Kiss of Wrath

  He did have in hand an unsuspecting call girl. Well, unsuspecting but not innocent. The woman headed a notorious agency that catered to perverted tastes. She no doubt thought the designer suits Jasper and Beltane wore translated to a ticket for her to international wealth and travel, where in fact her ticket would be to Horror and a life far worse than that she inflicted on the women who worked for her.

  “Jasper,” Mordr called out, a sword in one hand and a rifle in the other.

  Suddenly alert, Jasper’s eyes, quickly morphing into a bright red, latched on to Mordr with evil malice. “A Sigurdsson!” He licked his bloodred lips. “Just what I wanted for dessert.” He motioned for Beltane to take the girl aside, and Jasper’s troop, such as it was, lined up against Mordr’s vangels. It was Jasper against Mordr, though.

  The woman let out a scream when she saw what beasts the Lucies were turning into. Not the high-class boss man and mob, as she’d assumed. Beltane merely slapped her aside the head with one of his big paws and she slunk down to the floor.

  Mordr and Jasper faced off against each other. The king of the Lucipires wielded a heavy broadsword against Mordr’s thinner-bladed dueling sword. While not so heavy, Mordr’s weapon was equally lethal in its own way. Through his side vision, he saw one of his vangels approach the woman, offering her a chance to repent. She spat her refusal at him. The vangel shrugged and turned away, thus leaving her to a bunch of hordlings who gnawed on her flesh, quickly reducing her to a pile of empty clothing on the floor. Win some, lose some, Mordr thought.

  Mordr delivered a number of wounds to Jasper that would be fatal to a human, but not to a demon vampire. The master Lucie was merely weakened, but still in fighting form. The only way to really get rid of Jasper would be a specially treated blade or bullet to the heart, neither of which Mordr had managed thus far.

  And then Jasper struck hard on a backward swing, catching Mordr off guard. Mordr fell backward, tripping over an imp who was rolling about the floor licking up blood. That’s when Jasper delivered what could be a final blow to Mordr, the broadsword almost severing his arm at the shoulder. Jasper knelt, about to fang the blood from Mordr, which would bring him to a numb-like stasis, a fate worse than death because it would mean Jasper could take him to Horror and conceivably turn him into a Lucipire after days or months of torture.

  Mordr began to fall into unconsciousness, which he knew, even with his dazed senses, would give Jasper the opportunity to feed on him, sealing his fate in the worst possible way. With one last agonized cry, as Jasper’s fangs lowered toward his neck, Mordr pleaded in a loud cry to the heavens, “Help me!” Whether he was praying to God or Michael was unclear. All he knew was he’d rather be dead than a demon.

  So grievous were his injuries he was unaware that his brother Vikar heard his plea and came to his rescue. Swords flying right and left, Vikar and his troop slew one Lucie after another until they reached Mordr, who was already near “death.”

  A limping Jasper and the severely wounded Beltane escaped as Vikar lifted Mordr and immediately teletransported him back to Transylvania with an urgent call to Sigurd, their physician brother, to come help save Mordr.

  Mordr’s last thought, in his dream-like—rather nightmare-like state—was I never got to tell Miranda that I love her.

  The half-severed arm would heal, but there were other worries. Although Jasper hadn’t yet fed on Mordr, his sharp fangs had scraped the skin, oozing poison into his flesh. Without expert vangel help, Mordr would perish. Even the saliva of a demon vampire was deadly potent.

  It was one day later before Mordr discovered that Miranda and Linda had been taken by Roger. His brothers, anticipating his reaction, had tied him to the bed in order for him to recover.

  It was two days before Mordr broke his bonds and teletransported back to Las Vegas, where he discovered an empty house. Not only were Miranda and Linda nowhere to be found, as he’d been informed by his brothers back in Transylvania, but the rest of the children were gone, as well. Even the dog was absent.

  “I could have told you, if you had asked, that the children are with Ivak in Louisiana. And the woman, Darla, is in the hospital recovering from a head wound,” Vikar grumbled, having followed after Mordr. “Your friend Jack is caring for the dog. Apparently, he has become quite the Olympic swimmer, spending half the day in the pool.”

  “What? Jack is an Olympic swimmer? What has that do with Miranda and Linda?”

  “No, lackwit! Ruff has become an avid swimmer. And it has naught to do with Miranda or Linda. I was just trying to lighten your mood.”

  Mordr told Vikar what he could lighten. Then he choked out, “What of Miranda and Linda? Has there been no ransom demand?”

  Vikar shook his head, sadly.

  Once again, Mordr felt like such a failure. Once again, he’d failed to protect those under his shield. Especially Linda, who was so much like his own Kata. How would he ever bear the guilt if he lost these two? Clearing his throat, Mordr asked, “Do we know for certain that it is Roger who has them? Or, please God, do not let them be with Jasper.”

  “We’re fairly certain there is no tie to the Lucies.”

  Fairly certain? Oh, that is reassuring! “Just Roger, who wants Miranda dead.”

  Vikar acknowledged with a nod that this was true.

  “But why would he take Linda, and not the other children?”

  Vikar hesitated to tell him.

  Mordr made a growling noise indicating he was in no mood for soft soaping.

  “We do not think Roger wanted the child. We think his friend, a fellow inmate from prison, wanted the little girl.”

  “Why?” Mordr tilted his head in question. “Why would an ex-convict want a five-year-old child?” When understanding seeped in, Mordr let out a roar of outrage, the blood drained from his brain, and he felt himself begin to faint. Me—one of the fiercest Vikings in all the Norselands—fainting like a milksop youthling on first sight of his own sword dew? What is happening to me?

  He was just barely caught by his brother before he fell to the floor and sustained even more bodily damage, especially to his left arm, which was still in a sling. “Holy clouds, Mordr! You weigh as much as a warhorse. I think I sprained my back, and I was planning some energetic bedplay with Alex tonight,” Vikar complained.

  Apparently Mordr wasn’t as healed as he’d thought he was. He really did faint then.

  Even unconscious, his mind kept crying out, Miranda! Linda! Hold on. I am coming for you.

  Some days you’re the hook, some days the hooker . . .

  Two days with Roger and Company, and Miranda felt as if she’d fallen in with a bunch of nutcase criminals.

  Roger, an antacid-popping Nervous Nellie, kept looking over his shoulder, expecting the demon beasties to come after him. For all Miranda knew, they might.

  In the meantime, Roger had her velvet handcuffed to the headboard in one bedroom. Linda came and went throughout the apartment, the darling of all the visitors (aka prostitutes). Roger, on the other hand, had the paternal genes of a gnat.

  Roger still claimed he was going to kill Miranda, but she was beginning to think he didn’t have the gonads for the job. To avoid any detection of his friend Clarence’s disappearance, Roger had taken over Clarence’s pimp business. Imagine Don Knotts as a pimp and you got the picture.

  Carlotta, on the other hand, was a vicious, greedy witch who kept harping on Roger to do “the job” so they could zip off to the Bahamas with all of Miranda’s cash. Miranda had news for Roger and Carlotta. There was no cash, or little of it, and the house was tied up in a thirty-year mortgage that would take months to sell in this depressed housing market. In truth, she was probably upside-down on her mortgage.

  If only she could get hold of a phone, Miranda would call for help. To Darla, whom she could only pray was all right. Last time Miranda had seen her, her friend had been lying on Miranda’s hall floor, blood flowing from a head wound. Or she could call the police, who must surely be searching
for her and Linda. No. The one she would call first would probably be Mordr.

  And, by the way, where was her favorite Viking anyhow? She’d thought Mordr was supposed to be her protector. You’d think he would have traced her by now. Surely, the showdown with the demon vampires was over. In fact, Roger had devoured the local newspapers the first few days, looking for news about the missing Clarence, and what he’d found was lots of missing folks in and around Las Vegas, leaving behind clothes, jewelry, watches, wallets, and nothing else. In still other places, piles of strange, smelly slime puzzled the authorities. FBI and other authorities were flooding the city, seeking answers, none of which they’d shared thus far with the public. Alien aficionados were having a heyday, claiming an invasion from another planet.

  Roger came in with a lunch tray for her then and said, “I know that you know more than you’re telling me. Who or what are George and Ginette? I mean, did you see them turn into those fucking animals? And Clarence just dissolved into a pile of nothing.”

  Miranda chewed on her pizza—the usual fare here above Luigi’s. “Demon vampires,” she told him, not for the first time. “That’s what George and Ginette are. They live in a place called Horror with a king named Jasper and they come hunting for bad guys like you.”

  “Yeah, and I’m a fucking acrobat,” he replied with his usual disbelief, stomping off to work on his pimp duties.

  A subdued Linda came into the bedroom then. She was getting a stomachache from all the junk food she was eating, thanks to her ladies-of-the-night friends. Candy, sweet soft drinks, cupcakes, and the like. “My tummy hurts,” Linda whined until she finally fell asleep on Miranda’s bed. With her hair teased and sprayed into some hooker’s idea of what a little girl should look like, and her fingernails and toenails painted a scarlet color, and her lips tinted with pink gloss, and her eyelashes mascaraed into black smudged fans, Linda looked like a caricature of a mini-adult, like one of those entrants in a child’s beauty pageant you saw on TV.

  Miranda leaned down and kissed the little girl on her forehead, brushing some of the waves off her face and behind her ears. Soon, she promised. Soon we’ll be out of here, honey, and back home where we belong.

  With or without Mordr? she wondered.

  Well, that was irrelevant for now, Miranda decided. She had more important issues to deal with. Like, she desperately wanted a shower since she was beginning to smell her own body odor, especially when she perspired day and night with the heat from the pizza ovens down below. AC ran nonstop but didn’t accomplish much of anything.

  Carlotta came in next and put the capper on Miranda’s crappy day. “I think Roger should put you to work.”

  “As a psychologist. Yeah, I can see how some of you people need my help. Hookers Anonymous meets in my office once a month, if you’re interested.”

  “Not as a psychologist, bitch. As a working hooker.”

  Miranda burst out laughing and couldn’t stop for so long that Carlotta stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  Later that day Linda walked into the bedroom playing with a handheld game. “What’s that, sweetie?” Miranda asked.

  “Nothin’,” Linda answered sheepishly.

  “Linda?” she inquired, recognizing child guilt when she saw it.

  “I dint take it,” Linda said. “It was just sittin’ on the counter.”

  Miranda took the electronic device from her to see exactly what it was and realized she was holding a cell phone. Quickly, before anyone could catch her, Miranda punched in some numbers.

  “Hello, who is this?” a male said in a questioning voice, not recognizing the caller ID.

  “Some protector you are, Mordr! Where the hell are you?”

  “Sweetling?”

  “Don’t you sweetling me. Get your butt over here before I die.”

  “Die? Oh no! Did that bastard shoot you?”

  “Idiot! Die of heat stroke.”

  The wrath of God . . . um, an archangel . . .

  To Mordr’s chagrin, it was not he who went to rescue Miranda and Linda.

  Just as he was arming himself and preparing to go out to the Lexus parked in Miranda’s garage, Mordr heard a familiar voice yell, “Mordr Sigurdsson!”

  Mordr stopped in his tracks and waited. He didn’t have long to wait.

  Michael appeared in a puff of feathers. He hadn’t even bothered to change from his heavenly robes. His fury was obvious, from his glaring face to his quivering wings.

  Stepping back into the kitchen to make room for the archangel, Mordr said, before he lost his nerve, “I must go to rescue Miranda and the child.”

  “You must, you must,” Michael mocked. “Thou must obey my orders, in case you have forgotten, Viking. Ivak has already been sent to take care of them. You and I have our own business to attend to.”

  Uh-oh!

  “What have you to report on the casino mission? Have you wiped out all the Lucipires?”

  “Me? Personally?”

  “Do not be flip with me, Viking. Is Jasper gone and condemned to shoveling coal for Satan’s fires?”

  “No. As far as I know, he is back at Horror, planning new evil deeds.”

  “As far as you know?” Michael mocked, walking about the kitchen, idly picking up and examining various objects. A bottled water. The can opener. A wooden block of steak knives. The coffeemaker, which he sniffed with distaste. “As far as you know,” he repeated.

  “I have been rather . . . indisposed.” Mordr felt his face heat at his choice of such as weakling word.

  Michael arched his brows. “Really?” He pointed a forefinger at Mordr’s shoulder.

  The sling fell off and the persistent ache was gone. Rolling his shoulder, Mordr realized that the wound was healed. “Thank you.”

  “I do not need or want thy thanks. How many Lucipires were destroyed in the casino mission?”

  “Five hundred and fifty, I have been told,” Mordr answered.

  “And how many human sinners were added to Jasper’s ranks?”

  Mordr saw where this was going now. “As many as a thousand,” he admitted.

  Michael pretended to be counting on his fingers and came up with a net gain for the bad guys of “Four hundred and fifty!” The archangel shook his head from side to side with apparent disgust. “And do you consider that a successful mission?”

  Mordr was about to utter that modern phrase, “Win some, lose some,” or to remind Michael that his mission had been to protect Miranda and the children, not the casino project. But look how that turned out! Linda and Miranda were both missing! In the end, he decided discretion might be called for. He opted for silence.

  “Is it possible you were distracted during this mission?”

  “What?” One of the worst things about talking with Michael was how his conversations changed direction so rapidly. A tactic designed to put the other person at unease. Mordr was definitely uneasy now.

  “What have you done, Mordr?” Mordr knew that Michael was no longer talking about the mission, evidenced by his next question, “Have you been sinning?”

  Mordr didn’t even bother to deny the charge, although his lovemaking with Miranda had not felt like sinning.

  “Excuses!” Michael said, reading his mind.

  Mordr would have to be careful about that.

  “Did I not tell you and your brothers that there would be no more fornication? Did I not forbid any more relationships with humans? Did I not warn you of the consequences? Did you think you were the exception?”

  Mordr bowed his head, then raised his chin. “I was dark and empty for so long. I tried to avoid the temptation, but I was weak. In truth, I cannot regret having loved Miranda. Still love Miranda,” he amended.

  Michael threw his hands up. “What am I to do with you?”

  “Punish me?”

  “That goes without saying. Go immediately to the tower in the Transylvania castle and stay there until I have made a decision. Until then, contemplate your sins.??
?

  “Can I at least go and say my good-byes to Miranda and the children.”

  “Do not push me, Mordr.”

  Mordr did not need to teletransport himself. Michael did it for him with a lung-piercing whoosh that landed him on his arse on the cold concrete floor of the tower.

  The oddest thing happened then. The scent of lilies and cloves filled the chamber.

  Mordr chose to view that as a good omen.

  Eighteen

  Sometimes prayers do get answered . . .

  Miranda and Linda were rescued, but not by Mordr. His brother Ivak and a contingent of what she assumed were vangels came to take them away, at the same time the police arrived to arrest Roger and Carlotta.

  While Carlotta screeched like a banshee that she was innocent, Roger went willingly. In fact, he almost seemed to welcome a return to prison. His rambling went pretty much like this: “Hey, I don’t mind being locked up, but are you sure you cops didn’t arrest any couple recently named George and Ginette? I am not sharing a cell with those two monsters. In fact, solitary confinement would be good.

  “I already told you, George and Ginette look like movie stars sometimes, but then they suddenly become about seven feet tall, with red eyes and fangs. And tails. Big tails. They killed Clarence by eating him. No, I’m not shitting you. They gobbled him right up, all except for his cop clothes.

  “How do I know why they didn’t eat the clothes! Of course I know Clarence wasn’t a cop. Do you think I’m a moron? Why are you guys laughing?

  “Clarence was a pimp. I’ve been filling in for the bastard. You ever tried to organize a herd of hookers? It’s worse than trying to herd cats, I tell you. Which bastard? Clarence! Holy shit! How many times do I have to tell you? Clarence killed his cousin Lamar, the pimp, and then the Weird Couple killed Clarence, and Clarence was about to kill Miranda. Weird Couple, Odd Couple, get it? Ha, ha, ha!

  “No, I didn’t kill Clarence, though I would have liked to. It was George and Ginette, the demon dragons, who made a Happy Meal out of Clarence.

  “Is anyone listening to me? I think Clarence’s ice chewing and knuckle cracking must have finally pushed me over the edge.