Kiss of Pride

  “Aren’t you worried about them going to the police?”

  “No. I told them we have a theatrical group rehearsing one of those mystery weekend skits for when the hotel opens.”

  “And what happens when the hotel never opens?”

  He shrugged. “By then, I hope they’ll have forgotten, or chalk it up to eccentric pretend-vampires up at the castle.”

  “Still. Lucies in our private domain is nothing to disregard.” Trond drew his broadsword out of its scabbard and began prowling about the huge kitchen, sniffing at the windows and doorways. The presence of Lucipires in the area was serious business.

  “It’s safe for now. This castle is a mess, but I’ve armed all the karls and ceorls. Even the thralls. We’ve secured the castle itself. As soon as Cnut arrives, we’ll have high-tech equipment out the yin-yang. Not only in and around the structure, but within a mile perimeter, all the way around. There are a hundred acres with the property to be patrolled.” His brother Cnut was a highly skilled security expert, when he was not being a soldier in William the Conqueror’s army or a Regency gentleman. He and his team of ceorls would get the job done within one day, at least for the immediate vicinity.

  “Nice hair, by the by,” Trond remarked. “You better cut it before the Reckoning, though.”

  Vikar did have good hair. Really good hair. Shoulder-length. Blond. Like silk, thanks to modern hair products. A source of pride that would be frowned upon by Mike.

  “How about a tour of this dump?” Trond looped an arm over his shoulders. As they began to walk through the rooms where karls and ceorls were busy carrying out old furniture, carpets, and bath fixtures to a commercial Dumpster parked out back, Trond asked, “By the way, Vikar, how many years do you have left?”

  Hard to believe but their seven hundred years had been up more than five hundred years ago, but, being Vikings, none of them had been able to maintain a saintly life. As a result, years kept being added. At this rate, they would be vampires until the Apocalypse, and that wasn’t coming any century soon.

  “Two hundred and seven, last count,” Vikar replied. “You?”

  “One seventy-eight, but I’ve been bad this year. I expect the tally to go up. Big-time.”

  Vikar glanced at his brother with curiosity, but he didn’t ask, not wanting to be intrusive. But then he had to make at least one inquiry. “Sex?”

  “Near-sex.”

  Do not ask. It is a trap. But curiosity got the better of him. “What in blue blazes is near-sex?”

  “Blue blazes?” Trond homed in on that one phrase, and laughed.

  That did sound silly. “I’m trying not to swear so much.”

  Trond laughed some more. Expletives—using God’s name in vain—were a problem they all fought. Hard to believe, but a good “What the fuck!” was not nearly so bad on the sin scale.

  “Near-sex?” he repeated.

  Trond explained, in detail.

  Holy lutefisk! “And we’re permitted to do that?”

  “I’ll soon find out.”

  “Let me know, for fang’s sake! There may be hope for me yet.”

  You want to send me where? . . .

  Alexandra Kelly walked into the office of her boss at the national D.C. headquarters of World Gazette magazine, braced for yet another argument.

  “I have a new assignment for you,” Ben Claussen, managing editor, said right off.

  “Let me guess. It’s one that will take me out of the city, right?”

  “Damn straight it will.” Ben’s ruddy face grew ruddier. With his balding head and pudgy build, he looked like a fortysomething version of Ed Asner from that old Mary Tyler Moore Show. “You are going to take the assignment.”

  “I just can’t—” she started to protest.

  “Alex, you’ve wallowed long enough. No, no,” he said, raising a halting hand, “listen for a change. You’re a good reporter . . . one of the best feature writers I have . . . and it’s time you get back in the game. Enough with this extended ‘vacation’ of yours. I know you want to be around when the trial starts, but that’s not for another six weeks. You’ll be back by then.”

  Alex’s husband, Brian, a DEA lawyer, and her five-year-old daughter, Linda, had been kidnapped and killed by a Mexican drug cartel two years ago. And, yes, she had been wallowing ever since then in alternating bouts of fury and self-pity, which she felt she was entitled to. Two of the cartel members, the Mercado brothers, had been caught and were to go on trial shortly, if they didn’t get off on technicalities, which might very well happen, according to her informants.

  “You’re going in some dark directions, Alex, and it has to stop.”

  “What do you mean?” Alex thought she’d been hiding her secret plans very well.

  “Do you think I’m unaware that you’ve been taking target lessons over at that Bethesda shooting range?”

  She could feel her face bloom with color. “Everyone’s entitled to protection in this country.”

  “As long as that’s all it is.”

  “What? You think I’m going to kill myself or something,” she teased.

  Ben’s doleful expression said that’s exactly what he feared. She breathed a sigh of relief. “I did not buy a pistol for suicide purposes, Ben. All that mess.”

  He did not laugh. “I mean it, Alex. You want to keep your job, you have to get back in the game.”

  Alex didn’t need the money, but she did need the work. Otherwise, she really would go insane. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “I am right. Dammit, you were nominated for a Pulitzer five years ago for that piece you did on Bin Laden’s daughter. You can’t rest on your laurels forever, honey.”

  With any other employer, Alex would be bristling at what had come to be called a sexual harassment term in the workplace, but this was Ben, her best friend, a father figure, her daughter’s godfather.

  “Laurels be damned,” she said. “Okay, what’s the assignment? Where do you want to send me?”

  “Transylvania.”

  “What? You’re crazy if you think I’ll go to Romania. That Count Dracula story has been done to death.”

  “Not Transylvania, Romania. Transylvania, Pennsylvania.”

  She looked at him and burst out laughing.

  He shoved a folder across the desk, which she quickly flicked through.

  “A vampire town?”

  “A town full of wannabe vampires. Twilight fever to the max! The whole place goes to unbelievable extremes to promote itself as a vampire haven. And there’s some dude who recently bought the town castle. He’s allegedly a real-life vampire. Royalty, no less. Lord Vikar.”

  “Give me a break!”

  He shrugged. “In any case, go and check it out. I’ve always said you could find a story in a load of sand. I’ve set up an appointment with this Lord Vikar. At the very least, you should come back with a color feature.”

  “Hmm,” she said, still skimming through the material. “I went to a writers’ conference years ago where Anne Rice was a speaker. This was in the days she was still writing vampire novels. Anyhow, she had this entourage with her, a bunch of crazies dressed up like vampires, right down to the actual filing of teeth into fangs. Sounds like the same thing here.”

  “Except on a much larger scale. Did you see in that one article”—he pointed to the open folder—“how they turned this depressed community around with dozens of thriving businesses related to vampires? They even changed the name of the town to Transylvania, which was no mean feat with all the legal mumbo jumbo that must have entailed.”

  “Sounds ridiculous, but I’ll do it if it’ll get you off my back. A few days should be sufficient.” She smiled as she spoke, then tried for a lighter note. “Aren’t you worried about the danger, sending me into a nest of Draculas?”

  “Hah! Anyone who would tweak Bin Laden’s tail should have no fear of a few vampire groupies. Besides, you might just hit it off with this Lord Vikar.”

  The last few months Be
n and his wife, Gloria, had tried to fix her up with dates, which she’d declined. But this was ludicrous.

  “You want me to make a love connection with a vampire?”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  Little did she know then how prophetic that statement was to be.

  Two

  One flew over the cuckoo’ s . . . uh, vampire’ s nest . . .

  Transylvania feature, Kelly Page 1

  Draft One

  Midway between Penn State University and Harrisburg lies a sleepy small town that can only be described as Twilight meets Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with a little Monty Python satire tossed in for special effect. Transylvania, Pennsylvania, is not for the faint of heart . . .

  Alex had been in Transylvania only one day, and already she was amazed. In fact, incredulous.

  First of all, because the town was swamped with tourists at this time in July, the only hotel accommodation she’d been able to find was at Bed & Blood, a bed-and-breakfast two miles out of Transylvania. She shouldn’t be surprised at the B&B’s vampire connection. As soon as she’d entered the valley this morning, she was jolted by a bulletin board in front of St. Vladimir Catholic Church that read: “Vampires Welcome.”

  The woman who rented her the room was warm in her welcome to the pristine farm, with its fields of lush green, knee-high corn and neat vegetable and flower gardens.

  “Welcome, welcome,” Sarah Yoder greeted her in a heavy Pennsylvania Dutch accent at the front door of the black-shuttered white farmhouse. Sarah then proceeded to talk a mile a minute, most of the time not even waiting for a response.

  The woman, who had to be in her late thirties, and her husband, Samuel, had apparently been Old Order Amish at one time. The journalist in Alex recognized that there was probably a story there, but not one she would probe. Although they had left that community years ago, Sarah still dressed “plain.” Her gray-streaked blonde hair was parted down the middle and raked back off her face into a bun and tucked under a white mesh cap. The loose ties of the cap dangled onto a long blue cape dress with a black apron.

  “This is the south bedroom,” Sarah said after leading her upstairs, where there were three other guest rooms, all occupied. And one shared bathroom! “Wonderful good sunshine you get in this room, but you daresent open the windows. Ach, but the smells from the pigsty!”

  The room was almost austere, with white walls and no pictures, but there was a pretty blue and white quilt on the iron bed, which Sarah explained was a Double Wedding Ring pattern and that it had been made by Grossmanni Yoder, her grandmother-in-law, for her wedding twenty years ago. Alex considered buying an Amish quilt while she was in this area. She could use it for her summer cottage at Barnegat, not that she’d been there in the past two years. In fact, she’d been considering selling it.

  An antique Bible sat on the dresser along with a pile of brochures highlighting all the tourist attractions around Transylvania. Not just the vampire stuff, but the giant flea market at the Amish sale barn in Belleville every Wednesday morning, fishing in Colyer Lake, estate auctions every weekend in the area, the Arts Festival in State College, even Penn State football. And guided tours around the Amish communities, though visitors were warned not to take photographs or annoy the plain people, who cherished their privacy.

  Alex set the brochures down and sniffed. Yes, she could smell pig poop, even with the windows closed. She was about to say that the odor didn’t matter, that she would be here for only a day or two, and that she had grown up on a horse farm in Virginia, but Sarah was already off on another tangent.

  “Did you have lunch yet? I got a pot of chicken ’n’ dumplings on the stove and shoofly pie just out of the oven.”

  “That sounds wonderful, but I’ve already eaten.”

  “Well, we eat dinner here about six, if you’re interested. We’re having ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, creamed cucumbers, pickled beets, coleslaw, sliced tomatoes, biscuits, and peach cobbler.”

  Good Lord!

  “Oh, and I have some leftover rhubarb pie, too. Plus, I always got whoopie pies. Wonderful gut, they are!”

  And super sweet. From what I’ve heard, about a thousand calories each.

  “Englishers love to take some of my whoopie pies home with them.”

  Englishers? It would seem you could take the woman away from the Amish, but you couldn’t take the Amish out of the woman. Not totally, anyhow.

  “So, you’re a writer, are you? I write. Letters. Lotsa letters to all my cousins, and then there’s the chain letters. Do you ever write letters? What a dummkopp I am! Of course you don’t write letters. You write important things. That’s your work.”

  “Well, I don’t know about—”

  “Oh, look, here comes my Samuel.” A sweet look came over Sarah’s face as she glanced out the window.

  A familiar pain clenched Alex’s heart. She recognized Sarah’s look. It was how she used to look at her husband. All he would have to do is walk into a room, and she would light up.

  In the early days, anyhow. Not later. Definitely not later. She visibly shook her head to rid herself of the memories.

  “Your husband?” Alex asked.

  “Jah, and a good husband is he, too. A hard worker. Me, I just sell my eggs and stinking roses . . . that’s what we call garlic . . . at my vegetable stand out at the end of the lane. Some of my heads of garlic are big as baseballs. Restaurants in town buy them to roast for their customers, and, of course, others buy them to ward off the vampires.” Sarah grinned unabashedly at that last comment.

  “Do you mind if I ask how you’re able to reconcile being Amish, or former Amish, with all this vampire stuff?”

  Sarah tidied the bed, even though it looked perfect to Alex. “It’s all in fun, you know. As long as nobody gets hurt, or nobody really believes all the nonsense, me and Samuel decided it would be all right for us. No worse than scarecrows and spooks at Halloween.”

  That was a stretch, but Alex wasn’t about to argue the point. “Do you have children?”

  A profound sadness came over Sarah’s plain features, and Alex wished she could take the question back. “I’m sorry. That’s none of my business.”

  Sarah waved a hand dismissively. “I lost four children. Three of them were miscarriages, and one . . . a baby girl”—Sarah’s voice choked up—“she died after two weeks.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “Sad it was, but it was a long time ago.” Dabbing at her eyes with a pristine white handkerchief, Sarah asked, “Do you have little ones of your own?”

  Alex shook her head. “I had a little girl but she died.”

  Before Alex could back away, her usual reaction when people got all sympathetic on her, Sarah took both of her hands in hers and squeezed. “For sure and for certain, losing a child is the worst thing in the world. I can only think God has a special place in Heaven for us mothers left behind.”

  Alex had strong feelings to the contrary, but Sarah would not appreciate her jaded opinion. “Does your husband help you run the B&B?”

  “Goodness’ sakes, no! Samuel works all day on the farm, and then he stays up nights in his workshop making specially carved caskets.”

  “Caskets?” she squeaked out.

  Sarah nodded with an impish grin. “He sells them to that fancy Englisher funeral home down the highway. And on his Internet website, Deluxe Death.”

  Alex grinned. An Amishman . . . or rather, former Amishman on the Internet! Actually, that might not be as much of a stretch as she’d once thought. Yesterday she’d noticed a group of Amish men in a rented van; they might not believe in owning cars, but they had nothing against riding in them. The irony was, each had a cell phone to his ear.

  The next day, as she killed time before her appointment with Lord Vikar, Alex strolled through the small, picturesque community near Colyer Lake, doing constant double takes. She rubbed every so often at her neck. Having failed to heed Sarah’s warning about not opening the window last nig
ht, she was now suffering from the world’s worst mosquito bite.

  And oddly, Alex found herself fixating on the upcoming trial of the Mercado brothers and what she’d like to do if they somehow managed to get out. She’d never had a Suzy Sunshine personality before, but there was so much hate bubbling up in her now that it felt as if she was being eaten alive.

  Ah, well, she had an assignment to complete. Maybe that would take her mind off all these dark thoughts. She continued walking and noticed right away that Sarah wasn’t the only one profiting from garlic. The whole town reeked of it, the smelly cloves being a necessary item in every home garden. At the same time, dentists advertised filing teeth into fangs. All the clothing stores featured black capes. One store even sold wooden stakes, which could also be used to hold down camping tents.

  “T-shirts. Get your T-shirts,” one street vendor hawked. And Alex could only smile at the usual “Fangbanger,” à la Sookie Stackhouse, as well as “Bite Me!,” “Got Blood!,” “Bitten,” and “Vampires Suck.” She bought one of the “Bite Me!” ones in an XL size for Ben.

  Throughout the town, she’d seen signs and banners announcing the upcoming Labor Day Monster Mash. Live bands. Blood-drinking contests. Barbecued vampire ribs. Stake-throwing events. The usual.

  She still had more than an hour to kill before her appointment; so she walked into a small cafe with the least kitschy name on the street, Good Bites. It was dark inside, even though it was only two p.m., and cool, a blessing since the temperature outside was in the high eighties. But because it was past the lunch hour, there were few customers; in fact, only a pair of young vampire lovebirds in the corner, alternating whispers and little kisses. She wondered idly how they kissed with those fangs. Carefully, she would guess. And, good Lord, that guy better guard his “precious jewels” with the fingernails on that babe. At least two inches long, pointy, and painted black, of course.