Vampire Sunrise

by Carole Nelson Douglas

Chapter Eighteen

   

  ALL LAS VEGAS hotels have wall-to-wall security cameras. Nowadays many are mobile, even nomadic. Before one overblown holographic glass block is laid, the building's skeleton is festooned with hidden camera links. Many newer ones are wireless.

  Central control areas are scattered throughout the structure. Sansouci led me to one hidden center and ordered out all the resident spies.

  It was just me and him and walls of color and black-and-white screens showing monitored areas, the casinos and shops, elevators, pool areas, even hotel rooms. I felt like a Homeland Security operative.

  "You need to expel Loretta," he told me. "If she uses you to get herself broadcast over the entire hotel snoop system we're both dead. You for real, me for a few more centuries of indenture. "

  "Why'd you get dragged in on this?"

  Sansouci's smile was both rueful and sinister. "It's a game Cesar has played with me for decades. He likes me in the target zone. He knows he can't kill me but he can add to my indenture. "

  "He does that with Madrigal too. "

  "Yeah? He also wants to sucker you somehow. His daughter's ghost he'd just like to exorcise. "

  "I'm starting to wonder if she is a ghost. "

  "What else would she be?"

  "I get that she and her lover were not of the 'same' supernatural derivation. I understand they alienated both sides of the vampire-werewolf war to control Vegas as it became a hotel and gaming hot spot in the nineteen forties. What about the thirty silver dollars thrown on the still-embracing dead figures?"

  "Exactly what you suspect," he said, "to show the lovers were Judases to both sides. The werewolves included an early design of an Inferno Hotel chip as a message to the vamps that they planned to own this town. "

  "Loretta and her six-hundred-year-old vampire prince were killed by her father, but why were the methods so brutal? Bullets and castration, rape and stabbing. Loretta's a vengeful spirit, sure. But. . . with, I'm beginning to think, ambitions and unsuspected abilities. You never really did her wrong, Sansouci. You just watched. You might still be able to negotiate with Loretta. "

  Sansouci's hand indicated the static scenes on the dozens of spy cameras. "Nobody can undo yesterday. That's not negotiable. Call her, but don't let her broadcast. "

  For some reason, my high-profile necklace thinned and slid down behind the neck of my blouse to go undercover as a hip chain.

  Call and control Loretta. Easy to say, less easy to do. I was working with emotional plastic explosive, ectoplasmic explosive with a lot of bones to pick. Her own.

  "Loretta," I said softly, envisioning the girlish apparition from the Enchanted Cottage hall mirror, wearing a blue taffeta forties gown. Puffed sleeves, flattened bodice, slender waist. She was a prepubescent Disney Snow White with the light brown hair instead of my potent midnight-black locks.

  And so she appeared in a flash, a tender pastel vision of color superimposed on the serviceable black-and-white scenes of the surveillance cameras. I wondered why they still used some of them, instead of all color.

  Loretta took the opening line. "Delilah! You came when I called. "

  "Of course I'd do that. Did you ever doubt?"

  "No, I didn't. " She frowned, seeing past me. "Why is he here?"

  "He?"

  "Daddy's prisoner. "

  "Your daddy doesn't trust me to talk to you alone. "

  "And just what have we been doing all these times in your hall mirror?" she asked, giggling. "I'm very pleased with you, Delilah. "

  "Yes?"

  "Well, you got him back, didn't you?"

  How did she know about the showdown under the Karnak, about Ric?

  She gushed on girlishly. "It's wonderful he's alive again. "

  "Yes," I agreed. How did she know? If a ghost thought Ric had been really dead. . .

  "And he's so powerful now that he's come back. " What did she care about Ric? "Don't you think he will become incredibly powerful?"

  "I. . . don't know. I'd settle for back the way he was. "

  "Well, yes, that too, but I want more than the way he was, I want him back the way he could have been if Daddy hadn't. . . let. . . his. . . pack. . . mutilate him. . . and violate me. . . and kill us. "

  Oh. We weren't talking about the same "he" at all.

  "How they killed you both was terrible," I agreed, switching gears fast. "An atrocity. "

  "Having his head severed truly killed him. He didn't just die. His flesh rotted to nothing. The coroner nicknamed him 'the Bone Boy,'" she added bitterly.

  "Coroners need to insulate themselves from the violence of death. "

  "He's not a 'Bone Boy' anymore. "

  "No? That's good. "

  Sansouci's frown was deepening.

  "I want to thank you for that," she said. "You've been very helpful. "

  "It was nothing," I said. "Once I heard your story-"

  She giggled. I was beginning to find the giggle sinister.

  "That was a great story, wasn't it, Delilah?"

  "Of course I realized that you needed to. . . embellish it to win my sympathy. "

  "You did? You're smarter than I thought. And I knew you had reason to hate my father. "

  "Who wouldn't? He kidnapped me like I was a paper doll to cut out and use. And what he did to you and your prince. . . " I eyed Sansouci. He had made me think. . . damn his vampire eyes!

  "You've done very well, as I said," she added imperiously, "but you're not done. My darling is back in full physical form-"

  The rampaging monster on the security tapes!

  "-now I want to come back physically too. "

  I finally got the whole scenario, a sort of Sunset Boulevard/Sunset Park movie melodrama of lust and death and resurrection for the unhuman set. How had the Bone Boy been fleshed out and animated? By something the Karnak vampires had figured out while torturing Ric? Loretta was supposed to get her long-dead and even-longer-undead lover boy back over my lover's dead body? No way!

  "Yes," I conceded to gain time to think, "the ancient Karnak pharaohs may have developed a way to reconstitute bone into muscle and blood-seeking flesh, but Loretta, you're not a vampire. You were never undead, like Prince Krzysztof. You were a half-human werewolf. I doubt ancient Egyptian vampire rituals can raise the dead, only the Undead. "

  "NO!" She stamped her foot, unseen on camera, but I bet it was shod in a soft satin slipper. "They have the means now. And you aren't done! Now you must give me a body, make me whole and mortal, or I'll tell Daddy you brought my Bone Boy back and he'll grind your bones to powder with his werewolf teeth. "

  "Sweet," Sansouci muttered under his breath. "Her father's daughter. "

  We were witnessing a spoiled rotten, mean-girl supernatural tantrum? That didn't make Loretta Cicereau less dangerous.

  I started fiddling with the screen controls, focusing past her to the background where tourists milled unaware of the ghost in the foreground.

  Also mixing into the tourist scene were some Gehenna CinSims. Black-and-white cameras were their medium. That's why the surveillance cameras weren't all in color! Jeez. These casino owners are so paranoid. Can't even trust their "unreel" help. I fixed the focus on one CinSim after another.

  Meanwhile, Loretta was concentrating on bending me to her wants and needs.

  "First, Delilah, get that turncoat half-vamp out of here. "

  I turned to eye Sansouci with a signature Mr. Spock raised eyebrow. The tables had turned. Now Cicereau's dead daughter was bossing him around.

  Sansouci made a sour face but shrugged and slipped out via the gray-flannel upholstered door. He was used to high-handed Cicereau ways. The control room was designed to be soundproof, so now Loretta could speak in total secrecy.

  U
ntil, that is, she might decide to turn on the audio-visual systems and we'd take over every mike and screen in the hotel-casino.

  She lowered her voice despite our complete privacy.

  "I know what happened at the Karnak after the pharaohs recovered Krzysztof. They modified ancient rituals to clothe his bones in muscle and flesh and bring him to life again, Delilah. Once they trapped the man who was with you in Sunset Park when you two linked to find me and Krzys, all became possible. You found me so he could resurrect the Elder Vampires. "

  She certainly thought the world revolved around her undead melodrama.

  "How did you know Ric was captured?" I asked.

  "You think you're the only one who can call a moon goddess Dark Mother? Between Hathor's mirror and the moon goddess Hecate's power you escaped the Karnak's royal vampires. I felt the wind of your passage through ancient corridors as if you were air or water.

  "Hathor is the protectress of women in business-as we both are, Delilah. We're businesswomen, you small and I. . . major. The goddesses protect women who are cunning as well as beautiful, as we both are. Well, we both are beautiful. Cunning is not your strong point, as it is mine. "

  Oho, so now I have looks, not brains. I'd been called worse. By better.

  Ric's savvy mother-cum-doctor had helped me see that I'd grown up hating my looks because of who-or what-they attracted when I was a vulnerable preteen even younger than Loretta. As a woman grown I could realize I wasn't responsible for whom I attracted. I could accept that my looks were attractive to more guys than half-vamp greasers. Some of those guys might be bad or some might be good but, either way, more power to me.

  So it was out with the half-breed vamp boys and on with seriously complex men like Ric. Or seriously supernatural forces like Sansouci and Snow.

  In view of my new take on me and men-leaving out my professional orphanhood-it was fascinating to watch Loretta's devious side appear. Her father's daughter. Sansouci had nailed it. Made me almost glad I'd never known a father.

  Loretta's Technicolor image cavorted on every black-and-white security screen. I kept surveying the background for random CinSims. She might claim moon goddesses as her allies but I had my Silver Screen legions to call on.

  At least, they had called on me when it came to rescuing Ric. That proved the allegiance went both ways.

  I noticed a nervous little guy I'd first seen at the craps table in the background of one screen in which Loretta's image now dominated the foreground.

  Could it be? Yes! Ugarte from the Karnak, aka actor Peter Lorre from Casablanca, was now a floating CinSim at the Gehenna. Was he a plant, or an escapee? You'd think he'd have found shelter at the Inferno with Snow or contacted Godfrey to enjoy Nightwine's formidable protection. Those two Vegas moguls were collecting free-range CinSims for their own purposes.

  Or had Ugarte already sought sanctuary with one party or the other and then been reassigned to the Gehenna as a spy? His criminal on-screen persona fit right in with gangsters. Every mob needs a house flunky.

  Either way, I'd assumed earlier that Ugarte had made sure I learned that Ric was being held prisoner at the Karnak. In that way, this pathetic doomed con-man character from Casablanca had heroically tipped off all the topside Vegas Strip lords to Lower Egypt's vampire legions, undermining their power from below.

  As soon as I figured out what to do about Loretta turning me into a hotel-wide streaming message, I'd look up Ugarte and get the story from his own pale-gray Silver Screen lips.

  Meanwhile. . .

  "Why are you using me to aggravate your father?" I asked her.

  "You know what he did to me and Krzysztof. I told you our dead souls bonded with you and your Ric when you dowsed together in Sunset Park to find us. We're your matchmakers. You owe us. Ric has paid us back, though he may not know it, but you haven't. "

  My fingertips grew icy. Loretta considered Ric's capture and torture "payback"?

  "You think Ric's ordeal somehow helped the Egyptian vampires raise your Prince Krzysztof?"

  "It wasn't an ordeal. It was an honor to be of such vital use to the sacred entwined pharaohs and their people. And I know it did. "

  "He told them where the Sunset Park bones were kept, is that it?"

  The coroner's office location was public knowledge. I could see Ric "giving" that away to conceal his real secret: his inborn abilities to dowse for the dead and raise zombies.

  "I told them where Krzysztof's bones were," she scoffed, as if I were stupid. "No, they have what they really needed from Ric, and you're welcome to the leftovers. "

  My hands reached for the screen, ready to seize this bloodthirsty spoiled brat's wrists, or even more happily, her neck.

  Of course my fingers curled as they met solid glass. Although I could see Loretta's image, the medium was a camera, not a mirror, and she was safe from me.

  More to the point, I was safe from her.

  "What am I supposed to 'pay'?" I asked.

  "You must give me what you gave him, Ric. "

  I kept silent but my blood iced in my veins again.

  "You must meet me in a mirror again and give me the same Kiss of Life. "

  "It was merely cardiopulmonary resuscitation. CPR won't resurrect someone long dead, like you, Loretta. You saw me pound Ric's chest to get his stopped heart going again before it was too late. That's a common 'miracle' of the late twentieth century you didn't live to see. I was merely acting as any ordinary emergency tech person. "

  I was, of course, lying big-time right now.

  I had to admit to myself now that Ric had been truly dead. I had to admit that Snow's lingering Brimstone Kiss allowed my "Kiss of Life" to reverse mortality. I'd probably pay for that down the line but I didn't know how yet. Nor care. The intensity of my love for Ric scared me plenty. An unloved childhood was not good practice for mature love but somehow both Ric and I had managed to overcome our beginnings. Our endings were a lot more vague.

  Meanwhile, Loretta hadn't bought either my arguments or my lies.

  "How will we know you can't revive me if you don't try?" she cried. "Now!"

  "This isn't a mirror, Loretta. "

  "Madrigal has a very special one onstage. "

  Oops. I'd hoped she hadn't known about the magician's mirror with its front-surface glass. The blue-tinged glass was an entirely natural substance in the real world that eliminated the slight double image all other mirrors cast. That somehow allowed me to project myself more fully into the "world" beyond the reflections.

  I had even left a mindless simulacrum of myself in Madrigal's mirror the first time I encountered it. I wondered, if I did indeed give Loretta what was left of the Brimstone Kiss, would our places be exchanged? Might I become the permanent prisoner of Mirrorworld while she walked free?

  Whatever might happen was too dangerous to risk, not to mention turning her loose on Cicereau and the Gehenna. Her boyfriend's killing spree had already claimed innocent lives. I began to fully understand Ric's tortured continuing responsibility for the zombies he'd been forced to raise for El Demonio Torbellino during his youngest years.

  Looking into Loretta's calm yet demanding eyes, I knew she wouldn't care. She'd presented herself to me as a horribly wronged victim, an abused innocent. She'd made me think we had love and loss in common. She'd been wrong, yet I was beginning to see that Cicereau had killed the teenage lovers the brutal way he did for motives beyond mere paternal rage.

  "What do you want," I asked, "besides a restored physical form?"

  "Nothing much. Revenge and this hotel empire of my father's. His time has come and gone, don't you think?"

  Wow. I had a very romanticized view of parental relationships. I may not have goddesses seriously in my corner but I might have some Olympian-like powers myself.

  "Give me a little time,
" I told Loretta. "I need to arrange some things. "

  She smiled wickedly. "I can't wait to see you set my father up for a fall. "

  Maybe, maybe not.

  The major problem: she was "in" every surveillance camera in the hotel.

  I collected Sansouci outside.

  "Any place we can talk in absolute guaranteed privacy?" I whispered. Yeah, it looked like we were nuzzling.

  "Cicereau has every place in this hotel wired. The surveillance centers are pretty good, but Loretta's got those now. "

  "Trusting sorts run in the family, eh?"

  "Trust is neither a werewolf nor a mobster virtue," Sansouci said, "so we serve double doses of paranoia here at the Hotel Gehenna. However, Cesar is no dummy, either. His extreme paranoia led him to establish an electromagnetic dead zone, eavesdropping- and I'd think also ghost-proof. Only Cesar and his top full-blood assistants use it. "

  Sansouci was enjoying breathing hotly in my ear, telling me arcane little nothings, so I called him on it.

  "Tell Cicereau in just this very secretive way that I need to use it. "

  "He'd bite my freaking lips right off. "

  "What a grave loss for the Sansouci Ladies Daily Dinner Society. Tell him. "

  Although I was worried about Loretta's eavesdropping on my plans I also saw she was overconfident. Getting Krzys back from the dead had her high on hormones and revenge.

  I knew that feeling now, and how physically blinding extreme emotion was. In the group homes I'd learned to deaden my feelings to conceal my reactions. Now that I'd found and almost lost Ric I understood the power of honest feelings, and I also had some hot ideas on how to manipulate them.

  Bad Delilah!