Vampire in Paradise (11 page)

Is it a club they all belong to where everyone has to file down their teeth? Hey, men do dumber things than that all the time. Think tattoos and bolts in unlikely places. And women are just as dumb. Can anyone say “Brazil wax”? Has to be a man who thought up that one, but women were brain dead enough to agree.

Just then, there was a female scream from inside the party room, followed by a male voice, probably Harry Goldman, yes, it was Harry, shouting, “Doctor! Where the hell’s that doctor?” Everyone seemed to be talking or yelling at the same time.

Sigurd immediately rushed away from her, heading toward the commotion, but he stopped at the door and pointed a finger at Blue Devil. “Do not dare lay a finger on her.”

Blue Devil—Zeb, Sigurd had called him—tipped his hat at Sigurd, then held out a hand for Marisa so that they could go inside and see what was happening. She ignored the hand but did follow after him. There was something about him that made her uncomfortable. And not in the same way that lots of men at this conference made her feel. He was kind of woo-woo scary.

A man was lying on the floor, either dead or unconscious. It was Clinton Farentino, the Hollywood producer. She heard someone say, “A heart attack.”

Dropping to his knees, Sigurd checked the man’s pulse and put his ear to the unconscious man’s chest. “Does anyone have a friggin’ aspirin?” he hollered, probably figuring someone should have thought of that before. One of the women dug in her silver purse and took out a tiny pill box, handing him one tablet.

He immediately pried Farentino’s mouth open and stuck the aspirin under his tongue.

Nothing happened.

“Goldman! Get me the ship’s medical kit,” Sigurd yelled once again.

Normally, Goldman would have scoffed at taking orders from anyone, especially with that tone, Marisa could tell, but he promptly gave a message to a gaping waiter, “In the supply room.”

“Uh, what does a medical kit look like?”

“It has a red cross on it, idiot,” snapped Goldman, who was clearly losing his patience with this calamity.

Sigurd, still not looking up, yelled again, “Clear this damn room! Everybody! Out!” He spoke softly to Farentino then, with no response, before he called to her, “Marisa, get a phone, and connect us to the nearest medevac hospital.” At least he hadn’t yelled at her.

People began to amble out, pushed by Goldman, who was telling them, “The party’s not over yet, folks. We can go to the theater room. Mr. Farentino is in good hands now.” Eventually, everyone was gone except her, Blue Dev—, uh, Zeb, and Sigurd. Inga had offered to stay, but Marisa told her to go on, she would be okay.

She had no idea why Sigurd had singled her out, but she knew how to act in an emergency, having had numerous ones with Izzie. Taking the cell phone that Zeb offered, she called 911 and was eventually connected to Holy Trinity Hospital in Key West. She clicked on the speakerphone and held it out so that Sigurd could communicate directly with a triage nurse.

Meanwhile, the waiter returned with the medical kit, and Zeb opened it, taking out a small vial, showing it to Sigurd, who nodded.

“Dr. Sigurd Sigurdsson here,” he said into the phone.

“A medical doctor?”

“Yes. Most recently, Johns Hopkins oncology. I have a patient here on a yacht anchored off Grand Keys Island. The man has suffered an apparent heart attack. His pulse is faint, and he did not respond to aspirin. I am about to administer nitro.” He did. “Again, no response.”

“Is there a helipad?”

Sigurd glanced over at Zeb, who nodded.

“Yes, there is a helipad. I am about to begin CPR.” He looked up at her and Zeb. “I need one of you to do artificial respiration while I do chest compressions.”

“I can do it,” she said before Zeb was able to respond. Zeb just shrugged and helped her to kneel down opposite Sigurd. Not an easy task in her short, tight dress.

Sigurd placed the heel of one hand over Farentino’s chest and the heel of the other hand atop that, interlocking fingers. Immediately he began pumping and calling out numbers, “One.” Pause. “Two.” Pause. “Three.” Until he got to thirty, then he nodded at Marisa, who leaned down and over the unconscious man. Pinching his nose, she lifted his chin, sealing her mouth over his, and breathed. Once. Twice.

Three times they went through the procedure. Midway through the fourth, Sigurd announced, “I’ve got a heartbeat.” He glanced at Marisa and smiled, and she smiled back.

“Good job, folks. Chopper should be there within fifteen minutes. Make the patient comfortable. I’ll stay on the line.”

Marisa was still slightly bent over Farentino when Sigurd said, “Stop looking at her ass, Zeb.”

She realized then that her dress had ridden up, exposing God only knew what. Shooting upright and then standing to shrug the dress down, she glared at Zeb.

He winked at her. “I get my kicks any way I can these days.”

“Why are you still here, anyway?” Sigurd asked him rudely, even as he laid a blanket over Farentino, which Zeb had found somewhere.

Not at all offended by Sigurd’s rudeness, Zeb replied, “You know why.”

Marisa could swear Zeb’s eyes looked red in this light. Were they bloodshot? She hadn’t noticed it before.

Sigurd shook his head at Zeb. “He is not a candidate,” he said enigmatically.

“Damn!” Zeb said and licked his lips.

A candidate for what?
Marisa wanted to ask, but she was suddenly very tired from all the emotion and just wanted to go back to the island and crawl into bed.

“You better go give Goldman an update,” Sigurd told Zeb. “Have him make sure that the signal lights are on and the helipad is secure for a landing.”

Zeb nodded and left.

Sigurd stood then and just stared at her, a questioning tilt to his head.

“You really are a doctor,” she said dumbly.

“Apparently so. You doubted me?”

She nodded. “You just don’t look like most doctors.”

“Know a lot of doctors, do you?”

“More than you can imagine.”

Again, the head tilt as he studied her. “You’ve done artificial respiration a time or two, haven’t you?”

“More than you can imagine,” she repeated. In the early days, before Izzie’s final diagnosis, she had fainted a lot. Marisa had needed to know how to do artificial respiration and lots more emergency care.

Harry came in then and asked, “Is he going to be all right?”

“I think so,” Sigurd said.

“Why isn’t he awake?”

“It’s his body’s way of handling the trauma. It’s normal.”

“I . . . uh, have to thank you for your service, Dr. Sigurdsson,” Harry said grudgingly. “You can send me a bill.”

Sigurd bristled. “There is no charge.”

Harry scowled. He did not like feeling beholden to Sigurd, whom he obviously disliked, for good reason. Sigurd goaded him every chance he got. “Well, then, thank you.” The faint sound of the approaching helicopter could be heard overhead.
Whup, whup, whup
. Harry glanced upward. “I’ll bring the EMTs down here.”

She and Sigurd were alone again, except for Clinton Farentino, whose breathing was shallow but even.

“Will he really make it?” she asked.

“He will, unless he has another attack.”

“I was impressed with how you handled the emergency.”

He arched his brows. “How impressed?”

She knew what he referred to. “That was a mistake out there.”

“A definite mistake.”

For some reason, she didn’t like his agreeing with her. “I can’t explain it.”

“Neither can I.”

“Getting involved is out of the question for me right now. I have . . . issues that need my full concentration.”

“Your daughter?”

“You know about Izzie?”

He nodded. “Inga told me. A little. No details.”

Now was not the time for an explanation.

“Back to that . . . um, what happened out there.” She waved a hand toward the open door.

He arched a brow.

“The kiss.”

He made a snorting sound of disagreement. “It was much more than a kiss, and we both know it.”

“It can’t happen again.”

He ran a fingertip, just a fingertip, over her lips, and in a husky voice, informed her, “For my sins, do not count on that.”

Several hours later, well past midnight, Sigurd sat on the deserted beach with Zeb, drinking beers and watching the surf. There was no sharp dividing line between the black ink of the ocean and the white foam of its breakers. Like him and Zeb. Like good and evil.

The air was thick with the scent of pure salt water and the cloying perfume of myriad tropical flowers. Innocence and seduction.

What a night! For thinking. And other things.

Jogeir had passed them once on a security patrol of the island, and he reported that Svein was walking the halls of the mostly quiet hotel and Armod was asleep with dreams of new dance steps floating in his fool head. Tomorrow, crowds of attendees would arrive for this week-long perversion excursion.

Zeb had already told him that Jasper’s yacht would be arriving in a few hours, fifty Lucies with him. They’d both learned of another ship coming in with the vilest of procurers . . . those dealing with the most perverted of sex acts. These folks were not affiliated with the conference, but they hoped to benefit from the jaded appetites of the attendees.

“You could have let me turn the man,” Zeb complained, referring to the heart attack victim.

“He didn’t carry a sin taint, and his soul was not Lucie material . . . yet. Now, one of the pornographic film producers . . . that would have been a different case altogether. Some of them are . . . what do they say . . . bad to the bone.”

Zeb laughed and took a long draw on his beer. “You are becoming too modern by half, my friend.”

Sigurd would have bristled with offense, but he knew Zeb only called him that to annoy him. He and Zeb were not friends, and might not ever be, even if by some miracle Mike turned him into a vangel fifty years from now. His brother Trond was closer to Zeb than any of them; they shared the same warped sense of humor. “Needs must,” Sigurd replied, quoting another modern expression.

“I have to show Jasper something of a devil nature for the night’s work, or he will suspect me. Let me have the woman, then.” Zeb did not need to name Marisa for Sigurd to know which woman.

“No!” Sigurd’s response was quick and final.
Bloody damn not-a-chance in hell no!

“Why? Unlike the man, she does have a sin taint.”

“Only a slight one.”
Just the teeny tiniest scent of lemon, but then Lucies can sense that odor at fifty pace buried in a ton of concrete. I should have known Zeb would smell her lure.
A sudden thought occurred to him. “Was it you? Did you fang Marisa?”

“If I had, she would be salsa dancing her way to Horror by now. I do not do a slight bite.”

Rhyming now? A rhyming demon? And he knows of her salsa dancing back in Miami. Why? Why would he know or care to know about Marisa? She is a venial sinner, thus far. Insignificant. Unless . . . oh, why didn’t I think of this before?
“It’s me they want, isn’t it? And Jasper hopes to get me through her?”

Zeb shrugged. “Who knows the workings of the deviant mind? But no, this has naught to do with Jasper. Not yet. He has not yet learned of the connection. But he will. A satanic bloodhound he is when sin is in the air.”

“Well, forget about it. I am about to remove her sin taint.”
I hope.
“Virtue will be her second name.”
But not too virtuous.

“She has agreed to a rescue fanging?”

“She will.”
I hope.

“Sig, Sig, Sig! You cannot let emotion enter into the turning or not turning of a human, let alone the saving or not saving. If you do, you will not be able to endure all that you must do.”

Lectured by a devil? I really am sinking to new depths.
“Are you speaking of me, or yourself?”

“Both.”

It was true. If a vangel let himself care about every sinful person out there, he would drive himself insane. Or more insane than he already was betimes. He supposed the same was true of Lucies, but he’d assumed they’d lost all sense of caring long ago. Zeb was probably the oddball in the crowd.

Another modern phrase! Zeb is right. I am becoming too acclimated to this time period. Mike best not send me traveling back in time again. I can hear myself telling some knight in William the Conqueror’s army, “You better toe the line, dude, or you are dead meat.”

“You are smiling,” Zeb observed. “I thought you were the serious one of the brothers, the one always unsatisfied and yearning for more.”

I am, I am.
“You know too damn much about us.”

“Needs must,” Zeb repeated Sigurd’s own words back at him.

They sat in companionable silence for a short while before Zeb drank the remainder of the beer in his can and crushed it with one hand. “Beer is good, but blood is better,” he said. “I have developed a taste for the body dew and increasingly have to curb my appetite for more and more. Does that mean I am too far gone as a devil?”

Sigurd could have said yes. Why should he attempt to soothe one of the dark ones? But he found himself admitting, “I like it, too. Truth to tell, neither of us could do our jobs if we were not tempted by the heady beverage.”
Marisa’s blood drew me tonight like the strongest temptation, and not just to cure her inclination to sin. I know how Adam felt about that bloody Garden of Eden apple. It would taste rich and sweet and . . .

Zeb nodded. “’Tis like sex, I suppose. God created it so that men and women would want to procreate.”

Sex now? First I get a lecture from one of Satan’s followers on emotional detachment and now a philosophy lesson on sex.
Still, Sigurd contributed to the discussion by saying, “And then He put limitations on sexual activity, forbidding that which becomes such a powerful urge.”

Zeb gave him a sideways glance. “Not getting any lately, hmm?”

“Hah! Lately is an understatement. More like thirty years ago, and then I had another hundred years added to my penance for the lapse.”

“I would not mind those extra years if I could live them as a vangel,” Zeb said on a sigh. “Or even dead. I could even handle eternal celibacy to escape this horror of vampire deviltry.”