Dolly swerved a bit. "No steel studs here, chica? You'd think Snow of all ... people would know how much vamps like femoral arteries and would have ordered the fang-repellent studding everywhere."
By now I was mucho glad the suit was also waterproof. Did I even remember the naive virgin who'd thought she was getting her period the first time she'd met Mr. ex-FBI smoothie in Vegas's Sunset Park a mere couple of months ago? I kept my eyes on the rough road and parted my totally armored thighs a teasing bit more. Sex in a high-tech wet suit was suddenly looking really hot.
Too bad Ric didn't realize this was just necessary physical therapy.
Yowsa! Irma managed to get in as she broke out of solitary for a weak moment - mine.
"This is going to be quite a road trip, Montoya," I muttered.
Behind us, Quicksilver stopped the heavy doggy panting and gave a sharp yip, like a basso coyote alert. Was he jealous of me getting all the petting or ...
"Holy smoke!" I yelled, choking my grip on the steering wheel.
As we neared the lonesome gray of the interstate, a black hedge of fog had materialized from the concrete pavement, rolling toward Dolly's chrome front bumper like a solid wave of storm cloud.
"Flash flood?" I murmured uncertainly.
"That's no flash flood," Ric shouted, grabbing the fifteen-shot automatic from the very visible shoulder holster over his racing suit.
I looked hard. Yes, the wave was more solid than water ... and sported moonlit fangs.
I accelerated. Dolly's bumper bullets plowed through a fender-high onslaught of furred shoulders and snarling, snapping maws.
"Quicksilver, no!" I shouted as the gray tide flowed around Dolly's red taillights into the desert beyond.
The dog was already over the rear door and on the desert floor, giving chase.
"Quicksilver, no!" I shouted again. I'd recognized the pack's breed, and mere werewolves would have been an improvement.
"Quicksilver, come back." Yeah, like a locomotive would spin on a dime and jump its tracks.
"Quicksilver, leave kitty!" I screamed at the top of my lungs in as deep and commanding a voice as my female vocal cords could manage.
I squealed Dolly into a too-rapid right onto the empty highway to look for results.
Ric regarded me as if I was insane.
By then I'd roughed up Dolly's brake shoes, but had avoided a fishtail as the car stopped. To my surprise, I saw Quicksilver's form lofting into a long leap over the trunk and into the backseat.
"Good dog, good boy," I said in that exaggerated praising tone deluded dog "owners" use.
Ric was still watching me as if I was nuts. "'Leave kitty'?"
"It's the one command he'll obey for our walks in Sunset Park." I shrugged apology. "If it's late and deserted I let him off leash. Of course that's when the cats come out."
"So the only way you can call back Killer Dog is to scream 'Leave kitty' for all the world to hear?"
"It did work. And it's not easy to turn a hundred-and-fifty-pound half-wolfhound from prey."
"Nor a hundred-and-eighty-pound man," Ric added with a mock ogle. "Did you have to call out the hounds on me? Where'd they all go?"
I turned with Ric to eye Quicksilver's "aren't-I-really-good-to-listen-to-you?" smiling mug and the desert beyond.
A bright flash of gold was moving across the valley floor, the darker mountains looming behind it.
"What on earth?" I asked. "Some moonlight phenomenon, like the purported green flash at sunset?"
"What under the earth," Ric said, stretching out of his seat to see. "Holy smoke is right. Picture a tomb painting writ large."
"My God. It's not - " I looked again.
Now I saw the smoky flowing cloud that had rushed us was racing to meet the flash of moving moonlit gold that led an army of shadows over the sere ground. A solid-gold royal chariot. Behind that spectacular artifact came the Karnak Hotel's hidden horde of ancient Egyptian vampires taking a run behind their desert steeds, with hyenas serving as their pack of hounds.
"I never noticed these mountains looked like pyramids, from a distance," I breathed. "The royal hyenas just flowed right through us."
Ric nodded as we watched the distant spectacle.
"I never saw the critters personally, but from your description and what we've just seen, the hyenas may have a spirit or ghostly existence as well as a way-too-physical one. They'll sic the Karnak royal vampire chariot corps on us now that we've had a close encounter. Better floor it."
"And Quicksilver just chased them! That dog would tackle Godzilla."
Not to mention a six-hundred-pound white tiger. No way was