Kiss of Pride

by Sandra Hill

  “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.

  Work me? Is that like “do me”? “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” She stepped out from behind Vikar’s big body. “I am not engaging in any ménage à trois, not with normal men, and definitely not with bleepin’ vampire angels, even if they do look like stud muffins.”

  The jaws of all three men dropped, further exposing fangs. Even Vikar now.

  “And it’s not because I’m chicken, either. I’m not afraid of you perverts.”

  “Ménage à trois?” Vikar sputtered. “For the love of mud!”

  “Actually, that would be ménage à quatre,” the geek corrected.

  “A foursome,” Cnut interpreted, his dour face breaking into a reluctant grin. “Now there’s a thought.”

  “Perverts? We are not perverts,” Vikar sputtered some more.

  But then Harek, the brainiac, homed in on something else she’d said, “Who is she calling a stud muffin?” He, too, was grinning.

  “We will see you at dinner,” Vikar said to his brothers, attempting to shove her out the door.

  “Tacos, not lemon chicken, will be on the table, gentlemen,” Alex said, getting the last word in as she allowed Vikar to steer her away. Oddly, she wasn’t frightened. Vikar would protect her. She hoped.

  Once in the hall, he yanked her into his office and closed the door. “I have given you space these past three days, but as you may have noticed in the midst of your blathering with my brothers, your situation is dire. Beginning tonight, we will exchange blood twice a day until you are pure.”

  “You can’t make that decision for me.”

  “I can and I will.”

  “What about all that free will nonsense you keep spouting?”

  He fisted his hands as if to keep from throttling her. “Once the cleansing ritual is complete, you can do whatever you want.”

  “Including leaving this castle?” Why does that prospect suddenly hold no appeal for me? Is it the Stockholm syndrome, or something?

  “You can take a freight train to Hell for all I care!” He threw his hands up in frustration.

  His words hurt her, for some reason. The Stockholm syndrome must work only one way. No reciprocation of sentiment. Thus, it was in a small v
oice that she said, “That’s not true, Vikar. You do care. You care too much.”

  “Now you are going to psychoanalyze me?” He sighed deeply. “Why are you always fighting me? Why can’t you be biddable for once?”

  “Because if I stop fighting with you, I’ll probably hop in the sack with you,” she admitted, before she had a chance to catch herself.

  The sound of the ensuing silence was deafening. At first she didn’t want to look at Vikar, to see his reaction, but he took that choice out of her hands by suddenly shoving her against the closed door, his erection prodding her middle. With one hand on either side of her head, he leaned in, “M’lady, you play with fire when you make statements like that. I have not had sex for a hundred years, and I am hungry.”

  “I haven’t had sex for a long time, either,” she said, leaning up for a kiss.

  He turned his face aside.

  “You don’t want to kiss me?”

  He rested his forehead against hers. “Do not tempt me, wench. If I kiss you, I will not stop there. I will be swiving you continuously ’til your eyeballs roll back in your head and we mark every room in this castle like randy dogs.”

  Swiving? What a charmer? She tried to laugh, but it came out as a gurgle. Putting a hand to his cheek, she said, “Vikar, we both got aroused the other time you did that cleansing thing. You can’t deny the chemistry is there. How are we ever going to exchange blood, over and over, and not have sex?”

  “God help me, I do not know.” He turned slightly so that he could at least kiss her palm.

  Alex felt the erotic tickle all the way to her toes and some important places along the way. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the phone rang then. Stunned by the instant arousal that whipped between them, they let it go to the answering machine, and the message that came from Alex’s boss was an erotic damper if there ever was one.

  “Lord Vikar. This is Ben Claussen, Alex’s editor. Do whatever you can to keep her there for a while. I’ve already told her that it’s not safe for her to come back to the city at this time.”

  Vikar arched his brows at her for failing to deliver that news to him.

  “The feds are looking for her to deliver a subpoena to testify at the cartel trial. The cartel will be watching closely to see where that delivery is made. I fear she’ll become their target.”

  Now Vikar was shaking his head at her, as if she were a small child needing a scolding.

  “I’ll talk to Alex about this later, but she’s one stubborn lady. And she speaks highly of you.”

  That comment prompted more eyebrow raising. Alex didn’t recall saying anything particularly complimentary about Vikar. Had she?

  After the answering machine clicked off, Vikar folded his arms and scowled at her. “You will stay,” he declared firmly, “until I deem it safe for you to depart.”

  That’s all she needed. Not only did Lucipires have her in their cross-hairs, drug dealers might be gunning for her, too, and now her boss would be in cahoots with her vampire angel host.

  Could her life get any better than this?

  A devil’ s work is never done . . .

  “One of The Seven is in Transylvania? Impossible! Too much visibility there.” Jasper glared at the brain-dead idiot of a mung Lucipire—brain dead, ha, ha, ha!—who’d come to him with that improbable announcement.

  He was down in Horror reclining in his La-Z- Boy, sipping at a Bloody Mary (the real kind) and watching Buffy reruns on his satellite TV.

  “Real vampires of any kind do not go near Count Dracula’s hunting grounds,” Jasper declared impatiently to his assistant Sabeam, who’d brought the battered mung into his private quarters.

  “Not that Transylvania. The other Transylvania. In Pennsylvania,” Sabeam explained.

  “And one of The Seven was there, I tell you,” the mung insisted.

  He and Sabeam turned to the young male wearing leather with bullet holes in the knees, who’d not yet learned to speak only when spoken to. The mung shivered with fright. As well he should! He would be punished good and well for having lost his companion, never to return to Horror, and for failing to capture a most favored vangel, if what he claimed was true.

  Sabeam was a mung, too, but he had years and much experience on this new fellow. Maybe Jasper would let Sabeam be the one to instruct him on proper discipline.

  Jasper shoved Mary, an imp demon, and watched with distaste as she scuttled off like a scared crab. And he hadn’t even drained her yet! “There’s a Transylvania in Pennsylvania?” he inquired testily of Sabeam. “Why did no one tell me this?”

  “It is a joke. I mean, the town is a joke, master.” Their attention was drawn back to the young mung who was shivering so hard his teeth chattered, causing his fangs to bite repeatedly into his bottom lip. He kept swiping with the back of his hand to prevent blood from dripping onto the carpet. “The residents pretend to be vampires to draw in tourists.”

  “Ah! Twilight again! I wish that book had never been written. And True Blood! I swear, those Sookie Stackhouse books give vampires a bad name! I ask you, Sabeam, did you ever see a wussier vampire than Vampire Bill?”

  The young mung thought he’d been addressing him and said, “Huh?”

  Brain dead, brain dead, brain dead! Mulling the situation, he knew that he should send one of his haakai Lucipires or a few mungs there to investigate, but they were busy setting up the Sin Cruise on the Internet. The Sin Cruise was Jasper’s ingenious plan for harvesting vast numbers of new Lucipires.

  “Send Gregori and Virgana to me,” he told Sabeam. “Gregori is in the training arena with new Lucipires, and Virgana is in Bermuda hiring a cruise ship. Tell Brutus and Lucretia to take over for them. If there are vangels in this Transylvania, Pennsylvania, those two will scent them out.” Gregori was a haakai, once an executioner for Ivan the Terrible, and Virgana was his hordling consort. “And take this disgusting mung with you,” he added.

  After that, Jasper settled back and watched Angel seducing Buffy. Holy fires of Hell! He would love to have a Lucipire like Angel. There was a vampire with a brain! Though Jasper hated his name.

  Lucifer had taken most of Jasper’s collection from him by now, and the captive vangel had died without renouncing God, thus ensuring his place in Heaven, or wherever good vangels went, but all was not lost. The Sin Cruise was on the horizon, and Jasper felt certain he and his hordes would harvest hundreds, if not thousands, of lost souls in the act of sin. And there was a possibility that one of The Seven would be captured in Transylvania.

  Life . . . or Unlife . . . was good!

  Note to self: Order cruise wear.

  Sin City on the High Seas? . . .

  “Holy crap! Would you look at this?” Harek said as they finished their impromptu meeting. He pointed to the screen on his computer.

  “What the hell!” he and Cnut said at the same time. While vangels avoided bad language, profanity did not seem quite as bad as sacrilegious expletives. Those they shunned like gammelost, the stinky fish hated by most Norsemen. They slipped betimes.

  “Sin Cruise Planned on Internet Website,” the headline read.

  The AOL news article went on to say that the first ever ocean liner orgy was being planned for August off the coast of Florida, in international waters, where presumably laws against such activities would not be in effect. No children or child pornographers would be allowed, but just about everything else would be permitted.

  “This is friggin’ unbelievable!” Vikar said, sliding his chair closer to read. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  Cnut, who sat on Harek’s other side, remarked, “It was inevitable, with the way the world today is going. To Hell in a handbasket, as the saying goes.”

  “Sodom and Gomorrah,” they all said as one.

  “Look at this.” Harek read the itinerary: Nude Swimming. Extreme Matchmaking. Adultery and Perversions. Nighttime Orgies. How to Engage in a Ménage à Trois. Bestiality for the Faint of Heart. Advanced S&M. Fetishes Galore. V
oyeurism. Punishment as Pleasure.

  “Could this possibly be something Jasper cooked up?” Vikar shook his head with wonder. Given all the evil he had seen over the centuries, he was surprised that he could still be shocked.

  “Absolutely!” Harek clicked another link, then pointed the cursor at “How to Have Sex with a Vampire.”

  “Hah! What I want to know is how a vampire angel gets permission to have sex,” Vikar said.

  Harek had already moved the cursor to another topic and said aloud, “Satan Worship at Midnight.”

  All three of them made signs of the cross on their chests.

  “Many of the things planned are illegal in this country. How can they get away with it?” Vikar wondered. “You’d think the police would be shutting them down before they start.”

  Harek shook his head. “Maritime laws are convoluted and hard to enforce. Territorial law, meaning the law of the adjoining land, only applies twelve miles out. From twelve to twenty-four miles, it’s considered contiguous waters, where some laws apply. But beyond twenty-four miles, that’s international.”

  “Still . . .” Vikar was finding it hard to fathom how such an event could be planned, openly, with no repercussions.

  “Think about it. If a crime occurs aboard ship, what country has jurisdiction? The place where the ship is registered? The place where it started its journey? Where it docks?” Harek was still clicking away at the computer as he spoke. “Oh shit! Look where it’s registered. Libya. Try to file a lawsuit there today.”

  They all laughed. That country had enough problems of its own.

  “I can see now why all those missing persons and rape cases we hear about on cruise lines almost never get prosecuted successfully,” Cnut mused.

  “And most of them are never reported by the cruise lines,” Harek added. “Bad publicity.”

  “Michael should be informed of this right away,” Vikar said. “At least this activity should divert Jasper’s attention away from me. That mung must not have recognized me.”

  “Don’t be too sure of that,” Cnut warned, but then Cnut was ever cautious. As he should be as one of their best soldiers.

  “Where’s your pretty guest?” Harek asked then.