast and stopped at the barely covered center. “This doesn’t match,” he said. “Unusual for you.”

I looked down. A pair of silver chain pastie tassels shimmered with motion. Shoot! The familiar was living up to its name in triplicate now!

“Ah, no. Ric. Ah, I guess I should mention that some of the silver jewelry I wear used to be a lock of my lost Lhasa apso’s coat. It… attached itself to me and changes into… things.”