Kiss of Temptation: A Deadly Angels Book Read Online Free Page B

saw a bit of himself in the man, this particular inmate had become a challenge for Ivak to save.
    Benton put a hand over his heart and made a ridiculous moue of innocence around his cigar, as if wounded that Ivak would accuse him of such tactics. “A talent show will bring more people to the rodeo.” He put up a halting hand when Ivak was about to speak. “Oh, I know very well how y’all feel about the rodeo, Mistah Sigurdsson. Dangerous, demeaning, yada, yada, yada. But the more money the rodeo brings in, the more money that can be allocated for prisoner activities. Like your religious mentoring program.”
    That was a load of bull, and they both knew it. Religious mentoring cost almost nothing. But the warden could single-handedly pull the plug on any of the convict programs without any justification.
    “I’ll agree to do it, but my way.”
    Benton raised his brows. “We’ll see.”
    We’ll see, all right. I’m a vampire, my good man. How would you like to lose a bucket of blood in a dark corridor one of these nights? Well, actually, he was a vampire angel, and the angel in him curbed his indiscriminate feeding, but he could do it. Above all, Ivak was a Viking, and the Norseman in him hated giving in to bullies like Benton. “I need to go home for a few days,” he said, suddenly overcome by the oppressive atmosphere in the prison, but especially by the prison warden’s presence. “I’ll get started on your frickin’ talent show when I get back.”
    Benton arched his eyes with displeasure at his swearword. If he only knew! Vangels never used the Lord’s name as an expletive, but every other crude swearword was fair game. “Where exactly is home?”
    This was not the first time the warden had asked him that question, which he’d managed to evade so far.
    “Did I say home? I meant my fishing camp down the bayou. I don’t really have a home.” Next I’ll have to buy myself a fishing camp just to prove my lie. And I like fishing even less than I like swamps. Give me a nice five-star hotel in the Caribbean any day. Cool drinks topped with tiny umbrellas and bikini-clad women with no tops.
    That’s why you’re assigned to a prison, lackwit , he thought he heard a voice in his head say.
    And actually it wasn’t quite true that he didn’t have a home. He and his six brothers, the VIK, considered the run-down castle in Transylvania, Pennsylvania, their headquarters, for now. That’s where he teletransported himself as soon as he was outside the prison gates.
    Landing in the back courtyard of the castle, he stomped into the kitchen where the cook, Lizzie Borden, was hacking apart a rack of ribs with a meat cleaver. She didn’t even look up as he passed her. She must be in a mood, too. Last he’d heard, she went on strike over the vangels’ obsessive appetite for pasta. There was usually a minimum of thirty vangels in residence at any one time in the twenty-five-bedroom castle that had been built by an eccentric lumber baron a century ago.
    Walking over to the commercial-size fridge, he took out a container of Fake-O, the vangels’ makeshift substitute for real blood, and two bottles of beer. He’d just sat down at the counter when his brother Vikar walked in and raised his eyebrows at his presence. Vikar was in charge of renovating this huge pile of stone into a livable residence. Good thing vangels didn’t age. Vikar would probably still be working on the project fifty years from now, or a hundred.
    “To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?” Vikar took out a bottle of dark ale for himself. If there was anything Vikings appreciated about modern times it was a good beer.
    “I’m depressed.”
    Vikar sat down on a tall stool next to Ivak. “Vikings don’t get depressed. We go out and conquer a country, or at the least go a-Viking when an ill-temper comes over us.”
    Miss Borden mumbled something that sounded like, “Or eat a pigload of ravioli.”
    “Not having a longship, and being