Vampires Need Not...Apply? (17 page)

He glanced down at her hands. He’d never noticed them, but they, too, were a soft, creamy mocha brown. As if she spent her days in the Mediterranean, sunbathing.
Lovely.

He lifted a little further, his heart racing with anticipation, with morbid curiosity, with hope.

A chin. Perfectly rounded to a small point and made of the same silky skin on her neck. Then…
Dios mío, lips…

Words of blatant, ungentlemanly lust stuck in his throat. Two full, sexy lips stared back at him, mesmerizing him with their voluptuous perfection. Did they feel as silky as they looked? He leaned in close and ran his fingers over her lower lip. They felt like rose petals, soft and velvety little pillows. He placed a small kiss on her mouth. Heaven. Kissing such soft lips felt like heaven.

His mind instantly panned south, imagining how her other soft and tender spots might look and how he might enjoy kissing those, too. His fangs suddenly popped from his mouth and his shaft burst through the buttons of his jeans.

Christ. Now he finally understood why vampires wore leather pants. He’d have to order a pair or two immediately. In the meantime, his long apron would have to do.

He lifted a little bit more to see the rest of her face, and then…

“Ixtab!” She simply dissolved into thin air, leaving nothing behind but a pile of empty black lace and a very sexy set of pink, lacy lingerie.

“What do you mean, you ‘lost Ixtab’?” Kinich stood in the doorway of his apartment with a white towel wrapped around his waist, smelling of sex and woman. A really hot woman. Literally. The smell of sunshine seeped from his every pore.

“Lost. As in…
Coño
, she fucking vanished. Is this one of her powers?”

Kinich scratched his head and stepped aside to allow Antonio to enter. “How hard did you say you hit her? And what’s with the apron?”

“I haven’t ordered my leather pants yet.”

“Ah. I’ll give you the name of the local tailor. We get a bulk discount, and he does excellent work—triple stitching in the crotch.”

“Fantastic.” Antonio sank down on the black leather couch and dragged his hands down his face. “
Santa Maria.
I hit her so hard she crashed to the floor like a bag of rocks. I’m not used to this new strength.”

Penelope, with her dark hair appearing as though it had been teased in every possible direction, scrambled from their bedroom wrapped in a pink Hello Kitty bathrobe.

Antonio raised a quick brow.

“What?” she squabbled. “I borrowed it from Helena’s closet upstairs.”

Wasn’t Helena the current ruler of the vampire race? This strange, new world he’d been sucked into was farcical.

Kinich looked at Penelope with the utmost adoration. “Antonio says he lost Ixtab.”

Penelope stifled a laugh and then turned sheet white. “The Maaskab aren’t back, are they?”

“Maaskab? You mean the evil priests we fight?” Antonio asked. Fate and Viktor had spoken to him about the “situation.” And one might presume it was the reason he’d decided to continue on with his work. But no. It was her. The haunting woman from his dreams who appeared the very first night he possessed the tablet. Only now, now that he didn’t really sleep, he heard her voice each time he closed his eyes, pleading to end her agony. And dammit if he didn’t feel drawn to her—like she pulled him with invisible threads attached to his soul. There was simply no denying that he was destined to meet this woman, whoever she might be.

So what did this…
thing
with Ixtab mean?

“No,” Kinich replied. “The Maaskab have not returned. We haven’t seen any aside from Emma’s grandmother since the last battle. Our physicist here says he accidentally hit Ixtab, she passed out, and then she disappeared.”

Kinich and Penelope exchanged several rounds of awkward glances.

“What?” Antonio asked.

“I believe you killed her,” Kinich replied.

Killed her?
“It was only a thrust with my elbow, for Christ’s sake.”

“Lucky hit, vampire.” Kinich shrugged. “You must have cracked her neck.”

“Isn’t she immortal?” Antonio argued.

Kinich snickered. “Oh yes. And when she returns, she’s going to be pissed. And not pissed in a mortal female kind of way where she throws her shoes at your head.” He looked at Penelope.

“Hey!” She took a swipe at his arm. “I was really mad that day, and you weren’t being a very nice Sun God.”

Kinich pulled her close and kissed her nose. “No, I wasn’t. And you may throw your shoes at me anytime you like. You look extremely beautiful when you are venting.” He kissed her deeply. “And you are even more beautiful carrying my child. By the way, I cannot wait to find out the sex. If it’s a girl, I would like to call her—”

Antonio cleared his throat.

Kinich glanced at Antonio. “Are you still here? Shouldn’t you be looking for a place to hide, vampire?”

“Do I want to ask why?” Antonio groaned.

Without pausing from her ogling, Penelope replied, “Aside from being the bringer of self-imposed death, Ixtab is also known as Ninlil, Xochipili, Xilonen, Inguma, though the Basque thought she was a he, and—”

“You’ve been studying, my little Sun Goddess.” Kinich beamed at Penelope.

All these—oh, hell, what did Americans call it?—goo-goo eyes were making him sick.

“Yep. I’m finally on the book of Inuit, Akych,” she said.

“Very good. Yes. Akych is the name for Sun God.”

“Would you two stop with the incessant mutual admiration and tell me why I need to hide? It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

Kinich laughed and released Penelope. “That will not matter. A weaker, lesser being killing a deity in his or her immortal form is akin to giving a public bitch slap.”

Weaker? Lesser?

“Like all deities,” Kinich continued, “Ixtab’s Achilles’ heel is her ego. But her anger is by far her biggest flaw. Unfortunately for you—and the rest of us—she is the goddess in charge of happiness, flowers, natural seasoning, sport, winds, grain—”

“That doesn’t sound so terrible. In fact, those sound very nice.”
And explains why she smells so great.

“And,” Kinich added, “nightmares, strangulation, hangings, and toothaches. Fate was the last person to kill Ixtab by accident. And her return brought with it five days of global windstorms; three months of every game around the planet ending in a tie—the Germans and Latin Americans almost lost their minds; a plague of horrible toothaches and nightmares; a shortage of cardamom and cloves—the people in India and the UK were very unhappy without their curry; and the disappearance of daisies for an entire decade.”

Antonio scratched his unshaven jaw. “Not that I wish the world to be afflicted with the absence of a Super Bowl winner or subjected to flavorless dishes, but that doesn’t sound so devastating.”

Devastating was that he’d hurt—
estúpido!
—killed Ixtab. Killed her while she was doing that thing to him with her body and driving him mad in the most sexual of ways. Accidental or not, it was a terrible feeling. And there was nothing he could do about it.

Ironic. Ixtab was just telling you this is why she wears a veil.

And you mocked her, didn’t you,
coño
?

Pinche karma.

“I said,” Kinich clarified, “that’s what happened the last time she died. The time before that, she’s been refereeing an arm-wrestling match between K’ak and Belch at the edge of a volcano. The two had been fighting over a small misunderstanding having to do with a llama.”

Did he want to know?

No. He really, really didn’t.

“And so,” Kinich said, “the gods demanded they settle their dispute according to our laws.”

Arm wrestling at the edge of a fucking volcano?

“But Belch stumbled, ran into Ixtab, and she fell in.” Kinich shook his head. “Not one flower bloomed in the Western Hemisphere that year. And without flowers, no food. It was one of the worst famines ever to hit the planet.”

“I thought the gods couldn’t harm us humans?” Antonio asked.

“Not on purpose,” Penelope pointed out. “And don’t forget, you’re not human anymore.”

Dios mío.
Antonio dropped his head into his hands. “It was a goddamned accident.”

“Don’t worry,” Penelope said. “She won’t kill you—yet—because you’re too important to mankind, but she will make you and everyone else suffer.” Penelope cleared her throat. “As Ruler of the House of Gods, I order you to grovel. Immortal-style. Maybe you can defuse the situation.”

Kinich chuckled. “Immortal-style! You really have been studying.” He kissed her hard. “I love the way you take charge, woman. You’re going to make an excellent mother. And it is so goddamned sexy.”

“Thank you.” Penelope glowed.

“What am I missing?” Antonio did not like the sound of this “immortal groveling.”

“We keep a plane at the airport,” Penelope said. “You should make it to Bacalar in time to meet Ixtab at the cenote.”

“Why the
diablo
do I need to go to a cenote? And what the
diablo
is immortal groveling?” he asked.

“While most cenotes are merely ancient Mayan pools,” Penelope replied, “some are portals of the gods. They are also where a deity’s light is sent when they lose their mortal shell. From there, a deity can go back to the gods’ realm or decide to regenerate another body. I’m pretty sure Ixtab’s going to opt for the new body to kick your ass. Get packing, and I’ll have the instructions for immortal groveling ready on the plane.”

“What about the tablet? And my work?” Antonio asked.

“He’s right,” Kinich said, “we cannot afford to lose time.”

“He’ll have to bring it with him,” Penelope decided. “We can have the Uchben set up his lab and a secured communication line at Niccolo’s villa on the lake. It’s only a few miles from Ixtab’s favorite cenote.”

Again, Kinich glowed with male pride. “I am the luckiest male on the planet to have such an intelligent woman so well versed in the ways of our world. Niccolo’s is a perfect place to grovel.”

“It is also helpful that Ixtab and Antonio will be removed from any large populations—in case she loses her temper,” Penelope added.

Santa Maria.

“Save me, Antonio. You must hurry. Time is almost out.”

“I’m trying, but I can’t find you.” Antonio scoured the empty, dark room with his hands. “Please, tell me who you are.”

“You cannot allow distractions to come between us, Antonio, between our destiny,” the woman’s angry voice echoed in his head. “You must stay away from the goddess.”

“I don’t understand. Why?”

“I speak the truth.” Two wide eyes the color of a tropical ocean plowed through his mind. “Even the stars and the moon know I speak the truth—”

Antonio’s lids flew open, and he braced himself on the arms of the airplane seat.

Diablos!
Now his dreams were mad at him, too? And the odd part was that the woman had never said anything about Ixtab before. Why would she be telling him to stay away?

Perhaps she is jealous. Perhaps she knows the goddess is nothing but trouble.
Hell, a person only had to get within a mile of Ixtab to see that. One thing was certain, if he didn’t set the mystery woman free soon, he would go mad. First, whether he liked it or not, he had to deal with a very irate, deadly goddess who happened to wield the power of…
natural seasoning
?

He shook his head and glanced at his watch. There was still one hour until touchdown.

He pulled the folded list from his pocket and stared at it with utter disgust. This immortal groveling had to be a joke.

Then again, from what little he knew, deities were the epitome of bizarre as were the vampires they mingled with. He felt like he’d been thrust into a modern episode of the
Addams Family
—Ixtab being Morticia, of course.

Does that make you Gomez?

Caray.
Antonio shook it off and went back to the list.
Joder.
This wasn’t right.
I cannot do these things. I cannot.

You must, you idiot. There is no other choice.
Especially given the timing of the accident. He couldn’t get that moment out of his mind, the way she’d touched his body and pressed herself to his back. Her heat, the sexual tension she created and then released with the mere stroke of her fingertips.

Antonio shifted in his seat, recalling how she’d grazed the tip of his cock with her hand.

He adjusted his throbbing erection and looked down at it. “Don’t you have something else to do?” He’d tried several times to relieve the ache himself, but that only made him think of Ixtab, which only made his cock harder.

Shit.
What was happening to him? First blind, then he’d died and turned into a vampire, and now he was addicted to this goddess—who, he might add, wore a very unattractive outfit to hide herself and might actually look like a gremlin. What else could possibly get in the way of fulfilling his destiny and opening the portal?

How about killing Ixtab and immortal groveling?

* * *

“What. The. Hell!!” Ixtab exploded from the cenote, her brand-new body nude, dripping wet, and trembling with anger. She was tempted to go back to her realm just to torment the vampire—from there she could use the full array of her powers to rain a fury of hell on his immortal ass—but nothing felt more satisfying than delivering justice in person. And justice there would be. Because no one, and she meant
no one
, snubbed her out like that. She’d opened herself to him, showed him comfort, she’d worshipped his body! And what was his response? He killed her! A vampire actually knocked her block off.

The cloudless evening sky burst with a round of violent thunder and rattled the jungle with its tremors.

Ixtab scaled the deeply cracked wall of the slick, algae-covered cenote and balanced on the edge. She squeezed the stale water from her long dark hair while glaring at the squawking toucans above. “You think this is funny?” She looked out into the dark jungle. A hard wind whipped through the air. “This is war. And the vampire’s gonna pay.”