Virtual Virgin

His shaking arm rattled his IV tube and stand. As it has been said, “all is vanity,” and Howard was vainer than most vampires. His need to talk about himself, though, may have given me a couple of hot clues to what I really wanted.

I slugged down some scotch. “So. Vida.”

Howard summoned the energy to elevate just one thin eyebrow. “The word means ‘life’ in Spanish.”

“The word meant ‘mistress’ in the forties when it came to Cesar Cicereau.”

“That Johnny-come-lately werewolf trash from France! They’d been hanging around Nevada for decades, trading with the native population. There were no wolves in England, an island kingdom, but the Continent crawled with them, therefore, werewolves as well. I would never allow myself to be bitten into a werewolf. All that hair, although I admit could use some.” His taloned fingernails ruffled the three visible coiled white hairs at his scrubs neckline.

“But werewolves are so impotent,” he went on. “Three days at ultimate power and then you sink back into common humanity. Might as well settle for one, er, major rising a month.”

His gaze shifted. Hughes avoiding plain talk with me? Did he indeed have protective feelings toward me? Paternal feelings?

More scotch, fast.

“My dear, you mustn’t gulp Johnnie Walker. Savoring is the secret of life. And undeath. Now, why are you so interested in this woman, Vida?”

“She’s apparently my mother.”

“Impossible! That would likely make that low-life werewolf Cicereau your father, a fate to be escaped at any cost. Oh.”

He snapped his fingers but lacked the strength to make sound as well as gesture. A nurse hastened to his side to produce an auditory snap.

“Mainline level, please,” Hughes croaked. “I’m suffering a terribly distressful thought.”

I waited while Howard gathered strength and spittle. “You can’t seriously suspect that unprepossessing frog might be your father?” he demanded finally.

“That’s a very biased way to refer to Frenchmen, Mr. Hughes. But you’re right. I don’t want to think that.”

Howard’s features squeezed into an expression of pleased calculation. “You came here hoping I had that honor. That you would inherit?”

“Please. You ‘died’ childless without a will more than thirty years ago. Your ‘heirs’ unto the third generation and their lawyers number about a thousand and your last asset is a plot of Vegas land that lost most of its value in the Great Recession and is owned by a bankrupt corporation.”

“You cared enough to look that up,” he said, smiling sideways at me like a shy suitor.

Ugh.

“I’m an investigator. I investigate.” I eyed his white-uniformed attendants. Real nurses wore colorful scrubs nowadays. “We need to speak privately,” I told them. “Could you run off and sterilize blood or something?”

Howard cooperated by nodding vigorously. “I haven’t been alone with a living single woman in years,” he told me. “You are so obviously after my money, Delilah.”

“Me expect to inherit from a vampire, especially one so careful about the purity of the blood he takes in? Never happen. Besides, I don’t want your blood money.”

“Then, what do you want?”

“Your guess on my parentage. Vida is more than vague about when her fertile and vampire years intersected. But I do know that someone had to turn you. I heard you had a beautiful woman made into a vampire to make the process more inviting. That was despicable, Howard, even in a life that used women like the tissues you relied on during your last live years to keep your fingers germ-free. There is still innocent blood on your hands.”

“Don’t say that!” Howard began wringing his cadaverous hands like the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth washing them in Shakespeare’s play. “I have even more money now. It could all be yours. All you have to do is think well of me, flatter me. You do resemble my fondest loves, but, of course, I can’t consider any carnal activities nowadays. Germs. You could be my virgin mistress.”

“Some things you can’t buy, even after death.”

Like really old people his moods shifted fast. “I can destroy you,” he threatened.

I wouldn’t have come here if I’d taken his moods seriously, although he was probably right.

A deep growl to my right drew my gaze, and Howard’s.

Quicksilver was stationed by the IV stand, black lips drawn back from white fangs, his major canines poised to cut the tubing.

His eye whites showed as he turned a questioning look my way. To bite or not to bite.

“Get that monster dog away from my blood line!”

“Now I can destroy you,” I noted. “Your so-called bloodline is what I’m asking about. Am I in it?”

Howard’s teeth were chattering, his eyes pinned on Quicksilver’s teeth. For a huge dog Quick had a grip as delicate as a Chihuahua’s.

“All those women, Howard, those flattered, suckered devoted starlets and actresses. Never a pregnancy, never a hidden birth, an abortion? Birth control was more primitive then. You favored actresses who looked like me.”

A smile trembled around his chattering teeth. “It had not escaped me, but parentage is not possible, Delilah. There were two or three attempts to claim my paternity before you were even born. I was, ironically, sterile long before I became . . . senile.”

I nodded Quicksilver to back off now that Howard was sharing his most intimate secrets. Maybe. When I maintained silence he went on.

“Syphilis.”

For a wild moment I thought of Madrigal’s fey assistant, Sylphia.

Howard confused my continuing silence for ignorance. “Syphilis was the AIDS of the centuries preceding the nineteen eighties.”

I knew what it was. I had just gone stone cold at any possibility that my “inheritance” from Hughes might be that devastating venereal disease. It would certainly explain most of his mental and physical degeneration over the decades.

“Yes,” he went on, “any genuine heir of mine would bear that inescapable curse. My nurses can take a sample of your blood right now. A DNA test comparing yours with mine would settle the issue. It’s unlikely, but I’m willing if you are.”

I eyed the nurses lingering in the archway to the next room. Two were edging nearer, heavy lipstick clinging to their bared fangs and scary-large syringes drawn from their side uniform pockets like ever-ready revolvers from a cowboy star’s hip-slung holsters. I imagine they were on a diet of Shez’s bloodwine and welcomed any crack at the real thing, even through the intervention of a needle.

Quicksilver produced his bigger fangs and they stopped, eyeing Howard.

“Not necessary,” I told him. I definitely did not intend to submit my blood sample to one more vampire in this town. “I’ll take your word that you paid for the sins of your youth early, with interest.”

His skeletal hand waved off the attendants again.

“So you had to turn vampire,” I noted when we were alone. “It stopped your deterioration. Your life was really screwed up from the beginning, wasn’t it?”

“Not my fault, say the shrinks. It’s a kick to talk to a thorough researcher like you who sees the whole picture.”

“You’re like Elvis, Howard. So many exaggerations have been written about your life . . . and death . . . that the truth is still out there.”

“Elvis did not have the foresight to fake his death and live on as a vampire.”

“Elvis was surrounded by vampires at the end, as were you.”

“Ah, human vampires. A minor variety compared to the actual thing. I did do some good in my life.”

“What about the nest of unreformed vamps you’re sitting atop?”

“They’d be up here to stake me and my attendants in a second and take over the overworld as well as the