Vampire in Paradise (15 page)

“Teletransport,” he answered succinctly.

“Huh?”

“I have certain abilities,” he told her, rather hesitantly.

Men and their bragging! Though what that has to do with how I got here . . .

“One of them, teletransport, is the transfer of matter from one point to another without traversing physical space.”

Say again?
“Well, that’s as clear as mud.” She thought a moment, then laughed. “You mean like ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ teletransport?”

He made a tsking sound of disgust. “This is not
Star Trek
. This is another type of wars. Demons against angels. Vampire demons, called Lucipires, to be specific, against vampire angels, called vangels.”

I am getting a headache.

“Zeb, whom you met last night, is a Lucie. Me, I am a vangel, for my sins.”

That “for my sins” crap again. I wonder if I remembered to bring aspirin?
“You’re beginning to scare me.”

“You should be scared. That is why you must leave this island.”

We’re back to that same old song again.
“I didn’t mean that kind of scared. I meant scared of you. You, my doctor friend, are a bit of a loony bird. Did you escape from an asylum?” She rolled her eyes, then pointed to the logo on his T-shirt. “And are you a Navy SEAL, too?”

“No, that is my brother Trond.”

She set that news aside for the time being. “Are you even a real doctor?”

“How many times must I tell you that I am in fact a licensed physician? But that is only my job when I am not called on to be a vangel.”

“A doctor only when he doesn’t have better things to do? That’s a new one.”

“Why do you continually missay me? And I have told you afore, and it bears repeating, your cynical tongue ill-suits a lady.”

At least he regards me as a lady. I’ll give him that, and not an inch more.
“Your constant harping on me to leave Grand Keys ill-suits you.”

“Sit down and stop pacing. Do you deliberately distract me with that revealing garment? Up, down, up, down your arse cheeks go. And I do not care what you say, I can see the dimples in your buttocks. You are
not
wearing panties.”

Marisa stopped dead in her tracks, having been unaware that she’d been walking nervously (
What woman wouldn’t be nervous in close confines with a gorgeous Viking who claimed to be a vampire?
) back and forth between the kitchen and the sliding doors to the patio. Even worse, she’d forgotten that she was still wearing the revealing bodysuit
without
the sweater cover-up. She plopped down into a chair opposite him and put a floral throw pillow on her lap. “I’m wearing a thong, for heaven’s sake!” she said before she could bite her loose tongue. Now she was giving him new images of her bare self to imagine.

And he was imagining, all right. With a grin, he said only, “Aaah!”

“And I do not have dimples there.”

“Mayhap my vision is blurred by your female scent clouding the room.”

The female scent nonsense again!
Before he had a chance to remark on her breasts, as well as her butt and her body odor, she raised the pillow higher.

His grin grew wider.

He was a very good-looking man when he wasn’t scowling, his usual expression. Around her, anyway.

“Talk. Get it over with. I have things to do before getting to work. What exactly do you want from me?”

“I want you to leave this fucking island.” He was clearly getting exasperated with her.

She was exasperated, too. “Nice language for an angel!”

“We are permitted to use bad language, well, not permitted precisely but excused, as long as we do not use sacrilegious expletives, as in using the Lord’s name in vain.”

She blinked at the convoluted logic in that explanation.

“So will you leave the island?” he asked with a patience he clearly did not feel.

“Not going to happen. Not until my work commitment is completed. Ten days and not a day less. Next?”

“Then you must let me fang you. No, no, let me finish. It will not hurt. I will suck a little blood from you to remove the sin taint. Then I will inject a little of my own blood into your bloodstream through my fangs. The result? You will lose the inclination to commit the great sin you are contemplating.” He smiled as if that explained it all, and she should be happy to comply.

Not bloody likely!
“Are you nuts? First of all, I am not a bad person, and—”

He raised a hand, interrupting her. “I did not say you are bad, only that you are about to be bad.”

“People do bad things all the time. It’s not the end of the world.”

“It is if Lucies are in the vicinity.”

She inhaled and exhaled for patience, waiting for him to explain.

“’Tis true that Lucies go after only the most evil of humans, except sometimes when they sense a person about commit a great sin, they fang them enough to plant a sin taint. Then the inclination becomes a compulsion.”

“Like me, I suppose?”

“Precisely.”

Marisa tried to recall anyone biting her, and couldn’t. Except for that one time when they’d first arrived and she’d gotten that mosquito bite on her neck. The only person nearby at the time had been the blond-haired, surfer-looking guy signed up to be a scuba instructor. When she’d rubbed her neck, he’d told her that she ought to have that looked at, that “bites” could get infected. Then he’d smiled at her, and was it revisionist memory, but had he had slightly elongated incisors? She wasn’t exactly sure.

While her mind had been wandering, Sigurd had been continuing to talk. “Once the grievous sin is committed, the demon vampires arrive to drain the person until the human body disappears, and then he or she will re-form into bodily shape back in the torture chambers of Horror, the main palace of Jasper, king of the Lucipires.”

Drain? Yuck! This is like a bad vampire novel:
Interview with a Crazyass Vampire Angel.

“Usually, the victims are kept in ‘killing jars,’ large-size, clear glass containers similar to those used by butterfly collectors—”

Butterflies now? Angel wings, butterfly wings, I suppose it makes sense. No, it doesn’t. I am getting thoroughly confused with all these ridiculous analogies.

“—where they are kept in a state of stasis until they agree to become demon vampires. Usually, it takes some horrendous torture to help that process along.”

Marisa’s jaw had dropped lower and lower with each fact Sigurd fed to her. But the only torture she could imagine at the moment was being annoyed to death by incessant, impossible-to-believe chatter.

“Now do you understand?”

“You do tell a great story.”

He threw his hands out in frustration. “Just humor me then. Let me take a little bite of your neck, and I will leave you alone.”

For some reason, that bothered her . . . that his only interest in her was her potential hookup with Harry Goldman.
Isn’t he interested in me as a woman? Not that I’m interested in him as a man. Hah! Who am I kidding? I’m so interested I’m probably drooling.
She licked her lips to make sure.

He groaned.

“What?”

“You have the lips of a harlot.”

He is interested
, she thought with inordinate pleasure. “First, you call me a lady, and now a harlot. Make up your mind.”

“You are both, and that is the best combination. To a male, leastways. To this male, certainly.”

“Look, it’s been fun talking with you”—
not!
—“but I really need to alter my waitress uniform, take a shower, and get ready for my first shift at the restaurant.”

“We still need to finish this conversation.”

“As far as I’m concerned, the subject is closed.”

“Not even close. What is wrong with your uniform?”

“I’ll show you.” She went into the bedroom and came back out with the black nylon dress and the travel sewing kit she planned to use. Holding it up against her, she said, “I’ve got to let the hem down two inches; that’s all the fabric there is, but I haven’t stitched it yet. And I want to sew up some of this cleavage, too. Otherwise, I’ll be flashing my customers.”

She thought he would make some crude comment, but instead he said, “I can do that for you. Go, take your shower. The food should be here shortly, and then we can finish our conversation.”

“You can sew? Good Lord, you are a man of many talents. A seamstress now, too.”

“I’m a physician. I need to know how to stitch a wound with precision. How much different can a hem be?”

“Go for it,” she said, heading for the bathroom. It was the quickest shower in history, followed by an equally quick blow-dry of her hair and application of makeup. She came out in a long silk Donna Karan robe to find Sigurd speaking on a cell phone. Her cell phone!

“Yes, there is a beach here.

“No, I have not made any sand castles yet. Maybe later.

“Uh, I will see if there are any seashells and send one home for you. Of course, a biiiig one. They are the best kind.

“No, your mommy is not having nearly enough fun, but she makes lots of jokes. No, I do not know what is the difference between an alligator and a fish.

“You can’t tuna fish? Oh, that is a good one.

“You know another joke. What is it? How do you make a tissue dance? I cannot imagine. Magic?

“You put a little boogie in it? Miss Izzie! Shame on you!” He laughed.

“Izzie?” Her five-year-old daughter loved silly jokes, and she told the same ones over and over, forgetting that the receiver already knew the punch lines. “You’re talking to my daughter?” Marisa gasped and tried to grab for the phone.

Sigurd held it away from her and spoke into the phone again. “Your mother is here now. Yes, I will remember about the seashell. Buh-bye to you, too.”

He handed the phone to Marisa and, to her surprise, sat down to continue sewing a neat hem on her dress. He really could sew!

She walked out to the patio and sat down. “Izzie, honey, how are you?”

“I called you, Mommy, all by myself. Buelita told me the numbers and put them in. And that nice man answered. Is he your friend?”

“Um, yes.” What else could she say?

“Like Buddy Dalton is my friend?” Buddy was a next-door neighbor roughly Izzie’s age. Occasionally, they played LEGOs together. Buddy was a LEGO fanatic.

“Sure,” she said, and could only imagine the kind of playing a Viking like Sigurd would engage in. “How are you feeling today?”

“Good. I slept a long, long time. I dint get up ’til really late this morning. Buelita sez it’s ’cause I got so much sun at the pool yesterday.”

“Did you have fun?”

“Yes! You dint tell me you was going to the beach, Mommy,” Izzie complained.

Sigurd must have mentioned that.

“Why can’t I come and be with you? I would be a good girl. I would even eat my scrambled eggs.” Some kids hated vegetables, Izzie had an odd repugnance for eggs. “Please, please, please.”

“Not this time, sweetheart. I’m working all day and evening, but I promise you, we will go to the beach after I get home.”
Please God, let that be a possibility.

“And get a whole bucket of seashells.”

“For sure! Let me talk to your grandmother now.”

“Okay,” Izzie agreed, then yelled, “Buelita!”

Marisa cringed. “Love you bunches, peanut.”

“Love you more,” Izzie replied happily.

“Marisa, dear, how are you?”

“I’m fine. This is my first day of work. I made four hundred dollars in tips this morning at the spa, and I’ll be starting a waitress shift later this afternoon.”

“You work too hard. Be careful you don’t burn out, sweetheart.”

Marisa couldn’t afford to burn out, but she didn’t want to be so negative with her mother as to point out that fact. “The spa director put an Izzie jar on the front desk.”

“That’s nice. Every little bit counts.”

“How’s Izzie doing?”

“Remarkably well. She had a wonderful time at the pool. Yes, I remembered to slather her with sunscreen, and we made sure she didn’t overdo the swimming. The girl does swim like a little fish, doesn’t she? Like you, sweetheart.”

The warmth in her mother’s voice was such a gift to Marisa. There had been way too many occasions when there had been tears and distress. Marisa vowed in that moment to do whatever was necessary to make sure Izzie got the operation and there would be happier times not just for Marisa and her daughter, but for her whole family.

“We got a letter from Steve yesterday.”

“Oh?”

“He sent you a check for Izzie. For five hundred dollars.”

“Where would Steve get that kind of money in prison?”

“He said he earned it from working on the prison farm.”

Marisa knew for a fact that the prison inmates were paid twenty-five cents an hour for their work. He was probably gambling. She sighed deeply. “That was nice of him, Mom.”

“Yes, it was. Marisa, baby, I worry about you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you work too hard. You do not pray enough. At some point, we all must ‘Let go and let God.’ It is the only way.”

“I promise, Mom. I’ll pray,” she said, and she did after ending the call, except her prayer wasn’t exactly what her mother had in mind.

“Dear God, help me to do this thing I must to save Izzie.”

When she went back inside, Sigurd was holding up the uniform. “What do you think?”

He had indeed lengthened the hem and stitched the bodice. It remained to be seen how it would look. “Thanks for your help.”

“Now we will have time—”

A knock on the door interrupted whatever Sigurd had been going to say. No doubt the same old/same old refrain about leaving the island. It was a waiter rolling a trolley with their lunch.

She shouldn’t have been surprised to see that there was enough for a small army. Five kinds of sandwiches (chicken salad, roast beef, cheeseburger, a Reuben, and a turkey club), the Caesar salad, a fresh fruit plate, crème brûlée, and chocolate cake. Bottled water, two kinds of diet soda, and three bottles of beer. “Expecting company?”

“No. Why?”

The waiter set up the spread for them and left with a smile when Sigurd slipped him a fifty-dollar tip.

Marisa tied the belt on her robe tighter and sat down. She should have reached for the salad, and she would, but first she grabbed the chicken salad sandwich on whole grain bread. Her favorite kind, with big chunks of white meat chicken along with crunchy grapes and walnuts. “Mmmm,” she said after taking her first bite.