Virtual Virgin

Chapter Five

RIC LOOKED SIXTY stories down to admire the fountains of cavorting flames that enveloped the Inferno Hotel’s towering exterior night and day.

They flaunted every color of a high-Fahrenheit rainbow, azure to orange, gold and red blending with the blue into teal and bright absinthe green.

On the top floor the flame tips formed a dancing set of spearpoints outside the glass walls, but the penthouse temperature was as cool as its ice-white albino master, the Vegas mogul that Delilah called Snow.

Ric tried to see through the fire-shrouded stories but failed to glimpse the Las Vegas Strip. Only the crowding new towers under construction were visible at this level. These were brown-gray skeletons of concrete and iron, ugly and crude at this stage. They reminded him of the architectural equivalent of giant zombies gnawed down to their bare bones.

He felt a shiver despite the exterior flames and forced away a sudden eerie stab of foreboding. He had safe passage here now, despite being one of the few people in Vegas, besides Delilah, who dared to argue, hard, with Christophe. He wasn’t going to stop now.

“I don’t like the first part of your proposal,” he told the long, pale figure lounging in an ivory leather conversation pit built into a ghost-pale plush carpet. “I do agree the Metropolis robot is ‘extremely valuable,’ but she’s not a ‘commodity’ to me. She’s a responsibility. I called her off the silver screen into being. I won’t let her become a fancy new CinSim in your hotel’s extensive collection of hapless celebrity zombies. I’m not even sure she is one.”

“‘Commodity’ was a poor choice of words with you,” Christophe admitted, his lanky frame stirring. “You’re a man of admirable if tiresome responsibility. Unfortunately, post–Millennium Revelation Las Vegas is not much populated by individuals with scruples. Do you realize how much concentrated silver nitrate was on those film frames showing a solid metal robot? The mother lode. You must suspect that silver-power wielders are a new force on the paranormal scene. Hell, you’re sleeping with one.”

“Outta my private life. And I know where that silver familiar Delilah’s locked into came from, Christophe.” Ric eyed the mogul–rock star’s long, almost luminous white hair.

Christophe shrugged. “Powers can rub off like fleas in a place teeming with them as much as Vegas is nowadays.”

“You sent Delilah a lock of your damn hair like some lovesick Cavalier poet.”

“She wasn’t your girl then. And I didn’t know the ‘damn hair’ had a life of its own that would transfer to her. More likely her own latent powers animated it.” Christophe’s body shifted again.

Was he uneasy? Lying? Or telling an inconvenient truth? Ric didn’t know how to read it, but he sensed the Inferno kingpin was hiding a deeply personal reaction.

“Delilah has a wild talent,” Christophe said. “Better watch out. You’ve caught her silver powers, so your dead-dowsing abilities might rub off on her some night, Montoya. Imagine Delilah free, willing and able to raise her favorite vintage film idols. Errol Flynn, say.”

Now that Ric recognized as a guy-to-guy taunt designed to distract him. From what?

“Anyway, back to our real silver girl,” Christophe said. “Every power in town will be after . . . her, as you call the robot. And, you forget, I now own the film you filched her from and every frame in it.”

“It wasn’t deliberate, my raising her.”

“Exactly, not deliberate. Not planned, just like the case of the silver familiar. We’re both victims of undiagnosed powers.” Christophe’s smile was mocking. “Yet this unexpected new angle to your post–Millennium Revelation talent did put you a step beyond your usual bounds of dowsing for the in-ground dead. That was a focused but useful talent when you worked in law enforcement. You realize what you’ve just done to raise the so- called Silver Zombie from a movie screen? That makes you an ‘invaluable commodity’ in post–Millennium Revelation Las Vegas.”

“I can live with it.”

The albino’s perpetual inky-black sunglasses lifted to reflect the flames outside, not the sophisticated surroundings. “So you think,” he said idly.

Ric sensed Christophe was taking his comment in a way he hadn’t intended. That made him glad he hadn’t bothered to correct one misconception. Ric had been born into a family of poor rural Mexican water-dowsers, a boy only able to raise dead things, long before the Millennium Revelation had brought supernaturals out into the open and had exposed weird abilities in ordinary people.

“Sit.” Christophe’s guitar-riffing right hand gestured to a spot three feet away on the sprawling couch. On top of having untold money, influence, and probably unknown powers, he was a freaking rock star.

“Sit down, Montoya. Relax. You’re among friends. Who gave you shelter and protection after the Karnak vamps tried to eat you for brunch?”

Ric sat. “I didn’t ask for sanctuary here, with you, Christophe.”

“Call me Snow. Someone had to provide you with secure R and R time, so the Inferno Hotel stepped up. Now you’ve probably brought a demon drug lord down on us all. Why didn’t you kill your old tormentor when you had the chance in Wichita? You deserved to take your revenge on El Demonio and law enforcement would have loved you for it.”

“As you say, not long ago I was law enforcement. We’d want the bastard alive and in custody so we could break his organization.”

“You might have the power to do that solo now. Something enabled you to raise a CinSim directly without going through the Immortality Mob. That’s another ugly coalition that’ll be wanting you dead or on its payroll.”

“Is that why you’re making an offer you think I can’t refuse? That I live at your hotel from now on? To give you leverage with all these bad guys supposedly wanting my hide?”

Christophe kept silent, sipping from the martini glass set on a built-in Lalique glass table, savoring the drink Delilah had created to annoy him, an Albino Vampire. Christophe violently denied he was any such thing, but the jury that could rule on that issue hadn’t even been picked yet.

Ric could see why the man infuriated Delilah. He was unflappable.

“It’s the ideal solution to my prize CinSim’s security and your own safety,” he was saying. “It is an offer you can’t afford to refuse.”

As Christophe’s head had lifted to speak, Ric spotted a bruise as dark as cherry amber underneath the pink- ruby-studded black leather collar he wore onstage, and now, apparently, off.

Pink albino eyes were ultrasensitive to light. That would explain the constant sunglasses and symbolic hot- pink jewels. It didn’t explain why a flagrantly sexy rock star wanted to conceal a passion bruise . . . or a bite?

Ric didn’t want to speculate about Christophe’s sexuality any more than he needed to know what brand of supernatural he was. Sorcerer, it looked like, but looks were especially deceiving in a Vegas teeming with paranormal creatures and effects. The nickname “Snow” came from his onstage identity as Cocaine, the lead singer of the Seven Deadly Sins band. His stage persona reeked of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.

Ric bet Delilah would have a fit to know he was seriously powwowing with the guy instead of just watching a movie, but Ric had learned long ago as a small boy in Mexico that sometimes you have to deal directly with the Devil.

“Moving in here would be . . . awkward . . . Snow.” Ric sipped his own cocktail.

The pale lips smiled at this first step toward possible concession.

“I’ll give you a whole floor,” he said, folding his arms over his chest, now attired instead of bared for the stage. “A private elevator for Miss Street to come and go discreetly on her errands of surveillance and . . . other matters.”

“I like my house.”

“A suburban ranch-style equipped with a smart-ass computer? It has a certain earthy charm, like you, maybe. But it’s not secure enough now, Montoya. You were in the FBI. You know that.”

“Perhaps not safe enough for . . . her.”