suspended animation, I felt much better about abandoning the city to its overlords for a while.
Somehow I'd become a freelance gadfly-combination-warrior maid-of-all-work for werewolf mobster Cesar Cicereau, undercover vampire entrepreneur Howard Hughes, and rock star - supernatural question mark Christophe/Cocaine/Snow. Not to mention my landlord, media boss Hector Nightwine.
Pursuing hot new attractions like Shez and his offbeat enterprise was the Vegas mogul's favorite competitive sport. They'd all be a lot less likely to get up to anything really despicable as long as negotiations over Chez Shez remained in limbo. Much as I wasn't crazy about seeing Wichita again, I was pleased at the prospect of not having to face evil on a cosmic scale for a whole week.
Quicksilver always loved to ride in Dolly, and seemed even happier than I was to be leaving the Vegas Strip behind as Ric drove us out of town.
No more hoarding Dolly's big vintage steering wheel for me. I was glad to have Ric alive and well and putting me in the passenger seat. I'd done a hell of a lot for him lately, and he needed to feel he could return the favor.
Quick dashed from one side to the other of the Caddy's wide backseat, his long tongue flopping ludicrously from side to side in his mouth. The sunglasses that protected his unusual wolfhound-blue eyes from the wind gave him a guy-movie, stunt-dog look, silly but happy-go-lucky.
As we drove up Highway 93, slowed by heavy Vegas traffic, I kept glancing in my side mirror, watching the huge profiles of the Karnak, MGM-Grand, Bellagio, Gehenna, and the Inferno hotel-casinos shrink into the distance.
"Look," I said when my eye caught a blur of black motorcycles on the freeway access road. "Isn't that the Lunatics half-were gang?"
While Ric was giving them a glance, Quicksilver was already pawing the sunglasses off his wolfish nose. He leaped out of Dolly onto the bed of a pickup truck loaded with feed sacks in the next lane and then disappeared as he leaped down to the roadway.
"Madre de Dios," Ric swore, fighting to maneuver Dolly's nineteen feet between the pickup and a roaring semi into the far right lane. "My Vette this is not."
"Dolly may not be nimble, but she has the horses and the heart," I told him. "Just keep flooring it."
Ric roared the car onto the next exit ramp, reporting on the rearview mirror action while I twisted my head to watch it.
"Those crazy bikers must be doing seventy on the access road," he shouted into considerable wind noise. "They're a public menace."
"Do you see Quick?" I pleaded.
"No. He'd be a block or more back by now at this speed," Ric yelled.
"Not necessarily," I said, as I watched the last motorcycle in the long line spin out sideways in a cloud of dust. The desert seeped everywhere. "Don't slow Dolly down to more than forty."
"The speed limit is ..."
"Forget any law-abiding FBI guy stuff," I told him. "I'm watching. We'll need to accelerate fast to get back on the freeway on the next entrance ramp. Time it so you make the crossroad light on green."
"You want me to race the biker gang to the crossroad? Are you crazier than those half-werewolf Lunatics? Your dog on foot has fallen half a mile behind us by now."
"Nooo. That's why we have to time getting to the intersection just right. Quicksilver really doesn't like the Lunatics. They attacked me on practically my first day in Vegas."
"I remember, but ..."
"You don't remember like Quicksilver remembers ... ooh, see that? Ouch."
Ric, who'd responsibly kept his eye on the road and the speed limit, stole a sideways glance at the oncoming knot of formidable motorcycles. The salivating, fanged, hairy half-werewolf riders added a new dimension to the Hell's Angels' long-terrifying image. Another Harley spun sideways, taking out two ... no, three bikes beside it like huge shiny black bowling pins.
"I can cross lanes and stop that gang, Del, if you think they ran down Quicksilver, but I don't want to crease Dolly on my watch. You'd be more likely to kill me than those bozos. Hijo de puta!"
Ric jerked Dolly's big wheel to keep her untouched as neighboring vehicles fled the oncoming action, heading into our lane while dodging the were-bunch on the rolling thunder overtaking us all.
In my side mirror, the lead biker's snarling face was growing bigger and uglier, his overreaching front wheel closing in on Dolly's pointed chrome taillight. We were verging directly into the gang's path.
The bikers maintained their bowling-alley