Anno Dracula (48 page)

‘Y-yes, Mr A.’

Visser’s voice was a squeak, as if Alucard were gripping his testes.

He hissed through fangs. Visser had to submit to him.

‘Yes, Master,’ he said.

The magic words won the detective’s freedom. He held a hand to his ragged neck. He was not seriously hurt. His jugular was safe behind inches of protective flab.

He took a plastic folder from inside his coat.

Alucard snapped his fingers. Visser, hand shaking, lit a match and held up the flame.

Alucard could see perfectly well in this dark, but wanted something close to daylight for this. Inside the folder was a court artist’s sketch of a young woman on the witness stand, dressed conservatively, hair loose, fangs perhaps exaggerated, eyes wide, face clear. The anonymous Canadian artist was not up to C.C. Drood standards, but Alucard didn’t care.

Visser didn’t say anything clever.

Alucard looked at the picture for a long time. He didn’t have anyone on the payroll he could trust to take care of Geneviève. Gorse’s cheerleader hit-girl had bungled the job. Once, a contract had been put on Geneviève’s head with Mr Yee, greatest of all Chinese vampire assassins. She’d wormed her way out of that. The woman had survived notorious Slayers like the Crook, the Crimson Executioner, Anita Blake and Captain Kronos. If he wanted her truly dead, Alucard would have to handle her himself, which he was loath to do these nights, or head-hunt someone special for the sanction. But, he wondered, did he want her dead? So few appreciated what he was up to, it would be a shame to lose such a sharp, appreciative audience.

The impersonator turned to her and said, ‘Do you, Holly Sargis, take this man, Christopher Carruthers, as your lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold, in death as in life, to share the nights, throughout eternity?’

Holly looked into Kit’s eyes, the only mirror she’d ever need, and said, ‘I do.’

‘Then, by the power vested in me by the State of Nevada, I pronounce you man and wife.’

Kit whooped and swept her off her feet, swinging her around. The little chapel shook. It was done up like a crypt. The short, squat impersonator held on to the prop skull and real chalice which dressed his rickety altar.

‘You may now bite the bride,’ he said.

She bared her throat and he sank his teeth into her, deep. They didn’t do that often enough any more. She nibbled his ear as he tongued away the blood that came from her. The sense tsunami washed over his tongue and drowned his brain, then poured back into her through their mind link. Dry-mouthed, she tasted herself. With the blood came a flow of feeling which wound around them, making them as one. A closed circuit of love.

A blue-haired gnome woman played an electric organ. They’d chosen ‘Swan Lake’ over ‘Toccata and Fugue’, but asked her to switch after the ceremony into ‘I Got You, Babe’ for the biting and kissing. Holly guessed the impersonator disapproved, but he wasn’t the one doing the getting married.

It was a tradition every time they passed through Vegas to take their vows. This was their seventh wedding since 1962, when they’d seen Frank and Sammy heckle Dean, then killed some wiseguys and strewn the bones in the desert. Vegas kept getting better with every visit.

This time, they’d selected a late-period impersonator to officiate. He wore a scarlet lamé jump-suit split to the waist to show wolfstooth necklaces and military orders, with a gold-lined batwing-collared halflength black cape, a midnight-black widow’s peak wig that melted into flared and trailing eyebrows, and showy artificial fang-points. He had the voice down: the soul-stirring European accent made words into music and impregnated regular phrases with dark meaning.

At any time of night, seventy or eighty impersonators, representing as many different stages in the King’s life, milled about the desert city’s streets, lounges, bars and casinos. They corralled visitors, told stories to whoever would listen, performed close-up magic, played unusual musical instruments, showed off trained wolves or gila monsters. Morgan Freeman, Dick Shawn and George Hamilton all got their showbiz start working Vegas in capes and fangs. A persistent story was that the King was coming back and would first manifest in the West. She’d heard it too many times, from too many different vipers, to write it off as just sizzle for the tourists.

Still, they didn’t need a King of the Cats; they had each other.

The moment of commingling passed. Kit let her go. His mouth and chin were smeared. She licked him clean, mixing in a few kisses.

The impersonator was jealous.

Good. Her neck was for one man and one man alone.

‘Let’s go have some fun, Bloody Holly,’ Kit said.

‘Oh, Lambchop, let’s,’ she breathed.

They paid the impersonator and the organist with bloodied bills and went out into the velvet night.

Holly clung to Kit’s arm. For the wedding, she’d chosen a white gown, split up the sides to her armpits and cut low in front, with a string of cultured pearls and matching earrings, and high heels that at least raised her to Kit’s shoulder height. The groom wore an orange tux with matching devil’s-horns Stetson and a wide tie painted with cartoon characters. They posed under the arch of the chapel. An explosive flashbulb went off, burning their eyes. They kept trying new processes to photograph vampires. Their last wedding photo was an improvement over earlier attempts, with recognisable smoke-shapes rather than empty embracing outfits. For some vipers, photography would never take. It was part of their marriage ritual though. Kit agreed to be back before dawn to pick up the prints. Who knew what this year’s picture would show?

All around were points of light, stars fallen to Earth and stuck to hotels. Billions of coloured bulbs. Millions of miles of neon tube. Thousands of folks, attracted to the lights like insects. Coins clinked in polyester pockets like cicada chirrups. Dozens of tunes exploded from street-mounted speakers: ‘Here She Is, Miss America’ and ‘Transylvania Twist’ and ‘Would You Like to Swing on a Star?’ and ‘Witch Doctor’ and ‘Like a Virgin’ and ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ and ‘Cold as Ice’ and ‘Venus’ and ‘Vampire Junction’ and ‘Off to See the Wizard’ and ‘In the Ghetto’ and ‘Love is Strange’. White stretch limos blocked traffic along the Strip, coffin-cocooning cool celebs and overexcited contest winners. People on the hoof jammed the sidewalks and filled the spaces between cars.

They strolled on, back towards the Voodoo Lounge.

Rival casinos faced each other across the Strip. Two clanking buildings were shaped like Japanese monsters, with room windows in their bellies and arched entrances between their feet. One was a towering dragon, eyes like lighthouse lamps and spiny ridges all over its bulbous avocado-textured walls, plumes of fire projected from its gaping maw; the other was a titanic wing-flapping moth, in white with delicate colour patterns, spewing strawberry fun foam from a spout high on the roof. Crews of employees dressed as the casinos’ totemic beasts yelled taunts at each other from their forecourts and bad-mouthed the opposition to the streams of tourists. Sometimes, rivalry exploded into stick fights, swordplay or exchanges of sniper fire. A dozen more bodies and the Nevada Gaming Commission would up the expected bribes to let the
Kaiju Yakuza
stay in business.

Another impersonator, buzzed on drac, stick-thin and ragged-cloaked, was handing out casino flyers. Origami cat-shapes spilled from his hands onto the sidewalk, fanning around his feet, rarely taken by disinterested passersby. A wide-eyed warm man in a tailored Western suit sank slowly to his knees, hands bunched over holes in his shirt. His blood shone bright as neon. He was more surprised than angry or scared. No one was running away. A few stopped to look, giving the gut-stuck fellow room to kneel and bleed. Some licked their teeth. Holly and Kit didn’t need any of that action. It wouldn’t even count towards the score. They’d only be finishing something someone else started.

They crossed the Strip and went into the Voodoo Lounge.

The door staff were coloured women in skimpy shrouds, white bones painted on their brown skin. The lobby captain was a seven-foot black man in a battered top hat, a brocaded cutaway coat and a loin-cloth of fabric snakes and daggers. Baron Samedi directed customers with a skull-topped quarterstaff. At his side was a sack into which tributes poured as he advised people where in the lounge their particular pleasure could be serviced. Smiling on the newlyweds, he showed ruby blood-drops inset into his pointed front teeth, and a bat tattoo on his long, pink tongue. When he held up his staff to point, one side of his coat lifted to flash an unbuttoned shoulder-holster and a heavy automatic.

The centrepiece of the lobby was a wheezing brass coffin on a gravel bed, hooked up to a complex apparatus. Through an iced-over window, curiosity seekers could see the frost-rimed Howard Hughes, white beard and hair curled around his sunken face. It was considered good luck to rub the faceplate after a wedding. Kit and Holly stepped up and touched their palms to cool glass.

‘His eyes moved, Bloody Holly,’ said Kit, snatching his fingers away.

‘Did not, silly,’ she said, scratching his wrist with her nail.

‘Had you goin’ a second.’

‘Wait till I get you upstairs.’

Hughes was no longer warm, not yet a vampire. A thin stream of blood, ‘donated’ by pure-living Mormons, was circulated through his veins by an impressive arrangement of pumps. The billionaire, owner of the hotels and casinos on this side of the Strip, had definite ideas about when he should rise to continue his work on Earth. A plaque on the cryo-coffin explained that he was to be reactivated when his company filed unspecified aerospace patents which would take the industry to the point where Hughes might deem it interesting again. Until then, his fortune kept him half-alive and hotel profits contributed to his maintenance. A dent in the unbreachable brass showed that someone had tried to put a bullet through his heart. The hotels and casinos on the other side of the Strip were owned by the Five Families and between the two sides existed a permanent state of undeclared war. Last time they passed through, Holly and Kit had picked up a hundred thousand dollars of untraceable Hughes Tool & Die money for adding six goombahs to the score, prompting a change of administration in the Outfit. Since then, they were welcome any time to the Voodoo Lounge.

All around, matrons with zimmer frames and teenagers dressed like hookers popped chips into shiny one-armed bandits modelled on the Hughes cryo-coffin. The crunch of rolling reels and falling metal blended with the noise of a band. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, bone through his nose, sang ‘I Put a Spell on You’ as if he really meant it. A few people, those not in line for a machine, paid attention.

They had a suite here, but Kit wouldn’t gamble in the Voodoo Lounge or any other casino. Whatever game you picked, the odds were in the house’s favour. Later, they might try to get into a card game, though no high-roller would sit at a table with a viper couple. It would be like playing with a mind-reader and his assistant. Signals would fly invisibly from the first cut to the last cash-rake.

For them, this adventure was about love, not money.

‘What d’you want to do for a wedding night treat, Lambchop?’

Kit gave it some thought. She saw the blood-bursts in his mind and shared his excitement.

‘Let’s go find one of those lap-dancin’ places, suck ourselves fat on long-legged big titty girls or hard-butt gay boys, then score everybody in the place, leavin’ but one soul alive to tell the tale of what went down when Kit and Holly came to town.’

He kissed her, sweetly. Over his shoulder, she winked at the Eye in the Sky, which had swivelled their way. They had directional mikes these days.

‘Better make it a Mob place, Lambchop. The Hughes folks have been real appreciative. It’d be like doing them a favour, while we were having fun.’

‘You’re so sweet, Bloody Holly. Viva Las Vegas!’

It was unnatural that a warm man should be so enthused at the Hour of the Wolf. Behind heavy-framed glasses, the kid’s eyes jittered and shone. He wasn’t on drac, so Alucard guessed the auteur-in-waiting had caffeinated himself on a dozen jolts of full-strength Java.