THE PAST FEW days' events gave me much to think about as I drove Dolly home to the Enchanted Cottage late the next morning.

Ric wanted to use his discreet law enforcement contacts to investigate if word of the Karnak vampires was drifting around.

That would mean his checking with Captain Kennedy Malloy, but the rivalry was more on her side than mine. I was okay with it. Ric also swore that, no matter what he found out, he wouldn't go back to the Karnak without me. Not that I was crazy for a return engagement.

So we'd agreed to switch roles: he'd take the investigative lead for the next day or so; I'd get some R &R.

I welcomed time on my own. I needed nothing so much as the fast-food jumbo burger and fries beside me to share with a joyous Quicksilver, then to take a nice long nap until late afternoon.

Quicksilver had hated being home alone while I was out cavorting with Ric. After I awoke, I tossed something to sweat in over the hip-slung silver familiar, donned light tennies, grabbed Quick's chain leash, and we headed for Sunset Park.

Quicksilver bounded along the curving red-clay packed path ahead of me as we jogged. By now the western mountains were softening the sunlight. Day workers had gone home along with night-attraction-seeking tourists. We had the park pretty much to ourselves. Soon I was panting and Quick wasn't. Who was the dog here and who was the master?

I slowed to a walk as I watched him bound onto the grass and weave among the trees with their individual plaques commemorating the dead. I don't know why people could memorialize loved ones in the park, but it was a nice touch. At least there weren't actual bodies under the trees, like the old bones Ric and I had uncovered here earlier.

Sunset Park was peaceful at six in the evening, off the traffic noise from Sunset Road. I welcomed returning to daily routine. Even the silver familiar had stretched into a chain so fine I couldn't feel its eternal presence for now, especially with Quick's heavy-duty steel leash chain looped twice around my hips until I needed it again.

I felt as happy and secure as the old Wichita, Kansas, Delilah Street, a dedicated career girl with a house, a dog, and a future... before a vampire anchorman and a jealous TV-station weather witch blew all that away. I picked up my pace to keep an eye on Quicksilver, now a flashing gray form a hundred yards ahead.

I loved watching his bounding gait off leash and pounded after him, past a bench hosting a flash of flowery pastel orange and blue.

Wait a minute!

I stopped to trot back to the bench.

Sure enough, my old pals Chartreuse and Flamingo from mobster Cesar Cicereau's cast of werewolf flunkies were sitting there, looking hollow-eyed.

They weren't pretty to begin with, these late-middle-aged guys with sagging abs, thinning hair, wrinkles, and warts. Werewolves or not, they displayed that insane desire of some older human men for rainbow-colored leisure wear. Maybe it was liberating after a lifetime limited to the blue, beige, gray, brown, and black of men's clothing.

Me, I wore a cherry-red terry-cloth shorts and tank top jogging set-but I'm a girl, so they tell me.

"Were you gentlemen expecting me?"

"And your big dog too," Tangerine said, nodding at Quicksilver charging toward us like a pewter bullet.

"We have orders to escort you to the Gehenna," Baby Blue explained.

I missed the earlier nicknames I'd given them the first time they kidnapped me: Chartreuse and Flamingo. Kinda like Starsky and Hutch or Brad and Angelina.

Quicksilver skidded to a stop beside me, his shoulder hard against my hip, teeth bared to display his panting tongue. The Izod shirt twins backed up.

Werewolves had a major advantage over vampires when jousting for control of Vegas in the 1940s. They could look and act purely human for all but three nights a month. Sunlight-allergic vampires were out of action sleeping for twelve of every twenty-four hours.

On the other hand, werewolves were just ordinary mobsters most of the time, not monsters. That was a disadvantage when they needed to get tough with a woman who had a huge wolfhound-wolf-cross dog looking on. Quicksilver was always half-wolf-24/7-in a city that rocked around the clock.

"Um," said Tangerine, "no dog this time."

"Tell him, not me."

"Um," said Baby Blue, who did happen to sport watery eyes of that shade, "we are not putting the bag on you, Miss Street. We are just offering a chauffeur service at Mr. Cicereau's beck and call."

I spotted a charcoal gray stretch limo purring in the parking lot. Much better than the dingy white van they had hustled me and Quicksilver into before.

I glanced at Quick. His eerily human blue eyes were regarding me with unarticulated agreement. He could pace that limo on Highway 95 if he had to. Ordinary wolves can outrun cars at street speeds. Quicksilver had a turbo in his tank that put him in the speed-demon range, like a cheetah.

"And why should I accept a ride from two guys who dropped to all fours at Starlight Lodge last month and tried to run me down and tear me apart?"

They eyed Quicksilver, each other, and then me.

"Look, Miss Street, we were there, yeah," Tangerine admitted.

"And we did the Change. Had to," Baby Blue said.

"But we're just small stuff," Tangerine added. "We were hit-and-bit late in life. We're only good for a little wild game or chicken-chasing, honest."

"Nothing human," Baby Blue added. "We're late converts. Never got the taste. We never would have laid a fang on you."

"Never would have had a chance, either," I pointed out.

"True. We don't even get near the, uh, kill. The alphas throw a few tidbits to the fringes. That's us. That's all we get."

"'Tidbits'?"

"Not so much bone and blood," Tangerine explained eagerly. "Just some organ meats like any human can find in the grocery store."

"Some organs make pretty grisly fare," I pointed out. "Hearts, livers. We humans aren't like turkeys with hanging neck giblets to suck off and distribute in blood gravy."

"Eeuw." Baby Blue was quick to defend. "We don't get those big, important organs thrown to us, no siree." He glanced desperately at Tangerine. "Just the useless bits, like, uh-"

"Spleens," Tangerine put in. "Not even needed in live humans. Three-to-six-inch little sausage things like you'd put in a bun."

Quicksilver must have enjoyed the Pastel Brothers' verbal tap-dancing act, because he pushed his fanged muzzle close to their crotches and growled.

They paled in unison and shut up.

"You guys have a lot in common with Quicksilver. He likes to chow down on little sausage things too."

They back-stepped both physically and verbally. "Look, Miss. This is a friendly let's-just-talk sort of 'meet,' honest. It's not even Mr. Cicereau who sent the limo. It's Mr. Sansouci."

Sansouci? Had there been a palace coup at the Gehenna?

Now I was getting interested. Sansouci was Cicereau's right-hand man and not voluntarily. Cicereau had tried to use me and-when that hadn't worked out-kill me. He'd offed his own teenage daughter decades ago, so I had no doubt about his murderous capabilities.

Sansouci, on the other hand, had a certain hard-bitten self-interest I could work with. "Hard-bitten" was the right expression. I'd recently learned he wasn't a Gehenna werewolf but a daylight vampire, a new breed that hankered for a new dawn of cooperation between vampires and Vegas humans: voluntary long-term blood donors rewarded with exotic vampire sex.

"Mr. Sansouci, he-" Tangerine began and then faltered, eyeing his compadre.

Baby Blue gathered himself, shut his eyes, and bit the bullet. "Mr. Sansouci said we should say... please."

We all four kept shocked silence. That was simply not proper mob protocol for human or werewolf.

I shrugged. "I'm not dressed for a meeting and I need to get Quicksilver home. He's been on twenty-four-hour duty lately and might snap at the wrong spleen among your crew."

"Fine." Tangerine sighed in relief. "We'll give you two a lift to Nightwine's place and wait for you to get ready, like a, um, date. The boss isn't quite ready to see you, either. Right, Marvin?"

"Right." Baby Blue bolted for the idling limo and opened the back door.

Quicksilver bounded inside to check it out.

"Watch the claw marks on the leather," Tangerine cried. "Mr. Cicereau nips off ears for that. Sir."

I ducked to follow Quick inside. "You boys know what Quicksilver nips off."

They shuddered in tandem and piled into the luxurious upholstered cavern behind the solid black window between us and the unseen driver.

Little Red Riding Hood had never dreamed of a classier ride, with two werewolves and an Enchanted Cottage at the end of it. And no grandmother, except maybe Caressa Teagarden way out at Sunset City.
    
 

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