Hex Appeal (21 page)

“I don’t know if shapeshifters can survive breaking the mirror barrier,” I muttered as I leapt toward the image of myself, my hand curled tight around the tiger cub’s leash.

Grizelle answered with a fierce growl. She bounded through the mirror, turning into liquid quicksilver ahead of me, a circus tiger breaking through a paper drum-skin.

I hated to perform my disappearing act in public, but most tourists were eyeing the HD screen, and the CinSims would never betray my trade secrets.

How does a quantum leap through a quicksilver mirror backing feel? Imagine passing through oily dark lightning. Then four paws and two feet landed hard on the black floor of what seemed an empty soundstage.

*   *   *

Not quite empty.

In the farthest darkness, a disturbing spotlit tableau boiled with motion three hundred feet away. If you’ve ever seen a close-up of maggots infesting a corpse on a crime forensics TV show, which I can guarantee you have, that’s what the brilliantly lit postage-stamp-size scene recalled.

I started forward at a gallop, baby Grizelle leaping alongside me like a … well, like a gazelle. I had to wonder how a major beast felt being so totally downsized, and could understand the shapeshifter’s fury. The distant mob scene disturbed me, too.

As we closed on the action, I realized we were viewing the dark backs of about fifteen young women shoving, pushing, even climbing each other to make contact with a … white marble statue set against a black stone wall.

The obscured figure we neared was not all white now. Telltale blots of red dappled the object of the assault. My emotions sickened to see a rerun in progress of what I’d only witnessed at the bitter end … my partner Ric Montoya’s multiple fang-marked body after a whole freaking vampire empire, including vampire tsetse flies, had feasted on him. I had to stop this.

Closer still, a frantic Grizelle and I bounded, our charging footsteps muffled by the tiger’s pads, my ridged-rubber boot soles, and the attackers’ deafening shrieks.

Now I was close enough to read the backs of the attackers. Backs?
Read?
What were they? Living billboards? What was I missing? Oh, the women were wearing T-shirts with messages that echoed their shouted words. And those words were becoming clear and scarily familiar.

“You can’t whip us up, then just stop,” peeved female voices taunted.

“How does it feel to be ‘snowbound’?”

“Yeah. Like
we
were, Cocaine.”

“We want what’s coming to us … the Brimstone Kiss.”

I skidded to a stop.
Oh, no.
The figure pinned by the ravenous horde was no hunk of unfeeling marble. It had to be Grizelle’s boss and my so-unfavorite Vegas mogul.

The seething, clawing harpies using the real Snow for a climbing wall shouted “Come on, Cocaine, give,” and “Snow up a storm for us,” as well earthier online endearments I also recognized, like “Ice Prick.” Or so the rumor went.

Only my hard grip on the leash kept fifty pounds of snarling tiger cub from scaling the T-shirted human torsos ahead of us. Now I knew what these attackers were, not the relentless ancient tormenters who’d savaged Ric but modern fangirls gone bad. Even fifteen women, crazed enough, can make a mob.

Groupies were indeed Nick Charles’s schooling “fish” … if you thought “piranha.”

“Grizelle,” I ordered, “velvet paws and fangs
only
. They’re paying customers and fans. The boss would not want them hurt, no matter what. Got it?”

The tiger cub’s white muzzle lifted in grudging acknowledgment. I hoped she didn’t take it out of my skin later, when we were all back to normal, which I swore we would be. All of us, even Snow and the groupies.

Was I still missing something? Maybe I was being naïve, and Snow
liked
this scene. I had no time to overthink anything. Even my silver familiar jumped ship, abandoning its cool double-handcuff bracelet form. It split to rocket up one arm, across my shoulders, and down to the other wrist so fast I hoped I’d just
sensed
hot metal burns.

When I looked, my wrists were circled by cuff bracelets. The pair was etched with serious monster designs, snake-pit-tangled shapes I couldn’t name. Sea monster, kraken, giant squid? Both cuffs trailed silver-chain tentacles—more than the average octopus—say nine per wrist.

I was literally “armed” with my own matched set of heavy metal cat-o’-nine-tails. Could I whip community ass now …

The familiar had become such an intuitive part of me, I’d almost forgotten it had been spawned by my unintentionally touching a lock of Snow’s albino hair, and he might be murderously goaded to revenge at the moment.

Would the familiar, no matter how lethal the form, still obey my “prime directive,” think first and do no harm unless about to
be
harmed? Yeah, I’m a pacifist kick-ass chick. So sue me, but expect to pay court costs.

My only option was wading into the frenzied fans’ midst, jerking anonymous arms and shoulders away from the prey while Grizelle nipped the heels of their churning feet.

Only Grizelle and I knew the worst part of this assault scene, a damning secret that made me squirm with sympathetic pain for a man, or whatever, I despised.

Only we knew the mauling groupies were pressing Snow’s eternally wounded back—damaged because of me—to the hard stone. He was bound between pain and humiliation like a mythical demigod in Tartarus, the Greek abyss below even Hades, and the mother of all hells.

Whatever breed of immortal Snow was, I knew he was vulnerable—or even human enough—to bleed. I’d never seen but often envisioned the raw, meaty mess my driving compassion for my lover, Ric, had made of his back. I hadn’t known it, but every lash scar my lips fresh from an extorted Brimstone Kiss had erased on Ric’s skin had appeared as a fresh welt on Snow’s several hotel stories away.

Vegas after the Millennium Revelation was the kind of naughty world where one good deed would exact at least another bad one in exchange. Ugly speculations were occurring to me in fractured seconds.

My God. What if these spellbound women were no longer just berserk groupies, what if this sinister hotel-wide change also had made them into
vampires
?

Above the feeding frenzy loomed Snow’s profile, ghost white face and long hair turned sideways, neck cords strained, albino eyes shut, denuded of the ever-present sunglasses.

By then I’d jerked a pathway through the clawing groupies so eager to close ranks and fight off rescuers. My arms lashed out, the tentacles of silver chains cutting slashes in their black Seven Deadly Sins and snowsluts.com T-shirts, other tentacles wrapping their necks and bare forearms.

The swinging metal stingers left silver comet trails in the air … and streaks of glitter on the black knit and the flesh beneath the raw-edged rips, on the women’s arms, lifting to defend now, not assault. Their fevered demands became moans as I slashed them into stumbling away, cradling their arms and mumbling.

“That hurts … burns … stings.”

Only then did I realize what the monsters engraved on my silver cuffs were … jellyfish.

Most jellyfish stingers were not homicidal, but protective. So far, no major harm had been done. Grizelle, that intractable … huntress … had used her formidable baby teeth to snag jeans legs and T-shirt sleeves, dragging the groupies away over and over, until they clustered in a supine moaning clot.

Now I had to face—how it pained me to attach this word to Snow, but it was true—the victim. Not only did I dread the sight of the bloody rock idol … this was my deepest personal trauma, a Ric rerun, only with Snow instead, my worst nightmare starring my best enemy.

I approached, taking in the man manacled against a towering black basalt wall. Way too much Samson for this Delilah.

Bloodsucking lip prints covered Snow’s pristine white skin and bleached leather like a graphic design and his bare face … I’d never before seen those semicircles of white eyelashes innocently curved along his eyelids. They reminded me of severed snowflakes.

Something winked from the floor at his feet: his shiny black sunglasses, torn off and tossed down. He was an albino, no matter what else he was. Even Snow didn’t deserve to be crucified by his idolaters, his weak vision identified and their protection cast away. His pale blue-veined eyelids still danced to the REM mode, barely visible yet jerking in that unmistakable tic of nerves on edge. Genetically defenseless.

I bent to retrieve the fragile sunglasses.

“Hey, leave that! It’s ours,” a groupie shouted.

A couple rose to charge again, trying to topple me from performing my one good deed, but Grizelle protected me during my ass-out moment.

I elbowed away any still-upright groupies with my flailing glitter whips, climbed Snow like a Sherpa, and placed the sunglasses over the rock god’s spotlight-blinded eyes.

I let myself slide down the marble sculpture of his form, back to the obsidian floor of this place, satisfied his eyes were open again and hidden behind the same tiny, gleaming reflection of me I faced every time we met.

With his full persona in place, he struck me as way too cool and invulnerable again. I’d never seen his back flinch after he’d inherited Ric’s boyhood beatings, and at the moment he even seemed a bit amused by my race to his rescue.

“So,” I said to Snow. “Are we good now?”

His head bowed toward my presence. “
You’re
good,” he said. “But you could be better.”

If he wasn’t hurting, I wasn’t feeling merciful … more like had, and mad.

“Let’s consider,” I said, “the thousand cheesy films of women chained and mauled. Maybe you ‘asked for it,’ rock star. Not that I’d ever tell that to the Pussycat Dolls.” Who maybe had, too. Sex objects could be so obvious.

Why couldn’t we all just keep our kinks in the bedroom closet?

Because they made money.

“It’s my job, Miss Street.” He made it sound more like a vocation.

I’d noticed that two of the snaps beneath his costume’s gem-studded fly had popped open during the struggle among his frenzied fans to claim a piece of him. I mean, who could miss that bling? I was able to get my fingers, uh, down under to press the snaps decorously shut.

“And doing that isn’t yours,” he finished.

Interesting, though. Snow was obviously not getting off on this mass grope scene any more than I was … or … wait … not until I appeared in the neighborhood.

What to do? If I stepped away, I’d leave him even more exposed to the fanimals, so I stayed put as a barrier and nervously rubbed a bloodred stain on his torso, managing only to smear it.

His hair brushed my embarrassed pink face as his head bent to watch me, knowing what I didn’t until my fingers touched the sticky dab of red, retreated, and I inhaled the scent of perfume, not coppery blood.

No wonder Snow had suffered this apparent feeding frenzy so stoically.

Instead of bloody sucking marks, these “vampire” groupies had left … lipstick kisses on almost every inch of exposed flesh, which Snow had a lot of. He was a bloody Andy Warhol canvas. Oh, blessed Bela Lugosi! I hadn’t prevented a physical ravening; I’d interrupted a rave, a rainbow party gone bad.

“It’s only lipstick, Delilah.” Snow so loved stating the obvious when I’d missed the boat. My moral outrage only got me a ticket on Roll-Your-Eyes line. My time here had been wasted, and I looked like an idiot.

“I see that. Now,” I admitted.

“Even you wear lipstick sometimes.”

That was true. My Snow White coloring made most makeup unnecessary. I was your natural woman, until I ran into unnatural situations. Like this.

“Just a little light lip
gloss,
” I said between clenched teeth.

“Even better.”

I was
not
going to flirt with a guy whose fly I’d just locked down. I was tempted to leave him here to free his own ass. Except …

“Your back—?” I asked.

His long hair shook with his head. “—is my eternal unhealing wound, thanks to your innocent meddling. Forget that. I need to be free, not pain-free.”

Still, Snow’s sensitive white skin had turned scarlet under his wrist manacles. My hands fretted at the bonds that imprisoned him. The dark metal was so cold and slick, my fingers iced at the touch. The familiar twined around my wrist as a bracelet dangling only one edged charm, a four-inch diamond-grit jeweler’s saw on a chain. The miniaturized shark’s teeth no more nicked the black metal than the same saw or an acetylene torch could impact my silver familiar.

“Black-moon tarnished silver, Delilah,” Snow said. “I thought your silver talent could counter any supernatural traps, but I see you can’t. Get the hell out while you can. Protect the Inferno CinSims.”

“From what?”

Then I remembered a pretty damning lost detail in this whole misunderstood mess. “Why did I spot Lilith among the groupies upstairs? She only manifests outside my mirror when things are really wrong.”

“Don’t you know?” he asked. “She’s your shadow, not mine.”

The black lenses reflected me eyeing them suspiciously. “She’s been yours, too, Snowman! She’s not here now. Why not? Everyone I know has been sucked one way or another into this hell, haven’t they? These fevered groupies are just the Greek chorus, not the female lead…”

Oh. I realized that the current cast of characters was missing a powerful key figure I had spotted earlier but might not have truly recognized.

“And
I’m
not the female lead either,” I said aloud. “I wasn’t even supposed to be here. It all began with…”

I focused on the Grizelle cub stalking back and forth between the lines of now-cowed women nursing their stinging glitter wounds. Only in Vegas. But the glitter-whip marks were another element that looked worse than it was. We were all being
played.

I surveyed the vast soundstage from polished floor to the blackest, emptiest most opaque heights above us all.

I’d always teased the Lilith in my mirror that Mom, if we’d had one, had named us after shady ladies in biblical times. Delilah was an Old Testament seductress and spy who brought Samson to the same plight Snow faced, blinded and chained, only by a single vengeful woman instead of a hen party.