Kiss of Pride

by Sandra Hill

  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—

  “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 mec
hanism, 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 cann
ot 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?