Alucard's fingers darted out and pinched Visser's greasy dewlap. His nails pressed through slick skin. Blood welled, overripe with garlic stink. The private eye grit his teeth against the pain. His eyes grew as big as saucers. Fear boiled off him like steam, seeping out around his collar and through the damp patches under his arms.

'Give it to me,' Alucard ordered.

He knew what Visser would have got in Toronto.

'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 Genevieve. Gorse's cheerleader hit-girl had bungled the job. Once, a contract had been put on Genevieve'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.

6.

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 lame 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!'

7.

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.

'You are?'

'Adam Simon,' said the kid.

The writer-director wore a too-big check shirt outside khaki pants and hadn't shaved in the twenty-two hours since the last daybreak. He waved his hands constantly, a distraction. If Alucard concentrated, he saw movements beyond the ordinary human optical spectrum. A rarely useful vampire trick. Sometimes he was distracted by artefacting in his vision, almost lulled into fascination by shapes and colours the warm couldn't see.

Simon had made a couple of Roger Corman pictures, The Howling Man and Blood Chemistry 2. He was looking to pitch something at a major minor or a minor major.

Alucard was an independent with deals all over town. His line of old blood money and new Wall Street finance was the envy of corporate conglomerates who still didn't know what to do with motion picture studios they'd swallowed twenty years earlier. He chose to work out of Miracle Pictures because one of his third-generation companies had controlling interest monopolies and trusts people would never figure. He paid himself rent on office and stage facilities and set it against tax. Most nights, he hit the lot sometime after three and took meetings and calls until dawn. He was at his best and the warm were drowsy or cranked. No one in the business complained about having to stay up or get out of bed to see him. Most would sacrifice more than a few hours' sleep for a face-to-face with John Alucard.

Simon had been haunting his outer office for months, cajoling Beverly for a pitch window. She must have taken pity on the lost soul. He would give her a taste of the cat for that.

The kid sat, without being asked. Visitors' chairs, six inches shorter than Alucard's solid throne, were constructions of chrome and canvas designed to become uncomfortable after a few minutes. This office was his sanctum: it didn't do to encourage people to settle in. Simon sank lower into the chair than he'd expected and found himself craning to see over Alucard's desk, a pair of antique Spanish grandee coffins supported by four bowed hardwood angels. The kid was momentarily distracted by a framed Warhol, a silk-screened red and yellow and black multiple reproduction of an eighteenth century portrait of Carmilla Karnstein.

'I've a project I think you're going to be very excited about, John,' began the writer-director. 'Blockbuster potential, but with integrity. A star vehicle, but with something to say. It's very makeable, within a tight-ish budget. Or on big bucks if that's what it takes. Whatever.'

'Sands are flowing, Adam. Preamble eats into your pitch slot.'

Simon swallowed and began.

'We begin,' he said, hands raised, palms out, opening like theatre curtains. 'A John Alucard Production. An Adam Simon Picture. Big Star Name in... The Rock.'

'A boxing picture? Doesn't Stallone own the title?'

'Not Rocky, The Rock.'

'I like Stallone, though.'

'So do I, enormously. Death Race 2000, great movie. F.I.S.T., very underrated.'

Alucard made a funnelling motion, sand in an hourglass.

'The Rock,' said Simon. 'The Big House. Alcatraz Island.'

'A prison picture?'

'Exactly, but with a twist, a new wrinkle, an angle. A prison picture, with vampires.'

Word around town was that John Alucard was a soft touch for vampire pitches. He hadn't green-lighted a viper movie since The Lost Boys, but the flurry around the botched conjuring had left a wrong impression with the bottom-feeders. Every night, he nixed vampire pitches. The American public had a limited tolerance for films about the undead. Audiences wanted characters to wake up warm at the sunrise, not go all the way into the night. The Lost Boys sailed under the radar because it was a dhampire movie. At the end, bad vampires Kiefer Sutherland and Edward Herrmann were destroyed, and nice kids Jason Patric and Jamie Gertz turned warm again.

'Adam, just because I'm a vampire doesn't mean I'll back a vampire picture. Mayer, Glick and Warner were Jews. How many films did old Hollywood make about Jews?'

'Uh, The Life of Emile Zola, Gentleman's Agreement.'

'Ancient history. I know all about Alcatraz. You're not the first to come to me with this idea. I've even had your title pitched, by Eszterhas or Shane Black.'

'The title's not important. It could be From Dusk Till Dawn. That's classier. Or Lock-Up. Or The Concrete Coffin.'

'Your Corman background is showing. This is The Big Doll House with vampires.'

'"With vampires" isn't the twist. This isn't just another vampire prison movie. They've been done to death with Linda Blair and Sylvie Kristel. I have a new new angle.'

'Sands run low, Adam.'

'Here's our pre-credits sequence. The dock on Frisco Bay. Sunset. An armoured car draws up. It's like a prison cell on wheels, a black iron cage. It's a tank constructed inside-out, not to keep the crew safe from the world but to keep the world safe from the passengers. A boat, also armoured out the wazoo, is waiting to take the new fish out to the Rock. We see the island on the horizon, gulls circling above in the twilight like vultures. A John Ford sky, blood red with grey clouds. Guards with riot-guns, crossbows, burning crosses. We get pro ball players or wrestlers. Huge guys, arms like cantaloupes, slabs of beef. Close-up: silver dum-dums chambered into a pump-action shotgun. The rear door of the armoured transport opens. The grizzled senior guard - Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman - reads off a clipboard, giving us voice-over intro to the cons.'

'The guard is the star part?'

'No. No. Best Supporting Actor Nomination.'

'I like someone younger in the lead. More sex.'

'You'll get it. You'll get a lot of it.'

'Sex in prison? Sounds like a fag art movie. Jean Genet is dead again, you know.'

'The Rock is co-ed. It's for vampires, remember. Some of those nosferatu women are hardcore.'

Alucard let that pass. Miriam Blaylock, the most elegant murderess of the '80s, had wound up on the Rock. Ricia 'Rusty' Cadigan, the lonelyhearts killer who'd just lost a final appeal before the Supreme Court, was on the island too, safely welded into her solitary cell.

They were all idiots, to his mind. Like Lacroix and Macelli. Hopped up on what their 'vampire powers' could do, they thought they were beyond the law. Alucard hadn't personally killed anyone warm since 1982.

'We see cons come out of the van,' continued Simon. 'Big, small, mean, sneaky. We get their histories. What they've been convicted of. Horrible, horrible crimes. Mass murder, serial murder, drac-dealing, death cults. One's an elder, nailed with charges that go back centuries. A Transylvania Movement terrorist who led an assault on a Romanian gymnastics team, popping the heads off five fifteen-year-old girls. Call him something like "Baron Monster".'