Egyptian vampires could rampage without facing any Afterlife music.
Egyptian vampires?
Yup, they were the only ancient culture to have no bloodsucker mythology. Yet, sometime between 5000 and 3000 B.C., the problem had become severe enough that even the royal line was tainted. Many high-ranking mummy heads, including King Tut's, had been severed before wrapping to ensure no awkward resurrections here on earth.
Almost all world religions offer a "separate and save" option for the Afterlife. Not the Egyptians under secret vampire rule. Once infested with vampires, Egyptian culture froze in time, feasting on their own in perpetuity and occasionally sampling stray latter-day humans.
Shezmou had been the demigod, or demon, who twisted off the heads of the damned and cast them into Egyptian Hell. With him in chains, vampires had centuries to create and re-create their own thirsty breed unchallenged.
All those deathless big bad vampires were still ruling the Underworld beneath the Karnak Hotel and Casino. I knew something they didn't, not even their twin brother-sister pharaohs. A big bad modern vampire secretly owned the Karnak and pulled Vegas strings from atop the Strip hotel, and he had twenty-first-century ambitions. Luckily, he and I had an uneasy but mutual understanding. So I had an unseen ally here.
"I was not expecting to receive the mighty Delilah," Shezmou said.
Ric had adroitly impressed the ancient godling with my namesake's Biblical exploit of cutting off Samson's hair to sap his strength. I'm sure Shez didn't want me snipping off any of his wig strands.
"I thought two others of the Upperworld also sought audience?" Shezmou asked me.
"They await without, mighty Shezmou." Okay. Being suddenly thrown into an ancient surviving culture, vampire or not, brought out my high-school Shakespeare play dialogue.
Shez grinned at me. "I owe my liberator a great debt. It is good that you are wise enough to pour sweet oil on my godhead."
Oh, my lord! Irma said. Did that sound tacky. And hot.
"Now I practice a modern profession," Shezmou's Darth Vader baritone continued. "I must seem ... ordinary to conduct commerce. So speak as if I were your ... equal. Just between us."
"Sure, Shez."
His grinned widened. "You enjoy that, Delilah."
"Sure do, Shez."
"I observe that small women enjoy ordering large men around."
"Your human avatar is only six-feet-five, Shez. And I am tall for my gender."
"Do not I know it."
"If I may suggest, to get along in the Upperworld, cultivate contractions."
"I am not a woman in childbirth," he said, frowning. "Dealing with such matters is my little brother Bez's profession."
Bes, rechristened "Bez" by Ric and me just because it went better with Shez, was the dwarfish god of randy sex and ... subsequent childbirth. Logical, these Vulcans and Egyptians.
"Don't you know it," I repeated Shez's earlier phrase in a more casual way. "And I'm not a woman in childbirth, either."
"No, you are ... ah, you're slim and limber, although high for your sex."
"You're shortly going to meet a female almost as tall as you, Shez."
"Am I?"
"Yes. Before that, I want to make sure you're properly represented. I assume your boss ... er, overlord, has a link to the storefront."
"Yes. A link, as in a chain, only this chain is embedded in a fine glass box lid. See."
Shez gestured to a twenty-five-inch flat-screen monitor on an ivory-inlaid table of exquisite Egyptian workmanship.
I sat on the zebra skin X-bench (sorry about that, ancient zebra) and awakened the computer link with a touch.
"Aren't you looking Stripside sloppy today, my dear Delilah?" Howard Hughes's shrunken face mouthed into a fish-eye webcam lens. "What do you think of my new shop concept?"
"That it's mine."
Hughes shrugged. He'd had himself made into a vampire at almost his last breath to retain his financial kingdom. With his long beard and hair and gaunt look of pained disappointment, he alarmingly resembled a plastic Jesus figure.
"She who thinks is clever," Hughes chanted. "He who does owns the world."
"Come on, Howard. You know this concept - and Shez's enthusiasm for it - is my idea."
"Do you have a contract in writing?"
"I expect you to provide one."
"Forty percent for Hughes Tools and Tchotchkes."
"So like you to overreach, Mr. Hughes. Ten percent."
"Thirty."
"Twenty," I said.
"Twenty-five to me. Oh, twenty-four. Your age, nicely symbolic," he cackled. "And only fair. I am an old, old man."
"And ever were and always will be."
Hughes's blasted face wrinkled with a rather charming smile. "Give me credit, and I will give you the world."
"'I'll.' We're teaching Shez speech with contractions today. Better for the future talk shows."
"Always on top of things, Delilah. Speaking of which, you walked off