Carole Douglas - Silver Zombie

Cozying up to Sansouci might make Ric uneasy. Still, Sansouci, representing Cicereau, had been a major player in Ric’s rescue party. So had Snow. Which one did I prefer to confide in? Sansouci was wrong about me. The answer I liked was easy. Him.

“Try the tap,” I advised Sansouci. “You’re a new breed of vamp. This is a fresh type of blood from an inventive new source. What can it hurt?”

He eyed my mouth while I spoke as if he wanted to eat it.

Holy Hathor! Shez’s seductive ancient scents sure brought out new hormone levels in the old town.

“If I lived on brewed blood out of a golden spigot,” Sansouci said, “I wouldn’t need to sup on a nightly harem. I could concentrate on one lady. Would you like that, Delilah?”

“Would you?”

“You’re the monogamous sort,” he mused. “I might like your type for a change of pace. I confess I find fidelity really hot, but it’s not available.”

Fidelity? From a vampire with a harem? I suppose the novelty would last … for a while. We were back to talking sex and blood, again, and a deep nagging doubt tugged at my composure.

“Look,” I said. “Try the new brew. Some vamp has to be the first. Why not you?”

His grin was lethal. “Yeah. Some vamp has to be the first. Why not with you?”

“I’m taken.”

“Granted.” Sansouci eyed the cobra-headed spigot. “I’m taken too, indentured by Cicereau’s Blood Price. I don’t expect that condition to last forever. Come on and watch. I’ll toast you with the first … what? Mug? Glass. What’s this Shezmou going to serve his make-believe blood in?”

“I have no idea.” I turned to our host. “Shez?”

“At your command, Deliverer.” His impressive presence dwarfed even Sansouci and me. I glimpsed Grizelle scowling over his bare red-bronzed shoulder.

“We have a first customer for the house vintage,” I said. “Can you pour a … draft?”

“With pleasure.” Shez swept a gold-band-wristed arm over Sansouci’s broad shoulders and muscled him to the bar. He plucked a jeweled gold cup from the shelves and filled it at the tap, jerking the cobra neck to a broken right angle with relish.

A thin ruby stream pissed into the cup.

“Nothing from here goes to the police lab, right?” Sansouci asked.

Grizelle snorted.

Sansouci took the cup from Shezmou’s dark hands into his own pale ones. For the first time, I recognized Sansouci as Black Irish, like me. Just how old was he? In pre-vampire years?

He lifted the rim to his lips, threw back his head with the abandon of a howling wolf, and downed the liquid in one gulp like a shot of booze.

Three previously held breaths suddenly whooshed through the small showroom.

Sansouci lifted his cup Viking-style. “Brewer. Another round. Most satisfying,” he declared, eyeing me, “but not quite up to what one finds at the Inferno Bar.”

This was a reference to me, not Grizelle, who nevertheless growled softly as she edged closer to tower over me.

“First,” she told me in a hissing feline whisper, “you betray my master, Christophe. Now you hoodwink Cicereau’s security chief, who is apparently a blood addict. When will you abandon your beloved Ric? You fought me for his redemption. I predict that one day soon you will fight for his death.”

When it came to Mean Girls, Grizelle was top of the heap, claws down.

“You’re just annoyed at not being the center of attention,” I answered. “Shez is now the prize impressive supernatural on display on the Strip.”

“When does he join the Chippendales show at the Rio?”

“Never. Trading on his macho appeal is beneath Shez’s dignity. He’s an artist of the old school, a wizard with herbs and spices and wine grapes and sometimes … souls.”

“Soiled souls, like yours?” Grizelle asked, her contralto voice sinking to an even more sinister whispered hiss.

“I know what you owe my master for stealing his Brimstone Kiss and sacrificing his very skin for your lover’s pleasure,” she told me in a low, furious growl. “Montoya’s scars were old and no longer pained him physically. My master suffered the fresh and brutal physical burden of years’ worth of whipping in one session. I only realized you had to be the source when it was far too late. Christophe is more than Cocaine or Snow. He’ll call in your debt one day, believe it. I can’t wait to help that happen.”

Lordy! I’d been besieged by two sets of seething green eyes that wanted more than I was willing to give them this morning. Way too much excitement for a Kansas girl.

Someone loomed behind me. “If you talk of souls,” Shez told Grizelle, “I don’t wish to hear it. This is only my … day job.”

I nodded encouragingly. Shez was getting the lingo fast.

“You don’t wish to see me at my night job,” he told both his corporate suitors. “It is too rough for the likes of you.”

Sansouci’s dark eyebrows peaked like Mephistopheles’ with curiosity, while Grizelle merely looked haughty.

“The mighty Delilah,” Shez went on, to my glee, “is my … mouthpiece. You must negotiate with her. I weary of deciding too much. I prefer formulating my preparations or taking swift action. This talk of business and percentages and of ‘cloning the shops’ is annoying. My workplace is not … isn’t the place for discussing such boring things. You must deal with the mighty Delilah if you wish to bargain, or my serving girl, Fawnschwartz, if you wish to purchase.”

Shez withdrew through the tinkling glass bead curtains.

“How rude,” Grizelle growled.

I smiled and shrugged. “He’s the creative genius.”

“‘Mighty Delilah,’” Grizelle spat.

“You had to have been there.”

“Where?” Sansouci asked immediately.

“None of your business. Now. I’m going to be unavailable for a week or so. I suggest you two meet with your principals and each draw up a business plan I can review on my return.

“I wouldn’t advise slipping back to deal directly with Shez. He looks like a big, easygoing lug, and does indeed have a softer side, but he has quite a demonic temper and I can’t be responsible for your safety unless I’m present.”

“ You … responsible for our safety?” Shadows of Grizelle’s white whiskers were coming and going on her dusky face as her human upper lip curled with fury, the urge to shift barely under her control. Her long red fingernails fanned in and out. “I could eat you alive, and almost did once.”

Sansouci just smiled, on firm ground again, and donned his deep black sunglasses. “Looks like the mighty Delilah could use an escort to see her safely out.”

I jerked my arm out of Sansouci’s firm custody. No way did I want it to look like I needed male intervention in front of Grizelle.

She remained, pacing the shop, studying its wares, and terrifying the young clerk with a thoughtful, hungry look.

Sansouci led me down the street to the awning over a deserted doorway.

“What did you do to frost Grizelle’s whiskers?” he asked, admiringly. “I knew you were capable of rushing into the lion’s den, but she is no cat to mess with.”

“We had a discussion. It ended in a draw.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“That’s all I’m going to tell you. And you gave yourself away to Grizelle as a vampire, not the presumed werewolf everyone takes you for.”

“I wouldn’t mind giving myself away to her, were she a client of mine, in her human form. She’s not one to gossip, Delilah. Besides, she respects vamps more than wolf boys.”

“You need her respect?”

“It’ll help negotiations when you return, remember? Come on, Delilah. I’m your pal. I was in Montoya’s rescue party. I went into that damn fey maze under the Gehenna with you. You will award me the franchise, right?”