Kiss of Pride (22 page)

“Same here.” She considered a moment, then said, “There’s definitely a story here, Ben. Stories, actually. The town would be an easy, light feature, of course. An upbeat tale of a depressed town turning itself around. Plus humor. Did you get the shirt I sent you?”

“Yes, and Gloria thanks you for the blood jam.”

Alex smiled to herself. Amazing the products this enterprising town produced. Not just the jams. But specially bottled drinks, like Blood-Aid, Blood Rush, Blood Bull, Drac’s Brew. And vampire’s blood sausage. Ground Chuck, Bill, and Ed. Fang candy. “Anyhow, the castle could be a feature in itself. People love renovation stories, and a castle in the middle of Pennsylvania, even more.”

“Send me pictures, Alex.”

“I will. Plus I told you about that Amish farmer who stored all this furniture for fifty years. I know the Amish have been overdone, but everywhere you turn, there is a new angle.”

“Like the Amish casket maker you told me about?”

“Right.”

“What about your fiancé’s family. He’s a Lord something or other, isn’t he?”

Alex hesitated, in shaky water now. “I’m not so sure about doing a story on Vikar’s ‘family.’ Not that they aren’t interesting”—
more like unbelievable
—“but they like their privacy.”

“Objectivity, Alex,” he reminded her.

“Objectivity versus privacy,” she countered. “My privacy, as well as Vikar’s.”

“I still think I should come out there and see exactly what’s going on.”

“Maybe later, Ben. Not yet. Wait until we’re done with the renovations.”

Those renovations might be ongoing for years and years. But then, she could conceivably be around for ages, literally. She didn’t like to think of that aspect of her new life. One day at a time was her new motto.

Unfortunately, that day came way too soon.

The next morning, about five a.m., Svein knocked lightly on the door and came into their bedroom. She and Vikar slept together, without sex. Vikar said he was earning his wings the hard way.

Vikar was instantly awake, asking, “What is it?” He stood and pulled on a pair of sweatpants even before he got his answer.

“It’s Armod,” Svein said.

Alex clicked on the bedside lamp, and the expression on Svein’s face terrified her.

“What?” Vikar demanded.

“The boy snuck out last night. To meet that cashier down at the Uni-Mart. They went to a Michael Jackson revue over at the university.”

Alex knew that big-name concerts came to the Bryce Jordan Center at Penn State, and she’d been aware of the revue being planned for this weekend, a mixture of old video clips and Michael Jackson impersonators. But Armod had been denied permission to attend when he’d asked Vikar. He was still too new a vangel to control himself, Vikar had told him.

“What happened?” Vikar prodded.

“The girl came back alone, battered and bruised. Fang marks on her neck. And”—Svein gulped—“she had a note. One of those ‘To Whom It May Concern’ things.”

“Tell me.” Alex could tell by Vikar’s stony expression that he already suspected what had happened.

“Jasper has him.”

Greater love hath no man . . .

Vikar was in the chapel, praying. For Armod. For himself. And for Alex, whose life would once more be devastated by the loss of a loved one.

Vikar had to exchange himself for Armod. After all, Vikar had been responsible for Armod during this training period. He should have been aware of his doings. And now . . .

Vikar had done all the talking and brainstorming and arguing with his brothers that he was going to do. In fact, he’d ordered them not to come back to Transylvania under any circumstances.

No one knew precisely where Jasper’s headquarters were hidden. If Michael knew, he wasn’t telling them, and, in fact, there was only one time in their history when the archangel had intervened on their behalf. It had been a particularly egregious act of Jasper’s involving a nunnery. After that, Michael had sworn he would never enter that devil’s domain again.

So, not knowing where Jasper had taken Armod, the only other alternative was to draw him or his minions out, as they’d done on the Canadian mountain. Even with Jasper’s troops vastly diminished after the Sin Cruise, the head Lucipire would undoubtedly have some of his soldiers patrolling that area.

But what would such a fight accomplish? More deaths, possibly including some of their own vangels? And still no news of Jasper’s hideout, unless they managed to capture one of the Lucies and torture the information out of the beast. How long would that take? By then, Armod would have been subjected to days, maybe even weeks, of unspeakable acts.

No, Vikar had to offer himself in Armod’s place. He would go to the Canadian mountaintop where he would spread his scent about, and wait. He would let it be known that he was prepared to destroy every last one of them in battle, or he would lay down his arms for Armod’s return.

Thankfully, he had not yet married Alex. Much as he would miss having the long life with her that he’d anticipated, at least she would not die on his death.

In the meantime, he’d locked himself in the chapel by himself for the past hour so that Svein and Jogeir and the others could not harangue him anymore. He would leave his parting with Alex for last. Her weeping was a knife to the heart that he could not bear at the moment.

What he was about to do would require all the strength, physically and mentally and spiritually, that he could garner. He feared he would be too weak.

Even now, with less than twenty hours in the hands of Jasper’s beasts, Armod would have suffered unimaginable torture. He might never recover, even if released today.

Once Vikar entered Horror, and Armod left, Vikar knew that he would never return to the castle. Not that he had any hopes that his end would come soon. Jasper would want to torture him endlessly until he renounced God and became one with the Lucipires.

Alex did not know the full extent of Jasper’s depravities. There was that to be thankful for.

Michael was surprisingly silent in the face of this disaster. Was Vikar to take his silence as approval for what he was about to do? Or disapproval?

Vikar made the sign of the cross and left the chapel. He shook hands with some of the vangels, was surprised to see a distraught Miss Borden, who kept swiping at her eyes with her apron, and gave quick hugs to Svein and Jogeir. The latter two, he’d instructed to take over his duties until Michael assigned one of his brothers to the castle headquarters. And now for Alex.

Grabbing his cloak, he walked outside and found her in the gazebo. He was well-armed under the cloak in case the Lucies chose to fight, rather than barter.

“Alex, heartling,” he said, drawing her up into his arms.

“I won’t say good-bye to you. I won’t!” she declared.

He shrugged.

Her refusal to say the words was a moot gesture. “I am so sorry to put you through this, my love, but I cannot be sorry for the time we have had together.”

“I love you. I will always love you. Maybe we’ll meet again . . . on the other side. No, no, no! I am not going to think like that. You
will
come back.”

“Don’t do this to yourself.” He kissed her wet cheeks, stroking damp strands of hair off her face. “This is the end. There is something you must do for me, though. When Armod comes back, reassure him that this was not his fault. It was meant to be.”

“Bullshit! It was not meant to be! Oh, don’t worry. I won’t make Armod feel bad, but you putting yourself in that monster’s claws is not predestined. Dammit! I don’t want—”

“Shh! I must go now.” He kissed her one last time.

“I’ll pray for you,” she said, even as he was disappearing.

And then he was gone, to that mountaintop in Canada to await his entry into Hell . . . or Horror. Same thing.

Eighteen

Where’ s heavenly intervention when you need it? . . .

S
t. Michael the Archangel was getting royally pissed. Or was that heavenly pissed? Regardless, he was mightily annoyed.

Why were all these people bothering him? Vangels to the right of him. Vangels to the left of him. And one particular human female who had just called him a vulgar word. He wasn’t even sure if he had one of those anymore.

Did they think he had nothing to do but cater to their every whim? Pray, pray, pray! But did they ever pray to thank him for all the things he’d done for them? No! Just complain, complain, complain.

In a whoosh of feathery wings, he shot himself down to earth and that castle in the Pennsylvania hills. “Well?” he shouted.

Two dozen vangels came running, along with the woman of the foul mouth. Their jaws dropped open, except the foolish female, who put her hands on her hips and raged, “It’s about time!”

“What would you have me do?”

“Save him!” twenty-eight voices yelled as one, including the cook, who was waving a cleaver in the air.

“Send me back in his place,” demanded Armod, which was a ridiculous notion. Even after a week, the boy could barely walk.

“No, me,” Svein and Jogeir said. The last straw . . . rather, feather . . . was when the woman said, “Either send me to help him . . .”

He arched one brow, wondering what help she thought she could be.

“. . . or kill us both.”

He arched both brows now.

“Please,” the woman begged. “The Bible says, Ask and you shall receive.”

“That phrase is open to interpretation.” And much overused by people seeking favors, in his opinion.

“Grant this favor, and I’ll go back to church. I’ll pray every day. I’ll—”

“Enough!” He raised a halting hand. There was nothing worse than a human trying to bribe an angel. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Michael had sworn never to enter Horror again after that last time eight hundred years ago when he’d gone to give Jasper a warning from God about his stalking a nunnery in Switzerland. Not that Jasper had heeded the message.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” the woman wept, dropping to her knees with relief.

“I did not say I would save him,” he was quick to add. After a week in Jasper’s clutches, he doubted there would be much of Vikar to save, anyhow.

Moments later, he stood outside Jasper’s unholy cave and inhaled deeply to prepare himself for what he would see. Then he let out a loud bellow that nigh shook the earth. “JASPER! Come forth and speak to God’s messenger.”

And he got an unholy response, “Go to Hell!”

Michael was annoyed before, now he was feather-flying, thunderbolt-throwing, sword-wielding furious. He went in swinging.

Hell hath no fury like an archangel scorned . . .

Vikar had been in Horror for only a week, but it felt like a century. Every minute of the days had been filled with the most abominable torture. All 10,080 of them.

He’d thought that having every bone in his body broken was bad enough, but the disgusting things they did to his phallus and anus, the things they stuck in his mouth . . . they defied torture. An abomination, that’s what they were.

And the poor victims he saw about him drew his pity, even if these had been dreadful sinners before arriving here. In particular, he was repelled by what was being done to the woman placed in a glass vat of snakes. Hundreds of them. She had been taken out after several hours, on to other tortures, but then she was placed in the snake “pit” again. Over and over, this agony was repeated until now the woman’s eyes were permanently frozen wide open with insanity.

But even that had not been the worst. Today they brought out a giant cross and crucified Vikar, with his hands and feet nailed to the wood. No sword through the heart, though, and no draining of all blood from his body. No, that might have killed him, and they did not want that.

Until Vikar renounced God and agreed to join them, this torture would continue. He prayed he could stay strong until the end. The only thing that kept him going was thoughts of Alex. In his mind, he replayed every contact he’d had with her, from the day she knocked fiercely on his front door to his final farewell. Every word exchanged. The kisses. The near-sex. The smiles and laughter. He could swear he had the scent of her in his nostrils to bar the evil smells around him.

Jasper was especially incensed because Vikar had destroyed his longtime assistant, the giant mung Sabeam. Apparently, one of his bullets had nicked the demon’s heart.

Just then, the walls of the cave shook and he heard a familiar voice call out “JASPER!”

Michael?

“Lucipires! Your end is near! How dare you, Jasper? How dare you?” The voice seemed to come from a distance, outside the cave, but still the stone walls reverberated with its echo.

Michael was here? Why? What did it mean? Michael had sworn long ago that he would never again enter this particular devil’s domain.
Am I dead?
Vikar wondered.
Have I passed over and not realized I am gone from this world? Is Tranquillity just around the corner? When will this agonizing pain end?

The evil leader of the Lucipires came running out of his office. “Did you hear that?” he shouted to his new assistant, Eglan, a hordling who quivered every time Jasper came near. “Get that damn VIK off the cross. And gather our new demon vampires. Hurry. We must leave.”

“But . . . but . . . will we not fight this person who shouts outside the cave?” Eglan asked. “It is only one man.”

Jasper swatted the hordling with an arm. “Are you daft? That is not a man. That is Michael. An archangel.”

Putting a hand to his face where Jasper had hit it, Eglan persisted. Hordlings were known to have small brains and little sense. “There are fifty or more of us. Why can’t we—”

“It would take a hundred and fifty of us to fight Michael, you blithering idiot.” Jasper was stuffing gold bars and various weapons into a leather satchel while his other Lucies were scurrying about, opening locked killing jars and restraints on torture tables to grab victims to take with them.

Eglan was struggling with a pair of huge pliers, trying to remove the spikes from Vikar’s feet.

Vikar had not thought his pain could be any more excruciating. He’d been wrong. For a moment, he blacked out.

By the time he awakened to the sound of screams at the cave entrance, about a hundred yards away, Eglan had managed to remove only one nail.

“Hurry up!” Jasper yelled when he saw how little progress his assistant had made.

For a long, shocking moment, Vikar saw Jasper considering whether he should chop off his hands with the sword at his side, to get him quickly off the cross. But Vikar was up too high for Jasper’s sword to reach.

“Thank you, God!” Vikar prayed. He’d done a lot of that, praying, the past week.

Frustrated at the possibility of losing a captive VIK, and muttering something about “Not enough time,” Jasper then took a long pole and slammed it against Vikar, breaking his nose once again and cracking his cheekbone. “We will meet again, you irritating sonofabitch.”

By the time thunder crashed and lightning hit the earth above the cave, causing a massive crevice to open in front of Vikar, there was not a single Lucie or Lucie victim left in the cave. Except for Vikar. And dozens of writhing snakes that came crawling from the open vat.

Vikar could barely see out of eyes that were swollen almost totally shut. Blinking several times, he finally managed to make out the giant angel who stood before him, wings widespread, a sword in one arm and a lance in the other. Anger had turned his face into a granite mask.

Was it Jasper who drew the archangel’s fury, or Vikar for taking matters into his own hands by exchanging himself for Armod. But then Vikar noticed the oddest thing. Tears streamed down the angel’s face.

For me?
Vikar tilted his head in confusion, and even that slight movement had his head nigh exploding.

“Who else, Viking?” Michael answered his unspoken question.

Vikar felt tears burn in his own bruised eyes.

Michael dropped his lance to the ground and raised his broadsword high.

Vikar braced himself for the blow that was about to come. Now he understood the angel’s tears. Vikar’s life as a vangel was about to end.

The sword was swung in a wide arc, but not at Vikar’s body. Instead, it cleaved the cross near its base. In a flash of movement, Michael caught the cross on its way down, laying it gently on the dirt floor. Staring down at Vikar, the archangel said, “You are no longer pretty, I fear.”

“You, on the other hand, are a sight for these sore eyes,” Vikar commented. Just that amount of speaking caused his cracked lips to open and bleed once again. He could not care about that. Michael had come for him, and was kneeling over his tortured body, removing the big nails from his hands. Eglan had already taken the one out of his crossed feet. “You will have scars,” he remarked idly.

Vikar was confused. Why would it matter what scars he had on the Other Side? Just then, another thought occurred to him.

“Do not be any more of a fool than you already are,” Michael said as he picked him up gently and began to carry him from the cave.

As careful as Michael was, the pressure of his body against the archangel’s embrace caused Vikar such unbearable pain that he lost consciousness, again. But only for a short time.

When he drifted awake, he found himself standing on the edge of the cliff outside the cave. He swayed on his feet, the bottoms of which had been flailed raw. As awful as he felt, he could feel the broken bones in his body beginning to heal.

“We will have to fly, but I think you are too heavy for me to carry,” Michael said, an odd tone in his voice.

Vikar tilted his heavy head to the side, but then almost fell over as he stumbled. The bumps on his shoulder blades were afire. And, holy clouds! There were wings, big freakin’ wings with at least an eight-foot span, growing out from his back.

Michael took his hand then and they both rose from the ground, wings fluttering in the gentle breeze. Soon they were soaring high above.

“Shall we go home now, Viking?” Michael asked.

Vikar nodded, but he wasn’t exactly sure which home Michael meant. A few moments later, when he recognized the land below and the castle on the hill in Transylvania, Vikar’s heart began to beat wildly. He turned in question to his sky partner.

“Your work is not yet done here, Viking.”

Look homeward, angel . . .

They were all crammed into the chapel, and had been for the past two hours, ever since Michael had left them. Praying silently. Many of them weeping, but not Alex, who was convinced that the archangel would come through for her.

Where did this faith come from? When did I start to trust in a higher being?

She was not surprised, therefore, when there was the sound of wings overhead. She smiled as she followed the crowd through the house, across the kitchen, out to the backyard. Her smile died quickly when she saw the two figures that had landed.

Landed!

There were two angels there. Michael, and another angel, a naked one, who landed on his feet, then stumbled and fell forward on his face.

“He’s not used to his wings yet,” Michael explained with an amused wink.

Did an archangel just wink at me?

“You should have seen him almost miss the top of that evergreen at the bottom of the lane. Talk about brush burns!” Michael rolled his eyes.

First winks, now rolling eyes. What next?

The other angel’s wings started to retract and Michael rolled him gently onto his back.

Alex put a hand to her mouth to stifle her cry. This poor creature had been beaten and cut badly. The whole face was a swollen blob. The Pillsbury Doughboy, but worse. There wasn’t an inch of skin, head to toe, that wasn’t bloody, broken, or bruised. Alex hurt just looking at the poor man . . . or angel . . . or whatever he was.

Where is Vikar?

Alex felt awful thinking of herself when this man had been hurt so badly, but she couldn’t help herself. As the others helped the man to his feet . . . in fact, Svein and Jogeir lifted him so his arms straddled their shoulders and his feet were off the ground . . . she walked up to Michael and tugged on the sleeve of his white belted gown. “Please? Is there any news of Vikar?”

He arched his brows at her. “No foul names for me now?”

“I’m sorry for that. But I’ve been so worried. I
am
so worried. Did you . . . did you find him?”

“Child,” Michael chided her, then turned to glance at the poor man/angel who was staring at her through the bare slits of his eyes. His cracked lips were working as if he wanted to speak, but couldn’t.

“Oh. My. God!” she whimpered. It was Vikar. She reached out for him, but was afraid to touch him for fear of increasing his pain.

“Ugly . . . now,” Vikar gasped out.

“Oh, you foolish man!” she said. “Your beauty is from the inside.”

He tried to laugh, but it came out as a gurgle.

“I told you so, Viking. Pride ever was your downfall, and all for naught,” Michael pronounced, and he was gone before Alex even had a chance to thank him.

Later, they had Vikar in his bed, washed and medicated. She’d fed him some of her own blood to help rejuvenate him. It wasn’t nearly enough, so each of his brothers, who’d arrived posthaste, gave him some, as well. Sigurd said it would probably take weeks for his body to heal. Even then he would probably have scars and possibly a crooked nose. Maybe even a limp. None of that mattered to her. He was back, that was the most important thing.

“Sit with me,” he urged as he was drifting off to sleep.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, touching only the tips of her fingers to his hand, still careful of hurting his battered body. Before he fell asleep, she had one question to ask: “Are you a real angel now?”

He smiled, a grotesque, adorable lift of his lips on one side, and said, “Your angel. Only yours.”