question. "You're a hard woman to shake off an inquiry. I hesitate because I don't enjoy acknowledging the brutal state of lawlessness in the land that birthed me."
"You care, even though you were enslaved there as a child?"
"Especially because of that. Think. Mexican soil near the U.S. border is a no-man's-land thick with unclaimed corpses. Thousands perished trying to cross the border and were left in shallow graves. Others were undiscovered victims of the drug cartel wars or, like the hundreds of murdered women in Juarez, the white slave trade. The dry desert landscape preserves corpses. Look at the Egyptian mummies."
"No more mummies for quite a while, please," I said with a shudder. The dry desert landscape also cooled off plenty at night.
Ric absently put an arm around my shoulders to warm me. "The desirable CinSim zombies only come from the Mojave and Sonora deserts that reach into California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, not the Chihuahuan that straddles the Tex-Mex border. Something in the Mojave and Sonora sand is a prime natural preservative. Perhaps that's why the Egyptian vampires immigrated here via their underground River Nile centuries ago. You got a good look at these latest guys from Cicereau's Murder Inc. lodge?"
"Yeah, they appear pretty whole for having been werewolf pack bait. With some plastic surgery on their death wounds, they could pass as live."
"How do you think the Immortality Mob, whoever they are, get such clean canvases for their Cinema Simulacrums? You can't show a fine film on a scratched movie screen."
"I don't like to think of my CinSim friends in Vegas as hitchhiking on gussied-up corpses."
"Why not? They probably had cosmetic procedures when alive and acting."
"So your Zobos can be rehabbed?"
"That's the idea. If they can be used by the baddies, why can't they be employed for their own good, at least?"
"And you own this ... arid land."
"I own a thousand acres of it."
"I didn't know the FBI paid that well or that you were with them that long."
"Consulting pays a lot better. These acres are too far from everything, even Area 51, to cost much."
"Don't remind me of 'alien' issues," I complained as a joke.
Ric grinned. "California isn't the freakiest state in the nation anymore, Nevada is."
"You haven't seen Kansas yet."
"I will soon," he said, brushing a kiss across my temple. "I can't wait to start our road trip back to where you grew up. It'll be a change of scene and a chance to put your ghosts to rest."
I agreed. Ric needed a change of scene after what Vegas had dished out to us recently. I wasn't sure my past was any place to find R & R, but I kept quiet.
He reached over to pat a white-blazed horse forehead farewell. "Seven Zobos corralled tonight is a good start," Ric said. "They'll probably attract their former in-ground buddies. We need to get back to civilization, get a shower, some sleep."
A horse whinnied agreement. We must reek if the livestock wanted us washed.
"Most girls are horse-crazy at some stage." Ric nodded at the restless half-dozen mustangs and purebreds, bracing a motorcycle boot heel on the lower crossbar. Somehow that didn't do the trick of turning him into Clint Eastwood.
"Not me. I was fighting off vamp boys at that age."
He grinned. "You make me wish I was a vamp boy. You look tasty in the moonlight - mother-of-pearl skin, sapphire eyes, ebony hair."
Okay, I was about to blush. What girl believes she's good enough looking, deep down? And I'd had a head start at self-loathing nobody around me had bothered to head off or even see, except Ric.
But I was a piker.
Ric had been through hell and back, maybe even the literal one, since childhood, and recently he'd been vamp-drained of almost every last drop of blood. My Snow-assisted kiss of life had restored his heartbeat, and the docs had declared him fine, but I'd regarded making love as therapy ever since. I was tiring of playing therapist and ready to pronounce him normal again, relax, lose my protective instincts, and enjoy the ride.
So if me in the moonlight brought it on, I was willing to stand there gooey-eyed and sop it up. Looking at Ricardo Montoya had never been a chore for me, either. Girls aren't supposed to wax verbally enthusiastic about how guys look - unless they're Dan Brown's wife describing the dimple in Robert Langdon's chin - but Ric was the disgustingly tall, dark, and handsome Hispanic edition, only he now had one silver