Vampires Need Not...Apply ay-4

by Jean Mimi Pamfiloff

  “Not so,” Fate replied. “We can entomb him for eternity.”

  “I hate you, Fate.”

  Fate smiled. “Ditto.”

  Ixtab looked at Kinich and Penelope, who shook her head. “I’m sorry. We have to follow the rules and at least discuss the matter according to our laws.”

  For the next hour, Ixtab hung her head as the debates continued and voting concluded. Unfortunately, there wasn’t getting around what would come next. The laws they’d created to maintain a balance of power and protect humanity from themselves were now playing against Máax. Ironically, these were the same laws that would bring justice to Cimil and Zac.

  Ixtab felt Antonio’s comforting hand on her shoulder as verdicts were recorded, and more than ever she was thankful she wouldn’t be facing this next chapter of their history alone. How had the gods arrived to such a sad place? Yes, many good things had happened, too: Everyone was free, and of course, Ixtab had finally had her two wishes granted. After seventy thousand years, she was no longer the Goddess of Suicide. And she now had the most perfect male on the planet to share her life with. Yes, the Universe had been good to her. Finally.

  And yet dark times were coming. Very dark times. Despite what anyone said, Cimil had prophesied the end of days, and Cimil was never wrong. Ever. To make matters worse, the gods would have to face this challenge with their loyalties divided. Because there wasn’t a deity in the room who would not give their immortal soul to fight for one of the gods facing justice, herself included. She’d do just about anything to ensure Máax wasn’t punished.

  “Time to read the decrees: Zac will be tried for treason,” Penelope said, tears running down her face. Ixtab knew they were tears of regret, not of pity for Zac. What he’d done to her and Kinich was unforgivable. “I hereby order Zac to be hunted and brought to the gods for justice. If found guilty, he will be stripped of his powers and banished to the mortal world for eternity.”

  She paused with a heavy sigh. “Máax will be tried for violating our sacred law of time travel.” Penelope continued tearing up, and Ixtab couldn’t help but join her. Not even Antonio’s comforting touch soothed her sadness. “I hereby order Máax be found and brought to the gods for justice. Because this is not his first offense, if found guilty, Máax will be entombed for eternity.” Penelope swallowed.

  “Go on, honey. You’re almost done.” Kinich squeezed her arm.

  “I decree that Cimil will be tried for twenty counts of treason, fifty violations of our sacred laws—including aiding an incubus—two hundred counts of murder by the hand of Chaam, and the possible slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent mortals at the hand of the Maaskab and Obscuros, whom we believe she created.”

  “Don’t forget the torture and imprisonment of ten naked clowns,” Fate added.

  “They got free,” Belch argued.

  “Okay, we’ll let that one slide,” Fate said.

  Penelope continued reading the decree. “If found guilty, Cimil is to be stripped of her powers and banished to the human world where she will be entombed for eternity.”

  Belch made a chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?” Ixtab asked. None of this held even the slightest spark of humor. Máax being put on trial was a travesty. And the fact that Zac and Cimil had done such awful things was nothing but a tragedy for everyone. At the end of the day, even though the gods weren’t biologically related, Zac and Cimil were her family and possibly losing them—even if in the name of justice—felt terrible.

  “You want to know what’s so funny?” Belch slapped his knee, chuckling like a… well, drunken fool. “Haven’t you idiots learned anything?” Belch looked around the table. “Wait for it… wait for it…”

  “Wait for what?” Penelope said, a tremble in her voice.

  The doors flew open with a gust of wind.

  Belch slapped his hand on the table. “Checkmate! Gods, she’s good.”

  THE PAUSE (NOT THE END)

  Hi all! Once again, a giant “Thank you!” to everyone who’s supported this series. I hope the agony of waiting for this sequel was worth it. By now, you’ve probably figured out that we’re almost to the end of the Accidentally Yours series. Just one more novella (Accidentally… Cimil?) and then the final book (Accidentally… Over?). OH NO!!!!

  And don’t forget, if you liked this story, please be sure to click those happy stars on the etailer’s website, drop a LIKE, or write a review on Goodreads. (I still do a little disco dance when they are good.) I also have a mailing list for updates on upcoming books (visit www.mimijean.net) and a fun reading group on Goodreads called Ask Mimi Jean Pamfiloff, if you’d like to chat/ask questions about the books. And, of course, there’s always good ol’ Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail!

  Hope to hear from you!

  Mimi J.

  P.S. Mean people still suck!

  Turn the page for an excerpt from the Accidentally Yours novella

  Chapter One

  There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.

  —Buddha

  November 1, 1934. Bacalar, Mexico

  Why is that man… naked?

  Dazed and flat on her back, twenty-one-year-old Margaret O’Hare observed the man’s bare backside as he stood on a nearby weather-beaten dock, toweling off. Her vision, at first a groggy mess, focused to a machete-sharp point, the pain in her forehead equally knifelike.

  Yes. Naked. Really. Really. Naked. She’d never seen such a large, well-built man or such a perfect backside—hard, deeply tanned, and worthy of a marble sculpture. Maybe two. Or five. Too bad she was a painter.

  Hold on. Where the ham sandwich am I? Margaret’s eyes, the only body part she could move without experiencing pain, whipsawed from side to side. Jungle. Dirt. Lake. Okay. I’m lying near the lake. Yes, this was good. She recognized the place. Sort of.

  Am I near the village dock?

  Her peripheral vision said no; this dock had a tiny palapa for shade at the very end.

  Then where?

  She made a feeble attempt to lift her throbbing head, but her body rewarded her with a spear to the temple.

  Ow. Ow. Ow. She took a slow breath to allow the skull-shattering jab to dissipate. All right. Relax and think. What happened? What happened? What happened? And who is Mr. Perfectbottom over there?

  A sticky blanket of gray coated her thoughts, but she did recall swimming that morning. Maybe she’d slipped on the village dock and fell into the lake. Maybe Mr. Perfectbottom had been bathing down at the shore and rescued her.

  Or not.

  Her clothes were bone-dry except for the sweaty parts. Come to think of it, she felt like a mud pie, soggy underneath and dry on top, baking in the sun. It didn’t help that someone—maybe the man?—had placed a warm fur under her head and neck. God, it was itchy.

  She willed her hand to make the painful journey behind her ear to give it a good scratch. Her fingers brushed the soft, silky hairs of the makeshift pillow.

  How odd. People in these parts don’t wear mink.

  The mink coat purred.

  Maggie sprang from the moist grass and scrambled back a few feet against a thick tree trunk. “Ja-ja-jaguar!”

  The glossy black coat didn’t budge a paw. It simply stared, its eyes reminding her of two big limes—wide, round, and green. Then the damned thing smiled right at her like some real-life Cheshire cat. Goddamned disturbing.

  “You! Cat!” The man barreled down the dock, each heavy step thundering across the creaky wooden planks. “Leave! Do not return until I call you.”

  Maggie should have been frightened by the boom of the man’s tone, but instead, his rich masculine timbre soothed her aching head.

  “Raarrr?” the cat…

  … responded? I must be hearing things, she thought, her eyes toggling back and forth between man and beast.

  “Do as you are told,” he said to the animal, “or the deal is off.”

  The black cat hissed, whipped its shiny black tail th
rough the air, and dissolved into the shadows of the lush vegetation surrounding the small lakeside clearing.

  This is too bizarre; I need to get out of here. Maggie turned her wobbling body to seek shelter in another dream.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” said that deep, rich voice that wrapped her mind in ribbons of warm, dark caramel and exotic spices.

  Before she could mutter a word, her head cartwheeled and her body tipped. Two firm hands gripped her shoulders and propped her against the tree. “Close your eyes. Breathe.”

  She suddenly wanted to do just that. And only that. The man’s voice was… compelling.

  As she sucked in the dank, thick, tropical air, her mind slotted missing memories back into place.

  How had she gotten there?

  She recalled searching for the path to the ruin where her father spent his days. Little Kinichna’—or Little House of the Sun, as he called it—was the biggest find of his career, the one that would put his name on the archaeologists’ map. Ironically, this dilapidated and historically uninteresting pile of rubble had been known about for years, but when her father’s colleague asked that he decipher etchings from a rare black jade tablet found not too far away, he’d realized they were directions, an ancient Mayan treasure map. Said map led to a hidden chamber right underneath Little Kinichna’.

  “You are now well. Open your eyes,” the man’s husky voice commanded.

  She took a moment to survey her body.

  Miraculous. Her pain was gone. In fact, she felt downright euphoric and tingly. Especially in the spots where he touched her. Maybe in a few other spots, too. Margaret O’Hare! You dirty trollop!

  She slid open her lids. Two icy turquoise eyes, just an inch from her face, sliced right through her, their raw, unfathomable depths filled with stark, primal desire.

  Applesauce! She jerked her head back and knocked it on the tree. “Ouch!” Great. Now I have a lump on the back to match the front.

  The colossal man straightened his powerful frame and towered over her like a giant oak, but he didn’t release her from his fierce gaze.

  Well, at least he’d put a socially acceptable distance between their heads. The same could not be said for their bodies; the heat from his heaving chest seeped right through her. And thankfully—or was it regrettably? Or perhaps magically, since she didn’t know how he’d had the time?—he now wore a pair of simple white linen trousers. No. It was a definite “thankful.” The moment was awkward and unsettling enough without the man being naked and staring. Which he was. Still staring, that is. Silent. Suspicious. Studying her with his beautiful turquoise eyes dressed in a thick row of incredibly black lashes.

  Why the deviled egg is he looking at me like that?

  Maybe he thinks that giant lump on your forehead is about to give birth to an extra head.

  “What happened?” she finally asked.

  “I’ll ask the questions,” he said. “Who are you, woman?”

  Not the response she’d expected. “Ducky. I’m lost in the jungle with a half-naked rake.”

  “Rake?” Dark brows arching with irritation, he planted his arms—silky milk chocolate poured over bulging, never-ending ropes of taut muscle—across the hard slopes of his bare chest. Maggie meticulously cataloged the man’s every divine detail, like she would for each precious artifact from her father’s dig: his long, damp reams of shimmering midnight hair falling over his menacingly broad shoulders; the cords of muscles galloping down his bronzed neck into said broad shoulders; and his sinfully sculpted abdomen tightly divided into rounded little rectangles, which reminded her of an ice cube tray—a fancy new invention. God, I miss ice cubes.

  But as impressive as his raw, abundantly masculine features were, it was his height that most bewildered her. People from these parts were not known for stature. In fact, at five foot six, she had a good six inches on the tallest men in the village, and an entire foot on her father, Dr. O’Hare. No. This giant man most certainly wasn’t from the sleepy little pueblo of Bacalar or anywhere in the Yucatán, for that matter. But then, from where? His exotic, ethnically ambiguous features didn’t provide any clues. He could be a Moroccan Greek Spaniard or a Nordic Himalayan Kazakh. Hmmm…

  “Yes, rake, as in cad? Or if you prefer, savage,” she said.

  “Hardly. Savages don’t save women in distress. They create them.”

  True. They also don’t have wildly seductive, exotic accents. Like one of her parents’ Hollywood friends.

  Lightbulb.

  “Oh my God. You’re a picture film actor, aren’t you?”

  Yes. Yes. It all made sense now. The locals in the village had been talking about a film crew for weeks. Word on the street—errr, word on the pueblo corner next to the stinky burro—was that a famous Russian director was making a movie about Chichen Itza and filming historical reenactments in the area.

  “An… actor.” His icy, unsettling expression turned into a charming smile inspired by the devil himself. “Yes.”

  She sighed. “That explains the trained cat. Where’s the crew?” She glanced over her shoulders.

  “Crew. Errr.” He raised his index finger as if to point somewhere, then dropped it. “My crew will be here in a few days.”

  “Getting into character! Right.” Maggie had heard firsthand how actors prepared for their roles. Fascinating business. Of course, acting had never really interested her. Nothing that required work ever had, which was why she’d taken up painting when her parents pestered her to do something productive. Going to parties and dating famous, good-looking men apparently weren’t worthy pursuits.

  They were right. If only her mother had lived long enough for Maggie to tell her so.

  “Now,” he said, “will you tell me who you are?”

  She held out her hand. “Miss Margaret O’Hare of Los Angeles.”

  “You are a very long way from home.”

  No. Really? “I’m here working with my father. He’s a professor doing… ummm… research.”

  A teeny fib. Or two. Who’s gonna know? Truthfully, her father wasn’t researching doodley-squat; he was secretly excavating. And the “work” she was doing? It didn’t amount to a hill of pinto beans; her father wouldn’t let her anywhere near the sacred structure. “No place for a young lady,” he’d said. Well, neither was this slightly lawless, revolution-ravaged Mexican village, where electricity was considered a luxury—as were beds, curling irons, and those blessed ice cubes.

  And chicken coops. Don’t forget the chicken coops. The village was plagued with wretched little packs of villainous roaming chickens. Like tiny feathered banditos who leave their little caca bombs all over the damned place.

  You’ll survive. Some things are more important.

  “Well, Miss Margaret O’Hare from Los Angeles, very pleased to meet you.” The man bent his imposing frame, slid his remarkably-rough-for-an-actor palm into hers, and placed a lingering kiss atop her hand.

  An exquisite jolt crashed through her, causing her to buck. She snapped the tingling appendage away. Wow. That kiss could combust a lady’s drawers like gunpowder. Poof! Flames. No drawers. Just like that.

  The residual heat continued spreading. Please don’t reach my drawers. Please don’t reach my drawers…

  He frowned and dropped his hand. “So tell me, what were you doing in the jungle, Margaret?”

  “Jungle?”

  “Yes, you know that place where I found you unconscious. Barefoot. All alone. It has many trees and dangerous animals.” He pointed over her shoulder at the lush forest filled with vine-covered trees that chirped and clicked with abundant life. “It’s right behind you, if you’ve forgotten what it looks like.”

  “Yes. That.” Thinking, thinking, thinking. She wiggled her bare toes in the mushy grass and looked out across the hypnotic turquoise waves of the lake. Funny how the man’s eyes were the exact same color right down to their flecks of shimmering green.

  An early afternoon breeze pushed a few
dark locks of hair across her face. Still thinking, thinking, thinking. She brushed them away and then focused on the grass stains on the front of her white cotton dress. Darn it. She loved this dress, with its tiny hand-stitched red flowers along the hem. Her father had it specially made along with a beautiful black stone pendant the week they’d arrived. He said the gifts were in celebration of his find; everything was exactly where he’d thought, including some mysterious, priceless treasure that would “change their lives.” He said he couldn’t wait to show her when the time came.

  “I’m waiting,” the man said with unfiltered impatience.

  “Waiting. Oh yes. I was in the jungle because…” Still thinking…

  Fear. Yes, fear was the reason she’d been capering about. Her mother’s recent death had left her plagued with the corrosive emotion. She feared she would never make right with her past. She feared opening her eyes to the present. She feared the future would bring only pain and suffering because eventually anyone she cared for would leave. Fear was like an irrational cancer that ate away at her rational soul.

  It was why, when her father began acting peculiar back home—disappearing for weeks at a time, mumbling incoherently, obsessing over that tablet—she came to Mexico. She feared he might simply disappear in this untamed land, evaporate into nothing more than a collection of memories—just as her mother had.

  And now she feared that she had failed; her father had not been seen for three days. But she didn’t dare articulate this distressing, gloomy thought aloud.

  “Because… I am a painter!” she said. “I went exploring for new scenery. I got turned around, and then that giant cat of yours appeared out of nowhere and chased me.” She rubbed the gigantic lump on her forehead. “I fell and hit my head. You didn’t happen to find my sandals, did you?”

  One glorious turquoise eye ticked for the briefest moment. “Searching for scenery?”

  “You don’t believe me?”