I telling Ric that Quick had faced off Snow's security shape-shifter, Grizelle, while I was busy erasing Ric's childhood whip scars in the Inferno bridal suite.
Long story, for both of us. Ric hadn't totally recalled his ordeal as mass vampire bait and I was still acting as his lover-cum - private nurse, protecting him as he thought he protected me. Maybe that was love, or maybe it was fooling yourself.
Whatever, I'd discovered even natural hyenas are really ugly customers, more weirdly related to felines than canines, with jaws that can snap and grind bones like the cannibal giant lurking up Jack's fairy-tale beanstalk. The thought of even their spectral forms cozying up to Dolly's paint job ... ick. Hyena ectoplasm must resemble the wet cheesecloth fake mediums spit up in seances.
I was still shaking my head as I revved Dolly down the blessed ribbon of smooth concrete that would take us away from this prickly desert of cacti and khaki-colored carnivores, live and undead.
Ric frowned at my speedometer until I pushed the needle up to ninety. Then he tuned the radio full up on a Spanish-language station, so that trumpets and five-string guitars hailed our return to civilization.
Ric caught me eyeing his profile. "No traffic cops lying in wait until we approach Salt Cedar."
"That's right. Ex-FBI guy likes to take lawless midnight spins out into the desert dark."
"You've learned way too much about my deepest darkest secrets since I was unconscious in Christophe's bridal suite mainlining other people's blood." He smiled his promised revenge. "I'll have to show you some new tricks, then."
"We're heading straight to your home ground."
I checked the rearview mirror, pleased to see only the distant headlights of a semi. "Why were the Karnak vampire armies out for a run?"
"Our scouting expedition to their secret underworld did destroy the centuries-kept herd of human cattle they bred to feed on."
"Only after we released those poor souls to their long-delayed Afterlife," I said. "Howard Hughes is hoping his work with the wine-god we freed will get them all on brewed blood substitute."
"Howard Hughes was a demented genius of a human being and now he's a vampire, Del, not your Big Daddy. You can't trust him."
For a wild moment, I speculated that maybe he could be ... my daddy, that is. Anybody could be, from Hector Nightwine to coroner Grisly Bahr to, hey ... Donald Trump. That's the catch when you're an abandoned baby. You could be anybody. Or anything.
Ric was still in warning mode.
"And don't let the big, loin-clothed lug you freed from two thousand years of pillar duty under the Karnak lull your defensive instincts. That wine-loving Shezmou dude had a double role in ancient Egyptian mythology. His other specialty was Lord of the Slaughter. So, before everybody in the Vegas vampire empire can get nicely-nicely civilized via some Hughes invention, they still have to seek prey."
"What's out here to prey on?"
"Isolated ranches. I imagine the worker vamps can subsist on herd animals without killing them, if they have to, and the twin Pharaohs would get first dibs on any human herders."
"What about the Zobos and your horses?"
"The silver barbed wire will repel them."
"Vampires? I thought it was werewolves that silver bullets can hurt."
"Silver is one of the oldest vampire repellents. It fell out of favor in the days of the cross and holy water, but ancient Egyptians wouldn't be subject to Christian symbols. Silver recovered much of its mojo after the Millennium Revelation."
I touched my hip. My own silver familiar often went undercover as a slim chain.
"Your newly silver eye?" I asked.
"Yet to be seen," he answered, "but promising."
"Silver barbed wire. Where'd you get that stuff?"
"Custom-made. I have contacts in the Mexican jewelry trade on both sides of the border."
"Sterling silver? Isn't that metal too soft to make effective barbed wire?"
"I gave it the evil eye after it was nailed down around the compound."
"So you've ... used ... your silver iris?"
"Sure. If you got it, use it. My concentrated stare produced a cool blue aura around the wire. Then it hardened like your silver familiar did when you touched Cocaine's albino lovelock and it morphed into a solid form. My amped-up wire proved diamond jeweler's saw-and torch-resistant, just like Snow's pretty-pretty white hair. I'm betting this wire now has some supernatural power that makes predators of the paranormal sort back off."
"And how do you know this wire is impenetrable?"
Ric grinned as widely as Quicksilver. "First, my Taxco amigos tested it with saw and torch. Second, I have