Even Vampires Get the Blues: A Deadly Angels Book Read Online Free Page A

Their wives, those who had them, sat about under umbrella tables, sipping from tall glasses sporting skewers of fruit. And several dozen vangels basked in the sun and hot tub. Lizzie Borden, their cook (yes, that Lizzie Borden), scurried back and forth between the kitchen and the patio carrying trays of snacks.
    There was also a tub of ice holding bottles of Fake-O, the synthetic blood vangels needed in between the real blood gained from fanging saved humans or by destroying Lucipires. Without it, vangel skin would become lighter and lighter, almost transparent, especially in sunlight. With it, their skin glowed with seeming suntanned health.
    “Oh, this is fair! I’m off to Arctic Neverland freezing my arse off while you all enjoy a pool party!” Harek yanked off his cap, uncaring that his hair probably stood up on end, making him look even more ridiculous, and shrugged out of his jacket.
    Behind him he heard a voice say, “Art thou speaking to me, Viking?” The voice did not say “Viking” in an endearing manner.
    It was Michael, of course. Not in the white robes typical of an archangel, or of the warrior attire often seen in Michael the Archangel statues, but good ol’ faded Levi’s with a white T-shirt and Nikes, his long, dark hair flowing down to his shoulders. Despite the modern garments, there was no mistaking that this was a celestial being, even without the sunshiny halo that surrounded him. At least he wasn’t wearing swimming trunks. Harek didn’t think he was up for viewing hairy angel legs . . . if they were, in fact, hairy.
    Before Harek had a chance to respond, Michael asked, hands on hips, “Do you have my home site ready to load up on the computer highway for me?”
    Harek barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes. Michael tried to be modern by using contemporary language, but he frankly didn’t know a computer mouse from a rodent. He’d been wanting Harek to set up an archangel site for him on the Internet, in keeping with social networking of the times, but he kept changing his mind about what he wanted. First, it was going to be an information place, which Harek had told him was too boring and would get no traffic. Then it was going to be a blog, but Michael could never decide what subjects to discuss first. Then it was going to be an advice column, questions sent in by viewers and answered by himself, but Harek had warned him that he might not like the questions he would be asked. Truth to tell, an angelic presence on the Internet was a good idea, if only Michael could make up his mind exactly what he wanted.
    “Um . . .” Harek answered.
    “I would have thought with all the extra time thou had there in the colds of Siberia it would be done by now,” Michael remarked. “It is not as if you have rid the Russian lands of all Lucipires. Yakov still flourishes, I understand.”
    Yakov, a former Russian Cossack, was one of the high haakai demon vampires on the council headed by Jasper, king of all the Lucipires. Yakov’s home base was somewhere in Siberia, in a place called Desolation, a site Harek had not yet been able to locate, precisely, although he was close.
    “That is unfair! I have destroyed many of Yakov’s minions and saved many of his victims during my exile. I have fought beside my brothers on every mission to which I’ve been called. My kill and save records are nothing to scoff at.”
    “Exile, is it now?” Michael homed in on that one, insignificant part of what he’d said.
    But Harek recognized immediately that his word had been ill-chosen, and he, whose intelligence was his greatest asset, was at a loss for a better word. What in bloody hell am I doing, arguing with an archangel? He could tell by the silence around him and the disbelieving expressions on his brothers’ faces that they were stunned by his audacity.
    “As for your sudden emphasis on fairness,” Michael went on. “If life were fair, you would be roasting on a spit in that Other