I left Vilma with more questions than answers.
Chief among them was: who and what was Christophe?
The name was suspiciously akin to Christopher, but Christophe felt a lot older to me, as old as the serpent in the garden. And maybe the serpent had been a better catch for a woman like Eve than one lousy apple.
Maybe Christophe-Cocaine-Snow was the key to the mystery of Sunset Park. Maybe he was the key to the history of vampires and werewolves in Las Vegas.
Maybe he was the key to my own role in all these events, past and present.
Inquiring reporters want to know.
I remembered the Cocaine groupie I was suspected of killing. She’d mentioned online discussion groups where my accessory-buddy was known as the Ice Prick, possessed of a potent Brimstone Kiss.
Maybe I should do a little online cruising.
I headed home to the Castle Nightwine cottage, where my laptop worked without a hard-wire connection, thanks to whatever resident unseen elves or brownies of the Internet hung around the place.
Quicksilver arrived home just after I did, bouncing through his ajar window like a huge, furry beach ball. He was glad to see me. Why did I think I’d been under his distant scrutiny on my jaunt to the Twin Peaks?
Because I was becoming the belle of unseen surveillance here in Las Vegas.
First, there were Nightwine’s local security cameras and Cicereau’s stolen videos of me at the Inferno, not to mention Snow’s access to all of the Inferno pics. Then there was Quicksilver’s literal tailing of my movements, which I welcomed. And there was Snow’s possible remote viewing via the silver shape-shifting familiar attached to my epidermis.
And then there was Ric, who so far seemed to rely on just background checks and calling to ask where I was and where I was going to be when. Yay, Ric! He was a bit over-zealous, but at least just simply human. So far. The line between protective and possessive with all these . . . er, entities, was razor-edge thin.
I got online and Groggled the Seven Deadly Sins and Cocaine. Six hundred thousand entries came up. I Groggled “brimstone kiss” and got a million. (Groggle billed itself as “the drinking person’s search engine” and seized fewer copyrights than its more famous predecessor.)
Okay.
There were a ton of Web sites with names like cocainefreaks.com, sevendivinesins.com, and brimstonesluts.com.
That “sluts” group looked promising.
I avoided logging in or signing up, but was still able to peek in on a few discussion chains, message boards, and forums. The subject called “orgasmicidyll” caught my eye, now that I knew the feeling.
“Omigod!” began one gushing entry. “I got it. The Kiss. After the January 16th show. First, the Scarf. Like hot freezing acid around my neck. The Kiss was Cold, then Hot, then Searing! I am so totaled! It is better than a jackrabbit vibrator and it lasts, oh, soooo loooong. I live for the next one, if I can be the first and only femme to get a second shot at Sweet Oblivion. Cocaine’s got to slip up sometime, and I pray that it’s with me.”
What the heck was a jackrabbit vibrator? I personally did not expect much from a jackrabbit except long furry ears. I might, now that I’d been in Las Vegas, expect something from . . . a tiger. Or a lion . . . or an alpha wolf . . . or the right unrotted vampire . . . or an FBI guy. But not from a rabbit of any sexual persuasion whatsoever. Might as well get it on with a rat! But then a lot of women later concluded that they had.
These Cocaine-aholics were unabashed addicts.
I read a few more entries, trying not to heave at the idolizing prose. “Exquisite. Indescribable. White Lightning. Albino e-XXX-tasy. I’d never had any patience with teases of either gender and Cocaine sure had these poor twits on the ropes.
“The Holy Day,” one demented kissee wrote, “was my Independence Day, July 4. I was right in the middle of the mosh pit line. His scarf felt like a falling feather from an archangel’s wing and then came the Brimstone Kiss, all pulsing volcanic fury like the Devil’s own fiery breath. It seemed to go on forever and I never wanted it to end.”
Well, it had, honey. Get over it, Irma seconded me.
All of the groupies used cutesy login names: Cherry Tomato, Hasbeenhad, Candycaine, Powdered Sugar, Kissycat.
I glanced at the signature for the woman who thought being enslaved by a Brimstone Kiss was her Independence Day.
Lilith.
Hey, someone on this list might already have used Delilah even. Both were classical Old Testament names, classical lady vamp names. Didn’t mean that I was that Delilah. Or that this Lilith was. . . my Lilith.
Still, my look-alike Lilith had been working in Vegas. She’d had the opportunity to see the Seven Deadly Sins, even to get caught up in mosh pit gropings. No! I couldn’t imagine my look-alike clawing in a mosh pit for a melodramatic smooch from a self-important . . . freak. I hated to think so anyway, but I couldn’t know for sure. Then something prodded my memory that made my blood chill and set like strawberry Jell-O in all my veins.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” had been Snow’s opening line when he came up behind me at the Inferno Bar the first time I’d encountered him.
I’d taken it for a corny pickup line. Now I knew that Snow was a lot of things, most of them scary or despicable, but he wasn’t corny.
He’d mistaken me for Lilith.
And had covered his error so fast and smoothly that I’d never tumbled to it.
“Oooh,” warned Irma. “That is one major bad boy! He might have killed Lilith. He had her snowed, for sure. Better stay out of his contrail.”
True, but the answers I wanted might lie there too.
I definitely had to consider Snow as the revived Christopher, or a progenitor or descendent thereof. Certainly, he was the force behind the resurgent Inferno, which was a gauntlet thrown down before the werewolf lords who had run Las Vegas since vanquishing or bonding with the human mobsters here in the late forties and fifties.
The only vampire trace that had existed since then was Howard Hughes’ investment in the decrepit hotel at the south end of the Strip. So Christophe had come out of nowhere a few years ago, fronting his rock band, collecting his groupies, and bringing the dead and buried concept of the Inferno up from the ashes.
No wonder Cicereau was worried.
So was I.
And there was only one place where I could go to find out the truth and set my worries to rest. And I’d better go undercover.