Word was no unescorted mortal woman came out of the Sinkhole alive.
Naturally, I was planning to meet my very first unknown client in the Sinkhole. And no, I'm not immortal. Yet. If I didn't intend to be, I'd have to be on my guard.
Then I thought about whom... or what... I might be meeting tonight. The message machine tape featured a low, hissing voice, like all whispers. I listened to it several times that morning.
It said if I wanted to know more about the male skeleton-"the bone boy"-in the Sunset Park grave, I should meet my informant tonight at a place called Wrathbone's in the Sinkhole. The name had been spelled out so I got the initial W.
That gave me a clue to my mystery source and actually reassured me. I had my suspicions. Not too many people, or other entities, in Vegas knew-or guessed-about my quest besides Ric and my clients: Hector Nightwine, Snow, and Howard Hughes.
I'd need two things to enter-and leave-the Sinkhole: a disguise-so I wasn't hounded as Lilith-and serious weapons, both defensive and offensive. Oh, and a third thing: A way to find where the blamed place would be tonight.
The Sinkhole moves, you see, a mist of Hell's breath floating in the brimstone heat of the dark desert air like a nightmare oasis.
Post-Millennium Las Vegas is still paranoid about bad press. It may host a helluva lot of supernatural forces in 2013, but they all must fit the sales model. Even a pestilential pit like the Sinkhole attracted a certain kind of tourist. Being hard to find was an extra kick. And getting out was a lot harder than getting in. Or so they said.
"I hope you're planning on taking your hellhound to the Sinkhole with you," Hector Nightwine, my boss, said, sounding a teensy bit guilty, when I told him of my expedition in his manorial office that afternoon.
"Quicksilver is not a 'hellhound,' he's just a poor rescue dog."
Hector snorted. He does an awesome snort, being a bearded man of size and a connoisseur of blood-red wine, bizarre food forms and vintage films.
"And I'm Orson Welles," he sniffed.
Actually, he could be in Vegas nowadays, where the line between life and death is thinner than a honed straight razor's edge.
Quicksilver, who combined the huge size of a wolfhound with the disconcerting conformation and features of a blue-eyed 150-pound wolf, lifted his grandma-eating-size muzzle from his paws to whine like an abandoned puppy.
Hector snorted again. Majestically. "That dog could have outdone the heroic Rin Tin Tin in the early movies. He knows just when to second your extravagant lies."
"I can use loyal backup," I said, "especially since your damned show has made me the world's most wanted woman."
"Isn't that what all women want?"
"Not this one. Not this way." I ticked off my many pursuers on my fingers. "Cesar Cicereau of the Gehenna Hotel thought he could use me and then tried to kill me. Any creep who mistakes me for your highest rated CSI corpse, Lilith, wants to sell my hide to the black and blue division of the blue movie trade. The Las Vegas Metro Police Department's Detective Haskell has been bitten unhuman, into an even more loathsome variety of bully, and wants me either convicted of the murder of a Snow groupie or just plain dead out of revenge. For all I know, this mysterious 'client' wants to lure me into a meeting for some fate worse than death."
A sliver of smile peeked like a maggot from the corner of Nightwine's small, pursed candy-apple-red mouth.
"There are a lot of fates like that nowadays, my dear. Surely you're taking the Cadaver Kid along?"
I shrugged. If I was going to be a serious investigator, I needed to prove to him and myself that I didn't need a white knight behind my every move around Vegas.
Nightwine took my reticence for the affirmative, as I'd hoped.
"Very wise. A good dog and a good man are what a girl needs most in these perilous times."
"I thought you didn't like Ric."
Now he shrugged, a lot more impressively than I had. The shoulders in his burgundy brocade smoking jacket were mountainous. "Montoya's FBI, but at least he didn't stay in long. The Feds keep trying to close down my City of Dreams."
"City of Nightmares."
"As I said, my City of Dreams."
"I don't know why you're going all soft on me now that you're my landlord. You've always wanted me to find out who the guy in that Sunset Park double grave was. I've got a stake in your new vintage murder concept TV series. You were gonna make me a living-dead star, keep Lilith's mystique as a CSI's hottest corpse yet going. Remember? I couldn't do anything more dangerous in this town than get mistaken for Lilith."
"That's all true," he admitted. "I only fret because you're still new to Vegas. Good luck, Delilah. Do check in when you get back. Godfrey will be anxious."
"Right."
I left Nightwine's sumptuous office, Quicksilver at my heels, to find his man Godfrey lurking and listening in the hall. Godfrey's amiable, middle-aged starch went splendidly with his formal butler's garb. He escorted us down the back stairs to the kitchen exit with a monologue of warnings underscored by the castanet click of Quick's nails on the wooden stairs.
"The master means well, but underestimates the sturdiness of his employees, Miss. He is used to dealing with staff less, er, physically fragile than a mortal such as yourself. The Sinkhole is not fit for woman or beast. Mr. Montoya is not so accustomed to Las Vegas and its quirks yet that he would make a reliable guide. I knew a poor chap from Bangalore -"
"Godfrey," I said, "that sounds like the start of a naughty limerick." When we hit bottom at the large kitchen floored in big black and white marble squares like a chessboard, I turned to face him. "Besides, I know what I'm doing."
Godfrey's CinSim face and garb were all black and white and shades of gray. He was a blend of actor William Powell and the disguised rich-man-posing-as-butler from My Man Godfrey, a classic nineteen-thirties screwball comedy.
I knew that beneath the slick film image the heart of a zombie didn't beat, but Godfrey felt solid when touched and his fully human concern touched me.
"Godfrey, I have to learn to live in this pretty nasty world I've found myself in, just as you have. I'm not tied to any particular place, as most of you CinSims are. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do."
I nodded at Quick to follow me. We skedaddled out the back door, but not before Godfrey called after me, "Remember you're from Kansas. There might be some ruby red slippers somewhere to whisk you home in a pinch."
Poor Godfrey. He believed in movies almost as much as Nightwine did. It was only thirty yards across the cobblestone driveway to my digs. The sharp, reassuring sound of Quicksilver's nails still shadowed me. That dog was my fanged guardian metronome.
The place I rented from Hector was as cute as dimpled and spit-curled Betty Boop, the cartoon flapper. I fell in love again with my literal Enchanted Cottage every time I saw it. I considered it a real-life version of a vintage Disney cartoon cottage made for bluebells and bluebirds circling the front door, and sometimes they actually did.
Hector had added a lot of modern comforts, including a Jacuzzi and convection oven, but the cottage remained an unfolding origami magic show of kitchen witches, yard trolls and other usually invisible manifestations that came and went on their own quirky schedule.
Once home again, I caught up on the newspaper and current events and domestic chores that didn't get magically done by the shy household help before preparing an early evening snack.
"Better eat, drink up and be merry," I told Quicksilver. "We're going where you definitely don't want to consume anything you don't have to in self-defense."
I could soon hear him lapping up a tsunami at the kitchen water bowl while I changed into my impromptu Sinkhole outfit. As a TV reporter in Wichita, I wore business casual for the job. Here in Vegas I was going places where I needed clothes that would protect me from fang bites and claw burns.
I'd learned at an early age that bluff was the best disguise.
The use-softened black biker leathers I'd found at vintage clothes emporiums along Charleston would have looked Hell's Angels Goth with my black hair. Especially if I slapped on some vampire-red lip-gloss.
But after I struggled into the leather low-rise jeans, the knee-high boots, the spandex knit top and funky suede-fringed seventies vest, I pinned up my Black Beauty mane and pulled on my new short blond wig in the classic twenties/seventies Sassoon/so Neurotic Now bob that curves under your chin like twin scimitars.
The perfect disguise. Blonds were so plentiful in this town three hundred miles from Hollywood people literally couldn't see their faces for the façade. And the town sprouts wig shops like a transvestite creates female celebrity impersonations. Then I popped in gray contact lenses with no correction that obscured my morning-glory-blue eyes. Delilah, meet anti-Lilith.
The mirror accomplished the introduction. When the tall mirror ending the hall to the attic bedroom suite wasn't playing tricks and I wasn't in disguise, it reflected me in all my Snow White coloring and Lilith glory.
It was odd that the world thought Lilith, and therefore me, her double, beautiful. I'd always hated my dead-white skin and dead-black hair that reminded every vamp and half-vamp in the New Millennium universe that I came corpse-pale, just what they were looking for in a woman and a fast-food combo. I'd been fighting off vamp-boy bullies since puberty. It got so I'd rather fight than fornicate, even when I'd finally had a chance to do the latter.
I was making friends with my own image since I'd met Ric, though. His savvy, warm and winning personality and hot Latin blood were melting my Black Irish heart and hormones. I'd never had a boyfriend, only bad dates. I'd never had a lover or an orgasm. All that was past tense now and I'd wanted in the worst way to ask him to escort me to the Sinkhole.
Which is why I wouldn't. I don't like being dependent on other people. It only gets you hurt in the short run and makes you weak in the long run. Orphan's axiom. Dogs, on the other hand, offered unconditional love and unflagging doggy breath.
I slapped on some Lip Venom. I always carried the tingling, lip-plumping gloss because it made me feel lethal and viperish. Then I finished pinning on the wig with twenty copper-blond hairpins and was ready to go, except for donning the used cop utility belt I'd found in a pawn shop behind the Harley-Davidson souvenir shop and caf��.
It made me look hippy, but in a big baaad don't-mess-with-moi way. I kept the baton and heavy flashlight and added a couple kitchen knife hilts for show.
No cell phone. You could be identified by them. Las Vegas was full of dead zones, anyway. Nor did I have lots of relatives and friends to send pics of the infamous Sinkhole.
So where would I find the elusive Sinkhole, a notorious place where human and unhuman lowlifes did sex, drugs, armed robbery and grievous bodily harm to each other and any suicidal straights who wandered in?
I drove Dolly downtown near the crime district for starters. I wasn't worried about my flashy vintage ride even though it was hot enough to melt. It had its own special security system.
Soon after hitting town, Quicksilver had broken out a side window to escape the locked car and defend me from a half-werewolf biker gang called the Lunatics. The window was a one-off, long since vanished from even junkyards and online auto-part dealers. I mourned loudly about the impossibility of replacing the window when I got home and parked Dolly in the driveway of the Enchanted Cottage.
The next morning, I found the window-glass in place and intact. Ever since, when I parked Dolly in iffy areas, a nasty poison-green aura haloed the car. I figured it was pixie halitosis.
If I could bottle that arsenic glow, I'd have a really innovative method of car security. Nobody in Vegas messes with pixies, I'd learned fast. They're the equivalent of supernatural fleas: tiny, hungry, able to leap from one host to another in a single bound and bite. They cursed as much as your average American teenager, but real curses, not just bad words. Curses corrosive enough to move all the hair on your head to your toes.
So I left Dolly in the parking lot of a new high-rise time-share. Quick and I trotted through the Downtown "Experience"-a blocks-long barrel vault canopy, ninety feet high at its peak, that combined a pedestrian mall with a not-at-all-pedestrian sound and light show.
The venerable Four Queens Hotel and Casino had been reinvented as an exotic Temple to Ishtar, Medusa, Isis and the original sexpot Lilith. No Delilah. I guess overeager hair stylists aren't sexy-scary goddesses, even though it's sooo hard to stop them from snipping too much off.
Overhead holographic images evoked great world tragedies of fire and flood, featuring thousands of screaming, falling bodies hurtling right at you. There were no sappy Celine Dion renditions of "My Heart Must Go On." A rock band howled to back up their death agonies.
Tourists in Capri pants and Bermuda shorts were gaping open-mouthed at the kaleidoscope of destruction playing out above, tiny camcorders attached to their cell phone earjacks, so they could look and shoot instead of point and shoot. They resembled Borg wannabes. Creepy! Quick and I passed them like dust on the wind.
I headed for the area's outskirts. I figured that the Sinkhole would find you if you wanted it to. Or if you looked like you belonged there.
Amazing how even the biggest tourist attraction in the world makes room for sleaze. I was soon walking along unkempt strings of one-story shopping centers. Half of the shops were deserted. The other half sold fortunes, cut-price show tickets, lottery tickets, exotic lingerie and massages.
Beside me, Quick growled. I put my hand on his shoulder. It reached my hip. He was three times the size of most wolves. Good dog! The thin silver chain with a cross around my neck coiled like a snake and slithered down my black-knit sleeve to my wrist. It became the mace-like spikes on a leather wristband.
If my unwanted bodyguard was showing its fangs, we must be nearing the Sinkhole.
Quicksilver's hackles rose under my fingers along with his prolonged, low growl.
Good. We were there. Now all we needed was not to "get into" anything. I was hoping to tap the same eerie psychic energy that had helped me find the Sunset Park bodies when co-dowsing for the dead with Ric.
First I felt the heavy metal beat from the Downtown Experience quicken under my feet, through the thick leather soles of my motorcycle boots. It rumbled on and on, like Quicksilver's growl.
The sidewalk broke into smaller blocks, then heaved, then shattered.
The ground was giving way underneath us! I curled my fingers into Quick's thick black leather collar studded with silver-dollar-size moons in phase from crescent to full. If he hadn't been born half wolfhound, he would have been all wolf. As it was, he hated werewolves, even half-werewolves.
My punk leather wristband tightened hard enough to take my pulse.