my waterfall of front shirt ruffles as if it wasn’t there.
I sat up tall and adjusted them, like it would do any good.
“Sorry, Street. Christophe may have sold you a fairy tale, but I don’t believe any of them, except for the big bad wolf. Mine’s named Cicereau. I notice you’re not wearing red tonight, except in your lip gloss. Or am I supposed to go beneath the surface and think creatively. A scarlet satin thong?”
“You should think with something besides your . . . your gigolo jeans.” I decided to commit truth. “Yes, I know you like me. I’d like to think it was me and not my, okay, girlie attributes. You hate being held hostage to the Gehenna’s Cesar Cicereau and his wolf pack. I’m here to say you could do something about that now.
“Snow has a secret weapon Ric, ah, unearthed, something snatched from the clutches of the drug lord El Demonio that would have every overlord in Las Vegas panting to capture and use it, from the Immortality Mob to Cesar Cicereau.
“Snow is offering Ric sanctuary from all those forces, and he might offer you that too if you went over to his side.”
“What could be that powerful,” Sansouci scoffed.
“Not what, who.” He still looked unconvinced, so I sold harder. If I told Sansouci a secret, he might help me with mine. “This is big. You know what reach and power El Demonio’s cartel commands in the whole Western hemisphere. That demon covets what Ric raised to the dark bottomless depths of what would be a soul in anyone else, even in any other doomed supernatural in Vegas.”
I stopped for breath. And then caught it.
Sansouci’s head was down, hovering over the glass he held in both hands. His thick black hair with its silver streak reminded me of a wolf’s pelt, of Quicksilver’s paler version of it. Oh, no. I’d offended him. Wasn’t a vampire just another doomed soul too?
The silence lasted long enough for me to realize I was breathing heavily.
And so was he.
Just as Mama said, vampires may not live and breathe, but they had to suck air to speak.
When Sansouci looked up, his eyes were rimmed in bloodred.
“Do you believe that I ever wanted this, that I was always this?” he demanded, his voice so low I had to lean closer to hear, much as it scared the hell out of me.
“Do you believe a vampire ever forgets being human, any more than a plague victim forgets a whole skin and being able to breathe, to the very end . . . for six or seven or eight hundred years of the very end, with no cessation in sight but some fanatic striking out centuries of half life with a stake or a beheading sword? To finally wanting, needing immortality, if only as a way to hold off total damnation? By God, you’re lucky I’ve had a hundred years to live off what you call my gigolo jeans.”
God? Damnation? What kind of vampire was this? What shocked me most was his taking the Lord’s name in vain. A vampire? Calling on God in any way? Even I was edgy about doing that anymore. And I was only recently a postgraduate virgin.
Sansouci’s low mutter continued, as rhythmic as a familiar prayer. “Do you dare to think I’m some kind of chained bear whose entire being doesn’t scream out every day for vengeance on its tormenters? Do you presume to think I’ve come to your rescue a time or two just because I like your ass in a city showcasing whole chorus lines of them? Do you think I tolerate your feeble attempts to use me because it’s fun to see an amateur try to fire a forty-five magnum? To judge me, use me, snow me?”
Again the silence spoke only of my shock and terror.
And it was utter silence. I ached to hear the shrill pulse of the half dozen rock bands writhing to the beat outside the skull, for the screen to brighten with the waitress’s supernaturally perfect face offering a refill.
I was sure my heartbeat was audible too, especially to him, and shut my eyes.
“Who the hell do you think you are, Delilah Street?” the harsh whisper came again.
“Desperate?” I tried. “And overconfident.”
I heard the movement of fabric on velvet. My throat tightened against my damn flippant Goth collar, anticipating the fanged assault.
A bit of light flickered over my closed eyelids. I eased them open a slit.
Sansouci had finished draining his glass and