Vampire in Paradise

  “So few?”

  Sigurd shook his head. “There are undoubtedly some on the boats anchored off the island, and Jasper is expected to arrive tomorrow on his own yacht.”

  “Pfff! It does not surprise me that Satan’s comrade would array himself in splendor, as if the fine trappings of an opulent ship could hide his stink. Jasper ever was a vain man, even when he was an angel.”

  Sigurd did not want to go off on that tangent. Michael liked nothing more than to talk about the fallen angels—Lucifer, Jasper, and the lot—whom Michael had expelled from Heaven. “In any case, according to Zeb, Jasper intends to use only about fifty Lucipires on this mission, his goal being a low-key operation that would garner little attention.”

  “And how is Zebulan doing?”

  “Doing . . . how?”

  “Does he show signs of remorse for his sins?”

  “He has always shown that . . . as long as I have known him, leastways. Are you really going to turn him into a vangel?”

  Michael shrugged. “The Lord’s ways are not for me to fathom.”

  Sigurd wanted to say, Bullshit! That Michael had tremendous influence with the Almighty. But that rude expletive would gain him nothing.

  Time to bring the subject back to his request. “Will you give me the money to help the child?”

  “No.”

  Would it be a sin to punch an archangel? Probably. “That is all, just no?”

  “When wilt thou learn, Viking? That is not the way of our Father. If it was, more people would be winning lotteries, passing exams, getting a new car”—he gave Sigurd a meaningful scowl at that last—“having babies, not having babies, getting miraculous cures, and so on.”

  “Then why say, ‘Ask and you shall receive’?”

  “Because when you pray, God always answers your prayer, but not always in the way you want. He guides you toward what is best for you, in the long run.”

  That was as clear as the water in a Norse fjord on a cloudy day. And Sigurd did not like the sound of that “in the long run.” There might not be time for a “long run” for Marisa’s child.

  “Why dost thou care so much about this child? You have worked with many children losing the battle with cancer. Oh. Could it be that it is the mother you care about?”

  “Of course not,” Sigurd said quickly. Probably too quickly by the looks of Michael’s suspicious eyes.

  “Remember my admonition when your brother Mordr married that human last year. No. More. Wives. For. Vangels.”

  “Hey, I’m not as dumb as you think I am. I got the message loud and clear. I do not even know Marisa all that well, let alone be considering marriage.” He might be considering other things, though. Like that old Viking adage: “Bed her, not wed her.” He looked directly at Michael to see if he’d read his mind. He hadn’t. This time. “And that is your final word? You will not give me the money?”

  “I will not.”

  “I don’t suppose you would toss out a miracle for the little girl? No? I didn’t think so. I know, I know. ‘That is not the way of the Lord.’”

  “I trust that you will find a way,” Michael said, patting him on the thigh.

  “What does that mean?”

  But Michael was already gone.

  Bite me! . . .

  Marisa ended her shift at the Phoenix Restaurant shortly after midnight. She was tired to the bone, having worked since five p.m., but it had been a successful night in terms of tips. A whopping thousand dollars.

  But that thousand dollars, along with any other money she earned this week, would be gravy. She hoped. The money for Izzie’s procedure would come from another source. She hoped.

  It was almost with a warped sense of relief that she had made a decision about Harry Goldman. He had been dining in the restaurant with several bigwigs, including Martin Vanderfelt. When Harry had approached her privately as she came out of the kitchen, she had agreed to a late dinner with him on his yacht the following evening. Very late, because she would have to shower and change after her night shift.

  A woman did what a woman had to do, Marisa had decided. But she was not dumb; there would be terms set before she, as Sigurd had so crudely put it, “spread her thighs” for the man. She felt queasy at the thought, but not at all guilty, even if Sigurd did claim it to be a grievous sin. Izzie’s clock was ticking and Marisa had spent enough time searching for solutions.

  Her only goal at the moment was to return to her bungalow, where she hoped to get five hours of much-needed sleep. One of the best things about being so busy was that she hadn’t had time to dwell on the gory scene that had occurred earlier that night on her patio.

  Vampires? Hah! Didn’t matter that they were angel or demon vampires, they were still vampires.

  She had a sneaky suspicion, though, that this involved porno flicks in some way. In fact, she’d mentioned to Sigurd first time they’d met in that line outside the Purple Plum Hotel that she’d read an article in People magazine about a new porno film series called Sucked! But how would Sigurd the Viking Doctor be involved? He’d denied knowledge of the series then. Still . . .

  Even more alarming was the possibility that he might have slipped some hallucinogenic drug in her food or diet soda that produced that horrific, imaginary scene. But what would be the purpose of that?

  Her head hurt just trying to figure it out.

  Exiting the restaurant into the lobby, she was not surprised to see the man himself leaning against an opposite wall, waiting for her. He must have showered and changed because his hair, which had earlier hung loose with thin braids framing his face, was now pulled back in a long ponytail. He wore an unbuttoned, long-sleeved denim shirt over a white T-shirt tucked into button-fly jeans. Well-worn Nike high-tops on his big feet. No designer duds for this dude. He didn’t need them.

  And, yes, she noticed the button fly, even as she tried to tamp down her irritation with the guy. He couldn’t seem to take a hint that she didn’t want him hanging around. Forget about the protection he promised against some unseen and unbelievable threat. She hadn’t needed protection until she met him.

  “This is getting old,” she said on a sigh, walking toward him.

  When she got closer, his head shot up and he sniffed the air. “What have you done, Marisa?”

  “Huh?” She felt herself blush. He couldn’t possibly know about her date with Harry. Could he? “I have no idea what you mean. And stop sniffing me like I smell or something.”

  “You smell, all right. Like a bloody damn lemon. I could turn you upside down, dunk you in a fountain, and we’d have lemonade for a hundred people.”

  “You sure know how to compliment a girl.”

  “That wasn’t a compliment.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Sarcasm again! Truly, a quarrelsome woman is like a constant dripping,” he told her. “So the Bible says, and I agree.”

  “I thought that verse referred to a nagging wife.”

  “Same thing,” he muttered, and grabbed her by a forearm, steering her across the lobby.

  “Hey, we’re going the wrong way. My bungalow is that way.”

  “We are not going to your bungalow.”

  Uh-oh! “Where are we going?”

  “To my hotel room.”

  “I don’t think so!”

  “I do think so, you willful, irksome wench.”

  “I’m not going to have sex with you.”

  “Mayhap you should wait until you are asked.”

  She felt herself blushing again. Especially since he’d practically frog-marched her into the elevator, where several people were listening intently to their conversation. He pressed the button for the fifth floor and stared straight ahead. His left hand held her right hand, tightly.

  “I could scream,” she said under her breath.

  “Go right ahead. I might even enjoy sticking my tongue down your throat.”

  “That was crude.”

  “I am crude.”

  “I thoug
ht you were a doctor.”

  “Can doctors not be crude?”

  “Don’t you even care that we have an audience?”

  Sigurd didn’t even glance at the two men and one woman pretending not to listen to them. “They are vangels.”

  “They are not!” she said, indignant that she wouldn’t know the difference between abnormal beings, like vampire angels, and other beings at this porno conference, who were also abnormal, in her opinion. The woman was all tarted up with high hooker heels, a huge mass of blonde hair, thanks to extensions, and a skin-tight, low-cut, red dress. And the two men, with thick locks slicked back off their faces and wearing slim black pants and garishly colored polyester shirts unbuttoned to the waist, thick gold chains, resembled blond-haired John Travoltas from Saturday Night Fever. Someone’s idea of what a male porn star would look like, she supposed.

  The three of them smiled at her, displaying slightly elongated incisors, just like Sigurd’s. The woman gave her a little wave.

  Oh my God!

  “Convinced?” Sigurd asked, staring straight ahead. Clearly, he was angry with her.

  Well, she was angry with him, too. “Did you slip angel dust into my drink this afternoon?”

  Someone snickered, but it wasn’t Sigurd.

  “What?” He turned slowly to look at her.

  “That hallucination or whatever it was this afternoon—you know, the woo-woo, I-am-a-fierce-Viking-warrior-fighting-off-scary-demon-monsters . . . Well, I’m thinking you must have given me some kind of drug, like angel dust. Since you claim to be an angel of some kind, it makes perfect sense—”

  “Woo-woo?” he asked her with an incredulous expression. “Do not be a lackwit.”

  “Along with being a willful, quarrelsome wench?”

  “You said it!”

  The elevator pinged and the doors opened on the fifth floor.

  Sigurd said something to the other three in some foreign language and they nodded before heading down the hallway to the right while Sigurd pulled her in the other direction.

  “What language was that?” An irrelevant question, but she was so tired she wouldn’t know relevant from irrelevant.

  “Old Norse.”

  “Of course it was.”

  “Your sarcasm is going to cause your death if you are not careful.”

  “Death by Viking?”

  “You said it!” he repeated again. Tugging a key card out of his jeans’ pocket, he inserted it into the door, opening it, one-handed. She had trouble making the darn things work with two hands.

  Sigurd dropped his death grip on her hand and urged her ahead of him. The door locked ominously behind her, but, for some reason, she wasn’t afraid. As long as she didn’t accept any drink or food, she should be okay.

  Sigurd’s hotel room was nice, but not overly large or luxurious, as some of the rooms or suites probably were. A small sitting room held a desk, love seat, and chair facing a flat-screen TV on the wall. The bedroom, seen through a wide archway, had a king-size bed and two bedside tables, along with another flat-screen TV above a triple dresser. Lamps provided soft lighting in both the sitting room and the bedroom.

  Sigurd must be a neat freak because there wasn’t an item of clothing lying about, or a dirty glass, or even loose change on an end table. In fact, through the open closet door to her immediate right in the little hallway inside the door, she could see his clothing hung neatly on hangers, each equally distant apart, including what appeared to be a full-length cloak.

  She touched the cloak and remarked, “Planning on going to a masquerade ball as Zorro while you’re here? Or, I know, you really are trying out for a part in that vampire movie series Sucked!”

  He muttered something.

  “Did you actually say that you would like to suck me?”

  “No,” he said, a grin twitching at his lips, “I said, ‘I’ll give you sucked.’ In other words, I intend to do just that.”

  Moving forward into the other room, she sank down onto the luggage bench at the bottom edge of the bed and sighed. “Listen, I’m exhausted. I need to get some sleep. Say what you have to say so I can go home.”

  “The time for saying is over. Now is the time for doing.” Turning away from her, he took the cell phone off his belt clip, placed it on the dresser, and pressed a button for the voice mail. Belatedly, he realized it was on the speakerphone and he had an audience. He seemed to consider turning it off, then shrugged, as if it didn’t matter if she overheard.

  “Hey, Sig. Vikar here. Harek and Cnut should arrive tomorrow, along with a dozen more vangels to help you out. I understand that Jasper intends to use only fifty of his Lucies on this mission. The bastard is getting wiser in his old age, unfortunately for us. Anyhow, even fifty kills for us would be a good haul.”

  “Aren’t you afraid to let me hear your secrets? Then you might have to kill me? Ha, ha, ha,” Marisa said.

  “I’m considering it. Ha, ha, ha.”

  “They should arrive about dawn,” the man named Vikar continued on the voice mail. “There’s a supply boat anchored offshore that they’ll use as a control center.”

  Even as he listened, Sigurd took off his denim shirt and folded it over the back of the chair, thus revealing a back shoulder holster. He unbuckled the straps and placed both the holster and pistol carefully on the dresser.

  “Cnut and his men will target Jasper’s yacht,” the voice mail continued. “Harek is concerned about that ship of youthlings that is rumored to be on its way. Let him handle that, and you can focus on the island.”

  “Ship of youthlings? Huh? What’s a youthling?” Marisa asked.

  Sigurd, still seething with anger at her—Big deal!—ignored her question and lifted the hem of his right and left pant legs, withdrawing throwing stars that had been placed somehow inside the athletic shoes. These, too, he put carefully on the dresser. Or maybe they’d been in some kind of ankle sheaths.

  “And who is Vikar? And Harek and Cnut?”

  “My brothers. Shh.”

  “Mike said I’m not to give you any money, if you ask,” the Vikar person said with amusement in his voice.

  “Pfff! As if I would ask you. Every cent you earn goes into that bloody castle,” Sigurd muttered to no one in particular, since the person on the other end of the voice mail couldn’t hear him.

  “Why do you need seventy thousand dollars anyhow, bro?”

  Marisa’s lolling head shot up. Had he asked someone for money, for me? And been denied? Well, that put the last nail in the coffin of her upcoming “deal” with Harry.

  Yanking his T-shirt from the waistband of jeans, Sigurd crossed his arms and drew it up and over his head. From some hidden pocket or slit on the right leg, he removed a long knife, similar to the one he’d used this afternoon in that “imaginary” fight with a demon vampire. It joined the other weapons.

  “Call me when you get a chance,” the Vikar person was concluding. “Alex was talking to Armod a bit ago and now she’s humming the Wedding March. Any idea what that’s about?” The sound of a chuckle could be heard clearly over the speaker. “Bye.”

  Sigurd made a snorting sound of disgust.

  “Who’s getting married?”

  “No one. ’Tis just an example of warped vangel humor.”

  She didn’t see what was funny about someone getting married. But then she’d been so disconcerted by the speaker on the phone and the array of weapons that Sigurd was unloading that she belatedly realized Sigurd was down to bare feet and bare chest, and was about to unbutton his jeans.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s with the striptease?”

  “No teasing,” he said, leaving the top button undone, which revealed his belly button and a light pelt of hair pointing down, down, down, toward low-riding briefs. Not to mention his wide shoulders and narrow waist and ridged abdomen.

  Holy happy trails!

  He stared at her then with eyes that were now more silver than blue. The same way they’d gotten when he’d killed
that monster in the mirage today, the same way they’d looked when he’d kissed her on Harry’s yacht.

  It must be a sign of high emotion.

  Or arousal.

  Oh boy!

  “If not a striptease, then what?”

  “Time to get down to work. Vangel work.”

  “What kind of work requires you to be nude?”

  He arched one eyebrow, looking meaningfully at his jeans.

  “Half nude,” she corrected.

  “Seduction.”

  Chapter 13

  To seduce or to be seduced? That is the question . . .

  “Much as I like those red, swive-me-silly shoes, and much as I picture them in my dreams, kick them off,” he suggested. “I would hate to imagine you wearing them in Hell, or even worse, in Horror.”

  Mayhap later you can model them for me, wearing naught else but the skin God gave you.

  If someone doesn’t interfere with my plans.

  Not that I have any specific plans, someone.

  I am just playing this game by ear . . . or is that by cock?

  I did not just say . . . think . . . that!

  What was her reaction to his demand . . . uh, request that she remove her shoes, the start of her own striptease?

  She yawned. The wench actually yawned whilst he stood before her “half nude.” Well, she wouldn’t be yawning for long.

  “You dream of me?” she asked, homing in on the least relevant part of what he’d said.

  Instead of chastising her for minimizing the importance of Hell or Horror, he thought, Only every night since I met you. But answered with a lie, “No. That was a jest.”

  “I thought you never jested . . . uh, joked.”

  I didn’t. I don’t. “It is a defense weapon I am perfecting since making your acquaintance because . . .”

  “. . . . because . . . ?”

  “Because, you persistent wench, if I do not laugh, I will have to kill you.”

  “Ha, ha, ha. I thought you were going to say that if you didn’t laugh, you would cry.”

  “That, too.” But not because of some bloody joke. Because I am so horny, I am no doubt growing antlers. “Take off the damn shoes,” he snapped, then tamped his temper down and offered with consideration, which was not usually one of his strong points, “You will be more comfortable.”