Even Vampires Get the Blues

by Sandra Hill

  “I don’t care.”

  That is harsh! “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Persistence, thy name is Viking. “I think I love you.”

  Her eyelids fluttered. Thank the stars! I’m making headway, or is that heartway?

  Just then, there was a knock on the door. “Linda, are you in there? I have to pee.”

  “Oh, great!” Camille whispered, as she glared at Harek. In a louder voice, she said, “I’ll be right out, Cora. I was just about to take a shower.”

  “At this time of night?”

  “Yeah. I just got my period,” she lied, and smacked Harek when he grinned at her quick thinking. She shoved him into the shower stall, clothes and all, and turned on the faucets. Closing the shower door, she turned and let Cora in. Let Harek suffer the embarrassment of being in the same room with a tween as she peed, a thin glass foggy wall the only divider. “Don’t turn the shower off,” she advised Cora. “I want it to be nice and warm.”

  “In this heat?” Cora said.

  “Yeah. It’s a known fact that a warm shower on a hot night is the best thing for cooling off.” Buuuulllllshit!

  “Really, I’ll have to try it.”

  “But not now!” Camille inserted quickly, and went back into the bedroom and waited for Cora to return to bed. Then Cora wanted to talk, something about a boy over at the Global High School, who texted girls pictures of his left nipple, which was bigger than his right one. Whaaat? Camille told her they would have to talk later and waved a hand pointedly at her groin area.

  “Oh. Right,” Cora said, and climbed back into bed with a wide yawn.

  Camille thought about picking up her gun again. She could shoot the intruder in the shower and no one would dare prosecute her. On the other hand, rules of engagement and all that military crap would land her in court-martial land, maybe even prison. Besides, much as she hated Harek at the moment, she didn’t want him dead. Hurt, maybe, but not dead.

  Instead, she returned to the bathroom and made sure it was locked before she told the man just what she thought of him. She never got a chance because a hand snaked out and she was yanked into the shower. Harek’s clothes were already off and lay sopping wet on the floor, and her nightshirt was soon over her head.

  He made as if he was blowing her a kiss, and she was assaulted by his chocolate breath. (Note to self: Chocolate addiction is back.)

  He smiled at her then, a knowing smile that should have offended her, but didn’t. In fact, she was reminded of an old proverb, “When a rogue kisses you, count your teeth.”

  For sure.

  Chapter 17

  Men will be men, especially Viking vampire angel men . . .

  Men got windows of opportunity in the game of sex. They knew this instinctively and had from the beginning of time. Even cavemen thought, I have five minutes max to drag Ugga into my cave, seduce her into compliance, or she’ll be hitting me over my sloping forehead with a dinosaur bone.

  Harek had a brilliant mind. Maybe not so brilliant when it came to women, but, nonetheless, he knew that his window of opportunity was now. While Camille was surprised by his yanking her into the shower and amazed at the speed with which he’d removed her nightshirt. While she savored his chocolate scent lure. While she forgot the reason she was so pissed at him.

  With the hot water already turning lukewarm as it showered over them, Harek lifted Camille by the waist so that her feet dangled off the tile floor. He noted with seeming irrelevance that she wore candy-pink toenail polish, an appropriate color, he supposed, for a fifteen-year-old girl, though she was looking nothing like a teenager to Harek with her pretty breasts aligned just about level with his mouth. A fangy mouth, he might add.

  Bracing her shoulders against the wall, he lifted both her legs to wrap around his waist and, with no preliminaries, plunged his rampant enthusiasm inside her. Outwardly, she was shocked. Inwardly, she was giving him hallelujah clasps of welcome.

  He glanced downward where her fiery tresses were blended with his blond short-and-curlies. Fire and gold, he thought. Surely, beauty like this did not just come about by chance, like those creationists wanted people to believe the world started from an amoeba. Surely, a perfect blending like they were together, in all ways, was intended to be.

  Can anyone say wishful thinking? one side of his head opined.

  Who says God doesn’t have a romantic soul? the other side countered.

  And Michael is His cupid?

  Ha, ha, ha!

  “Good Lord!” Camille exclaimed.

  “That’s just what I was thinking,” he said, although he wasn’t exactly sure what prompted her exclamation . . . their blended hair picture or the fact that he was twitching inside her.

  (Sexual twitching was a genetic Viking trait, some folks said. They were probably Vikings. It was a great diversionary tactic in bedsport. If there were cavemen in the Norselands, there had probably been a lot of twitching going on with Ugga.)

  “Camille, I’m sorry,” he said, cupping her face with both hands. She was held against the wall by the force of his hips pressed against hers, his no-longer twitching penis still inside her. (Twitching was only effective in short bouts, and truth to tell, sometimes it happened without warning.)

  “For what?”

  “Everything. What I am . . . was . . . how I handled . . .” He took a deep breath to calm his stammering. “I’m sorry that I was a slave trader. I can’t defend myself by saying it was only one time, one shipload, which it was, because I can’t say for sure that I wouldn’t have continued if I hadn’t died.

  “And I’m sorry that I am a vangel, although I’m lucky to have been chosen for the program. I have little to offer you as a vangel. My main commitment will always be to . . .” He glanced heavenward.

  “As for how I handled things. I didn’t deliberately mislead you, but I knew after our trip to Louisiana how you felt about slavery. I should not have gotten involved with you, knowing my past.”

  “Is that all?” she asked. Her arms hung loosely at her sides. She wasn’t shoving him away, but she wasn’t embracing him, either. Not a good sign.

  He willed his penis not to twitch again. That would be bad, bad timing. Like a giggle in the midst of a funeral.

  “That is all, for now.”

  “And that’s why you came here? That’s why you have me pinned to the wall with your cock, like a human butterfly.”

  He winced at her crudeness, then wondered idly if she liked being pinned to the wall with his cock, like a human butterfly. That is an inappropriate thought, considering the circumstances, he chastised himself. So, sue me. I’m a man . . . a Viking, for cloud’s sake. That’s how we think.

  He did his best to wipe his mind of its meanderings. “Not totally,” he replied finally.

  She arched her brows. By now her hair was plastered to her head like red spaghetti, and water dripped off her nose. Not a pretty sight. Pasta hair and Pepto-Bismol toes. Good thing he could see beyond the superficial. Ha, ha, ha. More mind meandering.

  Enough! This was a serious situation, and he was going to lose his window of opportunity if he continued in this vein. The alarming thing was that he recognized his mind was drifting as a defense mechanism. He was frightened.

  “For my sins, Camille, I could not stay away. I do not want to eat or drink. I can’t sleep. You are on my mind night and day. I can’t focus. I think I might need you.”

  “Pfff! Like you think you might love me?”

  “I’m moving closer to certainty,” he told her.

  “Something else is moving,” she pointed out.

  His damn cock was twitching again. This was embarrassing. “Sorry. It has a mind of its own.”

  “It’s actually kind of cute.”

  “My cock is not cute, and, no, I am not going to engage in an argument over the cuteness of my male part. I need to know how you feel about me. I need to know if you will make love with me, willingly. I would not force you.”


  “Kind of late to be asking that question, isn’t it?”

  He started to pull out of her, but she locked her heels behind his butt. “Go ahead. I’m listening,” she said.

  “Can you forgive me, Camille? Can we start over?”

  “I don’t know. Forgive, maybe, in time. Forget, I don’t think so.”

  His heart sank. And his cock was becoming impatient. If he didn’t move soon, it was going to be the shortest fuck in history. A strokeless swive, as they said in the old days before anyone ever heard of premature ejaculation. “I have lots of time.” Oh damn! Am I begging now? Just like Zeb advised.

  “And are you offering me that time?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, even though he knew. She was talking about commitment. Was he making a commitment to her? None of that I-think-I-love-you bullshit. It was time to “fish or cut bait,” as his uncle Boris used to say. Boris had been a great fisherman. In fact, he’d caught a shark one time just by holding on to his line for a full day and a half ’til his hands bled and went numb with pain.

  More mind meandering!

  “Camille, I have to move soon or die of testosterone overload. Besides, the water is getting cold. You have goose bumps on your goose bumps.” He glanced pointedly at her breasts. “We can talk later, if you want. For now, all I can say is, I can’t imagine a life without you in it.”

  “Good enough,” she said.

  Huh? It took a second for him to understand that she was giving him the go-ahead for sex. He withdrew, then plunged deep again. One, two, three times, and he was shooting his seed clear to the moon, or leastways her womb.

  Turned out it was indeed the shortest fuck in history, or his history anyhow. Shorter even than his first time as a twelve-year-old when he’d had trouble finding the right hole.

  He would have been embarrassed, except Camille’s mouth was parted and her eyes were wide as she rode her own peak, then shattered.

  She wept softly as he held her tight. Knowing her, it was probably the first time she’d let loose her emotions since Zeb’s disturbing revelation. Turning off the water, he carried her outside the stall and used a towel to dry her off. He even combed her spaghetti hair into a semblance of order.

  They sat on the floor then, wrapped in towels, their backs braced against the tub, his arm around her shoulders. And they talked. Softly, so as not to wake the hopefully sleeping roommate. Surrounded by the scent of chocolate and roses.

  She got what she wanted, but in the wrong way . . .

  Camille wasn’t surprised by the quickness of her surrender to Harek. She liked sex. She especially liked sex with Harek. And, to be honest, there was something stronger, deeper than mere sex between them. Something she couldn’t resist.

  “Why are you so suntanned?” she asked. He looked like a California surfer boy after a summer in the sun. “Surely you haven’t been going shirtless out there in the jungle.”

  “Hah! I would have the blood sucked out of me, not by demon vampires, either. More like vampire mosquitoes.”

  She smiled. It was one of the things they were warned about in WEALS survival training. Scentless bug repellents were part of the medical kits they carried.

  Sensing her thoughts, he said, “A kryptonite shield probably wouldn’t keep these monsters out. Henry has a bite on his knee that might be infected. And JAM claims the spiders are even worse. Personally, the snakes are my biggest worry, aside from Boko Haram. Cage killed a big black bugger this morning that was ten feet long and as wide as my arm. He said some folks make gumbo out of snakes in the bayou where he’s from, but I think he’s full of shit. Snakes!” He shivered for emphasis, then looked at her. “I’m blathering, aren’t I?”

  She nodded.

  “The reason I’m so tan is—and I think I told you this before—a vangel’s skin tans after killing a Lucie or removing a sinner’s blood taint. I haven’t saved any Boko Haram bent on becoming Lucipires, but I have destroyed several who were already in Jasper’s army.”

  She asked how many of the terrorists they’d encountered so far, and whether their presence here in Nigeria was compromised.

  He shook his head. “Not yet, but the waiting is making us all nervous. Hard to tell exactly how many are in the forest because they’re so damn good at hiding.”

  “Do you think very many of them are actually . . . you know, those things?”

  “Demon vampires?” He shrugged. “Probably not a lot. Yet. But Lucies are like roaches. They multiply. Not by leaps and bounds. One day, there may be two; a week later, a dozen. And so on.”

  “Sounds like a losing battle.”

  “Doesn’t it? But, no, we’re about equal at this point. And Mike is sending us more vangels to build up our army. Essentially, this is a battle of good against evil. Defeat isn’t in the vangel vocabulary. Not in the Viking vocabulary, either.”

  “And you’re one of the good guys?”

  “I try to be.” He smiled and kissed the top of her head. “But goodness does not come naturally to us Vikings. And then, there is my sin of greed, which often rears its ugly head.”

  “Greed for what?”

  “Everything. Wealth. Status. Material possessions. Food. Beer. The latest, best car, computer, electronic gadget. Sex.” He waggled his eyebrows at that last.

  She ignored his attempt at humor and continued interrogating him, “So, you and your brothers were the first vangels.”

  “We were. We all ‘died’ within months of each other in the year 850. The VIK, we are called. Until a few years ago, we traveled throughout different time periods, backward, forward, from the Roman Age to the twentieth century, but now we stay in the present.”

  “And do not age.”

  He nodded. “Correct. Nor do the women who married five of my brothers.”

  “Your very own fountain of youth.”

  “You could say it’s one of the perks.”

  “I thought vangels weren’t allowed to marry.”

  “We’re not supposed to, but, well, things happened. In any case, the wives do not age, either, but they live only as long as their mates do. If Trond should die tomorrow, for example, Nicole would, too. And there will never be any children.”

  “Except for your brother Ivak.”

  “Right. Ivak is the exception for everything.”

  “Said with affection,” she noted.

  “Sometimes. Not always. When you live with someone as long as we have, people, especially brothers, can be irritating.”

  “Including yourself?”

  “Definitely.”

  “What do you do that’s irritating?”

  “You have to ask?”

  “I know what I find annoying, but what do your brothers dislike about you?”

  “I think I know everything.”

  “Ah. A know-it-all. I can see how that would be irritating.”

  He pinched her arm lightly.

  “Harek, I’m probably going to hate myself in the morning for having sex with you, and—”

  “Point of order,” he said, raising a forefinger, “I’m the one who barged in here and put you in an awkward position. No reason for guilt.”

  “Semantics.” She waved a hand dismissively. “I could have kicked you out, if I wanted. In any case, we both know this is a bad idea. You and me. Even if the slave trader crap wasn’t thrown into the equation, you’re not free to commit to anything, even if you wanted to, which I obviously don’t, and I’ve been burned so many times that my scars have scars. And yet . . .”

  “And yet,” he agreed. “I’ve had lots of time to think about us—”

  “Lots of time,” she hooted. “We’ve only known each other twelve days.”

  He raised his brows at her knowing exactly how many days since they’d first met, but said nothing about it, just continued, “—And while I understand that we may never get past the slavery issue, I also have to confront some long-held beliefs of my own. For as long as I can remember, I have held a conviction t
hat somehow I will eventually beat the system, and by the system I mean vangeldom.”

  “You don’t want to be a vangel?”

  “Nobody wants to be a vangel. It is just the far better of two choices we were offered. But, in my greed or perhaps because of my superior intellect, I have chafed at being bridled. I cannot use my full capabilities. I cannot earn great wealth. I cannot live the way I want with the material possessions I yearn to have. But I have a plan, and I have been waiting for just the right time to broach it with Mike. First, Mike wants me to set up an archangel presence on the Internet, a way of bringing religion to the masses in a more modern way. It’s a great idea, actually. Once I’ve completed that task for him, I’m hoping he will be in a good mood, more open to my veering from normal vangel rules. Timing is everything.”

  “And?”

  “And I cannot propose such a dramatic change to my vangel rule, not right now, not even after the angel website, and at the same time, tell Michael that I have met this special woman . . . well, you get the drift.”

  “Oh ho! Now we get down to the nitty-gritty. It’s me or a Lamborghini.”

  He felt his face heat. “I wouldn’t put it exactly like that.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” she said, a note of disappointment in her voice, “because that would mean you really wanted me, when you only think you love me.”

  “Time for us to lay all our cards on the table, not just mine, Camille. Do you want me to love you, Camille? Not just sex-love. Not just caring-love. But I-can’t-breathe-without-you, you-are-my-other-half, we-are-meant-to-be love. Is that what you want?”

  “Yes,” she answered before she had a chance to think. “I mean, of course not. What a silly idea! No, no, no.” She stopped protesting when she realized there was no taking back that single telling word. She raised her chin defiantly. “Yes. That’s exactly what I want. It’s what I deserve.”

  “All right, then.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, now I know where we stand. A line has been drawn. Can I tell you what I want?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “I want you to wait for me.”