“Like I said, hopeless, that’s me,” she said to the statue. “I’m looking for a sign here, Jude. How about a little cooperation? Something to show you’re listening.” She laughed out loud at her silliness.
But then, she heard a roar and almost jumped off her seat. A huge alligator had come up behind her, and just as she was about to run for her life, Tante Lulu yelled out. “Useless, behave yerself.” The old lady reached into a lidded milk can beside the bench and tossed some orange pellets at the gator, who caught them midair. Over and over, Tante Lulu tossed the treats until the gator was apparently full, and turned away to amble back to the stream. “Thass Useless. Mah pet gator. Holy crawfish, but he does love his Cheez Doodles.”
Regina’s jaw dropped.
But then, her jaw dropped even more as another car pulled into the driveway, and Tante Lulu’s “visitor” arrived. It was Beauregard Doucet, the former Lucipire.
His brown hair was pulled off his handsome face and clubbed at the neck into a small ponytail knot. He wore a white T-shirt tucked into blue jeans, and flip-flops were on his bare feet.
“Chère, Ah’m so happy ta see you again!” He reached out and pulled Regina into a warm embrace. “When Tante Lulu tol’ me you were here in Loo-zee-anna, Ah jist had ta come over.”
Regina glanced at the old lady, who was beaming with pleasure at reuniting what she must have considered old friends.
While Gabrielle and Tante Lulu went into the house to get some spices, Regina sat down beside Beau to catch up.
“They’re all gone, you know. All the Lucipires,” she told him.
“All of them? Even Jasper?”
She nodded.
“How about Patience and Grimelda?”
“Gone. To Hell, I presume, with all the other Lucies.”
Beau made the sign of the cross and looked up at the statue before them. “Ah been prayin’ fer jist such a miracle.”
“And what about you? I thought you were going to Alabama, or somewhere far away from your temptress.”
“Ah decided ta stay here and face mah demons.” He laughed at his own joke. “Actually, Ah took St. Michael up on his suggestion that I make contact with Tante Lulu here on the bayou. And that has made all the difference. Honestly, she could turn the worst sinner inta a saint. She’s a notorious busybody, but she’s got a heart of gold. Everyone says so. And, of course, she’s got you-know-who on her side.” He tilted his head in the statue’s direction.
“But what are you doing? I mean, do you have a job?”
“Well, not a job exactly. Ah’m goin’ back ta school. Actually, the seminary.” Beau blushed, then told her. “Ah’m gonna become a priest.”
“No way! A witch priest?”
“Yep. Ah got a calling. And Ah’m not a witch anymore.”
“And the voodoo priestess you wanted revenge on?”
He shrugged. “Ah forgave her. Turns out she wasn’t worth all the hatred.”
There was a message in there for Regina, but she decided not to heed it. For now.
“And what about the vangels?” Beau wanted to know. “If there are no more Lucipires, what’s the point of vangels?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “There’s lots of speculation, but the decision is in Mike’s hands now.”
After a long conversation with Beau, and then with Tante Lulu over pitchers of sweet tea and slices of her famous Peachy Praline Cobbler Cake, they all promised to keep in touch.
“Remember,” Tante Lulu said, giving Regina a last hug before they left, “the thunderbolt doan lie.”
Regina was quiet and Gabrielle seemed to respect her need for silence as they drove back to the plantation. Finally, Regina said, “I need to go back to Transylvania.”
She could swear she heard a voice in her head say, “Hallelujah!”
Was it St. Jude, or St. Michael, or her own bloody conscience? It was all the same, she decided.
He wants her, he wants her not, he wants her, he . . .
Zeb’s confinement in the tower room was about to be over. In two more days, Michael would arrive for the Final Reckoning. One way or another, his fate would be decided.
He hadn’t minded his so-called imprisonment that much. It was actually a pleasant room, with windows on three sides and a view for many miles around. The wacky town of Transylvania with its cornball vampire-related shops and restaurants, and then on the other sides, the trim Amish farms and countryside.
Besides, he deserved imprisonment, in his opinion. Jasper’s message to him about Sarah’s last words, blaming him for abandoning his family, were imprinted on his soul, forever. He had sinned gravely, and for his sins, he’d suffered as a Lucipire and now would suffer through eternity with self-recrimination.
His only regret was that he hadn’t been able to talk to Regina, to explain himself. He did care for her. Who was he kidding? He loved her. Not that he could offer her any kind of future together. He had nothing to offer her in that regard. Even if he did, he didn’t deserve a happily ever after.
But what about her? Shouldn’t she be given a choice?
But there were no choices.
Were there?
At the very least, he owed her an explanation.
Needless to say, he was confused.
At least, the world was rid of Lucipires, and he’d escaped just in time. That was no small thing.
And while the world was no longer rid of evil, terrorism seemed to have settled down a bit. Zeb had a television in his room, and he watched the news practically all the time. There was nothing else to do. And no one was permitted to talk to him, not even those who delivered his meals to him. If the network anchors were to be believed, terrorism was on the decline. At least the madness of the past week was gone . . . the extreme examples of depravity. Those that—he knew, though they did not—had been caused by the Lucipire influence.
Now, if only he could settle things with Regina. Make her understand why he’d acted the way he had. Not that he’d had a good excuse, but that there was an explanation other than complete disregard for her feelings.
All his good intentions were for naught when he got a huge whiff of cinnamon and in stormed Regina. With her red hair wild about her head, wearing the black turtleneck and tight black jeans he’d come to favor, and sparks practically flying from her blue eyes, she was a sight to behold.
Thor, who’d become attached to Zeb like a barnacle on a ship, screeched at the sight of his former mistress and darted under the bed. Regina’s upper lip curled with distaste at the traitorous feline. She must think Thor was just like him. Not to be trusted.
“Regina!” he said, and without any forethought, he yanked her into a tight embrace, then fell back on the bed with her atop him.
“Oomph!” was all she managed to get out. He’d apparently knocked the wind right out of her.
No matter! He was kissing her face and neck and hair. She kept swatting him away, but he was not to be deterred. “This will be the first time I’ve seen you in the daylight. Naked, I mean.” He shoved her shirt up to expose her black lace bra. He loved black lace bras. He loved no bras better.
“You’re not going to be looking at me in daylight. Yikes! Stop it! That’s not why I came here.”
He’d managed to undo the center clasp on her bra and separate the fabric, letting her breasts spill out. And spill they did. He smiled, which only enraged her more. He couldn’t help but be pleased, though. Staring back at him were large, round, firm breasts with rose-colored nipples. “Oh, Regina! How you look!”
“Don’t look. I told you, don’t look.”
Was she crazy? He was looking, all right. And thank heavens for female hormones because Regina might be fighting his advances, but at least one part of her body was happy to see him. Her nipples were already distended, and he hadn’t even touched them yet.
Remembering how sensitive her breasts were, he put his lips to her breast and drew the whole areola and nipple into his mouth. He alternately s
ucked and licked. She tasted like cinnamon and sugar and heaven.
Regina let out one long moan. “I don’t want you,” she said. At the same time, she put her arms around his shoulders and caressed his back, then began to tug his shirt up and over his head.
“I wanted to talk to you. I intended to talk to you. I should explain to you first,” he tried to say, but his hands had other ideas. They were busy doing the same to her, taking off her shirt, admiring the skin exposed. She was soon bare to the waist, just as he was.
“I don’t want any of your explanations. Lie down. On your belly,” she ordered.
“What? But I want to—”
“Do it.”
He complied. Gladly. And shrugged out of his jeans and shoes in the process. It was amazing how flexible and quick a guy could be undressing when the occasion called for it. This occasion did.
“Oh, that is unfair,” she said.
“What’s unfair?” he asked, twisting his head to peer up at her over his shoulder.
She slapped his head back down, face to the pillow. “You have the best, world-class butt in the world, that’s what! How’s a woman to resist that?”
Don’t. That’s how. He smiled into the pillow and relaxed. Things were going his way without any effort. Why interfere with nature?
He felt her straddle his butt then, and, holy crap, when had she gotten naked? Her bare knees were folded at his waist and her bare behind sat on his bare behind. He could swear he felt her soft curls, as well.
His erection grew, painfully, under him.
He started to raise his head again. “Regina, I think—”
“Don’t you dare think,” she said with female illogic. “Thinking is what caused this whole mess.”
He wanted to ask what “whole mess” she referred to. Her rescuing him? Their lifemate business? His seeming ill-use of her for his own purposes? His failure to reciprocate her words of love? His lying to her about his plans for the final battle at Horror? But any questions he might have asked melted under her sweet ministrations to his back.
She didn’t say anything, but she sighed deeply as she traced the scars that crisscrossed so much of his skin. There were many of them, and they were ugly. He knew because he’d been able to view them in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. But, by the way she touched the welts, and then kissed a path from his shoulders to the small of his back, over and over, he could tell that she didn’t see them as repulsive.
He could have wept for that small favor.
But he needed to take control of this situation or it would be over before he could bring her to any kind of satisfaction. Forget about himself. He was already on a runaway train to paradise.
Rolling over, he managed to get Regina on her back and he was atop her. She was still angry, throwing off sparks, even as she panted heavily with arousal.
“I have missed you so,” he said, kneading her breasts and rolling the nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.
“Bullsh—”
He stopped her rude word with a kiss. For a moment he lay on her heavily so she couldn’t move and shove him off. And he just kissed and kissed her, slanting his mouth this way and that to get the right fit, then plunging his tongue deeply inside, then out. He couldn’t get enough of her sweet mouth.
“Your smell,” he murmured, sniffing her hair.
“Your taste,” he murmured, kissing her again, and again.
“Your feel,” he murmured as his palms swept over her body, her shoulders, her arms, the back of her thighs.
“You look like a goddess,” he murmured, staring down at her. “My goddess.”
She blinked up at him, her eyes dilated with passion. Her kiss-swollen lips parted with longing. Her nostrils flaring to catch a breath.
“Words,” she argued. “Just words.”
“More than words,” he argued back, but instead showed her. With long, hungry kisses. With fingers that parted her woman folds and delved in the warm honey there. With his engorged penis which sought entry and then filled her.
He was the one who gasped for breath now as her body welcomed him with muscular spasms. He loved her then with strokes deep and then shallow, slow and then fast. The whole time, they were enveloped in a cocoon of cinnamon rain. Sweet and erotic. Spicy and erotic. Fresh and erotic. Erotic, erotic, erotic.
At one point when the mattress was creaking under them, he heard Thor screech out a protest from under the bed, where he was still lodged.
“Shut up, cat,” Zeb said.
When he was fast approaching his climax, he looked down at her and said, “You gave me your blood back at the island. You took my blood at the cave. In many ways we share the same blood, blended. We are one.”
She was beyond words at that point, but he saw tears well in her eyes. To emphasize his point he sank his fangs into her neck, and she sank hers into his shoulder.
When they reached the peak of impossibly intense pleasure, they shattered together in a climax so powerful it caused them both to shut down for a moment. In deep sleep, in each other’s arms.
As the first peaceful sleep he’d had in weeks overcame him, he promised himself that he would make things right with Regina when they awakened. He would make her understand.
Even if he didn’t understand himself.
Chapter 20
Eeenie, meenie, miney, moe . . . How to choose, How to choose? . . .
Regina returned to the castle two days later, after slipping out of the tower room while Zeb still slept. She’d been embarrassed beyond belief that she could behave in such a wanton manner when she’d come to confront the man about his deceptions.
No one knew where she was or had been, and that’s the way she wanted it. Depending on how things went today with Michael, she would be returning to that secret place again.
Making sure she arrived just before the Final Reckoning was to take place, Regina stepped into the front parlor where close to fifty other vangels, including all of the VIK, were already crammed, spilling out into the hall and entryway, waiting for Michael. She scanned the crowd and didn’t see Zeb until he stepped up beside her.
“Where have you been hiding, Regina?” he asked, clearly angry.
“That’s none of your business.”
“After what happened two days ago?”
She blushed. “That was a mistake.”
“We’re lifemates, you know. You can’t call that a mistake.”
“Oh, yes, I can. Stop touching me.”
He’d reached for her hand, but she closed both hands into fists.
“You can’t escape me. We’re going to have this out.”
Just then, someone yelled, “Michael’s here.”
A shiver of anticipation went through Regina. This was the day! All other days . . . the rest of her life . . . would be measured from this day forward.
The buzz of conversation in the room halted and the crowd parted to allow for Michael to enter. He was in full archangel regalia today. White gown, twisted rope belt, crucifix on a gold chain, sandals on his feet. And a halo that surrounded not just his head but his entire body. Big, white wings were tucked in and folded at his back.
Businesslike and unsmiling, he proceeded to the front of the parlor and stood before the fireplace. “Kneel,” he told them.
Zeb, of course, insinuated himself right up to her side, so they were hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder.
“Let us pray.” Michael raised both hands in the air and said the “Our Father.” They prayed along with him. When it ended, Michael told them, “The Lucipires are no more. God is pleased.”
A sigh of relief went through the crowd, who continued to kneel.
“The fact that thou hast destroyed the Lucipires is a good and holy thing. It does not mean the end of evil in this world, but your job as vangels is ended. As of now, vangels no longer exist.”
And just like that, all of their fangs disappeared and their shoulder bumps went away. “Sorry I am to tell you,
Vikar, but your wings were short-lived,” Michael joked.
“I didn’t like them much anyhow,” Vikar joked back.
“Sigurdssons, stand!” Michael ordered, serious once again. When the seven VIK brothers were standing in a half circle before Michael, the archangel said, “This is what the Lord has decreed. You, and all the former vangels, will have two choices. Thou may go to Tranquility and wait until the final Judgment Day. Know that thy chances of going to Heaven from there eventually are good, and know also that Tranquility is not a bad place to be. Better than earth, a far cry from heaven.”
They all pondered this option, which raised other questions. What about those who’d married and whose wives were destined to “die” when their mates did? And what about the children of those couples, both the natural one, and the adopted ones?
As if hearing these questions, Michael continued, “If thou choosest that first option, thy mates will go with you, but thy children will not. Thou wouldst have to make arrangements for their earthly care. Thou canst surely see now why I urged you not to connect with human lifemates. The complications!”
Michael waited to see if there were questions so far. There were not. None voiced, anyhow.
“The second option would be to become human once again and live out a natural life. There is risk in this option. Earth has temptations. If thou commitest some grievous sin again, thou wilt not have a second chance for Tranquility. Dost understand?”
They did. They could still go to Hell.
“Vikar, thy pride is still great. Could thou control it?”
Vikar cringed at being singled out.
“And Trond, wouldst thou become lazy again? Mayhap the military would be too difficult for thy lazy soul?”
Trond also cringed.
“Harek, Harek, Harek! Still no archangel website?” Michael smiled, knowing he was responsible for the delays. “I guarantee, thou wilt be trading stocks and gambling as soon as I leave today. I know, I know,” he said when Harek was about to speak, “the evil is not in thy making money, but how thou usest it.”