"WELL," VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN muttered to himself, "if the blood won't do that eliminates the draining process."
I felt the table I was on tilt more level. What was this, psychotic pinball? I realized with another chill that the damn table, and me, had been canted at an angle all along, the better to "decant" all the blood in my body.
Hadn't my earlier online researches revealed that the ancient Egyptian embalmers used just such a technique? Being treated like an antique corpse didn't appeal to me any more than playing a glamour corpse on a twenty-first-century forensics TV show.
"I really don't need you nursemaids anymore," Frankenstein absently told the six weird nurses. "I now have an entire, live body. With such a fresh beginning I can attempt a better resurrection than I got with the Bone Boy. I've never had much luck with assembled parts. The complete body is the key and the blood, not bones, is the life."
The nurses stirred uneasily, or eagerly, which was more than I could do at the moment.
This was an English actor-not today's Colin Farrell or Colin Firth but... Colin Clive!
The thirties' Frankenstein CinSim extended his monologue to better relish the sound of his own mellifluous voice. The breed just can't resist exposition.
"My royal masters and their minions certainly don't need any more experience in embalming," he droned over my not-yet-dead body, "so I can hone my resurrection skills. First she must be killed, I think. Hmmm. I do find that part a bit queasy-making. I live to create life, not destroy it. I'll have trouble violating that directive. The royals must understand that one does not overcome one's assigned role that easily."
As he maundered on, I realized two things simultaneously. The scared, shrunken part of me that had been quavering on this table had known nothing of the Millennium Revelation and CinSims.
And, second, the part that did was coming back like ghostbusters.
If I wanted the silver familiar back, I had to call it. That couldn't be an ambiguous summons, so any love-hate thoughts of Achilles and Snow's long white locks were out. Besides, after what I'd let happen to Snow, I figured he'd like to see my blood drained about now.
I concentrated on my stouthearted Lhasa, Achilles, who would have tackled any five-times-bigger hyena on my behalf if he'd been alive. This Egyptian subterranean theme park was a place of resurrection. I'd seen Snow call a dragon to life from its ashes under the Inferno. I figured I could retrieve my late lamented and incredibly loyal dog from the lock of his hair I'd saved from the Kansas crematorium and recently added to the familiar.
This is Millennium Revelation Vegas, baby! Nothing dies here but lame onstage acts.
I took another deep breath while I still had one and called up the look and thought of Achilles with every shred of my bereft heart's longing.
There is someplace even more potent than thoughts of home, and it is the place in the heart where lost loves are enshrined. I conjured Achilles' spirit as hard as a six-year-old kid making a wish, with my eyes squeezed tight and my fingers curled into fists as tight.
Even at six I had stopped wishing for anything, but now I had memories of my love for Ric and the fierce risks I'd taken to save him.
I pictured Achilles bounding to me through foot-high Kansas snowdrifts, his white hair flowing behind him, baring his intent black eyes and long red tongue lolling against small rows of sharp white teeth.
"Ow!"
My wrists felt caught in the vicious steel-toothed jaws of an animal trap tightening like blood pressure cuffs. Then the gauze bindings shredded and my arms pulled free.
I eyed my stinging wrists, which now sported matching Wonder Woman sterling silver cuffs with turned-out, sawtooth edges. Ow! for anyone who tried to grab my wrists.
I looked up to see Frankenstein contemplating a scalpel like Hamlet the skull of his dead court fool. I could kick my unbound feet into Frank's wimpy mad-scientist chest like a kangaroo and be up and outa here in a second.
Oops. While I was busy channeling my dead dog and silver sidekick, the three nurses on either side had pulled down their masks and torn off their gowns.
I gazed upon beauty bare: six sets of sparkling Hollywood-white vampire fangs and snowy banks of dead-white cleavage fit for a plus-size Victoria's Secret catalogue.
The twin silver cuffs melted up my arms and began streaking toward my bare neck.
"Chill, dear," one nurse leaned down to coo. "We're actually your bodyguards."
"Wait," Frankenstein cried as I clutched my winding sheet to my chest and scooted my rear down the stone table away from him. I didn't wait, but spun to get my feet to the floor. I turned to face him across the stone slab with its drainage gutter along one edge.
"Quack!" I accused. "You're not even a real doctor. They called you that in the movie, not the novel. At best you're a wildly out-of-date movie baron and at worst a sniveling has-been."
He stood astounded, maybe shocked to discover that someone else with a speaking role was in the chamber. Spotting the creepy black blood vial resting in the groove at the table's other end, I did an end run around the vampire nurses and snatched it back.
In my hand the true red color blossomed like a liquid rose.
The exit's behind him, Irma cried, back and rarin' to go. Get us out of here.
I was amazed to see the nurses filing out behind me through an opening flanked by two giant crocodile-headed statues. Old-time Egyptians were squirts. I lowered my head and ducked through. These passages sure weren't designed for Vikings.
I could sense the nurses running right behind me. The absence of hot, panting breaths on their parts gave me new goose bumps.
Bodyguards? Irma asked. And I'm Rosie O'Donnell. Scram, please.
That was the problem. Where to? I had to stop, look, and listen in the deserted passage.
While I surveyed the maze, the brides of Dracula times two were gathering around me, salivating.
"Her heartbeat is so much louder now that she's run," one observed to her sisters.
"I can still smell the fresh blood in that vial," another said, eyes closed with a gourmet's appreciation.
"The doctor said it was 'bad.'"
That wasn't the first time I'd heard that from medical personnel, such as the doctor who'd pumped quarts of blood into Ric's body and treated his wounds. I was tempted to defend the honor and quality of my blood, except that was suicidal at the moment.
"And he would be so angry," another vampire nurse pouted.
"Not if the blood was really okay."
"True. We could say she fell and cut her carotid artery open and we could only stanch the flow with our fangs."
"He wanted her alive."
"She still could be. A little."
By then my silver familiar had shifted into a three-inch-wide dog collar around my neck, dangling enough cascading chains of crosses to armor a Crusader.
"Ouch!" a nurse complained, stepping back to hold a defensive forearm against her smoky shadowed eyes. "You're blinding us with all that shining silver churchy hardware. It's very rude to bling us to death."
"Just remember you're 'bodyguards' and get me out of here," I said.
So, like six very busty blind mice, they blinked and took the lead, feeling their way along the dim passage with me clanking crucifixes behind them.
I kept glancing back. Frankenstein was apparently microchipped like all the CinSims. He remained a prisoner of his ageless new laboratory.
The passage ended with a familiar artifact, the chariot "pulled" by stone horses. No ravenous hyenas lingered here now, but I was more than happy to leap into the chariot, armored like a Crusader.
The vampires crowded against the stone horses' shiny, cold sides. I saw one pull on a gold rein that swung from the bridle.
What this ride would be worth in twenty-first-century terms I didn't even want to know. That much gold...
Since I had ridden this chariot down into the royal chambers below, I wasn't surprised when the entire supporting floor lifted us all up like a group of Disney World tourists on a disguised elevator.
I was surprised when I saw the hotel's marbled main floor with ranks of facing sarcophagi passing and vanishing below.
Then I remembered what my demon parking valet pal had said on my first visit. The chariot marked the entrance to the Karnak Hotel's new high-end condos. Only very high rollers would be allowed to buy into this modern obelisk of chutzpah and wealth on a scale to dwarf Dubai.
I couldn't wait to meet Mr. or Ms. Big when we reached the biggest penthouse in the sky.