Carole Douglas - Virtual Virgin

“Don’t say that!” Howard began wringing his cadaverous hands like the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth washing them in Shakespeare’s play. “I have even more money now. It could all be yours. All you have to do is think well of me, flatter me. You do resemble my fondest loves, but, of course, I can’t consider any carnal activities nowadays. Germs. You could be my virgin mistress.”

“Some things you can’t buy, even after death.”

Like really old people his moods shifted fast. “I can destroy you,” he threatened.

I wouldn’t have come here if I’d taken his moods seriously, although he was probably right.

A deep growl to my right drew my gaze, and Howard’s.

Quicksilver was stationed by the IV stand, black lips drawn back from white fangs, his major canines poised to cut the tubing.

His eye whites showed as he turned a questioning look my way. To bite or not to bite.

“Get that monster dog away from my blood line!”

“Now I can destroy you,” I noted. “Your so-called bloodline is what I’m asking about. Am I in it?”

Howard’s teeth were chattering, his eyes pinned on Quicksilver’s teeth. For a huge dog Quick had a grip as delicate as a Chihuahua’s.

“All those women, Howard, those flattered, suckered devoted starlets and actresses. Never a pregnancy, never a hidden birth, an abortion? Birth control was more primitive then. You favored actresses who looked like me.”

A smile trembled around his chattering teeth. “It had not escaped me, but parentage is not possible, Delilah. There were two or three attempts to claim my paternity before you were even born. I was, ironically, sterile long before I became . . . senile.”

I nodded Quicksilver to back off now that Howard was sharing his most intimate secrets. Maybe. When I maintained silence he went on.

“Syphilis.”

For a wild moment I thought of Madrigal’s fey assistant, Sylphia.

Howard confused my continuing silence for ignorance. “Syphilis was the AIDS of the centuries preceding the nineteen eighties.”

I knew what it was. I had just gone stone cold at any possibility that my “inheritance” from Hughes might be that devastating venereal disease. It would certainly explain most of his mental and physical degeneration over the decades.

“Yes,” he went on, “any genuine heir of mine would bear that inescapable curse. My nurses can take a sample of your blood right now. A DNA test comparing yours with mine would settle the issue. It’s unlikely, but I’m willing if you are.”

I eyed the nurses lingering in the archway to the next room. Two were edging nearer, heavy lipstick clinging to their bared fangs and scary-large syringes drawn from their side uniform pockets like ever-ready revolvers from a cowboy star’s hip-slung holsters. I imagine they were on a diet of Shez’s bloodwine and welcomed any crack at the real thing, even through the intervention of a needle.

Quicksilver produced his bigger fangs and they stopped, eyeing Howard.

“Not necessary,” I told him. I definitely did not intend to submit my blood sample to one more vampire in this town. “I’ll take your word that you paid for the sins of your youth early, with interest.”

His skeletal hand waved off the attendants again.

“So you had to turn vampire,” I noted when we were alone. “It stopped your deterioration. Your life was really screwed up from the beginning, wasn’t it?”

“Not my fault, say the shrinks. It’s a kick to talk to a thorough researcher like you who sees the whole picture.”

“You’re like Elvis, Howard. So many exaggerations have been written about your life . . . and death . . . that the truth is still out there.”

“Elvis did not have the foresight to fake his death and live on as a vampire.”

“Elvis was surrounded by vampires at the end, as were you.”

“Ah, human vampires. A minor variety compared to the actual thing. I did do some good in my life.”

“What about the nest of unreformed vamps you’re sitting atop?”

“They’d be up here to stake me and my attendants in a second and take over the overworld as well as the underworld, except for you and your handsome lover, Ricardo Montoya. And your big dog too.”

Rumors abounded that Hughes had been bisexual, but his tone when he mentioned Ric had been more envious than lustful. Once he ’d been the handsome young adventurer and he’d owned the skies, the most money, and the most beautiful women in Hollywood.

“Why thanks to me?” I asked.

He leaned toward me, looking alarmingly like a reviving mummy whose case had just been cracked.

“Shezmou!” he cackled. “You freed the demon god who can cast them all into hell. Shezmou is the only thing left on this earth they fear. It’s why I installed a workshop for him adjoining my suite in addition to that silly little enterprise you talked him into opening on the Strip. His presence is my guard dog. Nice puppy,” he crooned at Quick, earning an operatically sustained growl that made him grin, showing not great teeth.

I was struck to realize that Vegas moguls were busy inviting live-in neighbors, like Shez here and, at the Inferno, Ric, to protect their empires and . . . perhaps themselves.

Hughes was sitting atop a powder keg. The imperious ancient vampire empire under the Karnak had to scrounge for prey in the surrounding desert now that Ric and I had freed their food supply, an entire class of nonvampire Egyptians bred and kept like stock for that sole purpose.

Only the fear of Shezmou reaping their immortal heads and sending their souls on to Orsiris and a judgment that would cast them into eternal darkness kept them going along with Howard and his artificial bloodwine campaign.

So . . . why did the great and powerful Christophe need Ric? Sure, mi amor had soaked up some of my silver medium powers, but I still had my modest original silver mojo, plus the familiar transformed from a lock of Snow’s hair.

“I’m tired now,” Hughes muttered. “You may leave.”

Apparently girls weren’t considered ace supernatural guardians.

I should be so hurt that Cesar Cicereau hadn’t invited me to be his in-house guard when I’d saved his hairy ass twice.

Speaking of hairy asses, as I’d recently had the unhappy occasion to glimpse, Bez was waiting outside the suite door to see me and Quicksilver out when we took our leave.

G EE , IRMA ANNOUNCED, when we weren’t looking, someone turned the lights out.

I took a deep breath.

After a fun ride down on the Hughes-built automated chair, Bez left Quick and me to navigate through the Karnak crowds and the oppressive exterior pillars outside. As the casino chill faded in the warm dry air, we gazed on the overlit dark of the Strip, now the world’s biggest and most expensive velvet painting.

I actually liked the effect of night scenes etched with luminous chalk on a black velvet background. It wasn’t the Hope Diamond on red-carpet jewelers’ velvet, but it was . . . Vegas.

Meanwhile, Irma waxed guilty for a change.

I sort of feel like I should have stayed to keep the old guy company.

“He’s power-mad Howard Hughes, world’s most unattractive vampire,” I pointed out.

All he needs is a good listener.

“Fine. Do whatever you do to take over an innocent mind. Howard just reminded me what I do best.”

Attract lonely old moguls?

“Research, baby! My next project is to figure out the identity of the woman who helped Hughes die and live again. If it wasn’t Vida, and I doubt that, thank God . . . who was it? That might explain a lot about pre– and post–Millennium Revelation Vegas, maybe even the Immortality Mob.”