by Sandra Hill
“Was that the beginning, when you first began to hide behind your shield of apathy? For surely, you followed a path of indolence thereafter. Like a slug you are, slow to move, except for your own wants and needs.”
One image after another flickered through the mist. Him ignoring a fourteen-year-old dairymaid who claimed to be carrying his child. Later, he’d heard that her father had turned her out, and she’d died of some fever or other.
Then there was his mother seeking a boon from him, which had been inconvenient at the time. The expression of hurt on her face showed clearly, as did the coldness in his. Had that favor been so important to his mother? Why had he not bothered to find out? She’d died soon after of a wasting disease whilst he’d been off a-Viking.
Trond felt sickened when he saw himself and all his sins. What was wrong with him? Why didn’t he care? About anything or anyone? It was selfishness, of course, but more than that. To his surprise, he felt tears wet his bearded face.
“I suppose you have come to take me to your Christian hell in payment for my sins,” Trond said with resignation.
“Not exactly,” the angel replied. “God has other plans for you.”
Trond arched his brows in question.
“Satan has put together an evil band of demon vampires to roam the earth harvesting human souls before their destined time. Lucipires, they are called. Our Father has charged me with formation of a different type of band to fight those evil legions. Vikings, to my eternal regret.”
Trond’s brow furrowed with confusion. “You are going to lead Viking warriors in battle against some demon vampires?”
“Not exactly.”
Trond didn’t like the sound of that. “What exactly?”
“Viking vampire angels,” St. Michael explained. “Vangels.”
Trond started to laugh. “You are going to turn Vikings into angels? You would have better luck turning rocks into gold.”
The archangel was not amused by his laughter. “Viking vampire angels,” he emphasized. “For seven hundred years, you and your brothers will lead the fight against the Lucipires.”
“With your magical powers,” Trond said, waving a hand at the cloud picture and at the shimmery light that surrounded the angel, “why don’t you just annihilate the demon vampires yourself?”
“That is not the way God works.”
Trond mulled over everything that the angel had told him. “Seven hundred years is a long time.”
“It is. Or you can spend eternity in Satan’s fire.”
Death by fire was ne’er a pleasant prospect. He’d seen Olaf the Bitter consumed by fire from a pitch-lit arrow. Yeech! And eternal fire? “Not much of a choice there.”
St. Michael shrugged. “Do you agree?”
Trond was no fool. He could tell that the archangel would just as well see him on a quick slide to hell. “I agree.” But then he asked, “What exactly is a vampire?”
The archangel smiled at him, and it was not a nice smile. Before he had a chance to ponder that fact, Trond’s body was thrown onto the rushes where pain wracked every bone and muscle in his flailing body, especially his bleeding mouth and shoulder blades where it felt as if an axe was hacking away at the bones.
“It is done,” the archangel said after what seemed like hours, but was only minutes, and disappeared in a fading light.
Done? What is done? Trond felt himself rise above the floor, viewing his dead body, which lay on its one side, curled in a fetal position. Fangs stuck out of his mouth, like a wolf, and there were strange bumps on his shoulder blades.
But then in a whoosh of movement Trond was back in his body, and he was flying through the air, out of the keep, into the skies. Where he would land, he had no idea. He was fairly certain Heaven was not his destination. Nor Valhalla.
One
You could say he was a beach bunny . . . uh, beach duck . . .
If it looks like a duck, and walks, like a duck . . . hey, Easy, can you give us a quack? Ha, ha, ha!”
Trond Sigurdsson, best known here in Navy SEAL land as Easy, gritted his teeth and attempted to ignore the taunts military passers-by hurled his way, especially when he noticed that the bane of his current life, Ensign Nicole Tasso, was standing there, along with Lt. Justin LeFontaine, or Cage, who’d been the one teasing him this time. Cage was LeFontaine’s SEAL nickname, appropriate considering his Cajun roots. Cajuns were folks who lived in the southern United States—Louisiana to be precise—and were known to eat lots of spicy foods, drink beer, play loud rowdy music, and were generally wild. A little bit like Vikings, if you asked Trond, which no one did.
He didn’t mind the teasing all that much, but no red-blooded male—and, yes, his blood was still red, and, yes, he was still a man—wanted a good looking woman—even one Trond absolutely positively did not desire or even like—witnessing him down on his haunches, walking around like a friggin’ duck, making an absolute ass of himself. A duck’s ass!
“You’re working Gig Squad? Again!” Nicole just had to remark.
As if it is any of her business! But then Nicole was a nosy, bossy, suspicious woman who’d made it her goal in life to uncover Trond’s secrets, or improve him, or both. As if!
Gig Squad was a SEAL punishment that took place every evening in front of the Coronado, California, officers quarters where Navy personnel leaving the chow hall could witness the humiliation of the punished trainees. Squats. Push-ups. And, yes, duck walks.
His infraction? Jeesh! All he’d done was hitch a ride on a dune buggy when told to jog this morning in heavy boondocker boots for five lackwitted miles along the sandy shore. What was wrong with the ingenuity of taking the easy way to a goal? “Work smarter, not harder,” that was his motto. The SEAL commander Ian MacLean apparently did not appreciate ingenuity. Not this time, and not when he’d slept through an indoctrination session, or yawned widely when a visiting Admiral came to observe their exercises, or complained constantly about the futility of climbing up and over the sky-high, swaying cargo net when it was easier to just walk around the blasted thing.
Truth to tell, he was not nearly as slothful as he’d once been now that he was a vangel . . . a Viking vampire angel. Nigh a saint, he was now. Leastways, no great sinner. But Mike—as he and his fellows vangels rudely referred to St. Michael, their heavenly mentor—kept hammering away at him that sloth embodied many sins, not just laziness or indifference. Supposedly, Trond was emotionally dead, as well. Insensitive. Ofttimes apathetic and melancholy. “You have no fire in you,” Mike had accused him on more than one occasion, as if that were a trait to be desired. “Your foolery and lightheartedness mask a darkness of spirit. You are sleepwalking through life, Viking. A dreamer, that is what you are.”
So here he was, more than a thousand years later, still a fixed twenty-nine years old, still trying to get it right. Before vangels were locked into modern times, a recent happenstance, their assignments had bounced them here and there, from antiquity to the twenty-first century and in-between, back and forth. He’d been a gladiator, a cowboy, a Regency gentleman, a farmer, a pilot, a ditch digger, a garbage man, even a sheik. A sheik without a harem, which was a shame, if you asked him, which no one did.
And now a Navy SEAL, even as he continued to be a VIK, the name given to he and his six brothers as head of the vangels. He understood the VIK mission and how it applied here, as it did with all assignments . . . killing demon vampires or Lucipires and saving almost-lost human souls. Still, many of the SEAL training exercises were foolish in the extreme, if you asked Trond, which no one did. Walking around like a duck . . . was that any way for a thousand-plus-year-old vampire angel to behave? And a Viking at that!
It was demeaning, that’s what it was. And PITAs like the always bubbly, always on-the-go, always mistrustful “Sassy Tassy” didn’t help matters at all. By PITA, he didn’t mean a pet lover, either. More like a Pain In The Ass. He tried ignoring her presence now, but it was hard when Cage added to his embarrassment and Nicole�
�s amusement by further taunting in that lazy Southern drawl he was noted for, “Why dontcha fluff yer feathers fer us, Easy?” He was referring to the exercise where a detainee not only waddled around like a duck but flapped his elbows at the same time. Twice the pain and twice the humiliation. To Nicole, Cage added with a shake of his head, “That Easy, bless his heart, is the laziest duck I ever saw.”
The final insult was Nicole’s smirk at Cage’s remark. Oooh, he did not like it when women, especially Nicole, smirked at him. Then she added further insult by telling Cage, loud enough for Trond to hear, “Maybe he should just ring out and save us all a lot of trouble.”
SEAL trainees could “volunteer out” at any time by ringing the bell on the grinder, the asphalt training ground at the compound. Actually, huge numbers of those who started out in SEAL training dropped out. Quitting was not an option for Trond.
Once Trond managed to control his temper and the huffing of his breath . . . it was hard work, waddling was . . . he duck-walked toward the woman whose back was to him as she continued talking, in a lower voice now, to Cage, who idly waved a hand behind his back for dismissal of the Gig exercise. At the same time she was standing in conversation, she bounced impatiently on the balls of her boots, as if raring to get off to something more important. The blasted woman had the energy of a drukkinn rabbit.
Meanwhile, the SEAL charmer was smiling down at Nicole, and she was smiling back, even while she bounced. Nicole had never smiled at him, but then he’d never tried to charm her, either.
Trond noticed that Cage’s eyes were making a concerted effort not to home in on her breasts that were prominent in a snug white razorback running bra with the WEALS insignia dead center between Paradise East and Paradise West. Leastways, they looked like Paradise to a man who hadn’t had hot-slamdown-thrust-like-crazy-gottahaveyougottahaveyou sex in a really long time. Or any other real sex, for that matter. Near-sex, now that was a different matter. He was the king of near-sex. Not that I’m planning any trips to Paradise, near or otherwise. Nosiree, I’m an angel. Celibacy-is-Us. Pfff! In any case, WEALS—Women on Earth, Air, Land, and Sea—was the name given to the female equivalent of SEALs, which stood for Sea, Air, and Land. A female warrior, of all things!
He shook his head like a shaggy dog . . . or a wet duck . . . to rid himself of all these irrelevant thoughts.
“Are you sure about that, darlin’?” Cage was saying to Nicole.
Trond had no idea what they were talking about, but one thing was for damn . . . uh, darn . . . sure, if he’d ever called Nicole darlin’, she would have smacked him up one side of his fool head and down the other.
Trond was still down in his duck position while the other poor saps had risen, their punishment over for now. Without thinking . . . Trond’s usual M.O., unfortunately . . . he leaned over and took a nip at Nicole’s right, bouncing buttock, which was covered nicely by red nylon shorts. Luckily, he’d been a vampire angel long enough that he could control his fangs; otherwise, he would have torn the fabric.
With a yelp of shock, Nicole slapped a hand on her back side and swiveled on her boot-clad heels. SEALs and WEALS were required to wear the heavy boots to build up leg muscles. Hers were built up very nicely, he noted with more irrelevance, although the shape of a woman’s body was never irrelevant to a virile man. And Vikings were virile, that was for sure.
All this exercise must be turning me into a brain-rambling dimwit. Or is it the celibacy?
“What? How dare you?” she screeched.
I dare because I can, my dear screechling. Rising painfully on screaming knees, he stood, reaching for a towel and wiping sweat with purposeful slowness off his face and neck. His drab green t-shirt with the Navy SEAL logo clung wetly to his chest and back. “Oops!” he said, finally.
About the Author
SANDRA HILL is a graduate of Penn State and worked for more than ten years as a features writer and education editor for publications in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Writing about serious issues taught her the merits of seeking the lighter side of even the darkest stories. She is the wife of a stockbroker and the mother of four sons.
Visit her website at www.sandrahill.net.
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Romances by Sandra Hill
Kiss of Pride
The Norse King’s Daughter
The Viking Takes a Knight
Viking in Love
Hot & Heavy
Wet & Wild
A Tale of Two Vikings
The Very Virile Viking
The Viking’s Captive (formerly My Fair Viking)
The Blue Viking
Truly, Madly Viking
The Love Potion
The Bewitched Viking
Love Me Tender
The Last Viking
Sweeter Savage Love
Desperado
Frankly, My Dear
The Tarnished Lady
The Outlaw Viking
The Reluctant Viking
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from Kiss of Surrender copyright © 2012 by Sandra Hill
KISS OF PRIDE. Copyright © 2012 by Sandra Hill. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition MAY 2012 ISBN: 9780062063854
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062064615
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