Carole Douglas - Brimstone Kiss

"I'll abuse more than that before I leave," I warned him. "Listen. I've uncovered an unthinkable scenario for Vegas and the world. I need back-up. I need…Grizelle as a six-hundred-pound tiger. I need Genghis Khan and his hordes. The Egyptian vampires at the Karnak have a zombie army and they're holding Ric captive!"

"Egyptian vampires? You must be drunk on Albino Vampires." Snow's sunglasses nodded at the half-full glass on the desk. "'Grizelle said you stormed my office in a mad fury, but you're dressed for a waltz, not a rescue mission."

I was sweating bullets in my frail vintage velvet gown, melting from the agony of every single second of delay, but I didn't care. I realized there was another reason the CinSims had called me to the Inferno. Who but CinSims would know what the hotel must harbor on its many secret underground levels? If it was indeed modeled on Dante's Inferno, it could house an army of horrors below.

"Look, Snow. You've finally got what you want: me begging you for something. I need your help to save Ric. I don't care what you are, I don't care what you do, I just know you're the only…whatever… in Vegas that can bring any force up against those demented demigods at the Karnak."

"And how do you know demented demigods run the Karnak?"

"They sent their hell-raising sacred hyenas after me, so I got curious and paid them a visit two days ago. I found a hall of mummies, warriors who step out from walls and a sick pair of siblings who think they're a pharaoh in duplicate."

"Sounds like the usual spectacular Vegas theme hotel."

"This was under the hotel."

"Why would these escapees from a Cecil B. DeMille spectacular want Ricardo Montoya?"

"Are you brainless? He's the Cadaver Kid! They want him to find dead bodies. Hidden, undead vampire bodies, lost for centuries. You said yourself the vamps were driven out of Vegas during the founding days seventy years ago and wanted back in."

"I had more modern vampires in mind."

"Well, they didn't! There's no time to debate this. They've got an army down there. You happy with that in the neighborhood?"

He said nothing.

"Those monsters have had Ric for almost eighteen hours, for God's sake!"

"God is not in Vegas."

"For pity's sake."

"Pity is not a commodity in Vegas."

"For humanity's sake."

"Humanity is not worth much to many these days."

Didn't I know that from my orphanage rearing?

"Why are you so sure you need me?" he asked.

"You fight dirty, Snow. That's why I need you."

His smile was slow. "That's not why you need me, Delilah. You need me because you need Ricardo Montoya."

"Bastard! Loveless, soulless monster! You have Grizelle. You have your whole Inferno hotel security force. You have whatever evil creatures inhabit the Lower Circles of your Hotel Hell. I can tell you now who the vampire was who died with Loretta Cicereau."

"That's a very small matter in the fate of Las Vegas and its hidden founders and masters and mistresses and ignorant human occupants, including you. Why should I get involved?"

"I don't have time to haggle with you. You want me to beg? All right. You said I would someday and I will. I'll take your damned Brimstone Kiss now."

"An army of support for one kiss? You expect me to attack a neighboring hotel-casino on the basis of that?"

"Yes! The groupies are too easy for your ego. If you're a vampire, you'll want to destroy the upstart vampires who are trying to take over your territory anyway. If you're a fallen angel, you'll want to look better in my eyes and redeem your own shoddy soul. If you're a demon, you'll want to soil my soul. If you're just a very bad man, you'll want to humiliate and conquer me."

"And why would I want that?"

"Because you need to bring someone else down to your damned, lost level and I'm finally willing to go. For a price."

He licked his dead-white lips. Honest to God. Or Gehenna.

He was nervous, or hungry.

Whichever, it was all about me and the desperate spot I was in.

Not because I'm Lilith's double. Not because I'm a woman and supposed to be conquered. It's because I have nothing but true love in my heart and desperation in my soul. I'm awash with frantic, selfless fear and devotion. If I could trade my life for Ric's, I would. But I can only try to rescue him, at any cost. I'm a tasty treat for anything evil under the sun.

He was infuriatingly slow to respond. "I told you that one day you'd beg for it."

"It?" Even now, I wanted to be certain of the price.

"The Brimstone Kiss. You are the temptress, Delilah, who never wanted to be tempted."

"I'm not tempted. I'm desperate, like any other soul in Hell."

"They're desperate to get out. You're desperate to get in."

"There's no time. Do it."

"There is a price," he warned.

"With the Devil, isn't there always?" I knew this was the most desperate negotiation of my life or my death.

"Perhaps. Perhaps you just think so. Bad press, you know."

"Get to it, Snow."

He tilted his head to consider me, the dead-dark sunglasses winking with the overhead light reflections, adding false life to his hidden eyes.

His long white locks, that's how I always thought of them-as locks, bondage-swooped into a silver shimmer as his head tilted. His hair was seductive, gleaming like his slightly opalescent skin and lips. And fingertips. If this wasn't the base material of my marauding metal ball and chain, I might actually like to feel it feathering against my bare skin. Just where, I wasn't prepared to imagine.

"A kiss," he said. Or hissed.

That disconcertingly white eyebrow lifted above the top rim of one black sunglass lens. What were his eyes like? Pink like the Easter Bunny? Or crimson like a sated vamp's? I'd celebrated his rumored reputation as an Albino Vampire myself with the cocktail I'd created in his dishonor.

Right. Irma was being mum. I could still imagine her comment. Drugged slavery while you wait, with one perverted loving gesture. I'd seen the results on the groupies. Of what use would I be then to save anyone else, much less myself?

"I've seen your groupies sleep-walking around goo-goo eyed, wraiths, automatons, like Stepford wives. You seem to need a pretty big harem. No thanks. I'm into one-on-ones."

"Old-fashioned."

"Alive and well."

"And independent."

I didn't answer that. I wasn't very independent now, and knew it.

"Except you have obligations. One kiss. Then you can have anything you ask."

"Does it come with an apple?"

"It's just one kiss, after all," he said.

"Addicted zombiedom is my only option?"

He put a pale, elegant hand to his pale, elegant, sculpted chest. Warm, living Carrara marble? Maybe living. "Are you sure that's the only outcome?"

"I know what happens to your kissees."

"But not what happens to you."

"I'd be different?"

"You are different already."

"Just another trophy for your ego, anyway."

"Just your only opportunity to save Montoya. He wouldn't want you to sacrifice yourself in the process, you know."

I took a deep breath. "I know."

"All this drama over one kiss. Surely even you have done that before."

"Yeah, you're Mr. Eternal Experience. Have you ever considered you might really just be… shopworn?"

"You're taunting me because you're afraid."

"You bet." What the hell! Well, his hell. He was the only option I had. "All right. Sentimental fleas do it. Let's do it."

He seemed truly taken aback. "You have to actually say 'yes'."

Was this like having to invite in a vampire for your own destruction?

"Yes!" I sounded exasperated even to myself. It wasn't the dazzled wimpy 'yes' he'd expected maybe.

"A kiss can't be rushed," he warned.