Vampire in Paradise (24 page)

Marisa arched her brows at Inga. Her friend liked to party, and she dated a lot. But
The One
was not a term she used loosely.

“Rob Lowry. He’s thirty-five years old. Divorced. No children. He owns a water taxi service out of Key West with six boats that travel back and forth to the various islands. He went to West Point, served six years in the Army, was honorably discharged as a captain when he had to come home to take over the family business after his father’s death. His mother still lives, and acts as bookkeeper for the company. He has no brothers or sisters. He’s tall, well-built, bald as a golf ball, has one chipped front tooth, kisses like a pro, and is sexy as hell.”

Marisa had to smile. “You learned all that tonight?”

Her friend blushed, and she almost never blushed. “We spent the night on one of his boats, just talking and drinking wine, but mostly talking. Seemed like we had so much to say to each other. Like we had to catch up on all the years we’d been waiting to meet each other. That sounds corny, doesn’t it?”

“No, honey, it sounds just perfect,” Marisa said, putting her cup down and squeezing her friend’s hand. “I’m happy for you.”

Just then, the sound of helicopters flying low could be heard.

“This has been going on for the past hour. FBI and Coast Guard choppers coming and going from the mainland to some of those yachts out there. Rob says people in town have been aware that something big was going to come down.”

“Drugs?”

Inga shrugged. “No one knows.”

“Oh my God! You mentioned yachts. Was Harry’s one of them?”

“I really don’t know. Good thing you got out of there, just in case, huh?”

In more ways than one
, she thought.

“But, honey, there’s much more. That big party that was to be held at the hotel tonight . . . whoa, boy! What a dirtbag affair it turned out to be. For all of Vanderfelt’s hype about FOE and pornography is not all that bad, this was the worst of the worst.” Inga went on to explain some of the amazing happenings, which would be disgusting to most sane people. “Even worse . . .” Inga began.

“There’s more?”

“Oh yeah! There appeared to be some kind of fight that took place outside between Sigurd and his guys and some dragons.”

“Dragons? C’mon! Really?”

“Well, no one really witnessed the fight firsthand. But supposedly there were these beasts the size of buses with tails and claws.”

Marisa would have laughed, except that she recalled the waiter turned beast who’d appeared on her patio, the one Sigurd had destroyed into a puddle of slime. This nightmare kept getting more nightmarish.

“I’m beginning to think it was a mistake for us to come here,” Inga said.

“Ya think?” Marisa couldn’t be angry with Inga, even though she was the one who’d pushed Marisa into coming.

Something occurred to Marisa then. “Tiffany? Oh my God! Where was she in the midst of all this crap? Do you think she got hurt? You mentioned she was packing, but . . .”

They both stood at the same time with alarm.

Marisa knocked on the other bedroom door. “Tiff? Are you in there? Are you okay?”

There was a mumbling noise from inside.

“Can we come in?”

“All right,” Tiffany said sleepily.

Marisa opened the door and clicked on the wall light switch. She and Inga stepped inside.

Tiffany, under a thin blanket on the bed, blinked against the sudden light. “What?” Her luggage was packed and sitting next to the door. She’d probably gone to bed until the morning boats would operate back to the mainland.

“Are you all right?” Marisa asked.

Tiffany sat up and began to weep.

“What’s wrong? What happened? Were you at the awful party tonight?” Inga asked.

The weeping turned to bawling.

Marisa sat on one side of the twin bed, and Inga sat on the other, each holding one of Tiffany’s hands.

“It was awful,” Tiffany wailed. “First, Ah was at the party up at the penthouse. Ah think Ah musta had a funny drink, ya know what Ah mean. Ah had sex with the movie director Ah tol’ ya ’bout, but mah brain is fuzzy ’bout the rest. Ah mighta had sex with some others.”

“Oh, Tiff!” Marisa said, leaning forward to give her a quick hug.

“After that, Ah somehow got ta the party down in the ballroom. Ah’ve never seen anythin’ so disgustin’, not even in some of the bad adult videos, and y’all know Ah’m no prude when it comes ta that stuff.” She shivered and pulled her hands free to tug the blanket up over her shoulders.

“This man tried to force me . . . Ah said no, but he kept following me, but then Sigurd saved me. Ah don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Before she pulled the blanket over her head, Tiffany held Marisa’s gaze for a moment, and Marisa understood the horror she saw there. The rapist had been a Lucipire, in demon form, and Sigurd had destroyed it in front of Tiffany. “Ah jist wanna go home,” Tiffany whined under the blanket.

One last thing Marisa needed to know. She tugged the blanket down slightly and saw what she’d suspected. Fang marks on Tiffany’s neck. “Oh no!” Marisa said, putting her fingertips to the marks.

“It’s okay,” Tiffany told her. “Sigurd removed the . . . Ah mean, he saved me.”

Marisa could tell that the girl didn’t want to say more. Heck, she probably didn’t really know what Sigurd had done, especially if she’d still been under the influence of drugs. But Marisa did. He’d removed Tiffany’s sin taint, just like he’d removed hers. Not that it had done her much good, since she went on her date with Harry anyhow. And still would, truth to tell, if he was around tomorrow. After all, nothing had changed regarding Izzie.

“Ah’m leavin’ first thing in the mornin’,” Tiffany told them, after she blew her nose loudly into a tissue. “Tee-Beau is gonna drive up from Georg-ah and meet me in Key West ta take me home. Ah’m never gonna leave him again, Ah swear.”

“I’m leaving in the morning, too.” Inga patted Tiffany on the arm and stood. “We can take the water taxi back to the mainland together.”

They both looked at Marisa, who stood, too. “I’ll decide tomorrow.”

“Marisa,” Inga protested.

“Tomorrow,” Marisa insisted.

The next day, the choice was taken out of her hands.

S
igurd was lying, pain-ridden and stiff as death, in a castle bed in Transylvania when he regained consciousness.

Last thing he recalled was his encounter with Reynaldo, the haakai Lucipire, and someone coming up to stab him in the back. Vikar had called out a warning to him, but too late for Sigurd to escape injury. Even so, Vikar must have saved Sigurd from a fate worse than death for a vangel—being taken to Horror and tortured into becoming a demon vampire—by killing the Lucipire who had come up behind him. Otherwise, Sigurd would be in Tranquillity, not a castle bedroom. Tranquillity was the place vangels went, those who died before their time. It was a holding place until Judgment Day, much like Purgatory.

“Infection” was always a problem when anyone was injured by a Lucie weapon, which would have been treated with poisonous mung. Even if a fatal blow hadn’t been made, the slime itself in an open wound could cause death. That must be what happened to him.

He tried to sit up but fell back weakly onto the bed.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You are not ready to get up yet,” Karl said, rising from an overstuffed chair where he had been reading a paperback book, probably one of the mystery novels he devoured. Karl leaned over him, adjusting a blanket and straightening the PICC lines that ran from an IV pole beside the bed into his arm.

“A PICC?” he asked, his voice a dry croak that hurt his throat. Usually, a peripherally inserted central catheter was only used for patients with long-term care, as compared to a temporary IV line.

“Here. Take a sip.” Karl handed him a bottled water with a straw in it, like he was an invalid or something.

His eyes went wide, even as he took several sips of the icy fluid. “Heavenly,” he whispered in appreciation as he sank back further into the pillow.

“Not quite, good buddy,” Karl said. “Heaven, I mean.”

Sigurd studied the bags hanging from the pole. A saline solution for dehydration and probably antibiotics, he recognized. But there was also a bag containing blood.

“I bled out?” He didn’t recall a wound that would have bled so profusely, but then he’d passed out right after the last blow.

“No, but you’ve needed good vangel blood to dilute the toxins from the Lucie’s blade. Your brothers have been donating a pint a day.”

“My brothers?”
As in plural?
“Here?” He was so confused. Yes, Vikar would be here at the castle, but . . .

“Yep. All six of them are here. Sitting vigil. They’re down in the chapel as we speak, praying for you.”

Sigurd tried to laugh at the image, but it came out as a cough. “I have been that bad off?”

“Oh yeah. Here’s the funny thing, if you can find humor in any of this. Guess what saved you? Your angel bump. The Lucie’s knife hit that hard bone, harder than any of us realized they are, and skittered off to the right. All you got was a superficial slice on your upper arm. Mike says that if you ever get your wings now, you’ll probably fly lopsided.”

Ha, ha, ha. That is just great. Archangel humor.
“How long . . . ?” He waved his hand weakly over the bed, words coming hard for him.

“You’ve been dead to the world for four days now. It was touch and go there a few times, my friend.”

“Four days?” his raspy voice exclaimed in alarm. “The island? The mission?” And something else equally important nagged at his mind, but he couldn’t quite grab the thought.

“You’re not to worry. The island operation was a success. Almost all the Lucies were taken down. The only ones who escaped were on the yacht.”

“Jasper?”

“Got away.”

Sigurd said a vile expletive that vangels were forbidden to use and sank back into the blessed blankness. Karl was wrong. The operation had not been a success. Sigurd had failed to take out the master demon, which had been his primary mission. Mike was going to be so pissed with him.

The next day, when he awakened, he recalled what had been niggling at his mind. He jackknifed to a sitting position and said, “Marisa?” Even though his head pounded like a bloody drum and his upper arm felt like a molten knife was in it, being twisted to and fro, he managed to stay upright until he got his bearings. “Marisa,” he said again. “I need to see—”

“Lie back down, Sig.” It was his brother Vikar now. He was standing next to the bed. “Marisa made it off the island, just fine.”

Out in the hallway, he heard a child’s voice say, “I wanna see Unka Sig.” It was Gunnar, Vikar and Alex’s adopted son.

“Not now, Gun,” Alex said. “Maybe later. Now come away from there.”

“Doan wanna.”

“Gunnar, do as your mother says,” Vikar yelled, even though the door was closed.

The yell reverberated through Sigurd’s head like an echoing bell, and he winced.

There was silence for a moment as Gunnar tried to decide if his father meant business or not.

“I mean it, boy. I can still paddle your little butt.”

As if he ever would!

“I’m gonna read
Goldilocks
ta Unka Sig. That’ll make him feel better. It’s his favor,” said another child’s voice. Gunnar’s twin, Gunnora. He suspected her face was pressed up against the keyhole, trying to look in.

“Nora! You can’t read
Goldilocks
,” Gunnar protested. “You can’t do the bear growls like I can. Grow-ell!”

“Can, too! Grrrrr!”

Alex interjected, “Why don’t we go down to the kitchen and see if Lizzie will let you make peach tarts for when Uncle Sig wakes up.”

The thought of food made Sigurd’s stomach roil, even the fruit sweets he usually devoured.

“Yippee!” the two young voices said, and clattered away down the hall, hitting each step downward with a loud thud. He felt each thud in his pounding head.

The door opened a crack then and Alex peered in. “Welcome back, Sig. You better be up and about soon or the kids are going to drive us nuts, trying to keep them away.”

“I’ll try,” he said. When she was gone, he turned to Vikar, who’d pulled a straight-back chair up beside the bed. He noticed idly that the blood bag was gone, though the saline line was still in place. “Tell me everything,” he demanded. “From when I got hit.”

“It was mostly a matter of cleanup after you went down. Harek and Karl teletransported you back here to the castle and began immediate medical procedures. The rest of us stayed to handle any remaining Lucies.”

“How many?”

“Forty-seven, including six haakai and eight mungs. As far as I could tell, none of the Lucies on the island escaped.”

“But Jasper did?”

“He did.”

“Then the mission was a failure.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because Mike told me that destroying Jasper was my primary goal.”

“Sig! That is the goal in any of our missions, and none of us has been able to take him down yet. It does not mean we failed.”

“It feels like failure to me.” He shrugged. “Tell me more.”

“You never saw so much slime in one place. It took us an hour to clean up the mess, and even then there was enough left behind to raise questions. The news media was on the story of the island doings like a hog on slop. Not just the FBI arrests for sex trafficking, tax evasion, money laundering, and so on. That in itself was a huge story. But then, there was the disappearance of so many folks who’d attended the conference, or the seeming disappearance. I’m referring to those that had been taken by the Lucies. So far, it’s just speculation because most folks didn’t want their attendance at such a sordid event to be known. Tracking them down would be difficult even under normal circumstances.”

“Did they cancel the remainder of the conference?”

Vikar nodded. “Oh, they tried to resume, as if nothing had happened. But folks were scared. From the top, it was like rats jumping ship. I refer to those investors and filmmakers and Internet entrepreneurs who did not want the media light to shine on them. They were gone by dawn, escaping by yacht or helicopter or seaplane, whatever means available. As for the average attendee, the shame of having participated in that orgiastic party we witnessed had many of them hiding in their rooms the following day. Of course the first boats onto the island were news media, and soon there were more of them than the attendees.”

“Goldman?”

“Arrested. Sex trafficking. Probably out on bail already. His kind always manages to escape punishment.”

“And Marisa? I know you said she managed to leave the island, but did she return home? And what about her daughter? Please don’t tell me she is still involved with Goldman in any way.”

“I do not know, Sig. We’ve been too worried about you and unable to do much except . . . What are you doing?”

He was tearing the gauze bandage off his arm, about to remove the PICC line. “I have to see Marisa. I have to see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“But Sig, you are not strong enough to leave your bed yet.” Vikar gave him a slight shove, and it was enough to have him flat on his back again, panting for breath against the pain. “Besides, Mike said to tell you to stay put until he can come talk with you.”

“About frickin’ what?”

“I have no idea. Maybe your next assignment. Maybe he’ll be sending you back to Johns Hopkins. Maybe the Mayo Clinic this time. Maybe he is just concerned about your well-being.”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe. Vikar, I have to know that Marisa is safe. I have to do whatever I can to save her child. I have to!”

“Why is she so important to you, Sig? Could she be your life mate?”

“I don’t know. I truly don’t. I was only with her one time.”

Vikar arched his brows at him.

“Well, one long, memorable night,” he amended. “All I know is that my heart hurts when I think of life without her.”

“Sounds like a life mate to me.”

“But Michael said no more life mates, in fact no more relationships of any kind with humans. I am lost, Vikar. I am lost,” Sigurd said on a groan as the black sleep began to overtake him again.

“You need to focus on yourself now, Sig. Take care to heal your body.”

“The only thing I care about is Marisa, and I fear for her.”

“Maybe you need to trust in a higher power working on your behalf.”

“More maybes! Maybe you need to leave me alone. Misery does not love company.”

And he
was
miserable. Bone-deep, heart-sick miserable. Despite all the odds, despite all the warnings that it could not be, Sigurd suspected that Vikar was right, that he had found his life mate, and lost her, and that hurt more than any Lucie blade.

But he was a Viking, as much as he was vampire or angel, and as such he could not just lie back and do nothing.

He waited in his half-dead state for his brother to leave, and when he did, Sigurd fought the blackness and agony to sit up, then stand. With professional expertise, he removed the cath lines and then the PICC itself. He staggered at first, but then was able to pace the room several times to get his bearings.

Sitting on the dresser was the large conch shell he’d picked up on the island as a gift for Marisa’s child after talking with her on the phone that one day. It must have been in his luggage, which Alex had undoubtedly unpacked.

He should dress, he decided then. He was wearing only a pair of plaid sleep pants that Alex must have found somewhere for him. No matter. He hadn’t the strength to pull on a shirt or bend over to put on a pair of shoes.

In fact, he had to focus hard to teletransport himself out of the room and through the ether to his destination.

Miami, here I come.

Sigurd landed flat on his back on a soft surface, but it was painful nonetheless. Without rising, he gazed around him and realized by the dim light of a princess lamp that he was in one of two narrow beds in a little girl’s bedroom. Pink walls, pink curtains, pink bedspreads, pink, pink, pink.

Rising on the elbow of his uninjured side, he gazed over at the other bed where a little girl in a ruffled nightgown—pink, of course—was staring at him, wide-eyed and wide-awake. She had a cap of short, dark curls on her head, and her nose was different, and she had a rosebud mouth rather than fulsome lips, but still she looked like a little version of Marisa.

To his surprise, she was unafraid of him, a stranger in her bedchamber in the middle of the night. In a whisper, she asked, “Are you an angel?”

“I am.”
Sort of.

“Did you come ta take me ta Heaven?”

A vise clamped over his heart at her words. What a brave little soul she was! “No, sweetling, I am not that kind of angel.”

“Oh. You mus’ be my guardian angel then.”

He shook his head, hardly able to speak over the lump in his throat. “Not that kind, either. I’m just an angel friend come to visit you.”

“I don’t have very many friends ’cause I’m sick.”

And he saw then that her condition was not good. She was very thin and her eyes were ringed with deep shadows. “I know a little boy and a little girl who would like to be your friends. They’re my nephew and niece, Gunnar and Gunnora. They’re three years old.”

“I’m five,” she said as if that were so much older, “but I could still be their friend.”

“They would like that.”

“What’s that?”

He glanced down to where she was looking. He’d somehow brought the conch with him. “I promised you a large seashell. Remember?”

She nodded and reached out a hand, weakly, for it.

He stood slowly so as not to alarm the child and laid it on the bed beside her head. “If you are very quiet and hold it up to your ear, you can hear the ocean,” he told her.

“Really?”

He nodded and showed her what to do. Even a conch shell was too heavy for her little hand to hold up without support.

“Wow!” she whispered.

“I’ll put it over here where you can see it.” He placed it on the bedside table next to the dim-bulbed lamp.

He could feel the heat coming off her body before he touched her forehead with his fingertips. She was warm but not alarmingly so. “Don’t mind my touching you, Izzie. I’m a doctor.” He sat on the edge of her bed as he examined her lightly, taking her pulse.