"I love you so much, Del. You can't know what this moment means to me. Here. Now. I've been born again. I could die making love to you. But I never want to die so I can make love to you forever."

I was too blown away to answer, or even to say: make up your mind.

I just clung to him, not believing I'd just cleared such a horrible personal block. Every word Ric said, in English or in Spanish, eased a senseless fear and a vague, terrifying memory. But I couldn't speak of my feelings. What I felt was beyond words.

"I suppose," he said finally, "I'll have to get you back into that dress with every last button done."

"You can skip a few now," I said, kissing him on the throat while I began closing him back into his clothes, "but not very many."

Chapter Forty-Five

I woke up in my cottage bed, alone, thinking of Ric. Desposada meant "bride." I'd greedily clawed through my Spanish dictionary for the word as soon as we'd kissed a lingering goodbye at the door and I'd gone inside. Quicksilver was sniffing and sulking, but I ignored him for the first time in our association to find that word and hold it to me.

Not that I wanted to get married or to "trap" a man or anything formal. To be wanted that much was the thing, after being unwanted for so long and pretending not to care. He'd had me on "Hello, this is my dowsing rod," but now I felt totally unhad, if that makes sense.

Still, I saw myself clinging to my dictionary and my word, pretty pathetic, pretty teenage.

On cooler reflection, I was still in the dark about Ric.

I'd taken the biggest risk of my life and for it I'd gotten an important step in my personal redemption, but only a slim bit of insight into Ric's complex soul. Finally I'd met someone who was more mysterious than I was. Someone who was also able to bring me deeper into myself than I'd ever allowed.

Was it love, or addiction, or an adrenaline high? Or an undercover operator using me?

Last night on the long ride home Ric had listened to my tale of long-lived werewolf casino bosses and lost dead daughters.

"We need to know who the man with her in the grave was. That's the key," he said.

I couldn't stop recalling our last moments on the car's hood. How he'd spun so that I was on top of him. No sense of binding, just Ric serving as my bed, his eyes and lips heavy and satisfied, content, liking my weight on his chest and hips, my fingers toying with his hair and lips.

I liked everything about him. Wasn’t that a warning signal? I'd never had a decent connection with anyone male before.

"Querida," he'd said. "Don't run away on me now."

I'd run away before. From the orphanage. The convent school. I thought no one knew but me. Ric was The Man. Police. The FBI. He'd be able to check up on those things. Me. My history. He'd be able to manipulate me. My history.

He manipulated my hair as it fell over my shoulders onto his chest. My lips as they went dry and vacant, wondering what to say next.

"We have to find out who the man was," he repeated.

"The boy."

"Why do you say that?"

"They were just kids."

"She was immortal werewolf spawn."

"Not her fault! Or her choice. She was her father's daughter, and I wouldn’t care to be in her shoes."

"Shoes. Tell me again what shoes she wore?"

"Platform heels. Satin. Navy satin. Made her taller. Older, she thought. She wanted to be older, so no one could control her."

"She's way older now." Ric frowned. "Do you think her father could have had her killed?"

"Her father?"

"You saw him."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"The pack is everything. With eternal life, family is less. He could sire more cubs. More beta bitches and more alpha bastards."

Ric ran his hands over my back and butt. "'Del. I know he's despicable. He also uses the CinSims like toilet paper and Mexican zombies as cheap labor. He may even be behind that stuff in Juarez. That's why I want to bring him down so badly. Help me."

Wow. Even I knew how seductive it was to have a man asking, "Help me."

I lifted myself away. "How will we find out about her guy?"

"Detective work," he said, sitting up and making extreme love to my bare shoulder. "Delilah. We'll never be free to live our own lives until we solve this murder."

I made that "we'll" into an "I" in my mind. Where could I find out about this dead, forgotten guy? Somewhere in Las Vegas.

Ric would be looking.

So would I.

I just wished I could fully trust him enough to tell him all the other aspects of my search. About my strange facilities and Lilith. Yet, despite my complete unveiling and satisfaction tonight, I'd still only literally unzipped a tiny sliver of Ric's soul. That wasn’t enough.

I'd been born suspicious, raised alien and alone, and suspicious I would live…or die.

Chapter Forty-Six

I went back to Vilma Brazil. I sure as heck wasn’t going back to Howard Hughes, or what was left of him.

It was 4:00 pm and she was knocking back a Bacardi Breezer in the dressing room.

"Hey, kid! You made it out in one pretty unslavered-over piece. How is old Howie? He was really hot for me once, you know. He was gonna make me a star."

"He was gonna make any girl a star. He's living dead in Las Vegas and glad of it. What can I say?"

Vilma shook her peroxided fright wig. "He used to be quite the dude. Slicked-back black hair. Pencil-thin mustache. But he was always a tad strange. Hey, so was I."

"Weren't we all?"

"She was a werewolf princess, you said."

I nodded at Vilma's conclusion. The girl in that photograph, the girl in the mirror, had been just that: young, innocent, tender, and supernaturally gifted. Her daddy's pride and joy. And his biggest disappointment in her choice of mates. She had been playing Juliet to some unknown teen vampire's Romeo.

Neither of their houses would have permitted such a union, or could have permitted them to live after making such a union. Add a little Othello and Desdemona to the mix. Murderous possessiveness. By fathers of their children, by clans of their very different lifeblood.

"Who was the head of the vampire syndicate back in the forties when Las Vegas was busy being born and mortal mob bosses thought they'd rule the roost?" I asked Vilma.

"Only one, not heard of since. He was going to build the most stupendous hotel-casino in Las Vegas before the vampires lost the war. He was going to call it-"

"The Inferno." I knew the answer as I said it. The Inferno had fallen only to rise like a phoenix eighty years later. How much time was that to a vampire? The blink of an undead eye.

Vilma lifted a drawn-on eyebrow almost to her thinning hairline in recognition of my lucky strike.

"Yeah. I remember now. He was going to name it the Styx or something hellish. The vampire crew was from the house of…it's been so long. House of Wrathescu. The vampire king was Wilhelm XII. He has not been heard of since but may be only taking a vampire nap, as we humans would reckon it."

"He was Juliet's dream lover?"

"He was no one's dream unless you wanted a nightmare. You've seen what form of eternal life Howard won. No, this Wilhelm was old and corrupt. Not the stuff of films or Goth girls' romantic dreams. But I recall that he had a son of the spirit, one bright and blazing comet that he had bitten into the clan. A toothsome young vampire."

"His name?"

"Something vaguely and tantalizingly Christian. A prince among vampires. Foreign, from the land where werewolves were put to torture and the test as nowhere else. Kind of funny that a vampire-werewolf romance would end the Werewolf-Vampire War here in Vegas. I don’t know the details. Howard would "