Dancing With Werewolves (27 page)

The cool desert air ran up my spine along with the motions of his fingers and knuckles. I got really hot goose bumps. Ric finally undid the top button at my nape and pulled down the open gown in one sudden sweep, satin spiraling away into sand. I had what I had wanted, my naked body encompassed by his clothed one. It was the ultimate form of trust and a lot of other, less abstract needs and wants and emotions.

“You are so bold and beautiful,” he said, his hands soft as silk against my bare skin. He pushed me away, looked at me. I’d seen lust a few times, but never such shattering love.

From far away I heard the music of an iPod in the car playing dance music, slow dance music. He pressed me to him, started those liquid Latin motions that were all hip and heart, his hands moving over my bare torso, molding me to his soft, expensive clothes.

They were his shelter, those clothes, their softness. I knew now that he’d felt a lot that had been hot, harsh, cold, and brutal. My body tried to soothe all that away. I was living satin in his arms, and the roughness I felt—of buttons, a cold gold belt, zipper, trouser welt—it roused and hardened me to meet him as an equal.

We stopped moving, stopped dancing. In the hills and mountains I heard wolves howling for home. We both wanted that.

I stepped away from him and felt the desert wind chill every inch of my naked skin. He stopped moving. Bereft. Out of control. Feeling the cold night wind, not for the first time.

I put a finger to his throat. “You.
Señor
. I want you up against the car. I’m going to open you up from here . . .” I pressed my nail against his throat and ran my finger down the buttons of his shirt, past his guardian gold belt and down the swollen welt of his zipper to where it ended between his legs. “To there. Any objections?”

“God, no.”

I started at the bottom, as he had, caressing the weight, the length, pushing aside the soft expensive clothes, baring a few vertical inches of his torso, running my hands and mouth over what I exposed

He shivered. I shivered. Alone in the night. Outside ourselves. Beside ourselves. Inside ourselves.

We clung together. Slow dancing. Nothing to say. A bond forged stronger than stainless steel. Secret.

                                                                                          * * * *

The car’s long low hood vibrated as the engine idled in the night. Ric had turned it on, turned on the car stereo to some music that pumped iron. When he began to lower me to the car’s warm hard steel hood, I clutched at his upper arms, his clenched muscles suspending me above the abyss in my own mind.

All motion stopped. “Can you lie back for me, my Delilah?”

Never could. Never had. Helpless. Pinned on a slab of something hard and inanimate, my feet barely touching the ground, my torso a target for a vicious game of darts. Having to submit. To lose. To lose everything. Everyone. Even Ric, maybe? Even now. The living nightmares crowded at the edges of the star-spangled night sky.
Never! Never again!

“Maybe,” I said, because it was Ric asking.

Like the road not taken, asking made all the difference.

                                                                                          * * * *

I felt the strong arm and shoulder muscles that had wrestled the mysterious forces of the underground since boyhood holding me suspended over the car, over the edge as if I could hang like that forever in his arms, on my particular edge. It was my decision. My call.

This evening had touched so many sore spots on my soul. I never remembered anyone dressing or undressing me or even doing my hair. I’d always done it all myself, somehow, from the earliest age, at least in memory. That memory held no shred of someone giving a final pat to my coat buttons or my braids. No one crooning a lullaby, no one calling me a pet name, except when I was almost adult and cheerfully blue-collar waitresses or salesclerks would call me “hon” or “dearie.” I was supposed find this condescending, but I didn’t. I enjoyed it. Pathetic, right?

So Ric’s playing undo-the-buttons with me and his verbal, murmuring ways during lovemaking undid me. I would do almost anything for him. Maybe even this.

Is that what love was, pushing yourself beyond your most ingrained outer limits? I’d got what I had wanted. A narrow door of flesh to his innermost dark continent. Now he wanted, needed, my complicity. Small price to pay for a possible paradise.

I nodded and was lowered slowly onto the warm hood. It was like lying on the back of a purring hot steel tiger. Ric pressed down on top of me, the narrow warm slit of skin I’d unveiled feeling firm and smooth against my naked body. My hands could still cling to the strong, soft fabric of his jacket sleeves, cling and clench and hold on.

Meanwhile, he was murmuring his pleasure, solely in Spanish now. Every word was preceded by the possessive “my.”

Mi belleza . . .

And I knew that the center of him was reaching for the center of me, dowsing, stiffening, plunging . . . I braced myself for this truly terrifying act, this terrible centerpiece of my nightmares.

Mi tigre hembra . . .

And I felt, beyond my fear, a stirring of excitement, a wanting to be found, discovered, to have that divine divining rod taking my measure, the measure of his tigress.

Mi oasis

And his shelter.

Mi agua

And I was his water.

Mi sangre

And his blood.

Mi virgen

And he was the first man to breach me, outside of my nightmares, before, and now in the very imitation of my worst nightmare.

And it was done.

My fists caught his arms and pulled him closer, farther in, nearer. I was so relieved I had to bite my lip. I almost laughed out loud with relief. He was so much smaller than my nightmare metal rapist, but of course you couldn’t laugh. You couldn’t tell a man that. He was still plenty large enough that I could tell I’d be
muy delicado
later.

But now I let the surge of pleasure take me and wrapped my legs around his hips and rocked in the thrilling lullaby of his hot Spanish blood and sweet Spanish words.

Mi desposada!
he cried as my insides started quaking with satisfaction and we shuddered together, and I could scream this time, long and hard, as the killing pleasure took me.

Mi desposada.
I’d have to look that one up. . .

“Are you all right?” he asked finally in English.

Given that I was laughing and crying and almost swooning, I could understand the question.

But I could only nod.

He was still holding me and still talking softly, more to himself them me, but the words were music to my soul, even in English.

“I love you so much, Del. You can’t know what this moment means to me. Here. Now. I’ve been born again. I could die making love to you. But I never want to die so I can make love to you forever.”

I was too blown away to answer, or even to say: make up your mind.

I just clung to him, not believing I’d just cleared such a horrible personal block. Every word Ric said, in English or in Spanish, eased a senseless fear and a vague, terrifying memory. But I couldn’t speak of my feelings. What I felt was beyond words.

“I suppose,” he said finally, “I’ll have to get you back into that dress with every last button done.”

“You can skip a few now,” I said, kissing him on the throat while I began closing him back into his clothes, “but not very many.”

Chapter Forty-Five

I woke up in my cottage bed, alone, thinking of Ric.

Desposada
meant “bride.” I’d greedily clawed through my Spanish dictionary for the word as soon as we’d kissed a lingering goodbye at the door and I’d gone inside. Quicksilver was sniffing and sulking, but I ignored him for the first time in our association to find that word and hold it to me.

Not that I wanted to get married or to “trap” a man or anything formal. To be wanted that much was the thing, after being unwanted for so long and pretending not to care. He’d had me on “Hello, this is my dowsing rod,” but now I felt totally unhad, if that makes sense.

Still, I saw myself clinging to my dictionary and my word, pretty pathetic, pretty teenage.

On cooler reflection, I was still in the dark about Ric.

I’d taken the biggest risk of my life and for it I’d gotten an important step in my personal redemption, but only a slim bit of insight into Ric’s complex soul. Finally I’d met someone who was more mysterious than I was. Someone who was also able to bring me deeper into myself than I’d ever allowed.

Was it love, or addiction, or an adrenaline high? Or an undercover operator using me?

Last night on the long ride home Ric had listened to my tale of long-lived werewolf casino bosses and lost dead daughters.

“We need to know who the man with her in the grave was. That’s the key,” he said.

I couldn’t stop recalling our last moments on the car’s hood. How he’d spun so that I was on top of him. No sense of binding, just Ric serving as my bed, his eyes and lips heavy and satisfied, content, liking my weight on his chest and hips, my fingers toying with his hair and lips.

I liked everything about him. Wasn’t that a warning signal? I’d never had a decent connection with anyone male before.

“
Querida
,” he’d said. “Don’t run away on me now.”

I’d run away before. From the orphanage. The convent school. I thought no one knew but me. Ric was The Man. Police. The FBI. He’d be able to check up on those things. Me. My history. He’d be able to manipulate me. My history.

He manipulated my hair as it fell over my shoulders onto his chest. My lips as they went dry and vacant, wondering what to say next.

“We have to find out who the man was,” he repeated.

“The boy.”

“Why do you say that?”

“They were just kids.”

“She was immortal werewolf spawn.”

“Not her fault! Or her choice. She was her father’s daughter, and I wouldn’t care to be in her shoes.”

“Shoes. Tell me again what shoes she wore?”

“Platform heels. Satin. Navy satin. Made her taller. Older, she thought. She wanted to be older, so no one could control her.”

“She’s way older now.” Ric frowned. “Do you think her father could have had her killed?”

“Her father?”

“You saw him.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“The pack is everything. With eternal life, family is less. He could sire more cubs. More beta bitches and more alpha bastards.”

Ric ran his hands over my back and butt. “Del. I know he’s despicable. He also uses the CinSims like toilet paper and Mexican zombies as cheap labor. He may even be behind that stuff in Juarez. That’s why I want to bring him down so badly. Help me.”

Wow. Even I knew how seductive it was to have a man asking, “Help me.”

I lifted myself away. “How will we find out about her guy?”

“Detective work,” he said, sitting up and making extreme love to my bare shoulder. “Delilah. We’ll never be free to live our own lives until we solve this murder.”

I made that “we’ll” into an “I” in my mind. Where could I find out about this dead, forgotten guy? Somewhere in Las Vegas.

Ric would be looking.

So would I.

I just wished I could fully trust him enough to tell him all the other aspects of my search. About my strange facilities and Lilith. Yet, despite my complete unveiling and satisfaction tonight, I’d still only literally unzipped a tiny sliver of Ric’s soul. That wasn’t enough.

I’d been born suspicious, raised alien and alone, and suspicious I would live . . . or die.

Chapter Forty-Six

I went back to Vilma Brazil.

I sure as heck wasn’t going back to Howard Hughes, or what was left of him.

It was 4:00 P.M. and she was knocking back a Bacardi Breezer in the dressing room.

“Hey, kid! You made it out in one pretty unslavered-over piece. How is old Howie? He was really hot for me once, you know. He was gonna make me a star.”

“He was gonna make any girl a star. He’s living dead in Las Vegas and glad of it. What can I say?”

Vilma shook her peroxided fright wig. “He used to be quite the dude. Slicked-back black hair. Pencil-thin mustache. But he was always a tad strange. Hey, so was I.”

“Weren’t we all?”

“She was a werewolf princess, you said.”

I nodded at Vilma’s conclusion. The girl in that photograph, the girl in the mirror, had been just that: young, innocent, tender, and supernaturally gifted. Her daddy’s pride and joy. And his biggest disappointment in her choice of mates. She had been playing Juliet to some unknown teen vampire’s Romeo.

Neither of their houses would have permitted such a union, or could have permitted them to live after making such a union. Add a little Othello and Desdemona to the mix. Murderous possessiveness. By fathers of their children, by clans of their very different lifeblood.

“Who was the head of the vampire syndicate back in the forties when Las Vegas was busy being born and mortal mob bosses thought they’d rule the roost?” I asked Vilma.

“Only one, not heard of since. He was going to build the most stupendous hotel-casino in Las Vegas before the vampires lost the war. He was going to call it—”

“The Inferno.” I knew the answer as I said it. The Inferno had fallen only to rise like a phoenix eighty years later. How much time was that to a vampire? The blink of an undead eye.

Vilma lifted a drawn-on eyebrow almost to her thinning hairline in recognition of my lucky strike.

“Yeah. I remember now. He was going to name it the Styx or something hellish. The vampire crew was from the house of . . . it’s been so long. House of Wrathescu. The vampire king was Wilhelm XII. He has not been heard of since but may only taking a vampire nap, as we humans would reckon it.”

“He was Juliet’s dream lover?”

“He was no one’s dream unless you wanted a nightmare. You’ve seen what form of eternal life Howard won. No, this Wilhelm was old and corrupt. Not the stuff of films or Goth girls’ romantic dreams. But I recall that he had a son of the spirit, one bright and blazing comet that he had bitten into the clan. A toothsome young vampire.”

“His name?”

“Something vaguely and tantalizingly Christian. A prince among vampires. Foreign, from the land where werewolves were put to torture and the test as nowhere else. Kind of funny that a vampire-werewolf romance would end the Werewolf-Vampire War here in Vegas. I don’t know the details. Howard would.”

My fingernails were biting into my palms until my blood and dread seemed to well up together to my brain.

“And the name of this vampire prince?”

“Christopher,” Vilma said. “I heard talk about that. Some humans considered the name part blasphemy, part undead hubris. Christopher is the saint said to have carried the Christ child safely across a river. The vampire named Christopher was said to carry away Christian maidens. No girl or woman, it is said, could resist him. So you get the poor little rich werewolf girl and her bitter end. Yet you say a vampire died beside her? Can’t believe that would be our pretty boy.”

Dead bodies were dead bodies. Even supers, when killed by the proper means, dissolved into mere bones and dust like mortals. Who knew for sure just what these two dead lovers had been? Who knew who or what
they would have become
had they not been killed?

Maybe whoever had killed them had known, or guessed.