It was time I started looking for Lilith to save my own skin.
I'd spotted her name on some of the discussion forums of Snow groupie Web sites like cocainefreaks.com, sevendivinesins.com and brimstonesluts.com.
It could be another Lilith or a pseudonym someone had liked. After I'd finally realized that Snow had mistaken me for Lilith the first time we met-and tangoed and tangled-at the Inferno, I was more inclined than ever to think I'd find a path to Lilith through his groupies.
I might also find out who'd killed the one who'd messed with me. Doing that would get Malloy off my case, if not Haskell.
My scheme to start a groupie "self-help" group seemed the best way to get to know the culture and its members. And the best way to do that was mingle with them during a Seven Deadly Sins show.
Perry had been right and wrong at my interrogation today. I was not a mirror-gazer. My typical adolescent dislike of my maturing looks was magnified by the realization that vampires really grooved on them.
Now that I'd encountered Vegas, Ric and the Enchanted Cottage looking glass, though, I couldn't avoid mirrors. I needed them to confirm my disguises. I didn't need seeing glimpses of the dead in them, but I got them. Ric and I had first made love in front of a mirror, his choice, showing me a sexy side of myself I'd never imagined. Was I becoming a mirror seeress and escape artist because I always had a mirror self, a twin?
These thoughts were circling in my head as I did a last check in the hall mirror to make sure I passed as a Snow groupie. I had a lot of range there. They ran from dewy 'tweenhood to octogenarians and beyond, in flavors from Goth to punk to country club to vintage diner.
I had butterflies in my stomach, but not because I was going to the Inferno Hotel and Casino for the Seven Deadly Sins' nightly show. That alone proved I wasn't in any danger of becoming a Snow groupie. No, I was nervous because I was going to seduce those groupies away from the object of their mania. Long shot. But I didn't have any others when it came to tracking down my possible "twin."
I wore gray contact lenses to camouflage my signature baby blues. My outfit was relentlessly denim down to the ankle boots. I didn't usually dress this urban casual-I'd been a newsroom career woman for too long-so it was a good disguise.
The silver familiar had followed my thoughts, slithering up my arm, neck, and cheek to become a literal crown of thorns. That was a little dressy for denim, but the spiky look resembled the Statue of Liberty's tiara in a funky way and I needed one touch that would get me remembered, yet not attract Snow's post-show Brimstone Kiss.
His Brimstone Kiss was supposedly the one and only admitted desire of Cocaine groupies. Their raunchy online discussions, though, proved they hankered for more. Rumor nicknamed him "Ice Prick," but nobody could speak from experience. Witchcraft lore claimed the Devil and demons had ice-cold penises. Believing Cocaine demonic might appeal to women with Darkside tastes, but I couldn't imagine any thrill from that chilly attribute, other than goose bumps.
What I found demonic was that Cocaine fans who got to a Vegas show lost both ways. Some, broke, eventually went home without the Brimstone Kiss to try again on another trip. The "lucky" ones, though, might as well have rewound and erased their previous lives once they got that mosh pit lip-lock. They moved to Las Vegas, they held menial jobs, they attended the Seven Deadly Sins performance every night they could afford, seeking a return engagement with the Brimstone Kiss. And they never got it again.
I wasn't sure what Snow was, besides addictive to his victims, but right now I was more concerned about where Lilith was, or if she even was at all. I adjusted my crown of silver thorns to look more like a custom chrome hubcap. Then I slung a hobo bag full of my new business cards over my shoulder, and bid my mirror goodbye.
Nowadays Las Vegas resembled Lord of the Rings country. The new forests of time-share and condo towers were narrow needles, like magicians' or hermits' towers, that offered views from every unit. Hotels dating from after the millennium favored fountains of fire and geysers of colored smoke. They all looked like pits of Hell and just the right cracks of doom to throw a pesky but supremely powerful ring into.
The Inferno was the most fiendishly lit. The sound of falling water, hissing steam, and beating flames was oddly New Age. I dropped Dolly off at valet parking.
"Don't bruise those fins," I warned. "She's a big girl."
"Sure thing, ma'am," said the loathsome, scaly demon who slipped behind the wheel. Since the last time I saw him he'd lost the temporary tan, but still wore the beaded collar, linen kilt and jackal-head mask of a Karnak employee. "I'll park this baby in a handicapped spot. A '56, right?"
"Right." Guys and cars.
"Love your bitchin' Inquisition headache band. Radically retro, like the wheels."
I should have known, I thought, touching my fingertips to the sharp spikes haloing my head.
I entered the lobby to join the flow of females pouring past the casino area for the theater at the main floor's rear. They were so tightly packed we could only shuffle forward like old folks. I avoided even looking at the bar area, where my CinSim pals Nicky and Claude Rains, the Invisible Man, hung out. This was a total undercover outing. Small mirrored surveillance balls danced above us. Tiny bubbles. Tiny bubbles courtesy of Big Brother.
None of the other audience members came here alone like me. Their Snow dependency was a full circle of enabling. I intended to break it, but first I had to break into it.
"You're the one," a breathless voice behind me said, "who almost got the BK a few nights back."
I nodded as everyone around me quieted. "Have any of you gotten it yet?"
Heads short and tall, light and dark, shook in disappointment. Obviously, only a few lucky souls got the post-concert smooch. I prepared myself for two hours on my booted feet, sandwiched between pushing mobs of hysterical women, my eardrums caught between the huge stage amplifiers and mewls and whimpers of my sisters-in-waiting.
Still, Snow was a compelling performer. I couldn't avoid a small tremor in the pit of my stomach. If I worked it right, I would again "just miss" the Brimstone Kiss and get a ton of sympathy from my "sister" addicts.
I only prayed one would lead me to Lilith, my Lilith, and possibly to the groupie killer.
Maybe praying before a Seven Deadly Sins concert was a bit inappropriate to both parties involved.
A screaming guitar chord announced the Sins' entrance.
Greed's lead electric guitar was the culprit. Once he had our attention, he rocked that axe like a maniac, his silver-and gold-coin-encrusted duds glittering in shades the color of money and autumn leaves: green, amber, and rust.
The female back-up singers shimmied into place. Lust's lithe black figure was licked by rhinestoned red, orange, and gold tatters of flame silk. Envy looked mermaid sleek in a strapless sequined green gown.
Anger wore his black leather jacket with a swagger that emphasized the blood-red lightning bolts decorating it. He made his bass guitar grumble and rumble, a one-man biker gang. Gluttony in patchwork velvet hung over the drums like they were a five-course dinner he needed to devour, cooking up a percussive storm. Sloth's rhinestone-slathered silver-gray jersey shirt sparkled as he drifted almost idly into supporting riffs.
All the scene needed was lead singer Cocaine.
Ear-spearing screams erupted all around me. I could see the massive gold, green and maroon scaly chest and clawed feet of a huge animated dragon descending from the flies high above the stage. Clouds of smoke and fire enveloped the stage and the mosh pit, bringing a wave of heat, light and fog, and a beastly roar from the dragon's two hideously gnarled and horned heads that were now visible.
Snow-with his white skin, hair and leather catsuit- was a glittering flake of humanity perched on one of those beetled reptilian brows. He slid down the long dragon snout, hung from a huge gold nostril ring, then dropped onto the stage just in time to take the white electric guitar Lust rushed to his hand.
His strong baritone bawled out a line about "everybody goin' down" and some hard-driving number was launched, the boys in the band shaking a tsunami of sound from their instruments, the girl singers wailing like lost souls in counterpoint to screaming guitar and frantic drums.
Having the mind-numbing music this close nearly deafened me. The long wait and longer show numbed my tingling feet to the ankles and my mind into an endless trance. By the time Snow finally pulled out the long white chiffon scarves and went trolling for clamoring female fans, I was tired and crabby. I snapped myself to attention again, because this was the moment I'd been suffering for.
Snow, of course, never let anyone see him sweat. He was still pale-faced and dry as he began his concert-ending walk along the edge of the stage while the band played wildly behind him.
His long, angel-white locks brushed some of the fans' faces as he bent down to loop a scarf around their necks and draw them near. He gave them the long goodbye, not a short kiss-off. I'd seen that from the back of the audience. What I hadn't seen from there was that the Brimstone Kiss was so heavy on tongue, an erotic sensual smooch that drove deep before he released them back, swooning, into the buoying crowd with a palm stroke to their foreheads.
It was such a weird blend of, say, Elvis's ghost-on-speed kisses and some Holy Roller preacher's phony healing routine, I just did not believe it. These women must be self-hypnotized.
Then I felt the silver familiar fast-tracking from a punk tiara on my forehead into a heavy chain and pendant around my neck, as if drawn to its master. I looked down to see a giant S nestled in my cleavage, like I was Supergirl.
At that moment Snow bagged my neck with a chiffon scarf.
The women around me automatically pressed inward, determined to help push me up toward his kneeling figure for the final kiss.
Poison dog lips! Irma screeched in warning. I almost giggled, except I was too appalled. The Brimstone Kiss might be a lot of things, but that one it most definitely was not.
I felt my elbows grasped as I was bodily hauled up, the women pushing inward to assist my lift-off. My face was level with the stage, then Snow was standing and I went up and up with him.
He brought my face very close to his, holding me off the ground like a toy.
I shut my eyes and squeezed my lips shut even tighter, flinching against the forthcoming Brimstone Kiss. The only tongue that had ever gotten cozy with mine came from the butcher's counter or Ric Montoya. Or maybe Quicksilver if I wasn't fast enough to dodge doggie enthusiasm.
I felt a downward swoop and my feet hit the stage floor with a jolt.
"The 5 is for Street, I presume," Snow said. "Or should I be flattered?"
"More for 'sold out'," I admitted. Caught in his groupie cauldron. He could think I actually meant to be here! I was so humiliated.
" Miss Delilah Street. What are you up to?" Snow asked as he bent down, a smile on those lethal lips.
"Not up high enough for the Brimstone Kiss," I said. Okay, that was a coy answer.
And so he treated it. "See me backstage later. Use the side stairs and 'Beelzebub' for a password."
I blinked. This was an invitation a Cocaine groupie would kill for.
Snow was leaning forward to lower me back to the mosh pit. I hit the floor with a jolt. By the time I looked over the stage apron, he had retreated to the mike for the finale.
Wailing, bereaved groupies crowded forward even though the last Brimstone Kiss had been given, pushing me aside.
I let them, working my way to stage right.
The final song was a furious rock hair-raiser called "Liquid Lightning." No one noticed me creeping toward the black-painted side stairs where I confronted the creature from the Black Lagoon wearing a T-shirt labeled Security. In the dark, the grayish CinSim was discreet but visibly ugly enough to repel all comers when noticed. He smelled rubbery rather than rank, thank goodness. I breathed the Devil's B-name into his frilled side gills and Fish-face stepped aside.
Whipping around the black curtain, I entered the shadowed wings beyond.
I lurked there, my heart beating triple time, watching the Seven Deadly Sins rock out with demonic sound and fury.
I pressed myself against the offstage wall as the Sins swept offstage like a flock of demon raptors.
Snow was on me like white lightning, pressing me between his body and the wall. He spoke harsh and fast.
"You're not a groupie. You'd spit staples before you'd covet one of my Brimstone Kisses. What do you want? Why are you here?"
I decided to try honesty. "I want to understand."
"That's impossible. That is impossible. Delilah Street. No one understands. You pursue failure."
"Nevertheless, that's what I want."
"What you want means nothing in the scale of life and death and afterlife."
"It does to me."
"And are you that supremely important, that others should exist to be the objects of your 'understanding'?"
"Yes," I said. "It isn't just for me. It's for them."
"Them?" he thundered in a stage whisper.
"Humanity," I said back. "Oh, the humanity," I repeated, quoting the dazed radio reporter who had witnessed the hellfire destruction of the Hindenburg zeppelin almost a hundred years ago.
It wasn't film coverage, but the radio voice segment had been run over and over again, along with black-and-white film clips of the giant air-boat flame-out, for the disbelieving anguish in the reporter/witness's voice.
I was a reporter, and Las Vegas was my beat.
If Snow's eyes hadn't been obscured by the constant sunglasses I would have said he'd blinked at my reference to a seventy-five-year-old disaster that ended an antique form of air travel.
"This isn't Lakehurst, New Jersey," he answered, naming the location of the tragedy with eerie precision. "This is Las Vegas. And not that many perished at Lakehurst. If all the combustible elements in modern Las Vegas ignited, hundreds of thousands would die."
I didn't know what to say for a moment, taking in the enormity of his insinuation. Vegas was a potential tinderbox and I could be the spark? Me, the poor little match girl? I don't think so.
"Talk about self-important," I replied. "I merely want to get to the bottom of this Brimstone Kiss racket you've got going here. I hate seeing women turned into mindless zombies."
"I thought you were investigating felonies for Hector Nightwine's CSI franchises."
"That too."
"No laws are being broken here. Nobody's getting hurt."
"Having their free will tampered with, that's hurtful."
He pulled back to fold his arms. "They do it to themselves."
"People do lots of bad things to themselves. That doesn't mean we write them off."
"And you're going to undo the effects of the Brimstone Kiss?"
"Maybe."
"When you haven't even experienced it for yourself?" He stepped closer again.
I didn't want his faux jewel-bedecked fly grinding into my belly again, but I made myself hold my ground. Any renowned performer has learned to project charisma to the farthest, highest rows. There was a sort of magic to that, but Snow had taken whatever natural gifts he had to the mind control level. Or maybe emotion control. Not mine.
I was five-eight and not a wispy girl. Still, he'd picked me up like a leaf from six feet below the stage level. It was impossible to tell what was simple reality and what was supernatural about Snow, Whenever I defied him the slightest bit. he scared me more than Cicereau and his mob of werewolf hitmen ever could.
And, of course, my position at the moment was weak because I was really, really curious about the Brimstone Kiss.
He lifted me by the arms again, until I was level with his sculpted white face, his slick black sunglasses in which I looked no bigger than a pixie because of the convex shape.
"You want it? Yes or no?" he asked.
"No!" I shouted.
"You don't know what you're saying no to."
"With you, no is always a safe bet."
"Nothing with me is safe."
"Especially sex, I bet."
My tendency to cover nervousness with quips only tightened his grip on my upper arms. I'd probably be bruised from this, but happy just to get far enough away so I could check.
"You are audacious, tenacious and perspicacious."
"That last word is actually a compliment." I blinked at my own tiny distorted image. "You messed up."
He shook his head. "But you're best left to your own self-destructive path."
He lowered me until my dangling soles touched the wooden stage floor again and released my arms even as he turned to go.
I nearly turned an ankle trying to regain my balance. I felt like I'd been thrown back into the gene pool by God.
"Do your worst," Snow advised me. "It can't be any less disastrous than your best."
He whirled away into the darker part of the wings in that strange unseen bubble that made him invisible offstage.
I turned and made my way down the dark stairs. Most of the audience had poured out in a mass, but the groupies were still disconsolate, milling around the discarded trash of the mosh pit.
As I approached their faces turned to me like transfigured flowers to a sudden ray of sunlight.
"You jumped up on stage to get the Kiss," one breathed in the silence the Seven Deadly Sins always left in their wake after the screaming had finally died down.
"Cocaine almost lifted her on stage with the Sins and himself!" another cried.
Technically, I'd even had an offstage t�� te-��-t��te with Snow, but they'd missed that and seen only what they'd wanted to see earlier.
Now they were gathering around me. I glimpsed the cow-eyed, adoring gazes Snow eyeballed every performance. No wonder he was pretty pleased with himself.
I pulled fistfuls of cards from my hobo bag. Denim boots and a hobo bag. Good homeless orphan wear, but not quite the battle gear I'd pick to go toe-to-toe with Snow. When I was on the ground, that is.
I fanned my homemade-well, computer made-cards and doled them out to the beseeching hands.
Hooked on a feeling? The type read. Whether you've landed the mind-blowing lip-lock or not, it's time to take the brimstone kIss apart second by scintillating second. Come to delilah's get-down workshop and find out all about it. both happy haves and hangdog have-nots welcome. The next line was a place, date and time: next Tuesday at six p.m. at a former Weight Watchers spot in a strip shopping center.
Tenacious? Snow hadn't seen Kansas grit in action. We regularly endured killer blizzards that made the King of Kool look like something cool and slurpy you'd order at a Sonic Drive-in and suck down in one long swallow.
Thanks to his intervention, I now had the reputation of not only "almost" getting the Brimstone Kiss, but of clambering up on stage to chase it. Delilah Street, Pursuit Instigator.
The upcoming groupie gig might help me find Lilith as well as defend myself from suspicion of murder. It was still a personal pursuit, a side issue, maybe an obsession.
The Sunset Park lovers was the crime I was being paid to investigate and I was about to catch a break on it.
When I got back to the Enchanted Cottage, flushed from my success with the groupies and dangerous encounter with Snow, an intriguing message awaited on my answering machine.
Right now, all I wanted was some quality sleep time. I'd have to wait until tomorrow to deal with it and needed some advice from a local anyway.
