Kiss of Surrender (30 page)

And women claimed men were the ones lacking in morals!

That night he swived the Irish maid, and she was sweet, especially after having been bathed. It was not an entirely satisfying tup, though. The girl was too willing. He kept seeing her husband’s face as he was dragged away. No doubt his distaste would fade eventually, but tonight he had no patience for it, and he sent her away after just one bout of bedsport. In the end, she begged him to be permitted to stay, but he wanted no more of her for now.

He drank way too much mead then, which only increased his foul mood. That was the only excuse he could find for his seeing Asta slinking along one of the hallways and motioning him with a forefinger to come to her bedchamber. Another round-heeled woman with the morals of a feral cat. He knew for a fact that Serk was serving guard duty all night.

Mayhap he should tup Serk’s wife and then explain to him in the nicest possible way on the morrow what a poor choice he had made in picking this particular maid for his mate. Ivak would be doing his friend a favor, he rationalized with alehead madness.

Asta was riding him like a bloody stallion a short time later, and while his cock was interested, he found himself oddly regretting his impulsive invitation. Bored, he glanced toward the door that was opening, and there stood Serk, staring at them with horror. This was not the way he’d wanted his friend to discover his wife’s lack of faithfulness.

“Ivak? My friend?” Serk choked out.

“I can explain. It’s not what you think.” Well, it was, but there was a reason for his madness. Wasn’t there?

At the stricken expression on Serk’s face, Ivak shoved Asta off him, ignoring her squeal of ill humor, and jumped off the bed. By the time he was dressed, his good friend was gone. And Asta was more concerned about having her bed play interrupted than the fact that her husband had witnessed her adultery. To Ivak’s amazement, she actually thought they would resume the swiving.

Ivak searched for more than an hour, to no avail. It was already well after midnight and most folks, except for his housecarls, were abed. His apology and explanation to Serk would have to wait until morning. He had no doubt that Serk would forgive him, once he understood that Asta was just a woman, and a faithless one at that. Oh, Ivak did not doubt that Serk would be angry, and Ivak might even allow him a punch or two, but eventually their friendship would be intact.

Still, he could not sleep with all that had happened, and he decided to walk out to the stables to check on a prize mare that should foal any day now. What Ivak found, though, was so shocking he could scarce breathe. In fact, he fell to his knees and moaned. “Oh, nay! Please, gods, let it not be so!”

Hanging from one of the rafters was Serk.

His friend had hanged himself.

What have I done? What have I done? She was not worth it, my friend. Truly, she was not. Oh, what have I done?

Ivak lowered the body to the floor and did not need to put a fingertip to Serk’s neck to know that he had already passed to Valhalla. With tears burning his eyes, he stood, about to call for the stablemaster in an adjoining shed to help him release Serk’s noose, when he heard a noise behind him. Turning, he saw the young Irish blacksmith, husband of the red-haired maid he’d bedded, running toward him with a raised pitchfork. Vadim and his crew were supposed to depart at first light. The man must have escaped his restraints.

Before Ivak had a chance to raise an alarm or fight for himself, the man pierced his chest with the long tines of the pitchfork. Unfortunately, he used the special implement with metal tines that Ivak had purchased this past summer on a whim, not satisfied with the usual wooden pitchforks for his fine stable. So forceful had the man’s surge toward him been that he pinned Ivak into the wall.

“You devil!” the man yelled, tears streaming down his face. “You bloody damn devil! May you rot in hell!”

He was given a choice: Hell or something like Hell . . .

“Tsk, tsk, tsk!”

Ivak heard the voice through his pain-hazed brain.
I thought I was dead. I must be dead.
Opening his heavy lids, he glanced downward, beyond the sharp tines that still pinned him to the wall, to see his lifeblood pooling at his feet.
Definitely dead
. Raising his head, he saw that Serk still lay in the rushes where he’d lowered him. And the blacksmith was gone. Apparently, neither he nor Serk had been discovered yet. Well, it would be too late for either of them now.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk!” he heard again, and this time realized that the voice came from his right side. “It is never too late, Viking.”

If Ivak hadn’t been dead, and if he hadn’t been immobilized by a pitchfork through his heart, he would have fallen over with shock. Standing there, big as he pleased—and he was big, all right—was an angel. A big, black-haired man with widespread, snow-white wings and piercing blue eyes.

Ivak knew what angels were since he practiced both the ancient Norse religion and the Christian one, an expedience many Norsemen adopted. Apparently, he would not be off to Valhalla today with its myriad of golden shields and virgin Valkyries. “Am I going to Heaven?” he asked the frowning angel.

The angel made a snorting sound of disbelief at his question. “Hardly!”

“Hell, then?” he inquired tentatively.

“Nay, but thou may wish it so.”

Enough of this nonsense. Dead was dead. “Who are you?” Ivak demanded. “And how about pulling out this pitchfork?”

“Michael,” the angel said, then eyeing the pitchfork, added, “Thou art certain I should do that?”

Before Ivak had a chance to reconsider, the angel . . . Michael . . . yanked it out, causing excruciating pain to envelop him as he fell to the rush-covered floor, face first. If he were not in such screaming pain, he would have been impressed at the strength of the angel to have removed, all in one smooth pull, the tines that had not only skewered his body but had been imbedded in the wooden wall behind him, as well. Like one of his muscle-honed warriors who hefted heavy broadswords with ease, this angel was.

He realized in that instant whose presence he was in. Staggering to his feet, he panted out, “Would that be Michael the Archangel? The warrior angel?”

The angel nodded his head in acknowledgment.

“Am I dead?”

“As a door hinge.”

“Is this what happens when everyone dies? An angel shows up? You show up?”

“No.”

“I’m someone special? I get special attention?”

“Thee could say that.”

Ivak didn’t like the sound of that. “Stop speaking in riddles. And enough with the
thee
s and
thou
s!”

The angel shrugged. “You are in no position to issue orders, Viking.”

He sighed deeply and tried for patience, which had to be strange. A dead person trying to be patient. “What happens now?”

“That depends on you.”

More riddles!

“You are a grave sinner, Ivak Sigurdsson. Not just you. Your six brothers are equally guilty. Each of you has committed one of the Seven Deadly Sins in a most grievous fashion.”

“My brothers? Are they dead, too?”

“Some are. The others soon will be.”

Ivak was confused. “Which horrible sin is it that I have committed?”

“Lust.”

“Lust is a sin?” He laughed.

The angel continued to glare at him. No sense of humor at all.

Ivak laughed again.

But not for long.

The angel raised his hand and pointed a finger at him, causing him to be slammed against the wall and pinned there, but this time there was no pitchfork involved. Just some invisible bonds. “Sinner, repent,” Michael demanded in a steely voice, “lest I send you straight to Lucifer to become one of his minions. You will like his pitchfork even less than the mortal one that impaled you.”

“I repent, I repent,” Ivak said, though he still didn’t see how lust could be such a big sin.

“You do not see how lust can be sinful?” Michael could obviously read his mind. The angel gaped at him for a moment before exclaiming, “Vikings! Lackwits, one and all!” With those words, the angel waved a hand in front of Ivak’s face, creating a cloudy screen in which he began to see his life unfolding before him, rather the lust events in his life.

It didn’t take Ivak long to realize that not all the girls and women had been as eager to spread their thighs for him as he’d always thought, but most of them had. What surprised him was the number of husbands or betrothed who’d suffered at his hands—rather his cock—for his having defiled their loved ones. Serk hadn’t been the only one. And babes! Who knew he’d bred so many out-of-wedlock children . . . and how many of them lived in poverty! He would have cared for any of his whelps brought to his keep, but these were in far countries.

And then there was this past night’s events . . . the thrall he’d taken to his bed furs knowing she was wed. Worst of all, his betrayal of his best friend.

He shook his head with dismay as shame overcame him. Raising his eyes to the angel, he asked, “What can I do to make amends?”

Michael smiled, and it was not a nice smile. “I thought you would never ask, Viking. From this day forth, you will be a vangel. A Viking vampire angel. One of God’s warriors in the fight against Satan’s vampire demons, Lucipires by name.”

Ivak had no idea what Michael had just said. What was a vampire?

But then, it didn’t matter because his pain-ridden body became even more pain-ridden. Every bone in his body seemed to be breaking and reforming, even his jaw and teeth, after which he hurtled through the air, outside his keep, far up into the sky. Then he lost consciousness.

When he awakened, he found himself in another keep of sorts. But it was made of stone, not wood, as Thorstead was. And the weather here was almost unbearably warm, not the frigid cold of the Norselands.

The sign over the entryway read: “Angola Prison.”