Kiss of Pride (8 page)

“Fuck you and your help,” Alex said.

Whoa, that is certainly telling me.
With his distracted mind, he had to remind himself what she was reacting so strongly to. Oh, that’s right. He’d attempted to assure her that he would help with her Lucipire blood.

“If I want to sin, I’ll sin. Keep all your woo-woo cleansing crap to yourself. Let me out. Right now. I’m going to D.C. where the crazies are at least human.”

He flipped the door unlock mechanism, and she shot out like . . . well, a bat out of Hell. He would have smiled at his own pun, if he weren’t too busy chasing after her.

They were both stopped dead in the kitchen where Armod, chomping on a hard pretzel and slurping up Fake-O, had an ominous announcement, “Mike has a message for you.”

Armod spoke to him, but it was Alex who responded, “Mike, his agent?”

“Huh?” Armod said. “
No
, St. Michael the Archangel. Our boss.”

Alex threw her hands up in the air and sailed out of the room, like a longship in high wind, muttering, “Demons, vampires, angels, and now the big guy himself. What next? Noah building an ark out on Colyer Lake?”

Vikar could swear he heard a distant voice say, “Oh please, God, not another ark!” But it was probably the sound of Alex shouting obscenities as she stomped up four flights of stairs to her bedroom, before slamming the door hard enough to shake a few slates off the roof.

She didn’t come down at all for the rest of the day, and he let Armod bring a dinner tray up for her . . . Domino’s pizza and a beer. When he pressed his face against her door, he heard her pounding away on the keyboard of her laptop. No doubt blasting him and questioning her sanity. He would have liked to do another cleansing on her, but he was not a total idiot. That could wait until the morrow.

He had been sure Mike was going to ream his arse for calling Jasper’s attention to himself, or dawdling over unimportant things like furniture, or having impure thoughts, but when the angel appeared to him that night in his dreams, the message was clear: “Save her!”

Six

How much testosterone can one woman stand? . . .

Transylvania feature, Kelly      Page 1

Draft Three

Have you ever seen a mung walking? I have. They are giant, red-skinned creatures covered with a poisonous slime. And fangs. Long, pointed incisors designed to rip the flesh from humans who cross their path. Especially tasty to them are mortal sinners whom they can add to their wicked flock.

Are they real? Or a figment of an overactive imagination fueled by the vampire mania flooding the world, or . . .

Five days later, and Alex was still at Dracula’s Castle, as she’d come to refer to her home away from home. And she was getting grumpier and probably more sinful by the day, thoughts of murder surely being in the mortal sin category.

Was it true, what Vikar said, that her thoughts of killing her daughter’s murderers could be detected as a “sin taint” by him or other creatures of the night? And could that inclination to sin be enhanced by a demon bite? It was preposterous, of course, but it sure as hell—
and wasn’t that an accidental pun?
—felt as if her anger and need for revenge were increasing.

Besides that, she still could not get over what she’d witnessed in that parking lot. There had been something evil there. It had not been a figment of her imagination.

In the meantime, three days ago she’d gotten alarming news from an assistant district attorney in D.C. regarding the trial of Pablo and Jorge Mercado, the drug cartel members who’d murdered her husband and daughter. He divulged off the record that they might get off on a technicality or receive a light sentence. Her testimony could be a deciding factor. Alex’s blood boiled with hatred every time she thought about these scumbags escaping punishment. If she knew how, she’d hire a Lucipire to do the job for her, even if she risked her own life . . . or soul.

Vikar kept telling her that if she’d just let him cleanse her again, she would feel better. Well, she didn’t want to feel better.

She should have gone home by now, but when she’d told Ben about wanting to testify, he urged her to stay at the castle, out of sight. It would be just like the cartel to put a hit out on her, Ben told her. So here she stayed in Wackoville, working on her story that kept changing direction the more she learned.

And, honestly, she didn’t want to leave. Not yet. For reasons too close to her vulnerable heart to examine at the moment.

“Armod! That’s beautiful,” she said, just noticing that the boy had finished polishing the walnut sideboard and was admiring his fangs in the wavy mirror that was part of its back section. The boy was a fairly new vampire and apparently didn’t have the control over their movement that Vikar and others did. He loved to pose with them extended, when he wasn’t doing his Michael Jackson impressions, that was. Like teenagers everywhere, he was obsessed with his appearance, except his obsession was fangs instead of zits.

And wasn’t that a marvel, that she’d somehow accepted that the fangs were real on the people here in the castle. Was there a whole subculture of paranormal creatures roaming about undetected, like that Charlaine Harris world of Sookie Stackhouse? At one time—a week ago, in fact—she would have scoffed at the idea. Now she wasn’t so sure.

“This piece was easier to clean than the chairs.” Armod pointed to the two armed and eighteen armless chairs that sat along the covered verandah in back where they were working on the furniture that had been delivered from the farm. There was a great deal of carving on the chair backs that Alex had forced Armod to clean with Q-tips and Murphy Oil Soap. All the seats had been pried off, and she planned to recover them herself with a handy staple gun and some fabric she’d purchased online from a design shop that she’d hired on behalf of Vikar to do window treatments and bedspreads later.

She would have liked to go into the designer’s Harrisburg warehouse herself, but Mr. Bossy Viking refused to let anyone leave the castle because of the Lucipire threat, until reinforcements returned in a few days.

Right now, the bossy vampire was off doing important things, like picking the color of tile for the dungeon shower stalls, while she and Armod engaged in hard labor. Okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration. She enjoyed seeing the beauty of the old furniture emerge from its layers of dirt and mold. Jogeir was doing guard duty at the gate, while Svein had gone somewhere to feed in private off the mute blood ceorl Dagmar. Alex didn’t want to think about what that might entail, but apparently it was something the young woman did willingly; it was her job, for heaven’s sake.

“I notice you’re not lisping so much,” she said.

Armod blushed. “Vikar is helping me.”

That insight into Vikar touched Alex, for some reason.

Back to the furniture. Most of the pieces were of the heavy Empire period, not to her particular taste, but suited to a stone castle where spindly Queen Anne legs would seem out of place. Plus, the mostly male vangels seemed to be of considerable size, even young Armod, who was over six feet tall and slim, but still growing.

Armod tossed his cleaning rag aside and asked, “What are we having for dinner?”

“Armod! We just got done with lunch.”

He shrugged sheepishly. The boy was always hungry.

“We’re having tacos,” she informed him.

His eyes lit up. “And pie for dessert?”

“Yes, Armod, there will be apple pie à la mode. Your favorite. Thanks to your Aunt Sara.”

“Aunt Sara Lee?” He laughed. “My favorite aunt, for a certainty.”

“Let’s work on the dining room table next. That shouldn’t be too hard because of the large flat surface. How about you do the extension boards, while I tackle the table itself?”

While they were working, Armod said, “Why are you so mean to Lord Vikar?”

Am I that obvious?
“Because he is a pig?”

Armod gasped. “M’lady! He is no such thing.”

“I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that he annoys me when he tells me what to do all the time, like he knows what’s best for me.”
All he has to do is look at me and I melt.

“He is the best master in the world. If not for him, I would be burning in Hell.”

Oh boy! What can of worms have I opened now?
“What do you mean, Armod?”

“I did bad things. Very bad things. Lord Vikar petitioned on my behalf, even after St. Michael decided I was a poor candidate for the vangels.”

“What? Oh, sweetheart, I cannot imagine anything—”

“I killed people. Many people.”

Her heart sank.

“I was a prostitute on the streets of Reykjavik in Iceland. When I got AIDS, I knowingly, deliberately continued having unprotected sex, spreading the disease.”

Her forehead furrowed with puzzlement. “I thought Iceland was supposed to be virtually crime-free.”

“It is, but over the years prostitution has been legalized, off and on. Even today, selling sex isn’t illegal, but buying it is.”

“An odd distinction!”

Armod shrugged. “In any case, twenty men who’d been with me died, and thirty were infected before I finally succumbed myself.”

She should be disgusted. She was, but more than that. “Armod, how old were you when you first started hooking?”

“Ten, but I had been taken by men since I was six. That does not excuse what I did. Not the prostitution so much, although that was bad, but the spreading of a killer disease. I did so knowingly, wanting to kill my customers.”

“Are you gay, Armod?”

“I don’t think so.
No
. I was a pretty child who attracted men. Pedophiles, at first. Later, when I was no longer child-like and pretty, I just offered my body where it would gain the most cash. From men. Did I mention I was a drug addict, too?”

Alex could tell that Armod struggled with his lisp as he talked. She walked over and gave him a hug. This was why the kid obsessed over Michael Jackson music. He’d never had a chance to be a real teenager when he was . . . well, alive.

Honestly, she didn’t know what to think anymore. In the best of all worlds, a person’s good deeds were supposed to be weighed against the bad, but when this boy was taken, he’d had no chance to repent. Ah, she realized then. The Lucipires had infected him, had influenced his willpower. This was what Vikar had been trying to explain to her.

Oh my God! Am I actually starting to believe all this crap?

“So, you see, Lord Vikar is my hero. He went out on a limb, promising to take me under his wing.” Armod giggled at his own pun. “He is patient in dealing with my mistakes. And he even puts up with my Michael Jackson music, which I know he abhors.”

“St. Vikar,” she remarked snidely. Snideness seemed to be her pattern of late. Not very attractive, she had to admit.

“
No
, not a saint. But he is a good man. You should treat him better.”

“Yes, you should treat me better,” Vikar said, coming up on the tail end of the conversation and pinching her butt.

“You jerk!” She rubbed her bottom.

“That didn’t hurt.” He leaned closer to her ear. “Now, if I’d
bitten
your arse, that would be different.”

She backed away from him. “You wouldn’t dare!” Surely they didn’t do cleansing that way, too, did they?

“Only if you ask.” He grinned, reading her thoughts.

“What’s with this constant teasing? Aren’t vampires supposed to be dark and brooding?”

“There are all kinds. I can be dark and brooding if you prefer.” He cast her a smoldering, half-lidded look that would set her socks afire if she were wearing any.

“We’re having tacos for dinner,” Armod interjected, and Vikar, bless his black heart, didn’t make fun of the boy, but instead patted him on the head. “Great! My favorite! Hey, did you work on these chairs? They look like brand-new.”

Armod beamed at Vikar, soaking up the older man’s praise like manna. Vikar was clearly a father figure to the boy, who probably hadn’t had much of one before, if any. She could almost forgive a man like that anything, even having drawn her into this weird world.

“C’mon,” Vikar beckoned her then. “I want you to meet someone. You can finish up here, can’t you, Armod?”

“Yes, and I will put everything away afterward.”

“He thinks you’re a god,” Alex remarked as she followed Vikar into the castle. There were workmen throughout the house, although they were mostly done on the first floor. The whole place would need a good cleaning once they left. Even with meticulous care, there was a film of dust everywhere.

“
No
, not a god. Do not even whisper such,” Vikar warned her. “Armod is just a needy boy at this stage of his transition.”

“Were you needy?”

“More like broken,” he murmured, but then did not elaborate even when she arched her brows at him. They passed his office and went, instead, to a large, windowless room on the other side that had once been a storage room of some sort, possibly a butler’s pantry for crystal and china and such. All the shelves had been removed, and now there were two U-shaped desks that had been delivered yesterday, along with a bunch of computers, printers, monitors, and other electronic equipment too complicated for her to understand. At the moment, there were two men on their hands and knees under one of the desks attempting to maneuver a jungle of wires. All she could see was their denim-clad butts, and very nice butts they were, too.

“Hold the friggin’ flashlight still, lackwit,” one of them complained.

“I can’t hold the flashlight and lift these cables at the same time,
lackwit
,” the other countered. “Ouch! I just got shocked.”

“You deserve to be shocked. How can a person with the IQ of a genius be so clumsy?”

“The same way as a person with the IQ of a penguin. What did you have for lunch, by the way? Your breath smells like garlic.”

“I was kissing a waitress at an Italian restaurant in Milan.”

“Kissing? Hah! You must have had your tongue down her throat to smell so strong.”

“Of course.”

“Good thing vampires aren’t really repelled by garlic, although when it’s blowing in a person’s face, like your breath is—”

“Bite me!”

“Ahem!” Vikar said at her side. “We have company.”

Both men on the floor went still, began to back out, then stood. Their fronts were just as attractive as their backsides, she had to admit. They were big men, like Vikar, but as different as night from day.

One of them was tall and wiry with close-clipped brown hair, piercing blue eyes, and wire-rimmed reading glasses perched midway down his nose. A Viking geek?

The other had longish black hair, a mustache, piercing blue eyes, and muscles like a bodybuilder. Put a sword in his hand, and he would be perfectly at ease on a battlefield. Or on a Hollywood set.

“These halfbrains are my brothers. I urged them to come after the Lucipire attacks. Their skills will help ensure our safety. This is Harek, who is a computer expert,” Vikar said, pointing to the geek one. “And Cnut, who knows everything there is to know about security systems.” Then, turning to her, he continued the introductions, “And this is Alexandra Kelly, our guest.”

Both men nodded at her, suspiciously. She soon found out why.

“Vikar! She is unclean,” Harek said bluntly.

“I beg your pardon,” Alex said, glancing down to see if her hands or clothing were dirty. They weren’t.
Ah, the lemon scent.

“She must be cleansed at once,” Cnut said.

Then the most alarming thing happened. Fangs came out on both men, and they were gazing at her like she was a yummy Krispy Kreme donut at a Weight Watchers meeting.

“I am taking care of it,” a red-faced Vikar said, shoving her behind him.

“Not very well,” Harek said. “The room fair reeks of lemons.”

Yep, the lemon business.

“It does no good for me to set up a security system here if you’re going to wave a demon magnet like a bloody beacon,” Cnut complained.

“I told you, I am taking care of it,” Vikar repeated.

“We can help,” Harek said.

“Yes, we will work her together,” Cnut added.