But wait. The smell of lemons filled the air, a sure signal to vangels and Lucies alike that this was an evil man, or one about to commit some evil. In Leroy’s case, probably both. It was Karl’s job as a vampire angel to try to redeem sinners like Leroy. To offer them a chance to change their bad ways. He’d like to sic a Lucie on Leroy instead and send him to the Horror he deserved.
Still, Karl said, “You don’t want to do this, Leroy. Why not take a stand today? Turn a new leaf? I can help you.”
“Suck my dick!”
Okaaay! Karl just smiled, he couldn’t help himself.
Faith looked at Karl like he was crazy. She had to be thinking that her knight in shining armor riding in on a snow-white horse was actually a wuss in a Levi jacket driving an old pickup truck.
He had news for her. Not that he was any kind of a hero, but damn, some days it was good to be a vangel.
Chapter Three
He wasn’t G.I. Joe. He was better . . .
FAITH WAS TERRIFIED.
Leroy would kill her this time. Heck, he’d almost killed her two days ago, when he’d found the money she’d hidden from him so that she could order fuel.
And now she’d somehow gotten another person involved as well. She’d seen Leroy break a guy’s jaw one time just because he’d parked his vehicle too close to Leroy’s precious Harley in a bar parking lot.
“I think you should go,” Faith told Karl.
“I don’t think so, honey,” Karl said.
“Honey?” Leroy roared, and raised his fists, about to charge.
Karl moved so fast, Faith couldn’t believe her eyes. It was almost supernatural the way he was standing beside her one moment and behind Leroy the next with one hand twisting Leroy’s left arm up to his shoulder blade and the other hand pressing against Leroy’s thick neck so that Leroy was forced to raise his chin. Leroy was stunned, too, especially when Karl forced him to his knees.
“Faith, pick up your luggage and go outside. My truck is unlocked.”
At first, she couldn’t comprehend what was happening.
“Go!” he ordered.
Even as she began to move, she heard Leroy make a gurgling noise, and Karl moved his fingers from the front to the back of his neck, which he pinched, hard. And Leroy fell forward onto the thin carpet with a thud.
Most alarming of all, Karl appeared to have fangs coming out of his mouth. Noticing her watching him, he swiped a hand over his lips, and they were gone. She must have been mistaken. “Go!” he repeated.
Then it appeared as if he had wispy blue wings fluttering out of his back, like an angel. Her one eye was swollen shut, and her vision in the other eye must be impaired because when she blinked, the wings were gone, too.
Fangs and wings? A vampire angel? she thought with hysterical irrelevance. All this battering from Leroy must have shaken something loose in my brain.
Opening the door, she ran outside. The snow was coming down so heavily, she could hardly see. Making her way to the old pickup truck, she opened the passenger door, shoved her suitcase into the backseat, and climbed in the front, closing the door behind her. It was still fairly warm inside.
Sobbing, she pulled a tissue from her jacket pocket. Dabbing at the bruised eye, which burned from the salty tears, she wondered how her life had gotten so messed up. She was almost thirty years old and had no future to speak of. Despite having grown up in one foster home after another, she’d managed to graduate from high school with honors, and she’d had a good job at Penn State as a secretary, was even taking some college courses toward a degree.
But that was before she’d met Leroy five years ago. Everything in her life could be measured that way, it seemed. Before Leroy. After Leroy. BL. AL.
The driver’s door opened abruptly, and Karl jumped in. “Brrr!” he said. “I think the temp dropped ten degrees since I got here.”
What could she say to that? There were more important things, for sure. “Is Leroy dead?” she asked.
There was surprise in his pale blue eyes as he turned his head to stare at her. “Do you want him to be?”
“Of course not.” But she did want him gone. Out of her life. And, yes, she had to admit, there had been times she’d wished him dead. Too many times.
“No, sweetheart, he’s not dead, although he probably deserves to be. I just pinched a nerve in his neck, causing him to black out. He’ll be on his feet in no time.”
“Good,” she said. But what she thought was, Leroy will surely kill me now. And Karl, as well. There was no turning back the clock, though. What was done was done. “We better get out of here then, before he wakes up.”
He turned on the ignition, and blessed heat blew out, filling the cab of the truck like a warm cocoon, especially with the windows covered with snow. Backing up, he turned around and drove down the lane toward the highway, the windshield wipers swishing back and forth. It was beginning to look like a real blizzard.
“Everything is going to be all right,” he told her.
She couldn’t imagine how it could be. She didn’t even know the man, but she had to admit, she did feel safe for the moment. “Thank you,” she said softly.
“My pleasure,” he said with a grin.
He really was a nice-looking guy. A lot younger than her, of course. Probably in his early twenties. Although he had a military haircut; so, maybe he’d served in the armed forces and was older than he looked. “How old are you?” she asked.
He grinned some more. “Older than you could imagine. How about you?”
“Twenty-nine. Almost thirty.”
“No shit! I mean, no kidding! You look about sixteen.”
She shrugged. “I always did, even before I lost some weight.”
He arched his brows as if to say she’d lost more than “some weight.”
“Are you in the Army or something?”
“Or something,” he replied without thinking, then added, “I used to be one of Uncle Sam’s finest. No more.”
“I could tell—“
“Don’t talk,” he advised then. “Your lip is bleeding.”
She used the tissue in her hand to blot the moisture where her lower lip had cracked open again.
Karl reached over and turned on the radio. The air was suddenly filled with George Strait singing that old song, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
“Damn! Christmas music already!” Karl swore and was about to change the station.
“No. Leave it on. I like that song.” She leaned her head against the headrest and let the warmth and the music and sudden peace envelop her. Just before she fell asleep, a thought occurred to her, I wonder where I’ll be this Christmas.
Home, Sweet Home . . . or is it, Castle, Sweet Castle? Whatever! . . .
By the time Karl turned onto 777 Sayers Drive, the lane leading up to the castle, he had come up with a plan.
He would somehow park in the back lot, sneak Faith into the castle, go up the back staircase, one meant for servants when the monstrosity had been built, to the third floor, where his bedroom was located overlooking the rear courtyard. Once there, he would somehow assess Faith’s medical condition, and assuming there was nothing broken or no internal injuries, he could somehow . . . please, God! . . . keep her hidden for a day or two until he somehow located a women’s resource center or whatever the hell you called those places that would find her a safe house.
Yeah, there were a lot of “somehows” involved, but nothing he couldn’t handle.
Easy Peasy! he thought.
Then, Easy Peasy shit! as his plans ran smack-dab into the first roadblock.
There was a long-haul, flatbed truck parked in front of the castle. Exiting from the driver’s side was none other than Vikar, who’d had no trouble maneuvering a longship on the high seas at one time but knew diddly-squat about motor vehicles
, as evidenced by the many dings on every car he owned.
Armod climbed out of the passenger side. Svein and Jogeir crawled out, too. All four of them must have been sitting on the front bench seat. Talk about cozy!
Then Karl noticed something else. They were carrying axes. Armod, a regular woodsman kind that was used to chop kindling, but the other men had long-handled weapons with pikes on one end and sharp axes on the other, the kind Vikings and medieval knights took into battle.
Through the open double front doors of the castle streamed Alex, about a dozen vangels, and the two children, who had been bundled up in matching blue and pink snowsuits so that they resembled fat, midget snowmen.
Fortunately, the snow was still coming down heavily, covering the windows of his pickup no sooner than the wipers made a pass. Fortunate because that meant that no one could see Faith, who still slept soundly. He was beginning to think it was an unnatural sleep.
As quietly as he could, he opened the driver’s door, slid out, and carefully shut and locked the vehicle behind him. He shivered at the blast of cold air that hit him after being in the warm truck and wandered over to the big flatbed.
Now that he got closer, he saw the huge . . . and I mean HUGE . . . evergreen tree lying in the back, anchored down with many, many bungee cords. They must have bought out the entire supply of the stretchy straps at Walmart.
“Are you crazy?” Alex was yelling at Vikar. “I told you to get a Christmas tree. This is a . . . a forest.”
“No, sweetling. You told me to get a big Christmas tree. Which I did.” He grinned with pleasure and did a little twirl with his battle-axe that caused the children to jump up and down and giggle. Well, as much as they could jump with all that padding.
“Vikar!” she said, folding her arms over the chest of her hoodie. “That tree must be fifty feet tall. The front living room ceiling is thirty feet tall.”
“Oh.” At first, Vikar seemed surprised, but then he grinned again. “No problem, sweetling. We will just chop it down to size.”
Armod, Svein, and Jogeir grinned, too. Apparently, they were having a great time, playing with their axes today. Meanwhile, everyone was being coated with snow.
Alex stepped up closer to the truck. “How many trees did you get, Vikar?”
“Only five. The others are small ones. Only about ten or fifteen feet. While we were out in the forest, we figured you might want more than one, and why waste time making an extra trip. Don’t I deserve a kiss or something for all my good work, sweetling?” Vikar waggled his snowy eyebrows at his wife.
“Don’t you sweetling me,” she said, then did in fact lean up and plant a big one on Vikar’s smiling lips.
“I’m beginning to like this Christmas celebrating,” Vikar said, slapping Alex on the butt when she danced away from him to grab Gunnar, who was attempting to climb up the back of the truck.
Karl figured this was his chance to slip away. As he walked back to his pickup, he heard Gunnora begging her father, “Please, Poppa, make us a snowman. A biiiig one.”
“I wanna go sled riding,” Gunnar said.
“Yes, yes, yes!” Gunnora agreed. “But first I hafta pee.”
Alex groaned.
Climbing back into his pickup, he saw that Faith had awakened and, thankfully, had known to stay put and not make her presence known. She had the passenger window open and was staring outside. Gaping, actually, which was a ludicrous picture, with her swollen lip and one closed eye.
“Oh, my God! It’s a palace!” she said with wonder in her voice. Then, she turned to him as he started the engine and began to back up so he could take the alternate driveway around the back. “You live in a palace?”
With the snow covering its bleaker parts, the castle didn’t look as run-down and scary as usual. “It’s a castle, not a palace.”
“Big difference!” she said at his splitting hairs. “Are you a prince or something?”
He had to laugh at that. “Hardly!”
“But this is your home?”
“Well, it’s sort of a family residence. I do a lot of traveling.” That sounded like more splitting hairs, even to his own ears. But how else could he explain without really explaining vangeldom?
“And all those people out there . . . are they your family?”
“Um. In a way.”
“Like a blended family.”
Help me, Lord! “Sure.”
“And they all live here?”
Them and about thirty others, give or take a hundred or so, on occasion. “Yep.”
“Wow! I always wanted to have a big family.”
“You are an only child?”
“I had a brother who was three years older than me, but we were separated when I was only five years old and put in foster care. Separate families. Last I heard, Zach was in prison.”
The sadness in her voice told a story he wasn’t prepared to hear right now. Especially since he was in the back courtyard. He turned off the truck. Time to put his plan into effect.
“Listen, you stay in the car while I go check on something.” He hopped out before she could protest. Popping into the kitchen, he found the coast clear. Lizzie was the only one about, and when she paid no attention to him but went into the large pantry at the other end, he went back outside, leaving the outside door open.
When Faith’s sneakers sank ankle deep in the snow, he picked her up, without hesitation, and carried her inside, closing the door with his hip. Lizzie was thankfully still out of sight. Everyone else was probably out front admiring the Christmas trees, or not admiring them but enjoying the spectacle.
Faith was staring googly-eyed . . . a one-eyed google, that is . . . at the immense kitchen. But he had no time to pause for her to get a good look. Quickly, he entered the closed stairway and made his way upward. Her weight was slight and no burden to carry. In fact, he kind of liked the way she wrapped her arms around his neck and laid her face on his shoulder, seeming to trust him.
He heard voices on the second floor, but he didn’t pause to see who was about. Instead, he took the remaining steps at warp speed and soon entered his bedroom at this end of the wide hallway on the third floor. Setting Faith on her feet, he said in a teasing note that came from God only knew where, “Honey, we’re home.”
She turned in a slow circle, soaking everything in.
The room wasn’t small . . . none of them were in this castle. About twenty by thirty. It had a double bed with one of Alex’s many quilt purchases on it. This one was vividly colored in a pattern she’d told him was called God’s Pinwheel. There was a desk, a bureau, a small, flat-screen TV in a sitting area with a fat, upholstered chair with a floor lamp next to it for reading, two large, many-paned windows, one of which had a padded seat in front of it. The walls were plain white plaster, and the only thing adorning them was a crucifix above the bed and on the other side, a framed print of a summer landscape . . . a farm, ironically. That’s probably why he had picked this particular room.
The furnishings weren’t historically correct for a hundred-year-old castle, but Alex had enough to do restoring the first floor to the way it had been. Comfort was the key in the bedrooms. Thus far.
“This is beautiful,” Faith said on a sigh, taking off her hat, and scarf, and coat.
Her expectations must be low for her to consider this beautiful. Adequate would be a better description.
She shivered suddenly, although it was fairly warm in the room, a new heating system having been installed in the castle several months ago. For a small fortune, Vikar was quick to tell one and all. You could heat a small village for the same amount, Vikar contended.
But her shivering recalled to Karl that he needed to tend to Faith’s injuries, whatever they might be.
“There’s a bathroom across the hall,” he told her.
She nodded, but
didn’t seem to be in need of the facilities at the moment. She was checking out the paperback novels arranged between two bookends on the desk. Mostly thrillers.
This was awkward.
“Faith, I need to examine you for . . . injuries.”
That caught her attention. “Are you a doctor?”
“No, but I have some medical training.” He’d been a medic at one point, as well as a sniper, in the Army. And he’d served as an aide to Sigurd on some missions. Sigurd, one of the seven Sigurdsson brothers, was in fact a physician.
“I think I’m all right. I’d just like to lie down for a while if you don’t mind.”
“That’s a good idea. You lie down, let me assess your condition, then you can take a nap.”
“No way am I lying on that pretty quilt with these dirty clothes.”
“Huh?” She didn’t look dirty to him. In fact, her sweatshirt and jeans looked old and faded but clean.
“I was scrubbing the bathroom floor when you arrived,” she confessed, her face turning pink, as if that was something to be embarrassed about. She put a hand to her flat stomach, a gesture that he’d noticed she did a lot.
“Did that bastard kick you in the stomach or punch you there?” he snarled.
His rough voice startled her, he could tell, and he told himself to be extra careful with her in future. He didn’t want her to think she’d picked up another violent man. Not that Karl wasn’t violent when need be. But not with women. Unless they were Lucies.
“No. Not this time,” she told him, sitting down on the edge of the old upholstered chair he’d rescued from the Dumpster when Alex was spring-cleaning one of the attics. No worry about getting that thing dirty!
Faith began to toe off her sneakers, then curl her toes in their pink socks into the soft, braided rug on the floor. His cue to leave, he guessed.