I'VE BEEN CALLED nervy a few times since I'd come to Las Vegas only weeks ago. Actually, I'm liking it. Kansas Delilah could have been called determined but never nervy.

Tonight I felt nervy in a bad way.

Despite having faced off a few fistfuls of major mobsters and monsters lately, I approached the deserted Strip shopping center with icy fingers and damp palms.

Only one storefront was lit from within. Funny that this fluorescent sign of life unnerved me more than a fey power touchpoint or a fully packed zombie mummy tomb underneath the Karnak Hotel. I was only going to confront a roomful of mostly middle-aged women.

Imagine, a bunch of ordinary mortals had my knees knocking! The silver familiar seconded my cowardice by shrinking to thread-fine chains and taking cover under my "CSI V as in Vegas" black tee.

A good thing I'd paused at the Enchanted Cottage mantel to push Caressa Teagarden's funky green-stoned ring onto my middle finger. It might either draw my "twin" or simply underline any "up yours" gestures I had to make in traffic. Just kidding. I'd never do that to Dolly. Some road-rager might mar her perfect hand-waxed-by-me black finish.

I left my adopted cop duty belt locked in Dolly's vast empty trunk with an unwanted memory picture of Quicksilver's concealed ride-along there. To ensure a low profile, I'd even parked the huge '56 Caddy before a closed dry cleaning establishment. That was six doors down from the array of small, high-mileage late-model cars lined up in front of the unlabeled storefront like a gang of motorized roller skates.

I'd worked hard to become nervy and shameless all my life, but now I had a major case of Cringe.

The emails flooding in since yesterday had begged me to show up tonight.

"We need you there, Delilah," they typed in twenty-some messages. "Graduation Day wouldn't be the same without you, without the one who started us on a New Path."

Oh, Lord. I sounded like some cheesy online soul-saver.

They'd even kept up the rent on the former Weight Watchers space, meeting here daily under their own will-power, they told me.

Why? They'd actually bought into my hokey gambit of substituting dark chocolate kisses for white chocolate kisses to symbolize their resolve to grow beyond the addictive memory of Cocaine's unforgettably sensual Brimstone Kiss.

They had determination, chutzpah, heart.

There was only one bluebottle in the ointment. Me. While they'd been meeting and weaning themselves off the addictive smooch, I, Delilah Street, anti-Brimstone Kiss crusader and the liplock liberator, had become a Brimstone Kiss veteran myself.

Whining that I'd been forced to accept the fatal kiss to save a life... swearing that I didn't get one fattening, illegal, or immoral thrill out of it, honest, especially not a-gasp!-multiple orgasm, not even one teeny tiny singular orgasm... nothing except... some insignificant, way less than minor, mild body-to-body stimulation even an automated statue of a Greek god at Caesars Palace's fountain attraction might have been guilty of...

I paused before the kind of glass-paned steel door that had led to a lifetime of various small businesses, swallowing hard. Swallowed pride really does leave a supersize, almost lethal lump in the throat. Ironic that Snow, as lead singer, Cocaine, for the Seven Deadly Sins, had adopted the role of Pride.

I'd rather have faced six half-were gangs like the Lunatics, three pyramids full of zombie mummies, even a seven-course meal of Hector Nightwine's creepiest favorite things than know that I was something worse than the worst unhuman, a hypocrite.

Still, I couldn't knock the feet of clay out from under my fervent converts just to salve my corroded conscience.

I pushed inside.

And was greeted by Partee Central and a blaring boom box.

The usual metal folding chairs filled half the room, but had been pushed askew to make room for conga lines of women hip-swinging to a familiar music list: all the upbeat numbers from the Seven Deadly Sins albums. (The SDS was one of the few rock groups still popular enough to have best-selling albums.)

I recognized some of the Haves and Have-nots, Brimstone Kiss-wise, from my one and only meeting here, but they were all mingling. There was a mosh-pit, luau, Richard Simmons vibe to the crowd. Even my bruised conscience and sorrowing soul couldn't help nodding to the beat.

Giant brandy snifters on long folding tables along the walls shone bright silver with wrapped white and dark chocolate kisses. Punch bowls held cola-dark brews and milky concoctions floating ice cubes. Both wafted a hard-liquor lure.

"DEE-lie-lah!" a woman's voice hailed me.

Three others manhandled me into the conga line, hands on hips. It would have been churlish to ignore the mood.

How could those Snow-obsessed women languishing for an unheard-of second Brimstone Kiss from the rock god have become these joyous voodoo babes?

They one-two-threed me onto a metal folding chair and gathered around. Two came from the adjacent kitchen bearing armfuls of roses that were plunked into my unsuspecting custody like fragrant floral babies.

One bouquet was white roses, the other a red so dark and delicious it was almost the brown of bitter chocolate. Now I was not only seated and surrounded but armless and trapped. My defensive instincts twinged, but the roses' mingled scents were as heady as incense.

"I don't get it," I shouted into the chaos. Wasn't I here to give a girl graduate pep talk? "What's this about?"

"About us," a woman with thick curly dark hair shouted. "About you."

"We are finally free, girl," another voice cried. I glanced to a black woman sporting a gorgeous platinum-gray pixie cut. "Thanks to you. Come on, it's time for the show."

"Show?" I blinked when they swept back their chairs to leave an even wider aisle. A bare-chested ghost strutted into the cleared area.

"Oh."

A Snow tribute performer wasn't what I'd had in mind as an antidote, I thought, as a karaoke machine started blaring a Seven Deadly Sins number.

The guy began lip-syncing to a portable mike and making the rounds of the circle with eye-level pelvic thrusts at every stop.

Omigod, this was tacky. My noble attempt at liberation had ended in blatant, bald female lustulation? The guy wasn't bald. Nooo, he lashed his long white wig around while slinging his hips like a hash-house waitress. I was so embarrassed. I was sure the hair had been designed for a Cher impersonation.

And this guy had it all wrong. Close up, the not-waxed chest had sticky coils of thick clown-white theatrical greasepaint in a moir�� pattern. Anybody who'd been in the Seven Deadly Sins mosh pit (not to mention close-up and too personal with Snow himself) would know that lightning-strike scars were his chest tattoo of choice, or not-choice.

And the rhinestone-jeweled fly featured enough cat's-eye-green gems to equip a litter of Grizelle's cubs... when anybody in the know, like me, realized that the stones and colors on Snow's performance catsuit fly were all warm and kinda pulsing semiprecious scarlet, amber, and hot pink. (Now that I saw the imitation and thought about it.)

In fact, that imitation was heading to my chair as the guy started ripping the front snaps loose on his leather shirt. Snaps?

The fly was next and so was I.

I finally got it. This was a Cocaine tribute stripper. I squeezed my eyes shut just in time and thought of England. And my own situation and failings.

I was a prisoner of personal freedom.

Tangled in tacky.

Gratified by my liberated ladies.

Horrified by my own backfiring hubris.

Humbled.

Humiliated. Again.

At least when I opened my eyes the number was over. The cheap Cocaine clone finally had boogied out the rear kitchen door to a late-night performance at the Idolanimator Club, I was breathlessly informed, as if I would ever go there.

I handed the ladies single roses until my arms were empty. The twenty-four formerly addicted Cocaine ladies folded away their five-dollar bills and shut their purses and leaned back in the folding chairs breathing heavily, exhausted by liquor, libido, chocolate, and dancing.

I sighed relief. Those were fairly harmless failings in the Millennium Revelation's brave new world.

And then I noticed the figure standing just inside the front door.

Tall. All in white. Ghost-white. Eyes like those alien visitors of my nightmares. Big, black, shiny. No, just sunglasses. Arms folded on shirted chest. White silk Armani suit hiding snow-white scars and no gaudy zipper flies.

Himself. The unhuman of the hour. Cocaine. Snow.

Here in person, to take my ladies down.

I glanced toward the kitchen exit. That door was shut.

The women did what women do: they arranged the chairs in tidy rows, they folded the tables. Some grabbed brandy snifters of wrapped silver kisses as others emptied the punch bowls' ice water into the kitchen sink and prepared to tote everything out.

Everyone did her clean-up duty; everyone got a rose and some got leftovers as a door prize. Except there was one more door to pass. To the victors belong the spoils.

Speaking of spoils, he virtually blended in with the almond-white walls all such places have so that whatever happens inside them remains colorful and memorable.

I had a bad feeling I'd consider this one of the most colorful and memorable nights of my life. Not in a good way. I thought only I had sucked in my breath. No such bad luck. I heard a dozen deep inhalations and then that number doubled. My Brimstone Kiss sisters had finally noticed who blocked their exit route.

Ai-ai-ai, Chiquita Banana, Irma breathed in the back of my mind. You are up against the Big Kahuna.

Bastard! At the very moment when twenty-four individual triumphs of self-control and willpower were reverberating through this plain room, when I was daring to think I might have done some good, even if the outcome was a trifle tacky, up the Great White Cobra raises its lethal head and hisses.

Okay, so I tend to exaggerate. I always was too passionate about my work and too methodical about my passions.

I folded my fingers into my fists, feeling my nails make half-moon indentations all along my life and love and head lines.

The women halted en masse, seeing what I'd seen.

It was an impasse. Past versus present. Charisma versus self-esteem.

If I could have drawn a gun, I would have.

But my empty arms were still laden with a fragrance of roses and regrets.

The woman nearest the door started moving, a stolid middle-aged woman with a pure Mayan profile. She came even with the White Chocolate God.

Chocolate had been invented in the jungles of the step pyramids of the Maya and Aztecs of 1100 BC. I'd done a feature on that for WTCH-TV in Wichita. The word meant "bitter water," because fermented cacao tree seeds produced the flavor.

I waited and watched.

"Candy kiss?" she asked, proffering her brandy snifter.

"Dark or light?" he asked in that reverberating stage basso.

Okay, I told Irma. I'd cave and say, "Which do you prefer?"

"You take your chances," the woman answered.

Nah, Irma said. You'd be as contrary as she is.

He reached in and pulled out a tiny silver foiled pyramid with a curl on top. Cute.

The woman left.

The next woman sashayed up. She'd been watching.

"What do I get if you guess which color candy my brandy snifter holds?" she asked coquettishly.

"One less kiss."

"Oh, yeah? I can sell all of these on eBay for big bucks if I say you passed your eyes over the contents."

He waved his hand over them.

"Gracias! 'Cocaine-approved.'"

I couldn't believe it. Each woman passed with his blessing, pleased as... Cocaine punch.

I don't suppose it surprised anybody that I was last. Alone. Forgotten even by my own acolytes.

Passing him on the way out was the hardest thing I'd ever contemplated. He was so cool, so urbane. So uninjured. So not the vengeful god.

Those attributes made me hate him more. Or maybe it was me I hated. That damn silken suit reminded me of Ric's shining scar-smooth back. I'd only won that triumph at the cost of a few, last lashes to Snow, but those had been knowing.

I knew he'd suffer and had decided to sacrifice his skin and his pain for Ric's redemption. He'd known it, and, worse, possibly had leashed his guardian, Grizelle, to allow me to make my choice.

It's easy to fight for someone you love. It's much, much harder, I was finding, oddly enough, to wrong someone you hate.

So I knew, as I moved slowly to the door to face the enigma that was Snow, that he could be hurt and that I had been willing to do that.

No wonder he'd shown up here to undo my amateurish attempt at do-goodery. I knew I should apologize. I was too proud, and too ashamed.

"I guess," I said, staring at the middle white button on his silken white shirt, "I should have expected you to show up and undo my self-help group."

"Did I?" he asked.

"Well, they were mesmerized."

"You are mesmerized. They all left. Didn't you notice? Now you know they're truly free, as you might describe it. Dark or light?" he asked, holding out knuckled fists.

"Chocolate. We're talking about chocolate."

"Of course. And your chocolate won. Congratulations."

"White," I said. "No, I mean dark."

He smiled and opened empty fists. "Sorry. You'll have to buy your own. Such an interesting world, where dark is good and light is bad. Again, I congratulate you."

"But... you've lost all these women, all these devoted groupies. They're content with high-calorie substitutes."

"Are you?"

Oh, shit, he was right. No.

"So you've won," he said again.

"You act like you... wanted them to move on?"

"Exactly."

"And like I did just what you wanted me to do?"

"Exactly."

"Even to the... damage?"

He paused. "It wasn't unexpected."

"You're saying I've been manipulated into wronging you? That's truly wicked. I hate that worse than anything."

"Sometimes it's necessary to sacrifice your pride."

I'd known he'd claimed that seventh Deadly Sin from the first time we met. I just hadn't known that was my biggie too.

"I'm-"

I thought back to the religion lessons at Our Lady of the Lake Convent School, horrified, recalling the thirty pieces of mob silver Ric and I had found in Loretta and her prince's Sunset Park grave. Were they meant for me in some weird way?

"I'm some predestined Judas?" I asked, aghast.

"Delilah will do," he said with a smile I wasn't sure reached his eyes because of the dark sunglasses, which suddenly turned into mirror shades so I saw myself small and convex in them.

I wasn't sure, either, whether his powers had morphed the sunglasses, or my own mirror magic. So either he was a sadist, which I wouldn't argue except I'd hurt him, or I was a masochist. Either way, I knew letting my guard down would be fatal to something, my life or my pride.

"Samson took pride in his strength," I said, "but he lost it."

"So you've won," he said again.

"If pride is your cardinal sin." I remembered that a church cardinal had slain the medieval dragon Snow had recently raised.

"We have so much in common," he whispered.

I had to lean close, and up, to hear.

There was something I had to say, and it was very hard. I could barely whisper.

"I'm sorry."

He bent nearer. I felt icy heat and a heavy, sinking heart. Were our breaths mingling? Did I sense subliminal tremors of tension in us both? Can he give any kiss but the Brimstone Kiss? Did Lilith take it too? If so, what happened? His face tilted away, so did his lips a breath away from mine. They brushed the sides of my hair.

"What did you say?" he asked.

He was going to make me say it again. "I'm sorry, and apparently also a hypocrite."

He straightened, laughing.

"Welcome, Delilah Street, to the unhuman race."

He laughed again and I heard real joy.

"I couldn't," I started to explain... something.

"Shhh," he said. "You'd better let me go, or you might be sorrier."

"Me? Let you go?" I was keeping him here? No.

"The woman walks away," I said. "That's the whole point of this group."

So I turned my back and did.

All I could think as I did my walk-away was how much I'd like to rip the expensive clothes off his back.

Not because I'm a hopeless groupie but because I really have a need to know how guilty I should feel about him. Snow is enough of a bastard to have wiped the whiplashes away like lipstick and he'd never tell me. Or even Grizelle.

Some men just love a good catfight.

I flexed my tense, aching fingers.

Me too.
    
 

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