Kiss of Pride (7 page)

At first they just ate in silence, enjoying the meal. He especially enjoyed watching her enjoy eating French fries. First she dipped the long fried potato sticks in catsup, then sucked the red matter off the end before taking precisely three sharp bites out of each and every one. But then Alex pulled out a little black box and set it on the table between them. A mini tape recorder.

Uh-oh!

“Do you mind?” she asked. “It helps for accuracy when I get down to writing my article.”

He hesitated, then shrugged. There was going to be no article, but she did not need to know that yet.

“I noticed that your fangs were not out at all today? So, they’re fake, right?”

He finished swallowing from his long-necked bottle. “For a certainty, my fangs are real, but I can control them. Most times. That comes with age.”

“How old are you?”

“I was born in 817 and died when I was thirty and three.”

She choked on her hamburger and had to take a long drink of iced tea before scoffing, “More than a thousand years old?”

“Yes. As for the fangs. Mostly I can keep them recessed, but when I am angry, about to engage in a fight to the death with a Lucie, or excited . . . in other ways . . . I cannot control them.”

“What in blazes is a Lucie?”

“Lucies are a short name for Lucipires. I told you about them before.”

She still looked skeptical.

Oh, now you have done it, wench! You will regret your hasty disbelief when I show you
. “For example, if I picture you lying on my bed, naked, with black satin sheets framing your white skin, your red hair spread out like flames, your nether hair a nest of red dandelion fluff, and your freckles standing out like gold dust—”

“That is enough!” she squeaked out. “And I do not have red hair. And it doesn’t look like dandelion fluff down there.”

He shrugged and licked his bottom lip, then showed her his extended fangs. “You excite me,” he explained, pointing to his teeth.

“It must be a trick. Some kind of marvel you’ve perfected.”

It was a good thing a table separated them and hid him from waist down or he would show her other marvels. “Accept it, m’lady. For my sins, I am a Viking vampire angel. If you believe naught else, believe that.”

“Okay, let’s assume that I do believe, tell me how it happened. When did it start?”

“Is this going to be
Interview with the Vampire
?” he teased, avoiding the inevitable, knowing how revolted she would be by him afterward.

“I’m no Anne Rice, Vikar.”

“And I’m no vampire Louis.”

She gave him a sharp touché! look of approval at his quick retort. “I’m just a reporter. A good one. Be honest with me, and I’ll do an honest story. Now, start at the beginning.”

He took a deep breath, then started, “God was angry with the Vikings for our arrogance and bloodthirstiness and mostly because we worshipped other gods. Odin, Thor, and the like. He decided to destroy our entire race.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! You don’t pull any punches.”

“If you want the truth, you are going to have to let me tell the story, my way. And if you think about it, you will realize there is no Viking society today. Why is that, do you suppose? How could such a powerful class of people just disappear and meld into other cultures?”

She shook her head slowly, having no answer for him. You didn’t have to be a Norse historian to realize he spoke the truth. There was no Viking country today. Certainly not Norway or Denmark. The closest to the old society was Iceland, whose language was similar to Old Norse.

“In any case, God was also angry with my family in particular. My father Sigurd the Vicious—”

“Sid Vicious? Holy cow! The rocker from the Sex Pistols?”

“Huh?
No
, Sigurd . . . the . . . Vicious,” he enunciated. “A ninth-century warrior jarl.”

“Sounds like a WWE wrestler,” she scoffed, but motioned for him to continue when he frowned at her interruption.

“My father was the seventh son of a seventh son, and he begat seven sons, including myself. Seven is an important number in the Bible, you know, but we can discuss that later.”

“Okay, so God was angry with Vikings in general, and your family in particular. And?”

“He was going to destroy us all, but St. Michael the Archangel intervened on our behalf.”

She rolled her eyes. “What did your family do that was so grievous?”

He sighed. “So much! But I will speak only of myself. I was a prideful man. So vain and full of myself, though I did not see myself that way at the time.”

“Pride doesn’t seem so bad.”

He arched his brows at her.
You have no idea!
“Because I was so blind with pride, my first wife, Vendela, pregnant at the time, killed herself by jumping off a cliff. I built a castle to glorify my name and never cared that numerous slaves died in the process. I killed indiscriminately in battle, taking the innocent along with the enemy.”

Her face went pale. He’d only just started and already she was horrified, but he was wrong in his assessment of why.

“Did you have other children, Vikar?”

Ah, he saw where this was going now. “I did.”

“How many?”

“I honestly do not know. Two daughters with Princess Halldora, though they may or may not have been of my blood. She had the morals of a feral cat. But I do know that I had at least a half-dozen illegitimate boys and girls on my concubines. And there were the thralls, of course. I misdoubt there were any less than twelve.”

The expression on her face was so cold, he swore he could feel the temperature around them drop to freezing. “What were their names? What happened to them?”

“I have no idea. I mean, I could name a few, but not all of them.” He had asked, but Mike didn’t think he deserved to know. There could very well be a child of his blood walking the earth today, but he would never know.

She gave him a look of such loathing, he recoiled. “Men like you make me sick.” On those harsh words, she stood and ran from the restaurant.

With a sigh of regret, he paid their bill, picked up her tape recorder and purse, and walked out into the parking lot.

That’s when all hell broke loose. Literally.

Alex had walked to the far side of the lot near a wooded area and was leaning her forehead against a tree. At the same instant Vikar opened the SUV and tossed her purse inside, he heard two motorcycles enter the area, screech up almost to Alex, rev their motors in place, then jump off.

A man and a woman leisurely removed their helmets and glanced around, as if they were here to enjoy the scenery . . . or a victim.
Lucipires!
Alex’s sin scent must have attracted them.

Whoosh!
Faster than thought, faster than any human could run, he was in front of Alex, barring her from the Lucipires.

“What? Oh my God! What . . . who are they?” She had moved slightly and was staring around him.

Before their eyes, the man and woman in leathers transformed from beautiful twentysomething bikers to gnarled, giant, red-skinned creatures with open, oozing sores, claw-like hands, and fangs that kept snapping with anticipation. Their eyes were red as well, and pure evil.

“Run to the car and lock the door,” he told her as he pulled out his sword and the Sig with its special bullets. He would need both if he and Alex were to survive, not that he doubted his ability to overtake a mere two Lucipires.

Frozen in shock, Alex didn’t move.

“Alex!” he shouted, and shoved her away from him as he stepped forward. Finally, she heeded his warning. Only when he saw that she was safely inside the vehicle did he engage the two mungs. In the Lucipire hierarchy, these were full demons. Deadly as any other, especially with the poisonous slime that oozed from every surface of their bodies, but they were not quite as experienced as a haakai or a full-fledged Seraphim like Jasper, but superior to the foot soldiers of Satan, imps and hordlings.

Just then, one of the Lucies seemed to notice the winged epaulettes on his shoulders and the special signet ring he and his brothers wore, marking them as the VIK. The male mung whispered to the female. Vikar could not hear what he said, except for the word
seven
. They grinned at each other, already gloating over the prize they would be bringing home to Jasper.

Not if he could help it!

Without warning, he shot the male in each kneecap, bringing him to his broken knees, screaming with agony. A vangel bullet could injure Lucies, even “kill” them, but he needed to do more than that. Unless he cleaved its head, forehead to chin, with his sword until the body disintegrated, or pierced its heart with the specially-treated bullet or blade, the Lucie would just return to Hell to regroup. Recycling at its worst!

Meanwhile, he had the female to deal with. She swung a mace with iron spikes, striking him on one shoulder. The pain was excruciating, but he was equally skillful with a sword in either hand, and he still had six bullets in his Sig.

He dropped his cloak and turned his head, exposing his neck. “Come on, sweetling. Don’t you want a little sip?”

The female Lucipire hissed and her red tongue darted in and out like a serpent. There was nothing more tempting to a Lucie than vangel blood, and one of The Seven would be especially tempting.

Unable to resist, the Lucipire lunged at him.

He turned his head quickly, and the Lucipire’s teeth grazed his cheek, drawing blood, which turned the Lucipire frantic with bloodlust. That instant of distraction gave Vikar the chance to grasp her throat and squeeze until she wilted and fell to the ground. Without hesitation, he raised his sword and cut her face in half straight down between the fangs to the heart. The skin turned even brighter red, then the entire body began to slowly melt into a stinksome slime. Sulfur.

Only then did he turn to the male Lucie, intending the same fate, but the creature had managed to crawl over to the motorcycle and was already racing away. If Vikar had not been distracted and injured, he would have noticed and followed. But there were more important things for him to attend to now. Like Alex.

He shook the slime off his fingers and then walked slowly back to the SUV. It was a miracle that no one had noticed the activity at the other end of the lot, or, if they had, chalked it up to more crazy vampire wannabe shenanigans. When he got inside the vehicle, he saw instantly that Alex was in shock, shaking violently and whimpering. He wanted to comfort her but first he leaned over and opened the glove compartment, taking out a packet of holy water wipes. They were specially made by one of the vangel ceorls to remove mung slime and other Lucipire contaminants from vangel skin.

Despite still feeling unclean, he pulled her over and wrapped his arms around her. After a while, she shoved away from him and gave an embarrassed laugh. “I never thought I’d say this about an assignment, but I may be in over my head here.”

That was an understatement.

“Let’s go home,” she suggested.

Her inadvertent use of the word
home
for his castle struck a warm note in his heart, as if it wasn’t already warm enough toward her.

She was silent for most of the trip, but then she asked as he turned on the lane that led up toward the gates being guarded by Svein, “Are those creatures everywhere?”

He waited until Svein waved him through and closed the gates after them.

“Yes, there are Lucies everywhere.”
Thousands and thousands, and their numbers growing like bad weeds in a manure heap with the increasingly decadent society.
“But usually only a few in any one area, and, of course, some have none at all. It’s when they travel in hordes that they pose a huge problem.” Now
he
was engaging in understatements by implying that one Lucipire alone was of no concern.

“So those two were probably the only ones in this area?” She gazed at him hopefully.

He considered telling her about the one he’d killed in the castle kitchen just before she arrived, or reminding her about the one that had bitten her at the B&B, or the one that had gotten away and might announce to Jasper that there was a Seven in the vicinity, but decided not to scare her any more than she already was.

Luckily, she didn’t wait for an answer, or unluckily, because she was thinking too much, raising too many questions. “Why did those two come into the restaurant parking lot today? They seemed to be heading straight for . . . Oh my God! They were looking for me, weren’t they?”

He hesitated for a long moment before nodding. “It’s your scent that drew them.”

“I smell?” she asked indignantly.

“Yes. Lucies give off an offensive sulfur odor, but mortal sinners, or those about to become mortal sinners, smell rather tart, like lemons. Not an unpleasant scent, and obvious only to vangels or Lucipires, at least in the early stages.” He passed a number of contractor trucks and vans in front and in the back, too, where he parked the SUV. Turning to her, he continued, “You are lemony. Like lemon sorbet.” In an effort to comfort her, he patted her hand that sat on the seat between them.

She slapped his hand away. “Those . . . those creatures could have killed you.”

That surprised him, that her concern was for him. “I am already dead,” he tried to appease her with his much-repeated refrain.

“You are an idiot.”

“That I am.”
Really, the wench needs her funny bone tweaked.

“I don’t understand. It’s as if I’ve landed in an alternate universe. Monsters like those don’t really exist. And you say I’m the one who drew them. Are there going to be more? And good Lord, the way you fought! Are you like the Hulk or something?”

“Do I look like the Hulk?”

She started to cry.

“Now, do not get upset.”

“Upset?” she shrieked. “I’m freaking out here.”

“Settle down, Alex. I am here to help you. In fact, we will go inside now and do another cleansing.”
And if I’m lucky, I’ll spill a little of that seed I mentioned earlier. Or did I just think it? Whatever.
What a wonderful word that was!
Whatever.
Too bad they hadn’t had it back in his day. Whenever his mother had threatened to wallop him for pissing in her rosebush, he could have said, “Whatever!” Or when Ivak had bragged that he’d bedded six women in one night, he could have said, “Whatever!” Or whenever—