by Sandra Hill
“And a vampire?”
The smirk on her face was not pleasing to him. Not at all.
Still, he advised himself, tread carefully. “Not precisely. The word vampire implies dark. Evil. I am neither of those.”
She arched her pretty reddish-blonde brows in question.
“I am a Viking vampire angel. A vangel, to be precise.”
“Do you have wings?” The snide tone to her voice betrayed her disbelief, but she must have realized how impolite she sounded for a person requesting a favor . . . an interview. “Sorry. Sometimes I have trouble suspending disbelief. Let me rephrase that. Do you have wings, Lord Vikar?” This time she asked the question without mockery.
“Not yet.”
“Seriously, what’s going on here?”
“Seriously, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“Are you a Lucipire?” he blurted out.
“Huh? No. I already told you my name is Alex.”
“Lucipire is the name for one of Lucifer’s vampires. You know, fires of hell, burn and sizzle, and all that.”
“Sizzle? Hah! Don’t blame me for this sizzle between us. I didn’t create this fire. That’s your magic crap.” She slapped a hand over her mouth, realizing how once again she’d failed to rein in her tongue.
But sizzle? She feels the sizzle, too. Her blood is on fire for me. Oh, I am in big trouble. “Lucipire. L. U. C. I. P. I. R. E. One word.”
Her face turned a lovely shade of beet.
“A demon vampire.”
She rolled her eyes. “You people in this town really do take this whole vampire charade a bit too far. I understand why. The tourist attraction and all that. But I’m not writing a promo piece for you in my magazine. If you’re not going to be straight with me, you’re wasting both our time. And, frankly, I don’t appreciate your biting me, either.” She put a hand to the bite mark on her neck, but the way she rubbed it was almost a caress.
Which caused the air to crackle again and ripples of electricity to shoot right to . . .
Down, thickening! Down!
All right, so maybe she wasn’t in league with the devil. But how much information could he trust her with? On the other hand, she said Mike had sent her. Besides, there wasn’t any way he could let her leave after having tasted her blood. She’d definitely been infected. He had work to do on her if she was to be saved.
“You’ve been bitten by a Lucipire, not a mosquito. That’s why I had to sample your blood, to evaluate the extent of your infection.”
“Oh, please . . .” she started to say.
He held up a halting hand. “The Lucie must have been interrupted in the midst of feeding on you.” He tilted his head in question at her.
“The Yoders’ dog did start barking wildly, now that you mention it. I slapped a hand at my neck at the same time I heard Mr. Yoder walking down the hall to call the dog in. But it was a mosquito,” she insisted, “not some dumb-ass devil bloodsucker.”
She is going to have to do something about her language before Mike gets here. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
The warrior in him recognized that ’twas best to surprise the enemy with a sudden attack. Not that she was his enemy. So he launched his big question point-blank: “What big sin have you committed?”
“What?” That question certainly got her attention and caught her unawares, as he’d planned.
“You are clearly in a state of mortal sin.”
“How dare you make such a personal statement about me, a perfect stranger?”
“The Lucipires only attack those who have committed some grave sin, or are contemplating such.” Plus, the sin-scent teased his enhanced sense of smell, as well.
“Oh.” That one word said it all, guilt personified, along with another beet blush.
So, the sin has not yet been committed. That is good. Although even the small amount of demon infection is already heightening her temptation to evil. He tented his fingers in front of his face, his two forefingers resting on his forehead. Finally he came to a conclusion.
“You have to tell me everything so that I can save you,” he said.
“Save me?” she sputtered. “Like you’re my guardian angel?”
“So to speak,” he agreed. Time enough to explain later.
“That’s it. I’m out of here.” She stood and walked to the door. When she tried the doorknob, it was, of course, locked. “Unlock. This. Door.” She glared at him over her shoulder.
“Sorry, m’lady, but you are going nowhere.”
She gasped. “You’d force me to stay?”
He shrugged. “I prefer to say you are the first guest of the Hotel Transylvania.”
“Are you people escapees from a mental hospital? Is this the vampire version of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Am I going to see Jack Nicholson popping out of the woodwork with an axe in hand like he did in The Shining?”
She was going to see an axe or two, that was certain. Battle-axes. Lots of them. Along with swords. Maces. And any number of modern weapons, including his favorite Sig pistol. But he did not need to inform her of that just yet.
“Aren’t you a little old for these kinds of silly games? How old are you anyway?”
“You do not want to know.”
“Which means you’re older than you look. Let me guess. That’s a weave you’re wearing to hide your receding hairline. And they say women are vain about their appearance!”
He hated that she’d hit his sin right on its unruly head. Vanity, ever his downfall! Still, he attempted to defend himself. “I shaved my head one time so I could avoid the sin of pride. Mike made it grow back even better. He said cloistered virtue was no virtue at all.”
“The poet John Milton was the one who said that.”
“He did? Wait ’til I tell Mike about stealing someone else’s quote.”
“Who’s Mike?”
Would you believe St. Michael the Archangel?
“Saint . . . I mean, Mike Archer. My . . . uh, agent.”
“And he told you not to shave your head?”
“I have a thing about hair.” He shrugged.
She went on to discuss just about everything that was wrong with the male gender, from plagiarism, to comb-overs, to infidelity, to sex obsessions, to selfishness. On and on she went, lumping him in with the worst.
He let her vent for a while longer, then asked politely, “I don’t suppose you know how to cook? We have a side of beef in the kitchen that we got from a local Amish farmer, and our cook has not yet arrived. No one knows how to cook it without building a fire, and that would surely ruin the new floor tile.” He was teasing, of course, just wanting to stop her tirade.
She told him to do something to himself that he knew for a fact was physically impossible. “I take that for a no.”
“Correction. That would be: Hell, no!”
“We don’t mention that place here.”
She gave him a look, the one women have perfected over time that essentially said of their menfolk, Dumb dolt!
He widened his eyes with innocence, pretending not to understand.
“I need a drink. A dirty martini would go over great about now. Even a Bloody Mary, minus the blood. I don’t suppose you vampires have any alcohol?”
“M’lady! We are Vikings. We practically invented beer.”
“Angels who drink beer,” she muttered as she followed him out of the office. “And vampires, besides. I suppose you only suck on beer-sodden alcoholics.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” he said. “You have much to learn, wench. Much!”
He wondered if her obvious sense of humor would be intact after a day or two in VIK land.
About the Author
SANDRA HILL is a graduate of Penn State and worked for more than ten years as a features writer and education editor for publications in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Writing about serious issues taught her the merits of seeking the lighter side of ev
en the darkest stories. She is the wife of a stockbroker and the mother of four sons. Visit her website at www.sandrahill.net.
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Romances by Sandra Hill
The Norse King’s Daughter
The Viking Takes a Knight
Viking in Love
Hot & Heavy
Wet & Wild
A Tale of Two Vikings
The Very Virile Viking
The Viking’s Captive (formerly My Fair Viking)
The Blue Viking
Truly, Madly Viking
The Love Potion
The Bewitched Viking
Love Me Tender
The Last Viking
Sweeter Savage Love
Desperado
Frankly, My Dear
The Tarnished Lady
The Outlaw Viking
The Reluctant Viking
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from Kiss of Pride copyright © 2012 by Sandra Hill
THE NORSE KING’S DAUGHTER. Copyright © 2011 by Sandra Hill. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition OCTOBER 2011 ISBN: 9780062096340
Print Edition ISBN: 9780061673511
FIRST EDITION
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Reader Letter
Glossary
An Excerpt from Kiss of Pride
About the Author
Romances by Sandra Hill
Copyright
About the Publisher