Kiss of Temptation

  Hanging from one of the rafters was Serk.

  His friend had hanged himself.

  What have I done? What have I done? She was not worth it, my friend. Truly, she was not. Oh, what have I done?

  Ivak lowered the body to the floor and did not need to put a fingertip to Serk’s neck to know that he had already passed to Valhalla. With tears burning his eyes, he stood, about to call for the stable master in an adjoining shed when he heard a noise behind him. Turning, he saw the young Irish blacksmith, husband of the red-haired maid he’d bedded, running toward him with a raised pitchfork. Vadim and his crew were supposed to depart at first light. The man must have escaped his restraints.

  Before Ivak had a chance to raise an alarm or fight for himself, the man pierced his chest with the long tines of the pitchfork. Unfortunately, he used the special implement with metal tines that Ivak had purchased this past summer on a whim in the open markets of Miklagard, also known as Byzantium. Why had he not been satisfied with the usual wooden pitchforks for his fine stable? So forceful had the man’s surge toward him been that he pinned Ivak into the wall.

  “You devil!” the man yelled, tears streaming down his face. “You bloody damn devil! May you rot in Hell!”

  He was given a choice: Hell or something like Hell . . .

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk!”

  Ivak heard the voice through his pain-hazed brain. I thought I was dead. I must be dead. Opening his heavy lids, he glanced downward, beyond the sharp tines that still pinned him to the wall, to see his life’s blood pooling at his feet. Definitely dead. Raising his head, he saw that Serk still lay in the rushes where he’d lowered him. Apparently, neither he nor Serk had been discovered yet. Well, it would be too late for either of them now.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk!” he heard again, and this time realized that the voice came from his right side. “It is never too late, Viking.”

  If Ivak hadn’t been dead, and if he hadn’t been immobilized by a pitchfork through his heart, he would have fallen over with shock. Standing there, big as he pleased . . . and he was big, all right . . . was an angel. A big, black-haired man with widespread, snow-white wings and piercing blue eyes.

  Ivak knew what angels were since he practiced both the ancient Norse religion and the Christian one, an expedience many Norsemen adopted. Apparently, he would not be off to Valhalla today with its myriad golden shields and virgin Valkyries. “Am I going to Heaven?” he asked the frowning angel.

  The angel made a snorting sound of disbelief at his question. “Hardly!”

  “Hell, then?” he inquired tentatively.

  “Nay, but thou may wish it so.”

  Enough of this nonsense. Dead was dead. “Who are you?” Ivak demanded. “And how about pulling out this pitchfork?”

  “Michael,” the angel said, then eyeing the pitchfork, added, “Thou art certain I should do that?”

  Before Ivak had a chance to reconsider, the angel . . . Michael . . . yanked it out, causing excruciating pain to envelop Ivak as he fell to the rush-covered floor, facefirst. If he were not in such screaming agony, he would have been impressed at the strength of the angel to have removed, all in one smooth pull, the tines that had not only skewered his body but had been imbedded in the wooden wall behind him, as well. Like one of Ivak’s muscle-honed warriors who hefted heavy broadswords with ease, this angel was.

  He realized in that instant whose presence he was in. Staggering to his feet, he panted out, “Would that be Michael the Archangel? The warrior angel?”

  The angel nodded his head in acknowledgment.

  “Am I dead?”

  “As a door hinge.”

  “Is this what happens when everyone dies? An angel shows up? You show up?”

  “No.”

  “I’m someone special? I get special attention?”

  “Thee could say that.”

  Ivak didn’t like the sound of that. “Stop speaking in riddles. And enough with the thees and thous!”

  The angel shrugged. “Thou art in no position to issue orders, Viking.”

  He sighed deeply and tried for patience, which had to be strange. A dead person trying to be patient. “What happens now?”

  “That depends on you.”

  More riddles!

  “You are a grave sinner, Ivak Sigurdsson. Not just you. Your six brothers are equally guilty. Each of you has committed one of the Seven Deadly Sins in a most grievous fashion.”

  “My brothers? Are they dead, too?”

  “Some are. The others soon will be.”

  Ivak was confused. “Which horrible sin is it that I have committed?”

  “Lust.”

  “Lust is a sin?” He laughed.

  The angel continued to glare at him. No sense of humor at all.

  Ivak laughed again.

  But not for long.

  The angel raised his hand and pointed a finger at him, causing him to be slammed against the wall and pinned there, but this time there was no pitchfork involved. Just some invisible bonds. “Sinner, repent!” Michael demanded in a steely voice, “lest I send you straight to Lucifer to become one of his minions. You will like his pitchfork even less than the mortal one that impaled you.”

  “I repent, I repent,” he said, though he still didn’t see how lust could be such a big sin.

  “You do not see how lust can be sinful?” Michael could obviously read his mind. The angel gaped at him for a moment before exclaiming, “Vikings! Lackwits, one and all!” With those words, the angel waved a hand in front of Ivak’s face, creating a cloudy screen in which he began to see his life unfolding before him, rather the lust events in his life.

  It didn’t take Ivak long to realize that not all the girls and women had been as eager to spread their thighs for him as he’d always thought, but most of them had. What surprised him was the number of husbands or betrothed who’d suffered at his hands . . . rather his cock . . . for his having defiled their loved ones. Serk hadn’t been the only one. And babes! Who knew he’d bred so many out-of-wedlock children . . . and how many of them lived in poverty! He would have cared for any of his whelps brought to his keep, but these were in far countries.

  And then there was this past night’s events . . . the thrall he’d taken to his bed furs knowing she was wed. Worst of all, his betrayal of his best friend.

  He shook his head with dismay as shame overcame him. Raising his eyes to the angel, he asked, “What can I do to make amends?”

  Michael smiled, and it was not a nice smile. “I thought you would never ask, Viking. From this day forth, you will be a vangel. A Viking vampire angel. One of God’s warriors in the fight against Satan’s vampire demons, Lucipires by name.”

  Ivak had no idea what Michael had just said. What was a vampire?

  But then, it didn’t matter because his pain-ridden body became even more pain-ridden. Even bone in his body seemed to be breaking and reforming, even his jaw and teeth, after which he hurtled through the air, outside his keep, far up into the sky. Then he lost consciousness.

  When he awakened, he found himself in another keep of sorts. But it was made of stone, not wood, as Thorstead was. And the weather here was almost unbearably warm, not the frigid cold of the Norselands.

  The sign over the entryway read: “Angola Prison.”

  But then he was whooshed through time and space to his first assignment. Prison would have been better.

  One

  Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 2013

  When all else fails . . .

  “Petition denied!”

  Gabrielle Sonnier pressed her lips together to avoid saying something she might later regret. Tucking her legal briefs into a massive leather shoulder bag, she nodded at the parole board members, when what she’d like to do was give them the finger. Right in their holier-than-thou hypocritical faces. With a defiant lift to her chin, she walked stoically out of the hearing room. You could have heard a pin drop behind her.

  Putting one foot in front of the other, she walk
ed down the hallway. Click, click, click, her high heels marked her path on the worn hardwood of the corridor until she reached the ladies’ room, which was thankfully empty. Rushing into one of the far stalls, she dropped her bag to the floor and began to retch, violently. Since she hadn’t eaten breakfast before leaving New Orleans this morning just after dawn, not much came up. Still, the urge to upheave went on and on until her throat felt raw with bile and her stomach cramped.

  Finally, she sat down on the toilet seat and wept, a weakness she rarely allowed herself. Certainly, never in public. Being vulnerable was not allowed, not when fighting the criminal justice system in Louisiana. The vultures had been circling for years. Give them a chance and they’d peck the resistance out of her.

  She’d been so sure that this hearing would be different. With good reason. She’d been promised a different outcome. Be patient, those on the other side had advised her. Lie low. Don’t ruffle any feathers. Hah! Look where being a good girl had got her. She should have plucked a few damn feathers and to hell with them all!

  How am I ever going to tell Leroy? He’ll be devastated. Again. Not that he would show it. No, her brother was more expert than she was at putting on a brave front. She feared the pain would fester in her brother until it erupted in rage, as it did with so many inmates whose hopes were dashed over and over.

  With a long sigh, she straightened and swiped at her damp eyes with a wad of toilet paper. Leaving the cubicle, she hefted her leather bag up onto the counter and proceeded to transform her appearance for her trip to Angola, where she would give her brother the news. No way was she walking into that pen of five thousand–plus men wearing a short, fitted black pin-striped suit with a silk blouse that unbuttoned just enough to show off a lace camisole underneath. And definitely no sheer hose and high heels. Once, years ago, when she hadn’t been so careful with her attire, she’d seen an inmate in a hallway pull out his wiener—that’s what her grandma Sonnier had always called it—and pump energetically as he watched her walk to Warden Pierce Benton’s office. And it wouldn’t have mattered if she was stump ugly. Being female was enough to whet the deprived appetites of long-incarcerated men.

  The local press would want to interview her about the board’s decision. But not today. Not when her emotions were so close to the surface.

  She used a paper towel and squirt soap to wash off all her makeup before combing her hair tightly off her face and into a knot at her nape that she secured with two tortoiseshell combs. The short-sleeved, white blouse she left on, but buttoned up to the neck, over which she put a red, hip-length, cardigan-style sweater vest, which was too hot for this late August heat, but a necessity, to her mind, to camouflage her “assets,” such as they were. Next, she removed her thigh-high hose and replaced her short suit skirt with a pair of loose jeans. Ratty athletic shoes completed the outfit.

  She was about to leave the ladies’ room when the door opened and she almost ran into Dolly Landeaux, the owner of a wholesale Creole foods business out of Lafayette and a parole board member for the past dozen years. Scanning Gabrielle’s appearance, the big woman blocked her exit with her wide hips—Dolly obviously taste-tests all her products, Gabrielle noted snidely—and said, “Don’t be disheartened, sweetie.”

  You two-faced bitch! “Disheartened? How about crushed?”

  “You can always try again.”

  “Like I have for the past six years?” Gabrielle couldn’t stop herself from asking. “Like Leroy did for six years before that, on his own?”

  “It was close this time.”

  That’s what you said last time, Dolly. Have you been playing me? Is this all a game for you? That’s what she thought, but making an enemy of people in power wouldn’t help Leroy’s cause, Gabrielle decided, almost gagging as she said, “Well, thanks for all your help.”

  Dolly stepped aside to let Gabrielle pass, but then she said, “Tell that brother of yours that he needs to keep his mouth shut if he ever wants to be free.”

  Gabrielle bristled, but she knew what Dolly referred to. Her brother was ruthless, and highly effective, in his criticism of prison officials and politicians in Louisiana. The news media loved him and were always willing to give him an outlet for his diatribes. She kept telling him to save his bombs for after he was released, but Leroy was a rage-filled man whose passion for justice was rarely tempered with diplomacy.

  Odd that she referred to him as a man. For so long she’d thought of him as the sixteen-year-old boy who’d been tried and convicted as an adult for murdering their abusive bastard of a father fifteen years ago. He would have been out by now, but a boy that age was considered fair game in the prison system and he’d fought against two particularly vicious convicts who wanted him for a “love slave.” One of them ended up dead, and the other claimed that Leroy had been the perp with a makeshift shiv or shank. As a result, Leroy was now serving a life sentence. Didn’t matter that the convict in question had been a worthless, evil man, or that there was a question as to whether the other convict had been the one who did the crime in a fight over Leroy. In a prison like Angola, where ninety percent of the five thousand inmates would die there, they had nothing to lose.

  Leroy was the reason Gabrielle became a lawyer who worked for Second Chances, a Southern version of the Innocence Project. She’d been only thirteen when Leroy had stabbed their father with a kitchen knife, repeatedly, after his usual Friday night beating of their mother and any of the kids, meaning her or Leroy, when they weren’t quick enough to run and hide.

  Dolly stood in the open doorway watching Gabrielle walk away. The middle-aged lady was no dummy. She knew how Gabrielle felt about her. So it was a surprise when she called out to Gabrielle, “There’s someone who might be able to help you.”

  Gabrielle wanted to keep walking, but she owed Leroy every chance he could get. She paused and glanced back over her shoulder.

  “Have you ever heard of Louise Rivard? Tante Lulu, they call her down on the bayou.”

  “The traiteur?” Gabrielle frowned, having no clue how a folk healer would be able to help her, and a wacky one at that, if rumors were true.

  Dolly nodded, the compassionate expression on her face appearing to be genuine. “Tante Lulu knows people. She accomplishes things no one else can.” She laughed and added, “Mostly due to her devotion to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases.”

  She and Leroy had long ago lost any belief in a Higher Power. But hopeless, they were. With a nod of thanks, the most she was willing to concede to the old bat, she said, “What have we got to lose?”

  Even Vikings get the blues . . .

  If prison was a microcosm of regular society, as penal authorities purported it to be, then Ivak was living in a village of idiots. And the chief idiot, Warden Pierce Benton, had just made the most outrageous demand of him.

  “You want me to put together a talent show on the last night of the rodeo? Why me?”

  Twice a year, Angola put on a series of prison rodeos that were open to the public. A more ludicrous, often cruel, event Ivak had never witnessed, except in the days of old Rome when they forced inexperienced slaves to go out into the Colosseum as gladiators.

  “Why not you?” Benton inquired in a heavy Southern drawl as he rolled an unlit cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, the whole time staring at him from behind his desk where everyone knew his swivel chair was elevated to give him extra height. The warden, who wore his Christianity on his sleeve, was not a fan of Ivak’s less-than-deferential attitude, not to mention his unconventional manner of dress . . . in particular, combining a clerical collar with unclergyman-like attire. But then, Ivak was not a fan of the stocky, gray-haired man who was more autocratic than some kings Ivak had known over the years. King Bork the Boar came to mind, for one. When Benton smiled, as he did now, with that big space between his front teeth, he resembled a shorter, heavier, older David Letterman, but the smile was deceptive. Behind the amiability was a ruthless autocrat.

  No one
was exactly sure what or who Ivak was here at the prison. Not an inmate. Nor a clergyman, precisely, although there were chaplains and religious folks aplenty assigned to all the cellblocks and camps. Oh, he had credentials, thanks to St. Michael and his secret sources, proclaiming him a former inmate chaplain from some small European country, now a nondenominational “spiritual adviser” at Angola, but he didn’t fit anyone’s idea of a church minister.

  Ivak knew better than most the power Benton wielded in this prison. One word from him made the difference between a man being made a trusty with a limited amount of freedom or confinement to a six-by-nine cell for life. One word from him and Ivak’s “job” would be toast.

  “What do you think I am . . . some kind of Simon Cowell?”

  “What a great idea! Y’all can hold an American Idol–type competition. Maybe you’ll discover a Ruben Studdard or Scotty McCreery right here at Angola.” Benton smiled at him, but the humor never made it to his beady eyes. “See, I knew you’d be the man for the job.”

  “Simon Cowell is no longer with Idol. He moved on to X Factor,” he informed the warden. Or some other friggin’ show. It’s not as if I follow that crap.

  “Even better.”

  The Angola rodeos were held in the spring and the fall. That meant in a little over a month—the rodeo would start and continue each Sunday in October—the warden was expecting Ivak to have a talent show to put on.

  Ivak did a mental crossing of his eyes. He could just see it now. If he rejected Big Tony Fasano in the tryouts, the convicted Dixie Mafia hit man would cut off his balls while he was sleeping . . . and eat them. Or those thugs in Camp J where the prison troublemakers were housed . . . if they tried to audition as a group and Ivak wasn’t impressed, he would find himself someone’s girlfriend by morning. Or they could try. Gang rape was not unheard of in this testosterone-oozing jungle, and since most of the inmates would never leave, they didn’t fear the consequences. Rape didn’t carry a death penalty. Besides that, death would be welcome to many of the hardened souls.