Kiss of Temptation

  “This is about me trying to get through to Leroy Sonnier, isn’t it?”

  Sonnier was a model inmate who nevertheless managed to annoy just about everyone in authority at the prison with his attitude. For some reason, maybe because Ivak saw a bit of himself in the man, this particular inmate had become a challenge for Ivak to save.

  Benton put a hand over his heart and made a ridiculous moue of innocence around his cigar, as if wounded that Ivak would accuse him of such tactics. “A talent show will bring more people to the rodeo.” He put up a halting hand when Ivak was about to speak. “Oh, I know very well how y’all feel about the rodeo, Mistah Sigurdsson. Dangerous, demeaning, yada, yada, yada. But the more money the rodeo brings in, the more money that can be allocated for prisoner activities. Like your religious mentoring program.”

  That was a load of bull, and they both knew it. Religious mentoring cost almost nothing. But the warden could single-handedly pull the plug on any of the convict programs without any justification.

  “I’ll agree to do it, but my way.”

  Benton raised his brows. “We’ll see.”

  We’ll see, all right. I’m a vampire, my good man. How would you like to lose a bucket of blood in a dark corridor one of these nights? Well, actually, he was a vampire angel, and the angel in him curbed his indiscriminate feeding, but he could do it. Above all, Ivak was a Viking, and the Norseman in him hated giving in to bullies like Benton. “I need to go home for a few days,” he said, suddenly overcome by the oppressive atmosphere in the prison, but especially by the prison warden’s presence. “I’ll get started on your frickin’ talent show when I get back.”

  Benton arched his eyes with displeasure at his swearword. If he only knew! Vangels never used the Lord’s name as an expletive, but every other crude swearword was fair game. “Where exactly is home?”

  This was not the first time the warden had asked him that question, which he’d managed to evade so far.

  “Did I say home? I meant my fishing camp down the bayou. I don’t really have a home.” Next I’ll have to buy myself a fishing camp just to prove my lie. And I like fishing even less than I like swamps. Give me a nice five-star hotel in the Caribbean any day. Cool drinks topped with tiny umbrellas and bikini-clad women with no tops.

  That’s why you’re assigned to a prison, lackwit, he thought he heard a voice in his head say.

  And actually it wasn’t quite true that he didn’t have a home. He and his six brothers, the VIK, considered the run-down castle in Transylvania, Pennsylvania, their headquarters, for now. That’s where he teletransported himself as soon as he was outside the prison gates.

  Landing in the back courtyard of the castle, he stomped into the kitchen where the cook, Lizzie Borden, was hacking apart a rack of ribs with a meat cleaver. She didn’t even look up as he passed her. She must be in a mood, too. Last he’d heard, she went on strike over the vangels’ obsessive appetite for pasta. There was usually a minimum of thirty vangels in residence at any one time in the twenty-five-bedroom castle that had been built by an eccentric lumber baron a century ago.

  Walking over to the commercial-size fridge, he took out a container of Fake-O, the vangels’ makeshift substitute for real blood, and two bottles of beer. He’d just sat down at the counter when his brother Vikar walked in and raised his eyebrows at his presence. Vikar was in charge of renovating this huge pile of stone into a livable residence. Good thing vangels didn’t age. Vikar would probably still be working on the project fifty years from now, or a hundred.

  “To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?” Vikar took out a bottle of dark ale for himself. If there was anything Vikings appreciated about modern times it was a good beer.

  “I’m depressed.”

  Vikar sat down on a tall stool next to Ivak. “Vikings don’t get depressed. We go out and conquer a country, or at the least go a-Viking when an ill-temper comes over us.”

  Miss Borden mumbled something that sounded like, “Or eat a pigload of ravioli.”

  “Not having a longship, and being landlocked in a prison, I’m hardly in a position to go off anywhere. The best I could manage there is a small canoe-like boat they call a pee-row on a trip down the alligator-infested bayous. A-Viking, it would not be.” He hated the whiny tone in his own voice. When had he turned into a whiner?

  “Shh!” Vikar put a fingertip to his lips. “You don’t want Mike to hear you objecting to an assignment.”

  Mike was the rude name they’d given St. Michael. And, yes, it was unwise to protest a mission they’d been given by their celestial mentor. They would find themselves given worse. One time his brother Trond had complained about his mission to some misbegotten jungle and found himself slingshotted to ancient Rome where he was a gladiator fighting lions. A lesson learned for all of them: The more you complained, the worse the next job and the longer you lived as a vangel. Of course, the same could be said of sin.

  “I know what this is about,” Vikar said. “Sex.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You asking a question like that? The king of sex?”

  “Not for a long time. Truth to tell, brother, I’ve been celibate for more than a hundred years.” Ivak could tell that Vikar was astounded. He was, too. His brothers had seen him around women during that time, of course. He’d no doubt been touching them, or flirting. Mayhap even venturing a kiss on occasion, but what his brothers hadn’t known was, that was all. No. Sex. “I’ve been trying to be good in hopes that Mike will give me a ‘Get Out of Jail’ card.”

  Vikar grinned.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “Oh, I think it’s very funny. ‘The Sexiest Man Alive . . . Ever.’ And he has blue balls? They ought to put you on a magazine cover.”

  “Easy for you to mock me now that you are wed and have sex on tap.”

  “I dare you to say that in front of Alex.” Alex was Vikar’s wife, short for Alexandra.

  “What a wench-whipped man you have become!”

  “Are you referring to Alex as a wench? She will cut off your blue balls.”

  “Are you sure you’re still a Viking?” Ivak said, basking in the pleasantness of the sunny kitchen. How different it was from the bleak place he called home these days! Even the sun failed to reach many of Angola’s dismal corners. It smelled better here, too. Ivak inhaled deeply to appreciate the pleasant aroma of something baking in the oven, something chocolate, and even the bowl of apples and oranges in front of him provided their own scents.

  “Have a care, Ivak. I have lopped off the heads of men for lesser insults.”

  “Whatever!” He took a long draw on his bottle of beer, then added, “Don’t you just love that word? Can you imagine how handy such a saying would have been in our time? When King Olaf went on and on about one misdeed after another that we Sigurdsson brothers committed, we could say as one, ‘Whatever!’ Or better yet, when Mike calls us on the carpet . . . uh, cloud . . . for one teeny-tiny sin or another, we could say, ‘Whatever!’ ”

  “You really are going off the deep end, aren’t you?”

  “Lack of sex does that to a man, makes his sap thicken and clog up his veins.”

  “Is that a scientific fact?”

  “It could be.”

  They grinned at each other.

  “Where are Alex and the bratlings?” he asked. Vangels were unable to breed or bear children, but Vikar and his wife had “adopted” twin toddlers last year, a first in the thousand-plus-year history of the VIK and vangeldom. But then Vikar’s being permitted to marry a living soul was a first for vangels, too.

  “They went to an Amish market with Armod and Svein. You’ll stay until they come back, won’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “Back to sex—” Vikar said.

  Ivak snorted his opinion.

  “Really, Ivak, I sympathize with you. I don’t imagine there are many opportunities for sex . . . I mean, male/female sex . . . in a prison of five thousand men.”

&
nbsp; “You’d be surprised. There are prison guards, lawyers, Bible-thumping do-gooders who sometimes take do-gooding to a new level. Plus, I go outside the prison on occasion.”

  “There are women in an all-male prison?”

  “Believe me, there are women everywhere.”

  “And you’ve managed to resist the temptation. I’m impressed.”

  “I am, too. I keep thinking that if I can hold out just a little bit longer, Mike will take pity on me.”

  “Are you demented?” Vikar shook his head at Ivak, as if he were a hopeless case. “Methinks you need to find yourself a life mate and hope, and pray, that Mike will let you have her.”

  “That is the last thing I want or need. One woman, forever! Pfff!” Ever since Vikar . . . and his brother Trond, too, for that matter . . . had married, they thought there was a soul mate just waiting to catch each and every one of the VIK. As if that was a happenstance Ivak should be anticipating with great glee! It was sickening, really, the way Vikar and Trond and their mates constantly touched and kissed and cooed at each other.

  Ivak shivered with distaste.

  “Is the alternative any better? No woman?”

  “I refuse to believe that I will be forced to go on this way much longer. A man of my appetites should be able to ‘eat’ once in a while, or lots in a while.” He blinked his lashes with mock innocence at his brother.

  Vikar laughed. “I cannot wait to meet the woman who will bring you to your knees.”

  “The only reason I would be on my knees before a woman is because I am about to perform a sexual act on her person.”

  Vikar laughed some more. “You’ll see.”

  “You seem to forget how angry Mike was after Trond got hooked up with Nicole. He swore that was the end of vangel/mortal relationships.”

  A shrug was Vikar’s only response.

  “Actually, the reason I came here is to warn you that there might be Lucies in the vicinity of Angola.” Lucies was the nickname for Lucipires, Lucifer’s vampire demons. They fed on humans in a state of mortal sin, or fanged a sin taint into those tempted to some great sin. “Their scent is everywhere around the prison perimeter. I’m not sure they’ve actually infiltrated the complex yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

  “Well, you know where they’re coming from, if they’re there,” Vikar said, a note of disgust in his voice.

  “Dominique,” they both said at the same time.

  The VIK had recently become aware of Dominique Fontaine’s presence in New Orleans where she’d opened a portion of her mansion, Anguish, as a restaurant. Dominique was a powerful haakai demon vampire, one of the top Lucipire Command Council, and a more repulsive woman there never was, especially with her passion for snakes.

  “I hadn’t heard about her working her evil wiles throughout Louisiana, though,” Vikar remarked. “Rather like a dog soiling its own bed.”

  “We’ll soon find out if it’s her minions, or some others.”

  “As for Lucies possibly infiltrating Angola, you have to admit there’s a great body of potential victims there. I’m surprised they haven’t thought of it before. You’ve said yourself that many of the inmates are irredeemable.”

  “Yes, but I’ve managed to ‘save’ several dozen these past few years. It’s just that for every criminal I save, two others equally in need pop up.”

  “So, what can we do to help with this new threat?”

  “I’ll need at least a dozen, maybe even two dozen, vangels incarcerated there, or put on the prison staff, to help me.”

  “Jarls, karls, ceorls, thralls?” Vikar asked, referring to the various social classes of vangels.

  “Some of each.”

  “Done,” Vikar said.

  “And I need a quick lesson in talent scouting.”

  “Huh?”

  When he finished explaining, Vikar was bent over with laughter. Even Miss Borden snickered.

  “It’s not that funny,” Ivak contended.

  “Ivak! Your idea of talent is a stripper singing ‘Let Me Entertain You’ while she hangs from a pole.”

  “Your point?”

  Ironically, once he was back at Angola and received a list of potential talent show participants, the first song to be sung by Leo Lister in his cross-dressing role as Linda Lister was “Let Me Entertain You.”

  Two

  It was a hell of a party . . .

  Jasper, king of all the Lucipires, one of the fallen angels banished from Heaven ages ago along with his boss, Lucifer, was celebrating in Horror, the name he’d given to his palace hideaway in the coldest northern regions of Norway.

  They had much to celebrate. Despite all the roadblocks posed by those blasted VIK, Jasper had harvested more than five hundred lost souls this year, thanks to an increasingly decadent world. Thank you, Internet. Superhighway to Sin. And that was just the ones being “turned” into Lucipires. Satan was doing a booming business the regular way . . . bad people dying and riding the quick chute to his fiery pits.

  Attending this special party of Jasper’s were dozens of haakai demon vampires, including a few haakai lords. Haakais were the upper social strata of demons, just below Seraphims, as Jasper had once been . . . a Seraphim angel, that is. Lucifer had just borrowed the name for the elite demons as well, more to irritate their most hated enemy, Michael the Archangel, than anything else. It was Michael who’d booted them out of Heaven.

  Also attending the party were mungs, many of them seven or more feet tall, oozing a poisonous mung or slime from every pore of their red, scaly skin, though most in attendance today were in humanoid forms, but with fangs fully extended. It was easier to dance and move about without a tail obstructing pathways or slipping on the slimy floors. Besides the haakai and mungs, imps and hordlings danced their little hearts away as well, but what a troublesome lot! These foot soldiers of Satan required constant monitoring, lest they created chaos.

  Yes, life was good, Jasper thought as he snake-danced his way through the crowd. An imp band was playing “La Vida Loca,” and whoo-boy, some of those female backup singers knew how to shake their devilish assets.

  Beverages flourished in many formats for those working up a thirst. In an ice sculpture fountain, a well-endowed gargoyle was pissing out fresh blood. At the bar, an array of mixed drinks was offered: Devil’s Delight, Demon Semen, Hell, Yeah!, Hot Damn Demon Dew, Hemorrhage, Fangs for the Memories. And his favorite, which featured a large amount of Tabasco mixed in with the blood and vodka: Fire in the Devil’s Hole! Of course, there were also bloody Jell-O shots. And Bloody Marys on tap with blood substituting for tomato juice. Some hordlings were gathered around a funnel engaged in a boisterous, wild game of Blood Bong.

  The bandleader yelled out: “Anyone in the mood for country?” The band morphed into “The Devil Came Down to Georgia,” and the leader added, “C’mon now. Time to line dance, everyone. Hey, you imps over there. Behave yourselves. That’s not how we form a line.”

  Line dancing. Jasper grimaced with distaste. That was his cue to move on to the game room, where one group was playing Pin the Tail on the Newbie’s Ass. Screaming, newly turned, naked, no-longer-humans were tied to randomly placed posts while blindfolded Lucipires tried to pin their new tails on them. Great fun!

  Another group was playing darts. Not with bull’s-eye targets, but instead dead humans who were being difficult in resisting their “turning.” They, too, were naked, but spread-eagled against the wall. Points were given for eyes, mouth, heart, nipples, and genitals. Jasper was a champion dart player, if he did say so himself.

  Thunk, thunk, thunk went the darts. Scream, scream, scream went the targets. The sound of human suffering was music to an aged demon’s ears.

  Jasper preened as he gazed about at his subjects. “It’s great to be me,” he murmured with shameless pride. He was about to join in a game of eyeball billiards when he noticed a new arrival coming toward him. What was she doing here?

  “Dominique! What a wonderful surprise!?
?? What are you up to now, bitch!

  Jasper air kissed each of the woman’s cheeks. Any closer and he would be kissing the huge snake wrapped around the haakai’s neck like a boa. In fact, it was a boa . . . a boa constrictor.

  Dominique Fontaine was one of his seven high commanders. She operated out of a New Orleans mansion named Anguish that housed a five-star restaurant on the first floor and torture chambers that would impress the Marquis de Sade on the upper floors. The Creole, six feet tall and gorgeous by human standards—and she was in human form at the moment with café au lait skin, rather than the usual red scales—had no compunction about kissing him and taking it one step further, snaking her Gene Simmons–style tongue into his mouth, practically choking him. Mutual loathing was the name of the game between the two of them, always had been. She delighted in goading him.

  “To what do I owe this surprise?” he asked, taking her by the elbow and leading her away from the party and down the long gallery displaying the life-size killing jars he used to bring newly dead humans to stasis. Inside the soundproof cylinders, the struggling, naked humans appeared to be screaming, but they would eventually calm down and accept their fate. Next, their bodies would be pinned to display boards with three-foot pins through their hearts. Like butterflies, they were. His special hobby, so to speak. If the humans didn’t accept becoming Lucipires by then, they would be moved to the torture chambers in the dungeons below. He wasn’t about to take Dominique down there, or he’d never get rid of her. She loved to watch and dispense torture.

  Finally, they came to a lounge where he motioned for her to sit on a comfy sofa while he chose a wingback chair, which he felt gave him more authority, being rather throne-like. His French hordling assistant, Beltane, immediately appeared, and Jasper ordered cocktails for them both. Dominique asked for an oyster shooter, a Louisiana favorite that had Tabasco and a raw oyster in one shot glass and bourbon in the chaser, the Lucipire version including a good douse of blood as well.