I hadn't counted on Grizelle leading me to an elevator occupied by Snow.

In fact, I came to a dead stop when I saw him.

He was clad in the same studded and hooded black patent-leather wetsuit as Grizelle and me, but without my familiar's protective silver-mesh vest. The familiar wouldn't go undercover tonight. I caught Snow glancing at me and my fury surged.

No. I had to keep cool and think. That's what I had to contribute to this mission: my knowledge of the Egyptian bloodsuckers and their minions, of the chambers I'd seen and those I could only guess at.

I could also speculate about what the Inferno brought to the table. I'd assumed Snow had unsuspected resources and powers. I'd suspected he could or would fight the Karnak bunch, but I'd had no idea how battle-ready he was or why.

Why was the Inferno so well equipped for fighting vampires when so few purportedly survived in Las Vegas? Or was this gear designed for fighting more than vampires?

Snow's angular face looked scarier framed in severe black instead of his flowing white mane. He still wore sunglasses, but the lenses were gray, not black. However he looked or whatever he wore, he was the last monster I wanted to face tonight but the first I'd like to hurt.

"I'll walk," I said, looking for a nearby exit sign that would indicate a staircase.

"Not possible." Grizelle grabbed my arm and propelled me into the small, bullet-shaped glass capsule. She placed me firmly on her right and stood between Snow and myself. We all faced forward.

The stainless steel door closed and the elevator shot downward, scenes like a film on fast forward rocketing past the curved glass walls.

Okay, I'm a vintage film nut. This descent reminded me of that hokey thirties' Gene Autry Western-space movie serial, The Phantom Empire, where the cave's elevator led to a hidden futuristic world beneath the singing cowboy's Radio Ranch.

"This is a joke, right? Why are we going down?"

Snow answered without looking at me.

"If the Karnak vampires have as many guards as you say, we'll need to mount an expedition. We can't move a force that large along the Las Vegas Strip without attracting notice."

A force? That sounded serious. For an instant my heart lifted. I didn't dare be hopeful. Ric could be dead by now.

We whisked past areas as vast and dully dark scarlet as the planet Mars and as crowded as some World's Fair of the fey and unhuman. I glimpsed mutant beasts and humans, monsters and vistas of fire and ice. The levels pulsed in turn with such colors as lusty red, poison green, gold, the rust of shed blood.

"The Seven Deadly Sins," I whispered.

"Consider this a theme park under construction," Snow said. "The plans are secret, so I expect you to honor that."

A theme park of Dante 's Inferno, of Hell itself!

No one can say this Snow dude isn't cookin' on all four burners, Irma put in.

I didn't answer her, but she made not one more risqu�� remark about my recent indiscretion.

The elevator whooshed to a sudden but smooth stop and its doors slid open.

All around us ancient stone pilings formed wide arches. This was the foundation of the many stories of vast modern theme hotel above us. It looked like an old sewer system; I heard water lapping at stone even through the hood. I touched my ear and felt a metal mesh that amplified hearing. High-tech accessories in a low-tech environment.

So this was the cistern of Hell.

It stank.

Not of sulfur and brimstone...hated word!... but of damp mossy stone and still, oily, fetid water. Under Las Vegas?

"Call it my subterranean river Styx," Snow said, answering my unspoken question. Had the damned Brimstone Kiss made him able to read my mind?

He and Grizelle began striding alongside the dark, broad water.

I followed, scenting an odd tinge of brimstone in the damp air underground. Maybe it was just the reek of my conscience.

We walked for what I guessed were three Las Vegas Strip blocks. I figured we were at the back of the Inferno layout.

The area opened up into an underground plain of stones and arches. Through one of the arches rows of huge freight elevators were disgorging men and women wearing the same metal-imbedded wetsuits we did, except they were less shiny, and had Inferno security force badges on the shoulders. They were pulling trolleys loaded with racks of weapons, everything from machine guns to shotguns to swords and axes to flame-throwers.

Behind them came another cadre of wet-suited people.

I froze when one of the new men walked up to me, a sword belt hung over one shoulder and a nasty-looking machine pistol on a bandolier over the other, squinting to fix my face in his focus.

"Sansouci." Only the green eyes gave him away. In the fury of a fight, we'd know our own by the uniform only. And it would be a furious fight, given the weaponry.

I eyed Snow's back. He'd believed me, at least, about the numbers and killing instincts of the Karnak crew.

"You're here because-?" I asked Sansouci.

"Christophe convinced Cicereau the Karnak vampires posed a clear and present danger to us all. I'm guessing that you're behind this."

"Why?'

"Ever since you hit town, things have been going to Hell." He looked around with a raised eyebrow. "My orders are to protect our forces first and kill vampires second, but I'll watch your back."

"Why?"

"I like the looks of it."

"You haven't seen it."

"I go on instinct."

"Christophe didn't tell you the Karnak vampires are holding Ric and he knows stuff they're almost dying to find out?"

"Shit. No. I'm sorry. Christophe's people didn't mention that. Cicereau wouldn't give a fang about an ex-FBI man."

"And you?"

"I told you. I like you and your back, sight unseen. If he's your main man and if vampires want him that bad, I'll watch his back if we find him too."

I raised an eyebrow. Maybe Sansouci could be an ally, after all. "You help save Ric and I'll"-I really couldn't offer him anything he'd want-"try to return the favor some day."

He nodded briskly. "Fair enough."

"You don't mind going after your... kind?"

"These creatures aren't my 'kind', vampire or not." Sansouci frowned at me. "I've never seen even you so pale, baby pale. How'd you get Christophe to go to war?"

"My silver Irish tongue?" My knee-jerk, defensive quip had come too close to the truth. And Sansouci was no fool. I could feel my cheeks flaming as if I suddenly stood over a campfire.

"Huh. You paid his price, whatever it was, didn't you?"

"So did Cicereau, evidently."

Checkmate.

We turned to watch the Inferno forces and Cicereau's muscle men sling weapons over and torsos and every limbs. The echoes of the din were almost deafening.

Sansouci grinned. "Super-fine equipment. Never did cotton to mummies. The werewolves are only in human form right now, but they're fierce fighters even so, and needed some exercise." He eyed me again. "We going to run into those devil-dogs again?"

"Hyenas with eternal, supernatural strength."

"Good." Sansouci hefted his bandoliers tighter over his wide shoulders. "Thanks for the mission."

I stood alone. I felt as edged as a weapon, ready to turn my shame and fury against whoever opposed us. When Grizelle strode over, weapon-hung and holding a sword belt for me, I tightened with dislike.

"I'm your partner. I've got the flame-thrower, you've got the sword. Slash and burn is our game. Vamps are super-fast and super-powerful. No mercy is the only way to deal with them. You ready?"

I nodded. I was ultra-ready to show no mercy to someone. "What about... your boss?"

"What about him?"

"Who's his partner if you're with me?"

"Like you'd worry?" Her white smile showed the teeth of the tiger. She nodded to the dark river's edge.

I saw a tongue of stone pier thrusting out into the dark water where the river had widened into a lake as far as was visible in this dim underworld. A lone black figure stood at the end of the pier, one dead-white, ungauntleted hand throwing a veil of what appeared to be gray powder into the water.

He spoke, intoned, words that echoed off the stones.

"In the names of the murderers and the maidens and time immemorial, I command your ashes to congeal. I command you, La Gargouille, to rise."

Shivers coursed under my leather wetsuit as I remembered Caressa Teagarden's tales of her ancestor, the gargoyle carver of Notre Dame. This was not a mere gargoyle that Snow was summoning. This was the dragon of the Seine itself, supposedly burned to ashes by a holy cardinal.

Who was Snow that he could cast ashes on the water to rise as serpentine flesh and scale? What was he? Devil or angel... or something even more or less, using powers holy or hellish?

But that was then, the legend of the water dragon, in Medieval France, and this was now in Middle-evil Earth, and it was becoming reality.

The dark river water boiled like a vast pot of oil. Then a huge, pale-scaled form came rising, dripping gouts black as old blood, folding its webbed wings against its massive curved sides.

Only one head crowned its long, serpent-supple neck, but it bowed to Snow who leaped upon it. Up he rose to the cavern apex on that thorny, massive brow.

"This is a rescue mission, a raid," Snow's rock-concert voice boomed off the rock walls and water. "We will stop all opposition forces encountered with whatever means suits their breed and any mortal and immortal allies they may have.

"My mount's fiery breath will sear our foes dead; until they number few enough to get past. At that point we'll be hand-to-hand. Grizelle and I will lead, along with Sansouci of the Cicereau syndicate. Each fighter must be on the alert for a mortal prisoner, a Latino man of great value to the vampires-and a prize for our party. He'll be hidden and well-guarded."

The dragon began stalking, its huge body as hidden as the bulk of an iceberg, down the shallow river, towing an armada of empty shallow-bottomed barges. Its cave-entrance-size nostrils snorted mists of steam.

The armed forces shouted in triumph at the size and power of their leading edge, and waded to the thigh-tops into the fearsome dark shallows to scramble aboard the barges.

"Where are they going?" I asked Grizelle

She picked me up like a doll.

"Where we are. Along the doom-driven river Styx to the sacred river of the Egyptian dead and the temple of Karnak. I'm here on orders that you don't get your feet wet in Hell or in the river of blood that will soon flow under the Karnak."
    
 

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