Christmas in Transylvania

  “As you say, Lord.” Michael paused before asking, “And the seven Sigurdsson sons?”

  “These seven sinners must prove themselves sevenfold. By sins they were judged, by grace they will be saved. For seven hundred years, they must roam the earth doing good works. If they fail, Satan may have them for his unholy domain.”

  “Shall they be priests, or missionaries?”

  “No, that would be too obvious. And too easy.”

  And then Michael knew.

  Satan had recently delegated his comrade-­in-­rebellion Jasper to unleash on the earth creatures of the most evil nature. Lucipires . . . Lucifer’s vampires. These vultures fed on human souls, no longer allowing free will to play itself out. Instead, they swooped in before a sinner had a chance to repent, thus ensuring a hellish eternity. Why couldn’t good vampires be created to save those prey to the dark legions before they did their unholy work?

  God loved Michael’s idea. “You will head this enterprise. Viking vampire angels. Well, not really angels. More like angels-­in-­training.”

  The archangel gasped with horror at his mistake. “Oh, not me, Lord. I have to help St. Peter repair the Pearly Gates. And Noah is building another ark. We have no room to put another ark. And those hippos! Phew!”

  God frowned.

  Michael sank to his knees and nodded his head in assent.

  God’s frown was a frightful thing, like a lash to the soul. Besides, Michael was the one who had cast Lucifer, the fallen angel now known as Satan, from Heaven. But then God’s expression softened. After all, Michael was one of His favorites. “Who better than you to lead these angelic vampire soldiers?” God asked softly.

  Angelic? Vampires being angelic? Hah! And Vikings? Really, Vikings being angelic? Hah!

  Michael rolled his eyes and wished he had kept his mouth shut.

  Thy will be done . . .

  Thus was born in the year 850 a band of Viking vampires, a mere two hundred or so years from the time when the Northmen would begin to disappear from the earth. These vampires, known as the VIK, were different from any other vampires because they were made by God.

  Some said they were fallen angels . . . the darkest of all God’s angels.

  Others said they were God’s sign of hope for all mankind. Redemption.

  The Sigurdsson brothers, who were thereafter referred to as The Seven, or the VIK, thought they were God’s joke on the world.

  They were all right.

  And then he saw the light . . .

  Vikar awoke, as if from a deep sleep. The air was still around him, and he was alone on a vast plain with not a tree or fjord in sight. The skies were dark as pitch.

  It felt as if every bone in his body was shattered when he slowly sat up. Glancing downward, he realized that he was naked.

  Not even his trusted sword Death Flame was at hand.

  With what must be hysterical irrelevance, he noted that Death Flame was a highly prized damascened sword made by the pattern-­welded process with two different colored metals twisted and refired over and over until the final blade had a design on it. In his case, flames.

  What was relevant was that the sword was worth a fortune. He never went anywhere without it.

  But wait. There was a light approaching. A light so bright he was blinded for a moment. Then the blaze of light faded to a shimmering glow, especially about the head of the most glorious-­looking creature. A man, about his height, but beauteous of features. He wore a long, white, belted robe, but even so Vikar could see he was built like a warrior . . . a warrior with the face of an angel.

  That should have been a clue, but betimes Vikar was thickheaded.

  “Who are you? Declare yourself,” he demanded, though he felt foolish giving orders when he was naked and weaponless.

  The man did not answer, but there was a flutter near his back.

  Oh my gods! Wings. Massive white wings. Now that he looked closer, he could see that the shimmery light had settled about the man’s head like a halo.

  It really was an angel.

  “I must be dead, then,” he murmured, accompanied by a few Norse expletives.

  “Not quite,” the angel replied, “and if I were you, I would watch thy mouth.”

  “Chastened by an angel? Ha, ha, ha! Where are my seventy virgin Valkyries to welcome me to Valhalla?”

  “I told you, Viking. You are not dead yet. And besides, there will be no virgins where you are headed.”

  Uh-­oh! “Who are you?” He deliberately toned down his belligerence. A good soldier knew when to pick his battles.

  “St. Michael.”

  Although he worshipped Viking gods when it suited his purposes, Vikar had been baptized in the Chris­tian church . . . a convenience practiced by many Norsemen traveling to far lands. As a result, he knew a little about the One-­God and His followers. “The archangel?”

  The angel nodded. “Some call me St. Michael the Archangel.”

  “Slay any dragons lately?” Vikar quipped.

  The angel did not smile. “St. George does all the dragon slaying these days.”

  “Oops! So what are you slaying? Toads?”

  “Best you ponder your fate, Viking, instead of making jests.”

  No sense of humor. If Vikar could laugh at this horrible situation, why couldn’t the angel? But then he had no idea what his situation was. Frowning, he tried to imagine what had happened.

  “Think, Viking,” Michael said, as if he could read his mind.

  Hmm. I better not insult him in my thoughts. “Last I recall, I was in the midst of a holmganga. That is a form of duel fought on a cloak. Whoever steps off the garment is considered a coward. Whoever wins such a fight to death gets all of the loser’s property, including his women.”

  Michael made a snorting sound of disgust. “You cared only about Jarl Gaut’s comely wife, whom you wanted to add to your many concubines.”

  Vikar shifted uneasily from hip to hip. In truth, he had realized just before the duel began that Bera was newly wed to Gaut and fancied herself in love, but by then his pride was great. He could not withdraw the challenge. Besides, a little tupping never hurt any woman, even if she was marriage-­bound to another.

  “Can you hear yourself? Do you honestly dare to justify your actions thus?” Then more softly, Michael added, “You were not always so black-­hearted.”

  Suddenly, into Vikar’s mind came an image of his first wife, Vendela. It was their wedding ceremony. She had been fifteen to his seventeen. Sixteen years back, it had been. And what a joyous occasion! He a smitten, newly blooded warrior, and she with adoration in her clear blue, virginal eyes as they stood under the bridal canopy.

  “Your heart was pure then, Viking.” With a wave of the angel’s hand, a new image came into Vikar’s mind. Vendela again, but now she was twenty-­five, as he’d seen her last. With eyes closed, her face and body lay battered on the rocks below Lodi’s Leap, the salt cliff.

  Horror filled him, even now after five years. “Why would she take her own life?”

  “Can you possibly be that thickheaded? You put Vendela aside for your viperous new wife, Princess Halldora.”

  The daughter of King Ormsson from Norsemandy was indeed aspish on occasion, but seductive beyond compare. She had insisted that no other wives be in his keep afore speaking her vows, and he had been obsessed with her at the time. Even so . . . “I would have given Vendela her own steading at the far reaches of my estate. There was no shame in that,” he defended himself. “She should have seen the esteem such an alliance would give my name.”

  “Thoughtless man!” the angel said with a shake of his head.

  Tears burned his eyes and almost overflowed. He could not remember the last time he had wept, if ever. Oh, Vendela! I am so sorry. But immediately he shook such weak thoughts away.

  The ang
el waved his hand again, and a new mind picture came to Vikar.

  His grand home at Wolfstead. A palace, many said with awe. No wood fortress had been good enough for him. No, with the wealth amassed from his amber trading, along with a-­Viking for plunder, he’d insisted on a stone edifice, three floors high, with tapestries and finely carved furniture from far lands. All a monument to his success.

  “A monument to your vanity,” Michael scoffed.

  The picture in his mind changed. The stone castle dripped with blood, and he saw clearly the ten men who had died in the two years it had taken to build the structure.

  He sensed where this was going. The angel meant to guilt him. “They were mere thralls. Slaves’ lives do not matter.”

  “Can you hear yourself, Viking?” Michael repeated, gazing at him with sadness. “I do not know what I was thinking when I pleaded your case. You are a lost cause.”

  “I am not,” he argued, though for what he was not sure.

  As if by magic, that Wolfstead vision was replaced with his most recent memory. Was it only this morn? A blood-­soaked cloak and a screaming female voice just before the heavens opened with raging thunder and lightning as he’d never witnessed before.

  Had he offended Thor, god of thunder? He glanced up at the frowning angel.

  “There is only one God,” the angel roared.

  He flinched, but then he straightened. If death was his fate, he would face it boldly.

  “I went to God, fool that I am, asking that He give you another chance,” the angel told him.

  Vikar brightened. Not death, then? “What would you . . . He have me do?”

  “For your sins . . . and they are grievous . . . you will do penance sevenfold. For seven hundred years, you will do my bidding against the armies of Jasper.”

  “Jasper? Never heard of him. Is he a Saxon?”

  Ignoring his question, the angel went on, “I will be the hersir of your soul.”

  The chieftain of my soul? Pfff! “Seven hundred years!” he exclaimed with outrage, but then an idea came to him of a sudden. “I would live for seven hundred years?”

  “Sort of.”

  That sounded like a trap to Vikar. “And the alternative would be . . . ?”

  “The fires of Hell for all eternity.”

  Well, that was certainly blunt. And he did so hate the thought of burning flesh, especially his own. “I agree,” he said without hesitation, especially when a brief image flicked in his brain of a fiery pit with screaming creatures that must once have been humans.

  The angel almost smiled. It was not a nice almost-­smile. “Do you not want to know in what capacity you shall serve?”

  Vikar waved a hand blithely. Seven hundred years was a very long time, but eternity in that fiery pit was unimaginable. “It matters not.” He assumed he would be a warrior in some land of the angel’s choosing. Perchance even a warrior angel.

  “So be it!” Michael raised both hands on high, causing his wings to flutter and feathers to fly on a sudden breeze.

  Then the most ungodly pain hit Vikar’s face. It felt as if his jaw was breaking and all his teeth were being yanked out, one at a time. And on his back, a sharp object appeared to be hacking at his shoulder blades. When it was over, he found himself lying on the ground, felled with agony. As he rose to his knees, he glanced up at the angel with a mixture of anger and inquiry, but the angel said nothing.

  Vikar reached over his shoulders where he discovered raised bumps, like healed scars, over his shoulder blades. His mouth felt odd, too, and was filled with the not unpleasant taste of blood. He ran his tongue under his teeth, which were . . . “Oh no! It cannot be so.” He put fingertips to his teeth, which were uncommonly even and white . . . leastways, they had been in the past. Now two of the incisors on either side of his front teeth seemed to have elongated and grown pointy.

  The angel had turned and was about to fly off.

  With all these questions hanging in the air? “Wait! Fangs? You gave me fangs? Like a wolf?”

  “No. Not a wolf.” The angel did smile then . . . with glee. “A vampire.”

  On those ominous words, the angel disappeared.

  And all Vikar could think was, What is a vampire?

  Too soon, he found out.

  Club Med for the undead . . .

  In a cold, cold, miles-­long cave known as Horror, far below the surface of the earth, Jasper paced. It was not Hell, of course, but that place where Lucipires brought their victims before eventually sending them off to Satan’s fiery pits, or to become vampire demons in Jasper’s personal army.

  “It is too much!” he railed at his assistant Sabeam, who raced to keep up with him. Being a mung demon, a species of full demon, unlike former Seraphim angels like Jasper or even prestigious haakai demons, Sabeam had limited status and authority, even with his massive seven-­foot height. Then, too, there was the slimy, poisonous mung that covered every surface of its body.

  “What shall we do, master?” Sabeam asked, puffing for breath.

  The boy, who was only three hundred years old, didn’t get enough exercise these days. Maybe Jasper should order him a treadmill.

  “Satan demands his due,” Sabeam told Jasper, as if he didn’t already know that. “We must send the souls to him as prescribed by demon law.”

  Unlike most mungs, Sabeam was not mute. Sometimes Jasper wished he were.

  Still, Jasper nodded, knowing that he had no choice but to give up his collection soon. The last time had been two hundred years ago. This latest delivery was long overdue. “Grieves me, it does, to release my ‘babies,’ only to start all over. It will take us twice . . . no, thrice as long . . . to replenish the supply, what with the vangels hindering our efforts.” Vangels were vampire angels that Michael the Archangel had created specifically to fight Jasper’s legions.

  He could not think at the moment of Michael, who had once been his friend. If he did, he would fall into the pit of despair that had held him the first hundred years of his exile.

  Instead, Jasper gazed fondly around him at the life-­size killing jars that held the newly dead human souls who fought wildly against the glass sides, to no avail. Once subdued, they were placed on display slabs with a two-­foot pin through the heart holding them down. Like butterflies, they were, especially when they flailed their arms and legs in a wing fashion. Undead human butterflies that fought their confinement, eyes wide with horror at their fate. ­Jasper’s own personal human butterfly collection. Playthings, really, that he liked to take out from time to time and torture. Thousands of them.

  Most special of all was one of the few vampire angels they’d been able to capture, and that only a lowly ceorl, David, who was stretched out on the rack at the moment whilst imps and hordlings, Jasper’s foot soldiers of grotesque appearance characterized by oozing pustules, danced about the body, piercing the skin with white-­hot spears, wrapping barbed wire around the always erect phallus, jamming odious objects up the anus, stuffing imp offal in the mouth. “Good work, Fiendal,” he said, patting one of the hordlings on the head as he passed. “Do not go too far, though, lest the vangel get accustomed to the pain.”

  Fiendal nodded, his excessively long tongue lolling out with dripping drool.

  Jasper continued his pacing, trying to think. As he walked, fury turned his face into icy shards that flaked off like scales. His eyes glowed bloodred, his fangs hung down almost to his chin, and his tail dragged behind him on the stone floor. He hated that his once-­renowned beauty could be turned into this travesty of ugliness. Oh, he could transform himself into the most beauteous of humans, male or female, when prowling the earth. But this monstrous carcass was his true self now. And he blamed Michael for this most odious fate.

  Long ago, before the world was created, he had been one of the chosen archangels until he’d been expelled from Heaven, along with Lucifer
and all the rest of his rebellious followers. And it had been Michael, a fellow archangel, who had been the one to kick their unholy butts out of the celestial presence of God. Forevermore.

  Now Michael was after him again.

  For centuries Jasper had been sending out his special creations, demon vampires, to the earth to bring in more doomed human souls in a faster, more efficient fashion than just waiting—­ho-­hum—­ for bad ­people to die. Horror was just a way station on the journey to Hell, but it was Jasper’s own special playground, and now Michael threatened to take even that away from him by creating vampire angels to fight him. At the same time, Satan was demanding his due.

  “We cannot continue at our present pace, one soul at a time. We must needs speed up the process. Bring in hundreds, no, thousands of doomed souls at one time.”

  “Like 9/11?”

  “Holy Hades, no! God sent legions of His angels to Manhattan afore we could even arrive. Instead of Satan or I or any of the Lucipires being able to grab them, angels led them right and left to that holy place of which we do not speak. There were so many feathers flying about that day, it was a wonder the news media did not notice.”

  “Smoke,” Sabeam remarked.

  “Huh?”

  “The feathers were hidden by the smoke,” Sabeam said.

  I was kidding. Can a demon not even tease anymore? I am surrounded by idiots.

  “So, there is no event where you could harvest souls in large numbers?” Sabeam concluded.

  “I did not say that.” Jasper thought for a long moment as he continued to pace. Then he stopped abruptly. “I have the perfect idea. Did Satan not invent the Internet to blacken the souls of mankind?”

  “I thought Al Gore invented the Internet.”

  Jasper rolled his burning eyes. Can anyone spell idiot? “It matters not who invented what, but how Satan uses human obsessions for his own ends.”