Page 65 of Kiss of Wrath

“That is precisely what I have been suggesting. Get out of their way. Far out of their way. Like to our castle in Transylvania or mayhap my brother Ivak’s plantation in Louisiana, though neither would be ideal because young vangels cannot control their fangs and we cannot risk your children being exposed to such beings and not speaking of it when they return to their everyday lives.”

“Now you are the one who is—what did you call it?—missaying me. I never suggested that we leave Nevada. I was merely thinking that the children could be confined to the house, once school is out soon for the summer, under your very fine protection.”

He was the one rolling his eyes now. “Do not think to divert me with false words of praise.”

She shook her head. “Not false. I do believe that you would protect the children with your own life.”

“I have no life, Miranda,” he said, “but of course I would protect them, and I could protect them here in a confined space. That is not the issue. What about you?”

“Me?” She tilted her head in question.

“Do you intend to stay here in this confined space until the end of the threat?”

“Of course not. I have to go to work.”

He tossed his hands up in the air. “See. That is exactly my point.”

“You lost me somewhere.”

“You work in the city, right in the midst of the demon vampire activity. Some of your clients are probably Lucie targets. Do you work with any people who have done bad, almost irredeemable things?”

Her flushed face gave him her answer.

“Right in the middle of the fray, you would be. I cannot allow that to happen.”

“Let’s get one thing clear, Mordr. You have no right to allow or disallow me to do anything. I hired you. I can fire you.”

He shook his head at her denseness. “You did not hire me, and you cannot fire me. Only a higher power can do that, and he is mysteriously absent these days.”

“I can’t believe I’m asking this, but he who? God?”

“No. Mike.”

“Michael the Archangel? You’re being absolutely ridiculous.” She stood. “Well, thanks for explaining all this to me, Mordr, but we’re going to have to agree to disagree.”

“Agree to disagree? More female illogic! Go, put on clothing appropriate for the casino scene. I will take you out for the evening whilst my brothers watch over the children. I will prove to you how ridiculous I am not being.”

She paused, before nodding her agreement. Then she surveyed his body covered only with a shirt and shorts. “Is that what you consider evening attire?”

“No,” he said. “I will be wearing my cloak.”

Eleven

Viva Las Vegas, demon vampire style . . .

Jasper love, love, loved Las Vegas.

There was just so much sin here. Like a chocoholic swimming in a pool of melted Hershey’s Kisses, the king of all demon vampires felt himself getting not a sugar high, but a sin high.

“Kudos to the person who invented the catchphrase, ‘Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.’ If there is anything that encourages a man, or woman, to err off the straight and narrow, it is that,” Jasper mused aloud as he strolled through one of the glitzy casinos on the Strip, ever alert to evil scents that pervaded the atmosphere. Potential victims, soon-to-be-Lucipires-in-training. It was like the proverbial shooting fish in a barrel.

Beltane, who walked beside him, gawking here and there at all the sights—gorgeous women in scanty attire, high-stakes gamblers, slot machines ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-chinging, shouts of elation over big wins at the craps table, and groans of dismay by losers, blinking neon lights everywhere, and pounding music through the sound system—nodded his agreement. “A permission slip to sin, that slogan is.”

“Well said!” he told his young hordling assistant, who had been taken from New Orleans in the 1700s. “By the by, you are looking very handsome today.”

He and Beltane, as well as all the other Lucipires whom Jasper could see acting in various capacities as they infiltrated the casino—waiters and waitresses, dealers, players, valets, maintenance workers, showgirls, high-class prostitutes, both male and female, etc.—were in humanoid form, of course, when out in public. Beltane was wearing a gray Hugo Boss tailored suit with a crisp white shirt and red tie. A five-carat diamond acted as a tie tack. Beltane’s black hair was short and styled, thanks to about a gallon of goop—half of which was splattered about the marble sink of the luxurious penthouse suite they shared—into the latest style of deliberate disarray.

“Not nearly as good as you, master,” Beltane said with genuine adoration. You had to love a demon who showed such affection.