Carole Douglas - Brimstone Kiss

So my recent state of mindless sexual thralldom was not the most humiliating moment of my life.

That moment was still forthcoming.

I lifted both arms straight out. Let Snow's pallid fingers that had so recently twined in my hair touch my shoulders.

And the silver familiar came weaving and quivering, warm and liquid and enthralling, over my skin, melding with me, arming me, perhaps disarming me.

Snow snapped his fingers.

"Grizelle, Miss Street needs clothes more suitable to stalking vampires. I need to change myself. Of course, as usual, we have no time whatsoever."

I turned to eye his security chief who'd appeared from nowhere again. She must have seen me plastered half-naked to her master's body like a temple virgin, to which I was still way too close. I wanted to descend to the ninth circle of his ersatz Dante's Inferno and stay there for eternity.

Grizelle had no time for my sensitivities, but snapped shut her cell phone.

"You will require actual outfitting," she said, finally glancing my way, mightily imposed upon. "Follow me."

I did, finally, understand the phrase "mortified to death."

But this wasn't about me and my pride or even my sanity.

Grizelle led me to a cool, blue-lit room where she pulled black leather catsuits from a row of Ikea-looking white wood and glass cabinets.

"I suppose you want to retreat to human-style privacy," she said, waving me to a room around the corner.

She'd made modesty sound like the refuge of the feeble-minded.

I dashed to the security of some privacy, letting my tarnished, once-loved vintage gown fall into an abused crumple at my feet. My slick thighs reminded me my body had responded if my mind and will hadn't. Then I thought of what Ric might have faced and be facing. That knocked me out of my self-pity party. He was my beloved, not some demonic manipulator, and he was worth any price I could pay.

The tight pants zipped up the side and the leather was steel-studded everywhere to foil vampire teeth, but the creatures had supernatural strength that might allow them to tear your head off without a tooth touching you.

To counter that, a ninja-style hood and neck-and-shoulder piece reminded me of what the older nuns at Our Lady of the Lake Convent wore despite modernization, a very medieval wimple, only here the same form was studded black leather instead of starched linen.

Somehow, I suspected that nun-like starched linen might be the better defense.

I cringed there naked while changing, imagining what those good, long-gone nuns would think of me right now…

An image of a bare female arm thrusting a sword out of a body of water was so vivid in my mind it almost knocked me over. Excelsior, a female voice-not Irma's-said. Not Excalibur. Excelsior. Onward. Upward. I guess that meant I couldn't sink any lower than I had earlier tonight. Even Irma was still AWOL. Her usual nervy, naughty advice wouldn't be welcome after an encounter like that.

Okay. Joan of Arc had heard voices too and she didn't let that stop her. In fact, she let that start her.

I pulled on the thigh-high, flat-heeled boots that shielded my femoral arteries. My returned silver familiar assumed the likeness of steel mail for the second time in an hour, forming not a bustier but a protective vest up to my ears and down over my knuckles like the long, fingerless gloves prom-going girls in Loretta Cicereau's day would wear in pastel shades of lace. Nothing could easily breach my elbows and wrists, or the vulnerable neck where both carotid and heart-bound jugular came within almost kissing contact of each other.

There was nothing lacy about my protective armor except its amazingly light weight. I bounded around the corner, regrets shoved far away for pawing over later, thinking only of confronting the literal fiends who assuredly had Ric and who would assuredly do far more vicious things than kiss.

I hadn't counted on Grizelle leading me to an elevator occupied by Snow.

In fact, I came to a dead stop when I saw him.

He was clad in the same studded and hooded black patent-leather wetsuit as Grizelle and me, but without my familiar's protective silver-mesh vest. The familiar wouldn't go undercover tonight. I caught Snow glancing at me and my fury surged.

No. I had to keep cool and think. That's what I had to contribute to this mission: my knowledge of the Egyptian bloodsuckers and their minions, of the chambers I'd seen and those I could only guess at.

I could also speculate about what the Inferno brought to the table. I'd assumed Snow had unsuspected resources and powers. I'd suspected he could or would fight the Karnak bunch, but I'd had no idea how battle-ready he was or why.

Why was the Inferno so well equipped for fighting vampires when so few purportedly survived in Las Vegas? Or was this gear designed for fighting more than vampires?

Snow's angular face looked scarier framed in severe black instead of his flowing white mane. He still wore sunglasses, but the lenses were gray, not black. However he looked or whatever he wore, he was the last monster I wanted to face tonight but the first I'd like to hurt.

"I'll walk," I said, looking for a nearby exit sign that would indicate a staircase.

"Not possible." Grizelle grabbed my arm and propelled me into the small, bullet-shaped glass capsule. She placed me firmly on her right and stood between Snow and myself. We all faced forward.

The stainless steel door closed and the elevator shot downward, scenes like a film on fast forward rocketing past the curved glass walls.

Okay, I'm a vintage film nut. This descent reminded me of that hokey thirties' Gene Autry Western-space movie serial, The Phantom Empire, where the cave's elevator led to a hidden futuristic world beneath the singing cowboy's Radio Ranch.

"This is a joke, right? Why are we going down?"

Snow answered without looking at me.

"If the Karnak vampires have as many guards as you say, we'll need to mount an expedition. We can't move a force that large along the Las Vegas Strip without attracting notice."

A force? That sounded serious. For an instant my heart lifted. I didn't dare be hopeful. Ric could be dead by now.

We whisked past areas as vast and dully dark scarlet as the planet Mars and as crowded as some World's Fair of the fey and unhuman. I glimpsed mutant beasts and humans, monsters and vistas of fire and ice. The levels pulsed in turn with such colors as lusty red, poison green, gold, the rust of shed blood.

"The Seven Deadly Sins," I whispered.

"Consider this a theme park under construction," Snow said. "The plans are secret, so I expect you to honor that."

A theme park of Dante 's Inferno, of Hell itself!

No one can say this Snow dude isn't cookin' on all four burners, Irma put in.

I didn't answer her, but she made not one more risqué remark about my recent indiscretion.

The elevator whooshed to a sudden but smooth stop and its doors slid open.

All around us ancient stone pilings formed wide arches. This was the foundation of the many stories of vast modern theme hotel above us. It looked like an old sewer system; I heard water lapping at stone even through the hood. I touched my ear and felt a metal mesh that amplified hearing. High-tech accessories in a low-tech environment.

So this was the cistern of Hell.

It stank.

Not of sulfur and brimstone…hated word!… but of damp mossy stone and still, oily, fetid water. Under Las Vegas?

"Call it my subterranean river Styx," Snow said, answering my unspoken question. Had the damned Brimstone Kiss made him able to read my mind?

He and Grizelle began striding alongside the dark, broad water.

I followed, scenting an odd tinge of brimstone in the damp air underground. Maybe it was just the reek of my conscience.