NECROM

She made short work of Zazsu. With a jerk of her thumb, and a rasp of that deep graveyard voice, she ordered the woman away. "Beat it, honey. This one's mine."

"Wait a minute…"

"I said beat it, bitch."

"I…"

"Now."

Nephredana raised the veil of her hat, and a pair of demon eyes exactly like Slide's were revealed. Zazsu immediately capitulated and moved quickly away, and Nephredana turned her attention to Gibson. Fortunately for him, she had dropped the veil again and the inhuman eyes were hidden.

"I would have thought you could have done better than that, Joe Gibson."

Gibson shrugged, trying his hardest to put on a careless, swashbuckling front even though on the inside he was on the verge of panic. "What can I say. I'm still getting orientated."

"Getting an orientation lesson from a twenty-kudo hooker?"

"She wanted fifty."

"Probably thought you were a rube."

Nephredana was the only person in the place who wasn't blue, but Gibson didn't think it was quite the moment to ask for an explanation. He glanced down the bar to where Zazsu appeared to be telling her troubles to a man wearing a silk suit with very wide shoulders whose long, straight hair was slicked back and tied in a ponytail. "The girl seems to be complaining to her pimp."

Nephredana also glanced down the bar. "I don't think we're going to have any trouble with him." She leaned across and said something to the bartender that Gibson didn't hear. Gibson, not quite convinced that there'd be no trouble, continued to keep one eye on the pimp while he tried to find out what Nephredana was doing there.

"I'm assuming that this isn't a chance meeting."

The bartender set two drinks in front of Nephredana. One looked like ouzo and the other creme de menthe. She poured one into the other, and the resulting cocktail came out resembling a glass of toxic waste. She drank half of it and then smiled atGibson. "Of course it's not a chance meeting. Yancey figured it was time that you got out of the clutches of the streamheat."

"I may have already done that for myself."

"I wouldn't speak too soon."

"You think they're looking for me."

Nephredana swallowed the other half of the foul-looking drink and signaled to the bartender for the same again. "More likely they're waiting for you to come back dragging your tail behind you."

"And when I don't?"

"Then they'll come looking for you, if they still think you're useful to them."

"I hope I can manage to disappear before they get around to that. Unless of course Yancey Slide has other plans for me."

Nephredana mixed a second of the toxic concoctions. "Yancey doesn't have any plans for you. If you knew him better you'd be aware that Yancey doesn't exactly make plans, he just rides the flow. The only reason I'm here is because he wants you to come to a party."

Gibson blinked. This was the last thing that he had expected. "A party?"

"It's a very exclusive party. It's being given by one of the local power moguls."

"You want me to come right now?"

"Unless you want to stay here with the whores."

Gibson was becoming a little bemused. "No, no. I'll come to a party."

"You'll need a tux."

What the fuck was going on? "I don't have a tux. In fact, what you see is what I've got. I didn't exactiy pack for this trip."

Nephredana started on her second industrial waste. "Actually, I took the liberty of picking one up for you. I think it'll fit."

Gibson shook his head. All this was a little overwhelming when added to the rest of the day.

"Okay, so let's go to this party."

It was while they were both finishing their drinks in preparation for leaving that Gibson noticed Zazsu's pimp coming through the crowd with a look of vindictive anticipation on his face. His hand was going to the breast pocket of the silk suit. It came out holding a straight-edge razor. Nephredana had her back to the man and saw nothing of this. Gibson opened his mouth to yell a wanting but, in the same instant, she turned.

The pimp reached out to grab her arm. "I want to talk to you."

All Nephredana did was raise her right index finger. The man stopped dead in his tracks, and Gibson had never seen such an expression of pure terror as the one that came over the pimp's face. The razor dropped from his hand and clattered to the floor. He stood stock-still for a couple of seconds and then started to vibrate, as though in the grip of some violent palsy, all the time making small whimpering noises.

Nephredana glanced at Gibson. "In thirty seconds, he's going to have a fatal heart attack."

"You're going to kill him?"

"He pulled a razor on me, didn't he? Twenty seconds."

The pimp's face was going through progressively darkening shades of purple, and he was making noises as though he was about to swallow his tongue. The rest of the people in the bar stood silent and still, mesmerized by the spectacle of the vibrating pimp.

"Fifteen seconds."

Sweat was pouring down the pimp's face, and his eyes had rolled up into his head. One of his rings was shaken loose from his hand and bounced on the floor beside the razor.

"Ten seconds."

Somehow Zazsu seemed to break free from the spell that gripped the barroom. "Please! Don't kill him."

Nephredana looked at her pityingly. "Don't you whores ever learn? The asshole's probably better off dead. He's no use to you."

But she lowered her finger and the unfortunate pimp dropped to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The entire crowd in the barroom continued to stare as if hypnotized, except Zazsu, who crouched beside the man, sobbing and demanding that he speak to her.

Nephredana turned to Gibson. "Okay, let's get out of here."

Gibson had his hand in his pocket clutching the gun, but no one showed any signs of wanting to stop them from leaving. Indeed, the only sounds were the groans coming from the pimp on the floor and Zazsu's sobs. As he and Nephredana moved toward the door the customers stepped back like zombies opening a path for them.

The black Hudson was waiting at the curb outside the bar, gleaming with rain and reflected neon, apparently unchanged by its transition from dimension to dimension. A trio of punks were trying to peer in through the smoked windows but they scattered when Nephredana glared at them.

Gibson glanced back at the entrance to the Radium Room. "That was some trick you pulled in there."

Nephredana hurried round to the driver's door of the car. "You learn a few things over eighteen thousand years." She opened the door and slipped behind the wheel and leaned across to open the passenger door. "We shouldn't linger, though. The block I dropped on them will wear off in a minute or so."

Gibson climbed into the car and slammed the door. Nephredana eased the Hudson into gear and pulled away from the curb. Gibson took a last look at the Radium Room, half expecting an angry mob to come surging out of the door. "What did you do to that pimp anyway?"

Nephredana shrugged, concentrating on the traffic. "Just tweaked his nervous system."

"Was he really going to die?"

Nephredana nodded. "Oh, sure. In another five seconds if I hadn't stopped sticking it to him. The stupidity of prostitutes never ceases to amaze me. It's been the same since the invention of currency and it never changes. You'd think, after all this time, whores would come to realize that just because they're fucking for money, there's no need to give it all to a goddamned asshole of a man."

Gibson made a mental note never to do anything that Nephredana didn't like. The idea of being vibrated into a heart attack didn't appeal to him at all.

Since there was no sign of either Slide or Yop Boy, Gibson could only assume that Nephredana had been sent with the wheels to fetch him to wherever the party was. He looked around the interior of the Hudson and discovered that there was something a little weird about it. It appeared to be a good deal larger than the outside of the car would warrant. Sure, it was a big, old-fashioned sedan, but on the inside it was about as spacious as a small RV. He surmised that it was a piece of demonic spatial trickery, and he was a little surprised at the ease with which he was coming to accept these things, things that just a few days earlier would have boggled his mind and maybe scared the hell out of him.