Carole Douglas - Silver Zombie

Shez shook his bewigged, glass-bead-swagged, and braided mane, and growled godlike approval.

Sanscouci muttered, “Holy Seared Shitakes. This is a Clash of the Titans.”

He edged my way, arms folded on his chest, while the two larger-than-life types eyed each other like enemies and lovers. “Starting your own harem with Bijou Boy there, Street?”

“Jealous, Mr. Souci?”

Sansouci winced. “What I do for my boss. What’s with the guy’s albino kilt? And I don’t get this boozy beauty parlor concept.”

“You haven’t sampled his wines yet.”

Shez’s divine super-sharp hearing whipped his impressive head our way. “Mr. Souci may sample any bottle he pleases, but he should not drink the massage oils.”

Sansouci’s almost-emerald eyes rolled like Quicksilver’s when he heard me try a ridiculous command, like “Stop.”

“I do not sell beer,” Shez went on, “although I could brew it. The two gold taps at the end of the bar are a special house brew, ideal for”—Shez frowned, striving to be modern and hip—“the nightclub set.” He regarded me quizzically. I supposed that he’d been watching TV in his spare time at the roomy laboratory Hughes had provided atop the Karnak Hotel. “Night … stick. Does that not mean, ah, the police?”

I realized then that Shez had first met me wearing my used cop duty belt with the attached billy club. I’d left all that fighting gear home. Perhaps a mistake, I thought, as I eyed the three deadly paranormals in the room with little mortal unarmed me and poor Fawn Schwartz.

“The Police is a music icon,” Grizelle purred to Shezmou. “You seem new to our entertainment-centered world. I could introduce you to the Seven Deadly Sins rock band at the Inferno Hotel tonight.”

“Rocks I know from my native soil and sins are my specialty,” Shez answered, being far more provocative than he knew.

Beside me, Sansouci growled in his turn. “I’m supposed to get his attention away from that sleek Inferno cat-woman? Cicereau had no idea he had any competition.”

“I’m a partner in this operation,” I told him. “You can make points with me. ”

I hadn’t meant to flirt, just to make Sansouci feel better. That was an Our Lady of the Lake convent school girl-graduate problem. We always wanted to make everyone feel better … in an abstract, selfless, spiritual way. Not a good ploy with vampires.

Sansouci was about as spiritual as a machete.

“You don’t want to talk ‘points’ with me, Delilah, without being ready to deliver.” He flashed a grin broad enough to showcase the strong white canine teeth he usually kept under lip and key. “That why Shez calls you Deliverer?”

Mistake. Another one.

Trying to distract Sansouci to give Shez and Grizelle some one-on-one time, I’d upped the sexual and homicidal tension in the shop so you could cut it with a diamond saw. I guess Shez hadn’t been off a pillar for a millennium too many.

I was just a mortal wearing loose tee and shorts, the tourist uniform.

By comparison, Grizelle was prime Las Vegas Strip showgirl with a Siegfried and Roy pedigree. She was the modern equivalent of a Vegas goddess, much as I hated to admit it.

“What’s off between you and Grizelle?” Sansouci whispered, standing way closer than necessary.

“We tangled.”

“Seriously?” He leered at her, not me. “Girl-to-girl. I’d have liked to see that.”

“Rein it in, Romeo. It was tiger-to-girl.”

“You were the girl and walked away without bone-deep tracks in your face?” He stepped back to eye me as if I’d grown a unicorn horn. “Hey, Delilah. I know you have the nerve act sharp with Christophe and Cicereau, but Grizelle? Tell me another fey tale.”

“It was one of my more desperate moments.”

“You two hellcats were fighting over the Cadaver Kid, I bet.”

I just nodded. Sansouci didn’t need to know Ric had still been comatose at the time.

“Grizelle must go for the Latin lover type,” he said, frowning at Shez. When I just stared, disbelieving, he added. “What? This Shez guy is Mediterranean, right?”

“Just barely.” Egypt did border the southern seashore, but the ancient population came from the cradle of Africa, not Asia or Europe.

“And what’s with the major eyeliner?” Sansouci asked. “He looks like the Rudolph Valentino CinSim at the Karnak.”

“It worked for Johnny Depp. Re-creating his ancient beauty potions is like a religion with Shez. He isn’t shy about marketing his products.”

“How’d you get mixed up with him? What kind of super is he?” Sansouci asked.

“Ah … his job for his big boss was about the same as what you and Grizelle do for yours.”

“So he’s paranormal muscle of some kind.”

“You could say that.”

“And his hobby is making wine and … perfumes?”

“That’s his physical therapy.”

“For what?”

“PTS.”

“Post-traumatic stress? This guy doesn’t look like an army vet. You’re losing me, Delilah, not that I wouldn’t like to find you in a dark, deserted cul-de-sac.”

“Don’t you have enough women in your blood-bank harem already, Sansouci?”

“Yeah, but I can always use a fresh item on the menu.”

Sansouci was a modern, civilized vamp. He sipped a little from enough adoring ladyloves to live without killing, at least just for blood.

“See those cobra-headed gold taps Shez was mentioning?” I said, eager to distract him from his favorite target, me.

“Yeah. Not beer on tap, I hope,” he said. “That wouldn’t be smart, given the high prices on the beauty potions. Just the bottles are worth a bundle. Malachite, lapis lazuli, tiger’s-eye.” His gaze had drifted to Grizelle, who was interrogating Shez without him even knowing it.

“Sterile artificial blood,” I whispered in Sansouci’s ear this time. “Totally legal and dependent on no living creature’s circulatory system. Interested?”

“Hell, no. Would I drink near beer on a bet? Blood on tap? You’ve obviously never had vampire sex. Where’s the seduction? Where’s the danger? Where’s the warmth, the beating heart, the heat? Where’s the fun, Street? Huh? You like it hard, don’t you? You don’t like life, or death, too easy.”

His eyes were on the hair covering my neck. His eyelids had almost closed as one outer upper lip lifted over his teeth in a classic Elvis-sneer, but his voice went so low and deep I felt the vibration in my veins. I also felt myself swaying toward him like a cobra to a snake charmer.

I jerked away. “Where’s the profit, you should be asking.”

He hissed out a sigh of frustration, and then finally gave the gilded faucets a serious survey.

“Those look like real gold,” he said.

“Right.”

“Okay. I give Metrosexual Boy that. Blood would look deliciously tasty flowing from those eighteen-karat snake fangs. It would appeal to the kind of upwardly mobile vamp who sniffs cocaine.” His eyes narrowed to malachite-hard slits. “Your sponsor at the Inferno could market the hell out of a product like that. That might nudge your amateur cocktails off his featured drink board.”

Yeah. Christophe, aka Cocaine of the Seven Deadly Sins rock band, aka Snow, knew how to market danger and death. And he’d stolen my Albino Vampire and Brimstone Kiss cocktails recipes for his bar after I’d invented them there on the spot.

But there were other rich entrepreneur hoteliers in town, and only one of them was undead for sure. And only I knew who he was for sure. Did I want to share with Sansouci?

He claimed to feel the “warmth,” something Howard Hughes would never have been capable of, man or vampire. We both were at odds with his boss, Cesar Cicereau. I could use an ally on the dark side.