What? Wait. Did he say I won’t be dying, after all?
“This is thy choice. Repent and agree to become a vangel in God’s army for seven hundred years, and thou wilt have a chance to make up for your mortal sins. Otherwise, die and spend eternity at Satan’s hearth.”
A sudden smell of rotten eggs filled the air. Brimstone, Cnut guessed, which was said to be a characteristic of the Christian afterlife for those who had offended their god. At the same time, he could swear his toes felt a mite warm. Yea, fire and brimstone, for a certainty.
So, I am being given a choice between seven hundred years in God’s army or forever roasting in Hell. Some choice! Still, he should not be too quick to agree. “Vangel? What in bloody hell is a vangel?” Cnut gasped out.
“A Viking vampire angel who will fight the forces of Satan’s Lucipires, demon vampires who roam the world spreading evil.”
That was clear as fjord mud. Cnut was still pinned high on the wall, and he figured he was in no position to negotiate. Besides, seven hundred years didn’t sound too bad.
But he forgot to ask what exactly a vampire was.
He soon found out.
With a wave of his hand, the angel loosened Cnut’s invisible ties, and he fell to the floor. If he’d thought the heart pain was bad, it was nothing compared to the excruciating feel of bones being crushed and reformed. If that wasn’t bad enough, he could swear he felt fangs forming on each side of his mouth, like a wolf. And his shoulders were being ripped apart, literally, and replaced with what, Cnut could not be sure, as he writhed about the rush-covered floor.
“First things first,” the angel said then, leaning over him with a menacing smile. “You are going on a diet.”
Chapter 1
LA CHIC SARDINE PASTRY MENU
Salted caramel crème brûlée—Rich cream and imported toffee, chef’s specialty.
Opera Cake—An elegant gâteau of mocha buttercream spread over thin layers of pound cake soaked in coffee syrup, topped with ganache.
Assorted cookies—Chocolate-dipped madeleines; almond meringue macaroons, small in size but sinfully satisfying.
Dacquoise à la Framboise—Almond meringue filled with pastry cream and fresh berries, a seasonal delight.
Napoleons—Traditional flaky pastry layered with chocolate mousse, vanilla or coffee cream, and covered with ganache; one is never enough.
Bourdaloue peach tart—Fresh peaches and almond cream in a generous-size sugar tart shell, can be shared.
Petits fours—Assorted, including LeCygne, a miniature cake filled with vanilla hazelnut cream and Hill Farm natural strawberry preserves.
Crepes filled with fresh fruit of choice, topped with thick whipped cream and dark chocolate shavings, light and decadent.
Sister, where art thou?
“ISIS? Why would any woman in her right mind join that militant group?” Andrea Stewart remarked skeptically into the cell phone she had propped between the crook of her ear and raised shoulder. Her hands were free to stir the chocolate ganache to be spread atop the Opera Cake she was preparing for tonight’s dessert menu at La Chic Sardine.
The elegant gâteau was composed of mocha buttercream spread over thin layers of cake that had been soaked in coffee syrup, topped with the ganache, then sliced into bars. One of her many specialties at this Philadelphia restaurant. As far removed from ISIS as, well, the Liberty Bell.
“How do I know why your sister does the things she does?” her stepmother, Darla, whined into the phone. “All I know is, I have a picture here in front of me, and she’s wearing some kind of robe that covers her from head to toe with only her eyes peeking out.”
“A burqa?” That was a switch for her sister, who was more inclined toward tight jeans and skimpy shirts.
“I don’t know what they call those things. They look like tents, if you ask me. I get a hot flash just thinking about how uncomfortable they must be in this heat. Thank God I’m not an A-rab.”
It was summer, and the city was in the midst of an unusual heat wave—unusual for Pennsylvania—but Darla would have the AC on full blast. Is she in menopause? At forty-five? Andrea did a mental Snoopy dance of glee. There is a God! But that was nasty. Darla didn’t mean to be such an insensitive dingbat. She was just clueless.
Andrea set aside her whisk and adjusted the phone at her ear. Sitting down on a high stool at the kitchen prep table, she sighed and said, “Celie is going purdah? That’s a new one. How is she going to show off all her tattoos? And her body piercings will set off airport alarms if she tries to leave the country.”
“Andy! That’s not funny.”
Actually, it was. Celie’s ink, seventeen at last count, had started with a tramp stamp when she was only thirteen. Winnie the Pooh giving the finger. As for piercings, Andrea had personally witnessed a belly button ring, as well as multiple holes in her ears, eyebrows, tongue, and God only knew where else. Ouch!
To her credit, Celie had let some of the piercings grow back, but still, what was she thinking?
She wasn’t, that was the point with her sister, who was on a continual quest to find herself.
“Honestly, Andy, this is going to kill your father. How much more of this crap can he take?”
Andrea rolled her eyes. Darla had been saying the same thing ever since she, a mere thirty-year-old, married fifty-year-old widower Howard Stewart fifteen years ago, when Andrea had been fourteen years old and her sister Cecilia a mere four. Crap was her universal word for anything the two children did to “ruin her life.” On Andrea’s part, it encompassed everything from strep throat to a dirty kitchen due to one of her latest culinary experiments. When it came to her sister, it could be bedwetting, a low grade on a math test, or promiscuous behavior as a preteen.
Darla, a former Zumba instructor, did not have a maternal bone in her well-toned body. She’d no doubt thought she’d landed a sugar daddy when she met their father, a successful stockbroker, who was brilliant when it came to the market and dumb as a Dow Jones clunker when it came to women. Little had Darla known that the Wall Street gravy train also carried some irritating baggage in the form of two kids, who hadn’t been as sweet and invisible as she’d probably expected.
It was only nine a.m., and the kitchen was empty except for Andrea at this early hour. The restaurant didn’t begin serving until five p.m., but employees would be trailing in soon. Andrea needed to get off the phone and get back to work. “Darla, how do you know it’s Celie?”
“Because it’s a video. Celie sent it to us. At least, I think it came from her. Didn’t I tell you that?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Oh, well, I’m looking at it on my laptop right now. Celie is talking about Allah and the evil United States and that kind of crap. She has black eyebrows. What is her natural hair color, anyway? Oh, that’s right. Blonde, like yours.”
Andrea hadn’t seen her sister for months—in fact, almost a year. Not for any particular reason. There was a ten-year difference in their ages, and that wasn’t the only difference. Celie was of average height, with curves out the wazoo. Andrea was genetically thin, rarely gained an ounce, and thank God for that with her calorie-laden occupation. Celie’s hair could be any color under the rainbow, from bright purple to an actual rainbow, and styled short, long, or half long/half short. Once she even shaved her head. Andrea had sported the same long, blonde ponytail since she was a teenager. It suited her and her work.
Celie was the adventurous one. Always looking for thrills (can anyone say zip line off a cliff?), while Andrea didn’t even like roller coasters. As for men, forget about it! Celie drew men, like flies or bees or whatever. Boys had been chasing her since she was ten years old. Andrea didn’t even want to guess how many lovers Celie had gone through in her nineteen years, while Andrea, at twenty-nine-almost-thirty, had had two real relationships. Three, if you counted Peter Townsend. Pete the Pervert. He had the weirdest fetish involving . . . never mind.
Back to Celie. Despite their cl
ashes in personalities and interests, they were still fairly close sisters. They had to be during those early years of their mother’s death, and their father’s grieving. It was just the two of them against the world. Until he married Darla. And then, it was the two of them against Darla. Poor Darla!
They just never seemed to be in the same place at the same time these days. Celie was always traveling somewhere or other. Andrea was an ambitious workaholic with hopes of one day opening her own upscale pastry shop.
While Andrea’s mind had been wandering, she just realized that Darla was still talking. She interrupted her by saying, “I thought Celie was spending the summer with that cult in Jamaica, where they run around half naked and sell sun catchers to tourists. Led by that whack-job swami person who believes that world peace will come with global warming, or some such nonsense.”
“That was last year.”
Celie was a great one for joining cults, not that she called them cults, and mostly they were harmless. Modern-day hippies looking for the light, usually via some weed. Heaven’s Love Shack. Serenity. Free Birds. Pot for People.
“Remember, I told you about her boyfriend. He’s an A-rab or a Mexican, or something. Maybe Egyptian. They all look alike.”
That narrows it down a lot. Darla was no dummy, but sometimes she revealed a little inner Archie Bunkerism. And Edith, too.
“His name is Kahlil, you know, like that poet guy.”
“Kahlil Gibran?”
“Yes! Don’t you just love his poems? They’re so deep.”
Talking to Darla was like trying to catch popcorn from an unlidded pot. Here, there, all over the place.
“About Celie’s boyfriend?”
“Oh, right. He came to a dinner party your daddy hosted last month for one of his big clients. You were at that food convention in Las Vegas. Anyhow, Kahlil Ajam . . . that was his last name, I remember now because his last name reminded me of jelly. Do you still make that honey mint jelly to serve with lamb chops? That reminds me. Maybe I should make lamb chops for your daddy and me tonight. With those fingerling potatoes and little Brussels sprouts. I wonder—”
“Aaarrgh!”
“What?”
“Stop getting sidetracked.”
“Stop being so impatient.” Darla sighed, as if Andrea were the one who was irritating. “Anyhow, Kahlil just frowned the whole time he was here because we served alcohol. So rude! Honestly! Who doesn’t drink red wine with beef Wellington? And he had this dish towel thingee on his head. By the way, your raspberry torte was a huge success. Did I tell you that?”
Can anyone say Orville Redenbacher? “Yes, you told me.” About the dessert, not the boyfriend. “Thanks.”
“Anyhow, this Kahlil fella talked the silly girl into going with him to a dude ranch in Montana run by some Muslim church. Circle of Light.”
“What? That’s crazy!”
“You’re telling me, honey. I’ve been saying for years that your sister is two bricks short of a wall. You must admit, Andy—”
“I didn’t mean that Celie . . . never mind. What has any of this to do with ISIS?”
“The detective says that—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! You hired a detective?”
Just then, Sonja Fournet, owner of the restaurant, walked in through the swinging doors that separated the kitchen from the dining room. Hearing her last words, Sonja grinned and mouthed silently, “Darla?”
Andrea nodded and raised five fingers, indicating she would be off the phone shortly. Andrea was an experienced pastry chef, but even her skills were not going to save her job if she kept engaging in these personal phone conversations while on the job, almost all of them from her stepmother. Darla thought nothing of calling up to a dozen times a day, usually about the most innocuous things, like “What’s the best way to cook lamb?” Or “How do I clean the gravy stain off your mother’s lace tablecloth?” Or “Why does asparagus turn my pee green?” Real important stuff.
That wasn’t quite true about Andrea losing her job, though. Sonja had attended the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris with Andrea eight years ago and was one of her closest friends.
“Listen, Darla, I can’t talk right now. Why don’t I come over tonight and we can discuss this, without interruption?” Fortunately, or unfortunately, her father and Darla lived in a Main Line community only a half hour from the condo Andrea had bought two years ago.
I must have been under the influence of cooking wine when I moved back to Pennsylvania. Couldn’t I find a job in . . . oh, say . . . Alaska? Or, at the least, a chef opening on the other side of Philly? Like maybe New Jersey? Or London?
“Okay,” Darla said. “Could you bring some of those yummy Napoleons with you? Oh, and a few of the chocolate croissants for your daddy’s breakfast?”
“Sure.” She clicked off the phone and looked at Sonja, who was grinning at her over a steaming cup of coffee. “Okay, spill. What has the wicked stepmother’s thong in a twist now? I swear, girl, I wouldn’t have a life if it weren’t for you.”
“She says Celie has joined a cult on a dude ranch in Montana that has ties to ISIS, and claims she’s gone all Sharia, complete with burqa, mainlining the usual extremist Muslim propaganda. Though, how she would ride a horse in a robe, I have no idea. I didn’t even know Celie could ride a horse. And, yeah, before you ask, isn’t it strange that a terrorist organization would recruit from a dude ranch? Better that than the mall, I suppose. Bottom line, as usual when it involves my sister, Darla probably wants me to fix things.”
“Merde!”
“Exactly.”
“What does she expect you to do?”
Andrea shrugged. “Lone Ranger to the rescue, I guess, though I don’t ride a horse, either. Or is it Julia Child to the rescue?”
“Warrior with a whisk,” Sonja concluded.
Chapter 2
BREAKFAST IN TRANSYLVANIA (PENNSYLVANIA)
Liver mush
Blood pudding
Amish sausages
Pan Haus (scrapple)
Smoked boar steaks (ham)
Bacon
Pennsylvania Dutch home fries
Buttermilk pancakes
Souse or head cheese (meat jelly)
Cornmeal mush
Eggs, scrambled with cream or fried in bacon fat
Toasted muffins or fresh-baked bread
Sweet butter
Skyr (cheese)
Apple butter
Farmer’s Market fresh jams: strawberry, rhubarb, huckleberry
Coffee
Tea
Milk
Fake-O
Fresh-squeezed blood oranges
Beer
Home, Sweet Home . . . or, rather, Home, Sweet Castle . . .
In the early morning hours of July 9, Cnut was riding his Harley up the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The black and chrome Road King, a recent purchase, was a modest model, but it had so many bells and whistles, it could do everything but fly a jet plane. He loved it. In fact, he’d named it Hugo.
Most important, the motorcycle could accommodate his size, thanks to some tweaks. His height, that was, at six foot four. Cnut was no longer big in other regards, hadn’t been for a long, long time. A careful diet and a rigid exercise routine kept him at a lean, mean two-twenty-five.
Funny thing, though. Cnut still felt fat. Maybe it was like those people who lost a leg but still sensed a phantom limb. Phantom fat. How cool was that? But then, that was him. Cool-hand Cnut.
He should have bought a Fat Boy, instead of a Road King, but that was cutting too close to the bone in terms of description. He could only imagine his brothers’ reaction. As if he cared!
Cnut stretched and wondered if he should pull over at the next rest stop for a cup of black coffee. The sun was just coming up over the mountains, but he was only halfway there. He’d wanted to avoid the capitol traffic as he passed Harrisburg, but then this was Saturday, the legislature wouldn’t be in session. Sane people would be headed north in this heat,
to the Poconos or south to the Jersey shore. No, he’d rather get this over with. No stopping. The annual Reckoning was serious business.
Perhaps he should be examining his conscience in preparation for the meeting, but then he figured he would find out soon enough what transgressions he’d tallied up this past year. Michael kept meticulous records.
The three-hour trip from his Center City apartment in Philadelphia should put him at the old homestead in Transylvania before eight. Old being the keyword. The vangel headquarters that his brother Vikar had bought four years ago was a rundown castle built by some crazy lumber baron a century or so ago. The hokey, tourist trap of a town, once on the skids, had been renamed a few years back to profit from the vampire craze still hitting the country.
Hah! Little do folks know, being a vampire isn’t all that fun. Cnut ran his tongue over his own set of fangs, which were retracted at the moment. Otherwise, they’d probably have dead bugs on them, like windshields. Fat and buggy, that’s all he needed! Truly, one thousand, one hundred and sixty-six years, and he still wasn’t used to the things. Like a cock, they sometimes had a mind of their own. Popping out with the least provocation. Even with his improved physical condition, Cnut wasn’t a vain man, like some of his brothers—hell, like Vikings in general—but the wolfish teeth did embarrass him, on occasion. Which was probably the point, from Michael’s perspective, since he’d never been particularly fond of Vikings to begin with, and his affection had failed to grow over the years due to their irksome ways, irksome to an angel leastways.
He soon climbed the first of the Seven Mountains, sped through the scenic narrows, but then had to slow down when he got behind an Amish buggy on the way to one of the numerous roadside fruit and vegetable stands. The region was dotted with the neat farms of these “plain people,” an odd contrast to a town of vampire wannabes, but somehow they worked well together. Farms and fangs. Go figure.