Kiss of Pride

by Sandra Hill

  “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “No shit!”

  “You don’t believe this vampire/angel/demon crap, do you?”

  “No, of course not.” Maybe.

  “And there’s a story there?”

  “Definitely a story. I’m just not sure what it will be yet.” Should I tell him about the imminent arrival of St. Michael the Archangel? Nah. He’s having a hard enough time with vangels and Lucipires. So am I.

  “How long will you be there?”

  “I’m not sure. Today we’re going shopping for towels. Me and Lord Vikar.” She grinned at the domestic picture. A vampire trolling the aisles of Bed Bath & Beyond.

  Ben knew how much she liked to shop. Or used to. She could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “Go to town, sweetheart. And have a little fun.”

  Surprisingly, Alex was having fun, she realized after saying good-bye and promising to keep in touch every day. Since Vikar wasn’t back yet . . . she could hear talking through the open doorway, coming from the kitchen area . . . she browsed the office. Once the library, it could be restored to a handsome room with its walnut paneling and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that were mostly empty.

  She did see one box-type filing container, the kind that held folders for folks who didn’t want to bother with actual filing cabinets. Taking it down, she had to dust it off with someone’s T-shirt lying on the floor. The box looked old.

  And it was. Turned out, these were papers the original owners had used when buying supplies and furniture. A gold mine for a restorer. Her heart started to beat wildly when she found one particular document.

  “Vikar!” she squealed, and went running down the hall.

  He and the contractor, a fortyish man wearing khakis and a golf shirt with the logo “J.D. Donovan & Sons,” came running toward her.

  “What?” Vikar asked with concern, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Are you hurt? Did something fall on you? Oh, clouds! Did Armod accidentally bite you?”

  “No, no, no!” She handed him the folder and did a little boogie dance step toward the kitchen.

  J.D. stared at her as if she’d flipped her lid. Vikar was more interested in ogling her behind as she danced. They both followed after her.

  “I think I found all your furniture,” she announced, flopping the open folder on the counter in a ta-da fashion. “The original owner, before he was forced to go into a hospital for a long stay, had everything removed and taken to an Amish barn in Belleville that he’d rented. He’d planned on having the whole interior painted before he returned, which he never did.”

  “After all these years, do you think it would all still be there with no additional rent having been paid?” Vikar asked skeptically. His eyebrows rose as he perused the list: parlor chairs and settees, Tiffany-style lamps, carpets, a dining room table and chairs, a baby grand piano, for heaven’s sake! Beds, armoires, dressers. Even fireplace accessories. Who knew what kind of taste a guy who built this castle would have, but, hey, it would give them a start.

  Odd, how she’d referred to them and not just him, she pondered for a moment.

  “Hey, you never know with the Amish,” J.D. remarked. “They’re a very moral people. And their farms stay in the family.”

  “It’s worth checking, right?” Alex asked Vikar.

  Thus it was that Alex found herself riding in a black Lexus SUV with shaded windows next to a vampire angel with a ponytail, wearing aviator sunglasses and what he swore was his normal attire: black jeans, black Gucci loafers without socks, a black silk T-shirt, and a full-length black cloak with a raised collar and epaulettes on the shoulders in the form of silver wings, which hid his WTF sword in a belt sheath and an equally WTF Sig Sauer pistol in a shoulder holster.

  She glanced over at Vikar and smiled.

  He smiled back at her.

  Forget about Beavis and Butthead. She was having the best Great Adventure.

  A vampire needs a sense of humor, too . . .

  Vikar was treading a high wire with no net. He knew it, sure as sin, and that’s just what he was tempting. Sin.

  He was knee-deep in the near occasion of sin and had never been happier. Like a pig wallowing in quicksand, pretending it was mud, that’s how foolish he’d become. The risks he was taking defied explanation. Was it because betimes the anticipation of sin was as delicious as the sin itself? Or was it something more? Not that lure of sex wasn’t enough.

  “Why are you grinning?” Alex asked him. She was sitting across the table from him at a booth in the Blood Bath, a tavern just outside Transylvania known for its red beer on tap. Ugh! At least he didn’t draw any attention here, as the staff and some of the customers looked more like vampires than he did. Besides, the restaurant was mostly empty, it being past the lunch hour and too early for the dinner crowd.

  “I’m pleased with all we accomplished today at the farmer’s,” he replied, which was not really a lie, just not what he’d been thinking, “thanks mostly to your help.”

  He couldn’t stop staring at all the bare skin exposed by the short-sleeved, scoop-necked, mint-green sweater she wore over a short white skirt, the green just a shade lighter than her clear emerald eyes. While her face and neck were creamy white, her arms and chest had freckles, lots of them, which made him think she must use some cosmetic product to cover up her face. She shouldn’t bother because, really, her freckles were attractive, to him leastways.

  “Thank you, kind sir, for the compliment.” She did a little seated curtsy for emphasis.

  For a moment, he forgot what he’d said and had to shake his head to clear it of carnal musings. “I called the contractor when you went to the ladies’ powdering room, and he already has a dozen men tearing out the old plumbing pipes, some of which are lead and might cause someone to die of lead poisoning.” He waggled his eyebrows at her as if to say, Ha, ha, dead people dying of lead poisoning.

  She didn’t laugh, but then she was still not convinced she’d landed in a den of dead people.

  “Will there be running water while they’re working?”

  He nodded. “J.D. promised to renovate the bathing room next to my bedchamber last, along with the kitchen and nearby half bathroom, all of which are workable at the moment. Those should suffice for the six of us.”

  “Good thinking. I’m glad you went with my suggestion about keeping some of the old fixtures.”

  He nodded. In many ways, they were a good match. Certainly it had been her good thinking that led them to the Amish farmer today. And, yes, I fear other ways in which we match, too, and it has naught to do with furniture, except mayhap tongue and groove. By thunder! My brain is a melting puddle of running sex-sap. “At least we have some furniture to start with now,” he said, trying his best to sound calm and not so lustsome, “because, truth to tell, I consider shopping as painful an experience as plucking nose hairs.”

  “Nice image there!”

  He shrugged. He was a Viking, not a girlie man.

  “It’s truly amazing that I found that file and then just as amazing to find out that the lump sum the lumber baron gave the farmer all those years ago literally saved the farm.”

  To him, it was also amazing that this amazing woman had walked into his life just yesterday and made him feel . . . well, amazing. I wonder . . . do those amazing freckles cover her amazing bosom as well? Her breasts were not all that big, but they appeared so because of her slim frame. He knew a lot about women’s breasts. Past history, of course.

  “The farmer and his family couldn’t have been more thankful,” she continued, oblivious to his wandering mind, “and they always thought one of the family would come for the contents eventually. Unfortunately, there was no family. It makes you wonder about the man who built the castle, Mr. Waxmonsky. What his dreams were, why such an edifice, did he have a woman in mind who would share it with him, so many questions.”

  He smiled at her. “You see stories everywhere, don’t you?”

  “I do. Printer’s ink i
n my blood, as the old saying goes.” She smiled back at him.

  A companionable silence followed until he exclaimed, “But fifty years!” Though fifty years should seem like a week to a man like him who had more years on him than Methuselah. “I cannot believe that the farmer’s descendants held everything for fifty years.”

  “And he couldn’t believe you were willing to pay him twenty thousand dollars in past rent. Do you always carry that much cash around in the well of your SUV?”

  He shrugged. Money meant little to him. Harek, whose sin had been greed, had a flair for finances. In fact, he’d bought Apple stock when folks probably thought it was a seed company. To say they had a hefty bank account, spread across the world to avoid attention, was a vast understatement. “You’re right, Alex. I swear, the farmer practically had a orgasm when I started peeling off those hundreds.” Oh, clouds! Did I have to say that word? Now I will be having more lustsome thoughts. Forget tongue and groove. I will be thinking about rolling waves and longboats and tight channels. I swear, this woman has put a spell on me. Or else I am falling apart due to overlong celibacy.

  “Do Amish have orgasms?”

  Oh, this is just wonderful. Now she is saying that word, too. I am doomed.

  “Isn’t it against their religion or something?” she inquired with an irrelevance he found fascinating. Conversations with her always meandered in the oddest directions.

  “Sweetling, there isn’t a religion in the world, in any age, that can stop a man from spilling his seed with great joy.” Hopefully inside a willing woman. “Besides, how do you think they beget all those children?”

  “You have a point there.”

  Of course I do, and if you are not careful, I might decide to elaborate. Or demonstrate. “Do you think the stored items are worth that much?” he asked, bringing the subject back to safer territory.

  “Absolutely. Oh, some of the carpets and paintings might be damaged beyond repair. Even though the barn was water-tight, and everything was covered, there were temperature changes, and mice. Lots of mice. Did you see how much mice dirt was on that big mirror? Yuck!”

  He grinned. “If you think mice dirt is bad, you should have seen how many barrels of guano we had to remove from the castle.”

  “Actually, guano makes a good fertilizer. You probably could have sold it to some local farmers.”

  “Hah! ’Twas bad enough shoveling the crap out of a window to land in a Dumpster. I cannot imagine the protests if I’d asked my ceorls to put it into neat little bags.”

  “You have a great sense of humor,” she remarked after wiping tears of mirth from her eyes.

  “Me? You think I am funny?” That was not the way he wanted to appear, especially to a beautiful woman.

  “Not funny. Appreciative of the humor in life. Being able to laugh at yourself.”

  Well, that wasn’t so bad, he supposed, and whacked himself mentally for caring. Foolish pride, again!

  The waitress, a young girl who wore a low-cut blouse that exposed her neck and painted-on fang marks dripping blood, brought their order. Juicy bacon cheeseburgers, French fries, and iced tea for her and a bottle of beer for him.

  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.