Page 62 of Kiss of Wrath

“I can barely walk with grace, let alone dance,” Cnut gasped out between chuckles.

“Except for the Michael dance,” Harek added, also chuckling.

“What’s the Michael dance? Is it like Gangnam?” Sam wanted to know.

No one answered, especially not Mordr, who was the only one not amused by her asking if they were strippers. He stood and crooked a finger at her. “Come with me. We need to talk.”

“About strippers?” she asked as she followed him from the kitchen down the hallway to her office. “It was just a joke, you know. Ha, ha, ha.”

“We are not strippers,” Mordr said as she followed him down the hallway to her office. “But, for your own safety, I need to tell you who we really are.”

“Should I be frightened?” Miranda asked once the office door closed behind them.

“Very frightened,” he replied, and he was serious.

She should have remembered. The man was always serious.

But wait a minute. Miranda was starting to get alarmed. Mordr was going to tell her who he really was? Had he been lying to her all along? Oh my God! In her attempt to avoid danger, had she brought even more danger into her home? “What’s going on, Mordr?”

He pointed to the blinking red light on her answering machine indicating she had one message. Her eyes connected with Mordr’s. “Is it . . . ?”

He nodded and pressed the button for her.

At first, all she heard was heavy breathing. But then, a cruelly taunting voice said, “Dad-dy’s coming!” It was Roger.

What was Roger thinking, putting a voice message on her machine? She could go to the police and he’d be back in prison lickety-split. But then, he hadn’t said anything threatening, even though she knew without a doubt that it was meant to be a threat.

She’d been expecting this, of course, or something like it. Still, she felt as if she’d been sucker punched. She had trouble breathing.

“Sit,” Mordr said, and shoved her gently into one of the chairs in front of the desk. He sat down in the other.

“You’re right. I am frightened,” she said, once she had calmed down. “But what has Roger’s call to do with who you really are? Unless . . . unless, please don’t tell me you have some connection with Roger.”

He shook his head. “If only it were that simple! There is no easy way to say this, Miranda. But I am a vampire angel sent to protect you.”

This was the last thing she’d expected to hear from him, and she burst out laughing. “Oh, really? Sent by whom? Don’t tell me. My attorney, Bradley Allison, hired a vampire?”

“A vampire angel,” he corrected. “To be more precise, a Viking vampire angel. And no, it wasn’t your lawyer who sent me. It was Mike . . . um, Michael the Archangel.”

She arched her eyebrows at him. “Give me a break.”

“I wish I could. Personally, I need a break, too,” he said. Then, “You need proof?’

“Oh yeah!”

He made a hissing sound and flashed a pair of vampire fangs at her.

She did the only thing a lady could do in the circumstance. She screamed.

Angel flying too close to the ground . . .

Mordr nigh jumped out of his skin at the shrill, loud—very loud—unexpected scream that Miranda let loose on seeing his fangs.

Almost immediately, he could hear the kids outside the door asking if she was all right.

Fortunately, Mordr had locked the door after them. “Everything is fine,” he called out. “Go back to the kitchen.”

Not that the children obeyed him. He could hear heavy breathing and muttered conversation on the other side of the door as they attempted to eavesdrop.