The Warslayer(4)
She mascaraed her pale lashes and slathered on the kohl, and finished up with a liberal application of blood-red MAC lipstick. When she was done, the masklike face of Vixen the Slayer stared back at her from the mirror, yellow eyes gleaming out of Goth-black rings. She sighed, and reached for Gordon, resting her chin on his head. The big blue elephant had traveled everywhere with her since she was six and attending her first out-of-town gymnastics competition. At least he was a familiar face in a town full of strangers.
And a room full of strangers as well: her dressing-room was filled with an ever-growing collection of licensed Vixen tie-ins. The eighteen-inch stuffed Vixen doll—the full set of action figures (including the very rare Lilith Kane, the Duchess of Darkness)—the Franklin Mint limited edition sword and stake (of genuine English rowan!)—the cups and mugs and keychains and T-shirts and caps blazoned with the show's logo and her picture. She would have stopped collecting them long ago, but people kept giving them to her. When she'd started, it had all been fun.
But now . . .
This is not fun. I have had fun, and this is not it.
She cuddled Gordon harder and picked up the copy of the script that was on the corner of the table. She was in Hollywood, California, to tape an MTV special en persona as Vixen the Slayer. Christina (her personal publicist, and, as far as Glory was concerned, personal devil) had set it up, as she set everything up, usually without consulting Glory. Still, Glory knew just what Christina would have said: Hey, Vix, easy money. Show up, do some shtick, a few back-flips, everybody's happy.
Everybody but Vixen the Slayer, scourge of the soundstages.
She dropped the script unread. What did a bunch of cues and stage directions matter? They wanted Vixen. That's what they'd get.
Except that Vixen the Slayer would have cut their idiot heads off by now, and I'd be safe in a nice warm jail cell.
Although she was too sensible to think that would be really appealing. And trying to outface the cameras in jeans and a T-shirt certainly wasn't. If she was going to be Vixen, it was time to get dressed.
Her costume was laid out neatly on the couch: a fantasy in black leather along vaguely Elizabethan lines . . . assuming, of course, that the Elizabethans had been into serious bondage. The main part of the Vixen costume actually came in two pieces. There was the black-leather corset (it looked as if it laced, but that was an illusion; the laces were elastic, crossing over an inset panel of stretchable scarlet brocade that allowed her to breathe and move in the thing, and entry was actually accomplished through a set of concealed speed-release clasps on the sides) with the flared mock-pannier fabric-gathers over the hips, and then below that, the puffy leather slashed-look faux Elizabethan slops, or shorts (hotpants, really, and back in the day an item of strictly male attire), because their costume designer had seen The Six Wives of Henry VIII one too many times. Thank God the costume designer hadn't been let to keep the ruff—not after the dress rehearsal, anyway. Once she had the rest of it on she could wrestle with her elbow-length handless gloves at leisure—double bracers, really, upper and lower arm, leather and studded, with another of those idiotic slashed poofy things in the middle. Had the costume designer thought her elbows were going to get cold? Or be the focus of intense perverse lust among the males of cable TV? At least the neckline of the costume—what there was of it—made sense from a ratings standpoint, if not from a martial one. Add the sword, and the stakes sheathed along the outsides of her thigh-high leather boots (there was a spike-heeled pair for the publicity stills and the odd shot of her sitting down in the show, but thank God cooler heads had prevailed when it came to the boots she actually had to move in), and she was a sound technician's nightmare.
She squirmed into her costume with the ease of long practice. She'd just pulled one boot into place and was reaching for the other when there was a knock on the door.
Oh, Christ all bloody mighty!
Glory wriggled quickly into the second boot and staggered to her feet. Christina never knocked, and it was too early for them to want her in front of the cameras. Something's hit the fan, she told herself wisely, and opened the door in a rattle and creak of leather armor.
When she registered what was waiting for her, her mind went blank. She stared.
There were three androgynous entities standing in the doorway. The tallest of them didn't even come up to the top of her shoulder. They looked kind of like Classic Trek aliens—the weird, meddling, superpowerful kind—or maybe like really, really tall Munchkins. They were all wearing stiff shiny long-sleeved floor-length embroidered robes in virulent candy-colors—turquoise, green, and pink—and the one in front, whose receding hairline dipped into a killer widow's peak, was carrying a long stave with a glowing purple crystal on the top.