Snow-with his white skin, hair and leather catsuit- was a glittering flake of humanity perched on one of those beetled reptilian brows. He slid down the long dragon snout, hung from a huge gold nostril ring, then dropped onto the stage just in time to take the white electric guitar Lust rushed to his hand.

His strong baritone bawled out a line about "everybody goin' down" and some hard-driving number was launched, the boys in the band shaking a tsunami of sound from their instruments, the girl singers wailing like lost souls in counterpoint to screaming guitar and frantic drums.

Having the mind-numbing music this close nearly deafened me. The long wait and longer show numbed my tingling feet to the ankles and my mind into an endless trance. By the time Snow finally pulled out the long white chiffon scarves and went trolling for clamoring female fans, I was tired and crabby. I snapped myself to attention again, because this was the moment I'd been suffering for.

Snow, of course, never let anyone see him sweat. He was still pale-faced and dry as he began his concert-ending walk along the edge of the stage while the band played wildly behind him.

His long, angel-white locks brushed some of the fans' faces as he bent down to loop a scarf around their necks and draw them near. He gave them the long goodbye, not a short kiss-off. I'd seen that from the back of the audience. What I hadn't seen from there was that the Brimstone Kiss was so heavy on tongue, an erotic sensual smooch that drove deep before he released them back, swooning, into the buoying crowd with a palm stroke to their foreheads.

It was such a weird blend of, say, Elvis's ghost-on-speed kisses and some Holy Roller preacher's phony healing routine, I just did not believe it. These women must be self-hypnotized.

Then I felt the silver familiar fast-tracking from a punk tiara on my forehead into a heavy chain and pendant around my neck, as if drawn to its master. I looked down to see a giant S nestled in my cleavage, like I was Supergirl.

At that moment Snow bagged my neck with a chiffon scarf.

The women around me automatically pressed inward, determined to help push me up toward his kneeling figure for the final kiss.

Poison dog lips! Irma screeched in warning. I almost giggled, except I was too appalled. The Brimstone Kiss might be a lot of things, but that one it most definitely was not.

I felt my elbows grasped as I was bodily hauled up, the women pushing inward to assist my lift-off. My face was level with the stage, then Snow was standing and I went up and up with him.

He brought my face very close to his, holding me off the ground like a toy.

I shut my eyes and squeezed my lips shut even tighter, flinching against the forthcoming Brimstone Kiss. The only tongue that had ever gotten cozy with mine came from the butcher's counter or Ric Montoya. Or maybe Quicksilver if I wasn't fast enough to dodge doggie enthusiasm.

I felt a downward swoop and my feet hit the stage floor with a jolt.

"The 5 is for Street, I presume," Snow said. "Or should I be flattered?"

"More for 'sold out'," I admitted. Caught in his groupie cauldron. He could think I actually meant to be here! I was so humiliated.

" Miss Delilah Street. What are you up to?" Snow asked as he bent down, a smile on those lethal lips.

"Not up high enough for the Brimstone Kiss," I said. Okay, that was a coy answer.

And so he treated it. "See me backstage later. Use the side stairs and 'Beelzebub' for a password."

I blinked. This was an invitation a Cocaine groupie would kill for.

Snow was leaning forward to lower me back to the mosh pit. I hit the floor with a jolt. By the time I looked over the stage apron, he had retreated to the mike for the finale.

Wailing, bereaved groupies crowded forward even though the last Brimstone Kiss had been given, pushing me aside.

I let them, working my way to stage right.

The final song was a furious rock hair-raiser called "Liquid Lightning." No one noticed me creeping toward the black-painted side stairs where I confronted the creature from the Black Lagoon wearing a T-shirt labeled Security. In the dark, the grayish CinSim was discreet but visibly ugly enough to repel all comers when noticed. He smelled rubbery rather than rank, thank goodness. I breathed the Devil's B-name into his frilled side gills and Fish-face stepped aside.

Whipping around the black curtain, I entered the shadowed wings beyond.

I lurked there, my heart beating triple time, watching the Seven Deadly Sins rock out with demonic sound and fury.

I pressed myself against the offstage wall as the Sins swept offstage like a flock of demon raptors.

Snow was on me like white lightning, pressing me between his body and the wall. He spoke harsh and fast.

"You're not a groupie. You'd spit staples before you'd covet one of my Brimstone Kisses. What do you want? Why are you here?"

I decided to try honesty. "I want to understand."

"That's impossible. That is impossible. Delilah Street. No one understands. You pursue failure."

"Nevertheless, that's what I want."

"What you want means nothing in the scale of life and death and afterlife."

"It does to me."

"And are you that supremely important, that others should exist to be the objects of your 'understanding'?"

"Yes," I said. "It isn't just for me. It's for them."

"Them?" he thundered in a stage whisper.

"Humanity," I said back. "Oh, the humanity," I repeated, quoting the dazed radio reporter who had witnessed the hellfire destruction of the Hindenburg zeppelin almost a hundred years ago.

It wasn't film coverage, but the radio voice segment had been run over and over again, along with black-and-white film clips of the giant air-boat flame-out, for the disbelieving anguish in the reporter/witness's voice.

I was a reporter, and Las Vegas was my beat.

If Snow's eyes hadn't been obscured by the constant sunglasses I would have said he'd blinked at my reference to a seventy-five-year-old disaster that ended an antique form of air travel.

"This isn't Lakehurst, New Jersey," he answered, naming the location of the tragedy with eerie precision. "This is Las Vegas. And not that many perished at Lakehurst. If all the combustible elements in modern Las Vegas ignited, hundreds of thousands would die."

I didn't know what to say for a moment, taking in the enormity of his insinuation. Vegas was a potential tinderbox and I could be the spark? Me, the poor little match girl? I don't think so.

"Talk about self-important," I replied. "I merely want to get to the bottom of this Brimstone Kiss racket you've got going here. I hate seeing women turned into mindless zombies."

"I thought you were investigating felonies for Hector Nightwine's CSI franchises."

"That too."

"No laws are being broken here. Nobody's getting hurt."

"Having their free will tampered with, that's hurtful."

He pulled back to fold his arms. "They do it to themselves."

"People do lots of bad things to themselves. That doesn't mean we write them off."

"And you're going to undo the effects of the Brimstone Kiss?"

"Maybe."

"When you haven't even experienced it for yourself?" He stepped closer again.

I didn't want his faux jewel-bedecked fly grinding into my belly again, but I made myself hold my ground. Any renowned performer has learned to project charisma to the farthest, highest rows. There was a sort of magic to that, but Snow had taken whatever natural gifts he had to the mind control level. Or maybe emotion control. Not mine.

I was five-eight and not a wispy girl. Still, he'd picked me up like a leaf from six feet below the stage level. It was impossible to tell what was simple reality and what was supernatural about Snow, Whenever I defied him the slightest bit. he scared me more than Cicereau and his mob of werewolf hitmen ever could.