His eyes closed, I could see in the dashboard uplight, holding in the brown contact lens. I had so much more to confess to him. Better do the rest gradually. Ric was replaying some horror other than his hours in the hands of the Karnak vampires, something more painful for him than any physical abuse.

I laid my arm along the seat back, stroked my fingers into the soft hair at his nape. “Tell me, amor.”

He shivered this time, a frisson of present pleasure overlying the just-past horror that had gripped him.

“I only glimpsed it, like a flash of some ungodly circle of Hell. The people, the numbers and numbers of people, and so many of them children.”

I waited.

His eyes opened as he faced me again, features contorted by rage and disbelief. “Children. Do you realize what that means, Del? This goes far beyond a few tourists disappearing at the Karnak recently.”

I nodded. “They were prisoners?”

“Yes, and now that you’ve told me about the vampires, I realize they’d been captive for years, maybe decades and centuries. They were penned like cattle, food stock for an entire buried civilization of vampires. Bred to feed the future since far, far in the past. Bred to reproduce and replace themselves. Virtually naked, filthy, fed to be drained and finally cast away, mindless as zombies, barely sensate.”

He described a scene of the damned in Hell.

“Surely,” I suggested, “their dainty pharaohships don’t sip from unclean stock? Did you meet them at all?”

“I dreamed it all again. I was caught in some endless gray underworld and taken before their thrones. The splendor you describe around them is a blur. They wanted me to tell them how I raised the dead. Since dowsing is an inborn talent, it’s not a translatable skill. They didn’t want to hear that and had me taken below again, but not before a pair of crocodile-headed guards held me immobile and the pharaohs each drank from the vampire bat-bite scar on my neck.”

This time I shut my eyes. That damn boyhood “vampire bat bite.”

“Those ancient, noble vampires are spoiled and lazy, Del,” Ric said, knowing I blamed myself. “It was the easiest point of entry. After sharing a bloody kiss they blotted their lips on a linen square and watched as I was dragged away. I think they always get First Blood when there’s a mass feeding, after the victims have been cleaned and stripped for the real bloodbath.”

“No wonder you tried to outdrive your dreams,” I said.

Glancing again into the side-view mirrors, I saw only darkness in the distance. It was as if everything living in the night had drawn away from our presence and the matters we discussed and the fates we’d escaped.

“They’ve got to be destroyed,” he said matter-of-factly. “All of them, all the profiteers and string-pullers who exploit the supernatural-human struggle to come to terms with each other. I don’t care if they’re some corporate ‘Immortality Mob,’ the Mexican crime cartels, our own rogue human citizens, or subterranean vampires. You say a ‘coalition’ of Vegas bigwigs organized a rescue party for me? That could be promising. How’d you manage that?”

“You know. I started with Christophe and the Brimstone Kiss.”

“Smart, I see that now.” Ric grinned at me, happily innocent of how deeply I’d felt the price I’d paid. “It takes a bastard to shut down a city of bastards. He could be king of this town if he wanted to. Guess he can’t surrender the stardom and those idolizing mosh-pit groupies.”

“I’m sure that’s an inducement to someone with an ego as big as the Convention Center,” I said, nervously, glancing again to the side-view mirror.

Two tiny yellow eyes flashed far and wee in the darkness behind us.

“Maybe we should get going,” I suggested.

“We’re okay.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“Yeah, when things get to me. Usually I drive until I’m out of gas and then walk to the lights to get some.”

I looked around at the enveloping dark. “What lights?”

“There are always lights somewhere in the dark if you keep going long enough and walk far enough.”

“Uh, very philosophical, but those headlights are closing in on us from behind. Even if they’re not, I do not want to meet whatever would have eyes that big and move that fast.”

Ric glanced to the rearview mirror above the dash.

“Just a deadheading semi driver speeding.”

The headlights swelled to the size of fireballs. “Ric!”

I squinched my eyes shut, braced my feet, and hunched my shoulders, anticipating a rear-end collision. Jeez, after all we’d gone through we’d be bug juice on the front of a massive grille. At least no one would suck us dry. I wondered if Grisly Bahr would ID us…

Ric floored the Vette. I was slapped back so hard and fast in the seat the wind was sucked out of my chest. We accelerated to max in what felt like five seconds flat. When I glanced in the side mirror the two paired headlights were shrinking down to bug size themselves and my heart was pounding for nothing.

“That was a rush,” I commented.

“Nothing like a near miss to make you feel alive again,” Ric said, letting the car slow down to twenty miles over the speed limit.

Was I going to argue with anything that made him literally feel alive again? Nope.

His hand on my inner thigh promised that I’d soon be feeling very live again myself. We had lots to think about: Vegas supernaturals and politics, the nature of Hell in world mythology, revenge, death, destruction…

Was it any wonder that making love, not war, came out on top? At least if I was.

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.