Kiss of Pride (14 page)

Even so, he could not ignore regular work. There were a dozen naked humans pinned to his life-size butterfly boards, a small start to replenishing his supply of playthings. “How’s it going?” he asked Sabeam, who was putting a final two-foot pin through his latest addition, a financier who had bilked hundreds of senior citizens out of their retirement money.

Sabeam stared up at him through rheumy red eyes, fighting to control his lolling tongue that dripped drool. “This one is a fighter.” Ernie Randolph, the fiftysomething man, who was hardly recognizable without his thousand-dollar suit and Italian loafers, flailed widely, screaming with outrage at his fate.

“Not for long,” Jasper predicted. “In the old days before modern torture technology, it took years to ‘ripen’ new Lucipires, to bring them to an understanding that they should reject God and all that He preached, and accept Satan as their savior. Today, humans are weak. They have low thresholds of pain,” he explained, though Sabeam should know this after four hundred years in his company, but then mungs were dull-headed betimes.

“But some of our ‘recruits’ never reach that point,” Sabeam pointed out, “like that vangel who died from our tortures.”

Jasper backhanded Sabeam for reminding him of that failure, but then he regretted his action when he had to wipe the poisonous slime off his knuckles. Drawing on his dwindling patience, he elaborated, “There is a fine line Lucipire torturers must follow, excruciating and unending, of course, but never too much at one time. Ah, well, we live and learn. Ha, ha, ha. Great cliché, that, about living.”

“What’s a cliché?” Sabeam wanted to know.

Jasper just rolled his red eyes.

Before departing the curing area, Sabeam patted the man’s head. Not appreciating the comforting touch and too new to understand the consequences of his behavior, the fool spat a wad of mucus up at Sabeam.

“Now, now, we cannot have that,” Sabeam said sweetly, then reached down and ran his sharp claws over the man’s flaccid penis, causing the man to arch up on his pin, screaming with pain.

Sabeam patted the man’s head again after he fell backward to the butterfly board. This time the man did not spit.

“One more thing I would show you before we leave,” Sabeam said, pride ringing in his voice. “Our arrival from last week is coming along nicely. It took only three days in the killing jars for her to quiet down.”

It was the female serial killer from London who had run a human trafficking ring, specializing in children. Pedophiles had a special place in Jasper’s sick heart.

Not unattractive by human standards, Lily Durant had long blonde hair spread out over the back of her display board, like strands of gold. The nipples on her round breasts were pulled upward to elongate them by piercing wires strung from the ceiling. Every few days, the wires were pulled tighter. Down below, between her spread legs, a vibrating twin phallus did its work inside her body, both holes. Semen ran from her mouth from the many Lucipires who were permitted to use her at will.

The woman tried to struggle when she saw them approaching, no doubt fearing some new torture. Oh, there would be plenty of that, to be sure.

“Please . . . please . . . let me go,” she pleaded.

“Foolish split-tail!” Jasper said. “Do you not know you are ours forever? Soon you will be one of us.”

Her green eyes went wild with distress.

“Have you ever fucked a man with a tail, sweetheart?” he asked just before they left the chamber. “Let’s make a date, shall we? Eight tonight. Wait ’til you see the places a scaly tail can go.”

Her screams followed them for some time.

“Don’t you just love the sound of a Lucipire-in-training?” Jasper remarked to Sabeam.

“Like choirs of angels singing,” Sabeam said, then covered his head with both hands to field Jasper’s blow.

Finally, they came to the killing jars that held six new victims, along with two Lucipires, Gregori Petrov and his hordling consort Virgana Dorset, the ones who had returned last night from their unsuccessful encounter on a Canadian mountain with vangels. Jasper unlocked the last two latches and motioned for the Lucipires to follow them. The female, who’d been wounded and untreated thus far, limped badly, but knew better than to disobey orders or be slow to follow them. The male, a high haakai, hissed and raised his chin with anger over his treatment, but he, too, knew enough to do as he was told by his leader.

Jasper entered his private chambers where hordlings were arranging wheeled racks of cruise wear clothing for his Lucipires to choose from for the upcoming event. He shooed them out, along with Sabeam, and walked into his office, sitting down behind a desk, not an easy task when a tail needed to be accommodated. He did not give Gregori or Virgana permission to sit, so they stood before him in the tattered, foul-smelling clothing they’d worn in battle. A faint hint of vangel blood clung to them as well, which pleased Jasper mightily.

“A report, please,” he said to Gregori, but before he began, he told Virgana, “Go off and have your wounds treated. You are soiling my carpet.”

Virgana ducked her head and left.

“Now, sit, Greg, and tell me everything,” Jasper ordered in a more friendly fashion. The killing jar was a necessary punishment when a Lucipire failed to complete an assignment, but Gregori was a good soldier for Satan and deserved his respect. At one time, he had been a henchman for Ivan the Terrible . . . during his terrible period.

“We went to Transylvania first—”

“The vampire town in the United States?”

Gregori nodded. “Just a bunch of people pretending to be vampires as a tourist trap.”

“That
Twilight
series will be the death of us yet,” Jasper quipped.
What is it with me and the jokes today?

“At first, there seemed to be a strong scent of vangel in the area, but it proved false. Instead, we discovered a trail outside of the town leading in several different directions. A diversion. We soon tracked them to their hideout, not here in the United States but in Canada. We found not just vangels, but some of The Seven.”

Jasper gasped and rubbed his hands together with relish. “This is good news. Very good news.”

“Three of them, in all, along with a few other vangels. Breaking up our ranks, we managed to find them in Canada in a mountain hiding place.”

“And?”

“There was a fierce battle in which ten Lucipires were lost. Only Virgana and I escaped.” He bowed his head in shame.

As well he should! But Jasper already knew of their failure and they had been punished.

“But I smell vangel blood on you.”

“One of The Seven was mortally wounded and was carried off by his brothers.”

Jasper tapped his scaly chin thoughtfully. “That is good news, to some extent.” If vangels died before their penance was completed, they did not go to Heaven, but some holding place where they would be judged later at the Final Day. On the other hand, if they’d managed to infest him totally with Lucipire blood, there was a chance they could have converted him to their ranks.

“Even better, he could live with the Lucipire taint in him. One rotten apple in the barrel type of thing,” Gregori pointed out. “Plus it would be easier for us to track them down. A blood GPS, so to speak.”

“This is good, this is good,” Jasper said. “We must assign some Lucipires to search that mountain area. And Transylvania, that Pennsylvania town, are we sure there is no presence there?”

“Not totally sure,” Gregori conceded.

“Then send a few Lucipires there as well to investigate, but not until after the Sin Cruise. We need all our ranks working on this event if it is to succeed.”

“As you wish, master,” Gregori said, bowing his head.

Jasper loved when his captains gave him proper respect. As a result, he softened his regard. “Go and refresh yourself, Greg. And take one of the new Lucipires to play with, if you wish. One of them is especially . . . juicy.”

Gregori smiled at him, his fangs elongating in anticipation.

What’ s the protocol for vampire dating? . . .

Two days later, Alex was still at the castle, in a truce with Vikar over the cleansing ritual, for the time being. Every time she passed by Sigurd, who really was a physician, of all things, she gave him a dirty look that just caused him to laugh.

“Shouldn’t you be off curing cancer or something?” she’d sniped at him one time when he was watching a Michael Jackson video with Armod.

“I’m taking a break from curing cancer,” he’d replied in a mocking tone.

All of Vikar’s brothers, those five in residence now, thought she and Vikar’s growing relationship was a great joke. Frankly, she didn’t get the joke, but that didn’t stop them. She could only imagine what Vikar had to put up with when she wasn’t around.

“Getting lots of information for my story,” she kept telling Ben whenever he called, but what she was mostly doing was helping to set up some of the completed bedrooms with linens and the bathrooms with towels and toiletries. Comfort activity.

In some odd way, these days here with Vikar felt like a vacation from her real life. Blame it on some crazy demon vampire taint in her blood, or blame it on her unresolved grief over her daughter’s death, or blame it on her profound loneliness, but she was happy, and it didn’t matter to her if Vikar and his clan were Vikings or vampires or angels or frickin’ Hollywood actors. Maybe later it would, but for now she was riding a wave of “What the hell!” Not that she’d use that word out loud in the vampire angels’ company, not anymore, after having been chastised for it innumerable times.

So it was like icing on her personal happy cake when Vikar returned to his office after talking with the contractor and said, “We should go out and celebrate.”

Like a date?
she wondered, but didn’t have the nerve to ask as she continued to tap away at her story notes on her laptop. In the distance, she heard the trucks outside gun their motors and drive away. She saved her material and logged off. Only then did she glance up.

Lordy, lordy, the man was too good-looking, even wearing his sweaty workout clothes, a tank top and shorts and athletic shoes. Muscles rippled everywhere. Especially his broad shoulders and arms, accentuated by the silver bracelets etched with wings that ringed his upper arms. He was a magnificently proportioned thirty-three-year-old male of 2012.

“Alex! You’re ogling,” he said with a grin.

She shook her head to clear it, not even bothering to deny his smirking accusation. “You mentioned that we should celebrate. Celebrate what?”

“They’re done. J.D. just announced that they finished their work, or as much as I contracted for. When they come back tomorrow for me to sign off, they’ll take away any equipment or supplies still lying around. But, bottom line, no more pounding or cursing or screeching saws.”

Vikar and his big burly brothers could use the F word or crudities like drunken sailors but they cringed like splinters under the fingernail if they heard someone use
Jesus
or
Christ
as an expletive. The workers had used lots of those.

He smiled at her, waiting for her reaction to his news, and she marveled irrelevantly at how white and even his teeth were.

“Now what?” he asked, noticing the way she stared at his mouth. “If you want to be kissed, you have only to ask.”

She laughed. “I was just thinking that you must have the enamel of an elephant for your teeth to look so good after so many years, not to mention the havoc blood must wreak. If you run out of vampire angel work, you could always do Crest commercials.”

“Alex, Alex, Alex,” he chastised her as he sat down on the edge of the desk, way too close. Even sweaty, he was temptation on the Adidas hoof. “When you look at my mouth, you think tooth structure. When I look at your mouth, I think long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.”

She laughed. “You’ve been watching
Bull
Durham
again, haven’t you?”

He ducked his head sheepishly. “It’s Cnut’s favorite.”

“Yeah, right. Blame Cnut.”

“Some people claim I look like a young Kevin Costner. What say you?”

Honey, you look ten times better than Kevin Costner. Even a young Kevin Costner.
“Not really.”

He shrugged. “I already called Molly Maids and they’ll be sending a cleaning crew in the morning,” he told her. “Thanks to you.”

Apparently Vikar had scared off a couple of cleaning ladies one day before she’d arrived, so he’d asked Alex to see what she could do about getting them to come back. Alex had told the local manager that Vikar was an actor and he’d been practicing a scene from a play that had a sword as one of the props.

“And the dead cow?” the woman had asked.

“The delivery guy from Peachy’s Market had just left it in the kitchen when it should have been placed in the cooler.”

The woman had apparently been convinced since she was sending in a crew tomorrow.

“So you want to go out and celebrate the end of construction and the beginning of cleaning?” she teased.

“That and Harek’s continuing improvement. He got up and walked a bit today.”

That turned Alex more serious. “What good news! I know how worried you’ve been.” She was also aware that once Harek was well, Vikar would resume that blood cleansing thing with her. Only this morning Mordr, the crude oaf, remarked in passing that she “still smelled like bloody lemons.”

“None of the vangels have ever been in such dire condition and survived.” The relief in Vikar’s voice was apparent.

“Vikar . . . ?” she started to ask, and wasn’t sure how to word her question, “. . . if a vangel ‘dies’ in the course of a penance, do they go to Heaven?”

He arched his brows at her. “Do you now believe that we are vangels and that there is a Heaven and a God?”

“It was a hypothetical question. How can I believe in a God and reconcile the death of an innocent little girl? Brian was a grown man and danger was part of his work. But Linda did nothing wrong.”

“There are some things beyond our understanding.”

“That is a crock that religious folks feed nonbelievers.”