Kiss of Wrath

  Raising his hands high, he prayed, “Lord, bless this gathering and give these men wisdom, courage, and determination to carry out your will in their missions.” And give me the wisdom, courage, and determination to deal with these idiots. “For they are stubborn as mules, prideful as peacocks, wanton as rabbits, greedy as hogs, dumb as dinosaurs, and irritable as bears with wind in the bowels. Amen.”

  The seven brothers—grown men of great height and, by the grace of God, handsome appearance—raised their eyes and waited in nervous silence for the axe they expected to fall on one, or all, of their fool heads. Except for Mordr, that was, who muttered something about lackwit animal metaphors. He would get to Mordr soon enough. The dour Viking would have reason to mutter then.

  “Vikar,” Michael said, calling first on the eldest.

  Vikar flinched.

  He does not hesitate to war with fiercesome demon vampires and yet he cringes at my singling him out. Holy heavens! You’d think I was going to wield a whip or rain down locusts. “Pray tell, what is that vast hole in your back bailey, Vikar? Art thou digging a tunnel to Hell? Is that how you plan to fight Satan’s Lucipires now?”

  Vikar’s face, a healthy golden tone today due to some recent vangelizing, flushed with heat. “Of course not. It is to be a swimming pool,” Vikar explained in a low voice, scarcely a murmur, as if embarrassed. As well, he should be!

  Michael arched his brows. “You were ordered to renovate this castle into a suitable accommodation for vangels. Not a luxurious spa.”

  “Hardly luxurious!” Vikar protested. “Alex . . . I mean, I . . . wanted a pool for the children to swim in.”

  Michael laughed. “Please! Those little ones are not yet three feet tall, and by my estimate, your pool will be at least thirty cubits. Pfff! Next, there will be a hot tub.”

  By the increasing color on Vikar’s face, Michael assumed the pool would be even larger and that, indeed, a hot tub was in the plans. In truth, Michael did not mind a swimming pool, or even a hot tub, if it kept the Vikings out of trouble. Still, he cautioned, “Pride, Vikar. Remember, pride is e’er your downfall.”

  Vikar nodded. “All right. I’ll skip the wet bar and fake palm trees.” He immediately realized his mistake when he noticed his brothers snickering at him.

  “Cnut,” Michael said then.

  Cnut’s head shot up, and Vikar breathed a sigh of relief.

  “What is the latest tally on vangels-in-training?”

  Cnut, too, looked noticeably relieved since it was not one of his sins that was being exposed. Yet.

  Cnut was in charge of military training—in particular, training to fight Lucipires, which was all together different from regular military skills. The only way to destroy one of Satan’s demon vampires—destroy, not just kill, which did not prevent their return at a later date—was to pierce them with swords or bullets treated with the symbolic blood of Christ or the symbolic splinters of the True Cross. Holy water was a deterrent, but it only burned the skin off the vile creatures, and regular weapons merely killed them, allowing them to be resurrected over and over as demon vampires.

  “We now have five hundred and seventy full-fledged vangels, and twenty vangel trainees about to graduate into the ranks. Another fifteen of the newly turned need additional training. At least a month more.”

  Michael nodded. “I will be sending a hundred more shortly.”

  Seven jaws dropped at that news.

  “And, no, Ivan the Terrible will not be one of them.” Vikings were great ones for rumormongering. Like old women they were betimes. They had yet to learn that he heard everything.

  “Is it necessary to expand our ranks?” asked Vikar. “I mean, we annihilated a large number of Lucies on that Southern mission at Angola Prison a few months back.”

  “They’re like roaches,” Sigurd, the physician, explained, to no one in particular. “Kill a roach in one spot, and five others spring up in another.”

  Michael nodded. “With Satan’s help, in the Lucipires’ case. Word coming up to the heavens is that Lucifer has given Jasper another thousand of his demons.” Lucifer had been Satan’s name when he’d been an archangel. Jasper, Lucifer’s cohort in heavenly crimes, was also a fallen angel, once a friend of Michael’s, now king of the demon vampires.

  “I do not have room for another hundred vangels here,” Vikar griped.

  “Ivak, have you not made ready the Southern headquarters for the vangels?”

  “I’m trying,” Ivak contended. “Workers keep quitting on me because of the snake problem. The repulsive reptiles seem to multiply by the day. Like Lucies.”

  “Has it never occurred to you that they might be just that?” Michael asked.

  “Huh?” Ivak said.

  “Asp, Garden of Eden, original sin. Ring any bells, Viking?” Verily, Vikings could be so thickheaded. When Ivak still stared at him with lack of understanding, Michael continued, “Have the plantation renovated enough to house fifty new vangels within six weeks.”

  “That is imposs—” Ivak started to say, then quickly amended, “As you wish.” And bowed his head with seeming meekness, which was fooling no one. Vikings did not do meek well.

  “By the by, how is the baby coming?” Michael asked. To Michael’s consternation and total surprise, Ivak was soon to be the father of a human baby. Vangels were not supposed to be capable of begetting children.

  “Not soon enough. Gabrielle looks like she swallowed a wild boar, whole.”

  “Mayhap it will be twins. Or triplets,” Michael offered.

  “Whaaaat?” Ivak looked as if he was the one who swallowed something . . . something unpalatable.

  Actually, Michael knew that it would be only one child. A boy. In fact, he had informed Ivak of that fact sometime ago. Ivak must have forgotten.

  Michael left Ivak squirming in his seat as he moved on to another of the Vikings. “Cnut, you will help Vikar train the other fifty into vangels here in this very castle. Later, we will have to consider establishing another principality on the other side of the world. Possibly Italy, near the Vatican. Or the Holy Land. The Lord does have a fondness for Jerusalem.”

  They all cringed, wondering if they would be the one landed with that task. There would be incredible pressure to succeed in that favored country of the Lord’s.

  “Now, the reason for our meeting today.” Michael speared the grim-faced Viking at the far end of the semicircle. “Mordr.”

  Mordr lifted his head, unafraid like some of the others of whatever task Michael would assign him. He should be afraid. The Lord liked his archangels to test humans and vangels . . . especially Viking vangels . . . with tasks they hated.

  “Thou will go to Las Vegas where there is a family in need of protection.”

  “Las Vegas!” Harek interjected. “Let me go. Las Vegas is my kind of place. Why can’t I go on this mission?”

  “Because you would enjoy it too much,” Michael told the too smart, too greedy Viking who was teaching him to use a computer. “Besides, you have yet to put up a website for me.”

  “I could do that and take care of whatever task is required in Las Vegas,” Harek persisted.

  “Harek, Harek, Harek, have you been gambling again?”

  Harek pretended to be affronted at the question. But then admitted, “Only with the stock market.”

  “Remember, Viking, thy sin is greed.”

  “Any profits I make go back into the vangel treasury,” Harek contended.

  He was fooling no one, least of all Michael. Yea, he contributed greatly to the VIK coffers, but he also amassed a vast fortune for himself. For what purpose, Michael had yet to discover. Harek’s time would come. Later. Still, Michael could not help but prod Harek a bit more. “Now that I am learning computers, I noticed something odd on the Internet. ’Twould appear that someone is selling angel wing feathers as holy relics. I cannot imagine who would do such a sacrilegious thing, can you, Harek?”

  “Um,” Harek said.

  “S
ince ten thousand seem to have been sold thus far, methinks they must be fake angel feathers. Mayhap goose feathers. What do you think, Harek?”

  Harek knew enough to shut his mouth. No more pleas for a Las Vegas posting.

  “Harek!” Trond exclaimed with mock horror. “I am shocked.”

  “And how goes your Navy SEAL training, Trond?” Michael asked.

  Trond immediately realized his mistake in calling attention to himself. “All right,” he answered, “but I have never worked so hard in all my life . . . or death. My aches have aches.”

  “Good,” Michael said. The slothful, lazy Viking needed to ache, and where better to do that than in a society of fighting men who ran five miles in heavy boots afore breakfast?

  Turning back to Mordr, who still maintained his grim-faced demeanor, Michael said, “There is a situation in Las Vegas. Some people are about to be threatened by an evil person. You are to protect them.” Michael passed a piece of paper, which was handed down the line until it reached Mordr.

  “One-eleven Crescent Street. That is all?” Mordr asked. “What kind of protection? What kind of evil? Is it Lucipires?”

  “Possibly. You will have to ascertain the facts.”

  “That is all? Just go to this address and protect whoever, or whatever, is there?” Mordr inquired with a surly attitude that Michael did not appreciate. Not one bit. “Does it not make more sense to concentrate our efforts where there might be a large number of Lucies . . . like we did on that Sin Cruise, or at the SEAL base in Coronado, or at Angola Prison. I mean, one household? Really?”

  “Really,” Michael replied.

  “Am I to offer protection only, or should I attempt to save the attacker threatening their safety as well?” Sometimes Lucies fanged and drained a human who was already evil, a quick and easy conversion to Lucie Hell. Other times, a human might have committed some bad act or was contemplating some heinous act; a fanging by a Lucie then gave them a sin taint, thus pushing them over their tipping points to mortal sin. It was the latter that vangels were sometimes able to help, if they could redeem them before crossing that final line. “Is this villain redeemable?”

  Michael shrugged.

  “Aaarrgh!” Mordr growled.

  “I heard that.”

  Mordr frowned with frustration. “Can you not give me any more details?”

  “Thou wilt know when thou wilt know.”

  Mordr muttered a foul word under his breath. Just so long as he did not take the Lord’s name in vain, Michael could ignore the rudeness. For now.

  Michael stared down the resistant man.

  “As you wish,” Mordr finally agreed.

  “Now,” Michael said. “Which one of you is guilty of the sin of lust?”

  Six faces turned blood red.

  All except Mordr, who had problems in that regard that would soon be tested. Mightily.

  Some bribes are sweeter than others . . .

  “Darla?” Miranda said into her cell phone as she barreled down the Strip in her green minivan toward Caesar’s Palace, where P. Jack was apparently having a meltdown.

  “Uh-oh!” Darla, her best friend since she’d moved to Las Vegas, said at the other end of the phone line. “Two-thirty in the afternoon? Can mean only one thing. An emergency with the rug rats.”

  Miranda couldn’t be offended. At one time, she would have referred to kids in general as rug rats. She still did, at times. “P. Jack is having a crisis,” Miranda said. “He’s about to marry wife number fourteen, a stripper he met last night who is his soul mate for life. I’m on my way for an intervention.”

  “Good luck!” Darla laughed. Miranda had been telling her P. Jack stories from back when they’d been roommates in a one-room apartment five years ago on moving to the gambling mecca. A petite five foot two, compared to Miranda’s five foot ten, Darla, a former karate instructor, was a bouncer, of all things, at one of the smaller casinos, Lucky Lou’s. She knew P. Jack, too; in many ways Las Vegas was a small community, where the residents and employees all knew one another. In fact, Darla was the one who had referred P. Jack to Miranda’s clinic. Darla had, of course, also been the recipient of one of his marriage proposals . . . between wives eight and nine, as Miranda recalled.

  “What’s up?” Darla asked.

  “The agency is sending over the answer to my prayers this afternoon,” Miranda continued. “A world-class household manager, please God. She does everything from child care to laundry to carpooling to homework supervision. Even cooking.”

  “Sounds like a wife to me.”

  “Exactly. And for what she charges, there may very well be a division of assets. Just kidding. But, really, I’m willing to pay for the right person.” She paused. “This person has another unique qualification that I’m in need of. Ex-military.”

  Miranda’s words were met with silence. Then a worried “Roger’s out?”

  “No, but he soon will be. Good behavior and all that. A halfway house at first.”

  “Maybe he’s reformed. Maybe he’s sorry for what he’s done and will leave his kids alone. Maybe he’ll wait for the kids to grow up and contact him, if they ever want to.”

  “Do you think so?” Miranda asked hopefully.

  “No.”

  They both laughed, halfheartedly.

  “Anyhow, the job applicant will be there at four.”

  “So you need me there, not so much for the kids, as to arm wrestle this Mrs. Doubtfire to the floor so she won’t escape ’til you get home.”

  “Yes. And to make sure the kids behave.”

  “The first I can handle. Not so sure about the latter.”

  “Oh, Darla, you know how much the little gremlins love you.”

  “Don’t try to butter me up.”

  “Seriously, hon, can you cover for me? I shouldn’t be much later than four-thirty.” As an incentive, she added, “I’ll bring Chinese for dinner. And Shakey’s sticky buns for dessert.”

  “Consider me buttered.”

  Whatever happens in Vegas better stay in Vegas . . .

  Once again, excitement reigned in Horror, the icy palace headquarters of the Lucipires in the far Arctic regions of the world. The prospect of a new mission to bring vast numbers of evil humans into their ranks had them salivating with anticipation. Literally.

  Not a pretty sight, thought Jasper, shivering with distaste. Now king of the demon vampires, Jasper had once been a beauteous archangel, one of God’s favored ones, afore being expelled from Heaven along with Lucifer and his other rebel followers. The one delegated to expel them had been St. Michael the Archangel, Jasper’s most-hated enemy.

  And it wasn’t just the drooling that repulsed him. When they were in their demonoid forms, whether they be high haakai, mungs, imps, or hordlings, their skin was scaly, their eyes bloodred, their hands and feet claw-like, with slime oozing from every pore, and then there were the fangs. Of course, they could morph into the most attractive human forms, when needed.

  Jasper walked purposefully down the Corridor of Change, where he usually slowed down to enjoy his unique collection, but not today. Too much on his mind.

  Both sides of the hallway were lined with giant butterfly jars in which “dead” humans were pinned through the heart like, well, butterflies. They hung inside, flailing their limbs, screaming their no-longer-beating hearts out. Eventually, they would reach a state of stasis, at which point they either willingly became Lucipires or entered the torture dungeons where a little, or a lot, of painful persuasion usually brought them around to Jasper’s way of thinking.

  “Shall I take that one out for you to play with?” asked Beltane, his French hordling assistant. He pointed a clawed hand toward the right where a new human had just been placed the night before. A blond woman who had been active in a worldwide sex slave trade specializing in young girls and boys. Very young.

  “Later,” Jasper snapped, then softened his tone, realizing that the young Creole—young, as in only one hundred and fifty years old,
compared to Jasper’s ancient age—had only been trying to please him. “Mayhap you and I can both play with her later.”

  Beltane gazed at Jasper with the adoration that was his due, but in the young hordling’s case, the affection appeared to be genuine. Jasper’s cold heart warmed a bit at the prospect. This must be the paternal feeling humans talked about regarding fathers and sons.

  If only all his minions regarded Jasper with the same high regard, if not at least deference. He was thinking, of course, of Heinrich Mann, who stood in the open doorway of the conference room up ahead, waiting for him. Heinrich, whom Jasper not-so-affectionately referred to as Heiney, was a former Nazi general, who had somehow gained the confidence of Satan, and become a personal thorn in Jasper’s backside.

  If he gives me one of those Hitler salutes, I swear I am going to puke.

  ‘”Master,” Heinrich said, bowing low. “It is good to see you again.”

  Liar, liar, your swastika’s on fire.

  “Welcome, Heinrich,” Jasper said in a tone that told the German weasel just how unwelcome he was. “Please come inside and be seated.”

  The open doorway was still blocked by the German, who was only seventy years old, having died when in his thirties, serving as a Nazi officer during World War II. Unlike Jasper, who was almost two thousand years old. A prime candidate to become a Lucipire, Heinrich had been, but the biggest pain in Jasper’s hairy behind he’d been ever since then.

  “The other members of the council are already inside,” Heinrich informed him, as if Jasper were not already aware of that fact. And since when had Heinrich become a council member? As far as Jasper knew, and he knew everything about Lucipires and their commanding council, Heinrich was a mere liaison with Satan. Well, not exactly “mere,” but not a council member, either. “I wanted to have a word with you in private.”

  Uh-oh!

  “Satan is displeased by the discord between us.”

  “Us?”