"Mine is iron, like a lance. A loooong lance."

"Holy Thor! Do not make me laugh anymore lest I piss my braies."

Someone belched.

Someone else farted.

More bragging.

Ivak sighed with contentment. It was the way of men when they were alone with time to spare.

Their merriment was interrupted by the arrival of Ivak's steward announcing Vadim, the slave trader from the Rus lands, who had come from Birka before circling back home. He would probably be the last one to make it through the fjords before they were frozen solid for winter.

Ivak and Serk left the others behind as they went out to the courtyard and beyond that to an outbuilding that usually housed fur pelts. It was empty now, the goods sent to market, and cold as a troll's arse in a blizzard. He waved to a servant, who quickly brought him and Serk fur-lined cloaks.

Vadim was a frequent visitor at Thorstead. As often as he dealt in human flesh, Vadim also traded in fine wines, spices, silks, and in Ivak's case, the occasional sexual oddity . . . dried camel testicles, feathers, marble phalluses, and such.

Serk joined the steward, who was examining some of the wares on display in open sacks while Ivak, at Vadim's urging, walked to the far end of the shed.

"Come, come, see what delights I have for you, Lord Sigurdsson."

Ivak was no lord, and he recognized the obsequiousness of the title dripping from the Russian's lips, but it wasn't worth the bother of correcting him. "So, show me the delights."

Three men were roped together against one wall. Nothing delightful here. An elderly man that Vadim identified as a farmer from the Balkans. With the rocky landscape at Thorstead, Ivak had no need of a farmer and certainly not a graybeard. Next was a boyling with no apparent skills; Ivak passed on him, as well. The third was a young man that Ivak did want-a blacksmith's apprentice. He and Vadim agreed on a price, although Ivak did not like the angry exchange of words in an undertone between this last man and Vadim that the trader dismissed as of no importance.

Next came the best part. The delight part. The women. Ivak always enjoyed checking over new female slaves. Serk, who had finished examining the household wares, joined him.

The five women were not restrained, but they were shivering with cold, or mayhap a bit of fear, not knowing that Ivak would be a fair master. They shivered even more when Vadim motioned for them to disrobe. While Ivak pitied them this temporary chill, he was not about to buy a piece of property without full disclosure. Once he'd purchased a prettily clothed slave in Jorvik only to find she had oozing pustules covering her back, from her neck to her thighs.

"I see several you would like," Serk whispered at his side.

Ivak agreed, a certain part of his body already rising in anticipation.

The first was clearly pregnant, normally a condition that would preclude his purchase-there were enough bratlings running about the estate, including some of his own-but he had a comrade-in-arms who had a particular taste for sex with breeding women, so he motioned for her to join the young blacksmith at the other end. With an appreciative nod of thanks at her good fortune, she quickly pulled on her robe and drew a threadbare blanket over her shoulders.

"This one is a Saxon, a little long in the tooth, but an excellent cook," Vadim said.

"I already have a cook," Ivak demurred.

"Ah, but does she make oat cakes light as a feather and mead fit fer the gods?" the heavy woman of middle years, whose sagging breasts reached almost to her waist, asked in Saxon English. The Norse and Saxon languages were similar and could be understood by either. She'd obviously gotten the meaning of his remark.

Ivak liked a person with gumption, male or female, and he grinned, ordering her to join the other two. Besides, a Viking could never have enough good mead.

All the thrall bodies were malodorous from lack of bathing . . . for months, no doubt . . . but this next one-an attractive woman of thirty or so years-had a particular odor that Ivak associated with diseased whores. He gave Vadim a disapproving scowl and moved to the fourth woman.

"This one is a virgin," Vadim said. "Pure as new snow. And a skilled weaver."

Ivak arched a brow with skepticism as he circled the shivering female who had seen at least twenty winters. He doubted very much that a female slave could remain intact for that many years. Still, she would be a welcome diversion. New meat for jaded palates. Not to mention, he had lost a weaver this past summer to the childbirth fever. He nodded his acceptance to Vadim.

And then there was the fifth woman . . . a girl, really. No more than sixteen. Red hair, above and below. Ah, he did love a redheaded woman. Fiery, they were when their fires were ignited, as he knew well how to do. He could not wait to lay his head over her crimson fluff and . . .

He smiled at her.

She did not smile back. Instead, tears streamed down her face.

He ran his knuckles over one pink, cold-peaked nipple, then the other.

She actually sobbed now, and stepped back as if in revulsion.

The tears didn't bother him all that much, but the resistance did. Thralldom was not easy for some to accept, but she would settle into her role soon. They usually did. They had no choice. Not that he would engage in rape. Persuasion was his forte.

But wait. She was staring with seeming horror at something over his shoulder.

Ivak heard the growl before he turned and saw the smithy tugging to be free from the restraints being held by both Vadim and his assistant. At the same time, the young man was protesting something vociferously in what sounded to Ivak like the Irish tongue.

"What is amiss?" Ivak demanded of Vadim.

"He's her husband, but you are not to worry-"

Ivak put up a halting hand. "I do not want any more married servants. Too much trouble." He started to walk away.

"You could take one of them," Vadim offered.

Ivak paused. The woman's skin was deliciously creamy and her nether fleece was tempting. "I'll take her. You keep him."

The husband didn't understand Ivak's words as he spoke, but Vadim must have explained once Ivak and Serk left the building and headed back to the keep because his roar of outrage would be understood in any language.

"Is that wise, Ivak?" Serk asked. "Separating a man and his mate?"

"It happens all the time, my friend, and do you doubt my wisdom in choosing good bedsport over good metalwork?"

Serk laughed, but at the same time shook his head at Ivak with dismay. In some ways Serk had gone soft of late, ever since he'd wed Asta, the daughter of a Danish jarl. Six months, and Serk was still besotted with the witch. Little did he know that Asta was spreading her thighs hither and yon. Ivak knew that for a fact because he'd been one of those to whom she'd offered her dubious charms. He would have told his friend, but he figured Serk would grow bored soon enough, and then it would not matter. As long as she did not try to pass off some other man's baby as his own. When Ivak had mentioned that possibility to Asta, she'd informed him that she was joyfully barren. That was another thing of which Serk was uninformed.

And women claimed men were the ones lacking in morals!

That night he swived the Irish maid, and she was sweet, especially after having been bathed. It was not an entirely satisfying tup, though. The girl was too willing. He kept seeing her husband's face as he was dragged away. No doubt his distaste would fade eventually, but tonight he had no patience for it, and he sent her away after just one bout of bedsport. In the end, she begged him to be permitted to stay, but he wanted no more of her for now.

He drank way too much mead then, which only increased his foul mood. That was the only excuse he could find for his seeing Asta slinking along one of the hallways and motioning him with a forefinger to come to her bedchamber. Another round-heeled woman with the morals of a feral cat. He knew for a fact that Serk was serving guard duty all night.

Mayhap he should tup Serk's wife and then explain to him in the nicest possible way on the morrow what a poor choice he had made in picking this particular maid for his mate. Ivak would be doing his friend a favor, he rationalized with alehead madness.

Asta was riding him like a bloody stallion a short time later, and while his cock was interested, he found himself oddly regretting his impulsive invitation. Bored, he glanced toward the door that was opening, and there stood Serk, staring at them with horror. This was not the way he'd wanted his friend to discover his wife's lack of faithfulness.

"Ivak? My friend?" Serk choked out.

"I can explain. It's not what you think." Well, it was, but there was a reason for his madness. Wasn't there?

At the stricken expression on Serk's face, Ivak shoved Asta off him, ignoring her squeal of ill humor, and jumped off the bed. By the time he was dressed, his good friend was gone. And Asta was more concerned about having her bed play interrupted than the fact that her husband had witnessed her adultery. To Ivak's amazement, she actually thought they would resume the swiving.

Ivak searched for more than an hour, to no avail. It was already well after midnight and most folks, except for his housecarls, were abed. His apology and explanation to Serk would have to wait until morning. He had no doubt that Serk would forgive him, once he understood that Asta was just a woman, and a faithless one at that. Oh, Ivak did not doubt that Serk would be angry, and Ivak might even allow him a punch or two, but eventually their friendship would be intact.

Still, he could not sleep with all that had happened, and he decided to walk out to the stables to check on a prize mare that should foal any day now. What Ivak found, though, was so shocking he could scarce breathe. In fact, he fell to his knees and moaned. "Oh, nay! Please, gods, let it not be so!"

Hanging from one of the rafters was Serk.

His friend had hanged himself.

What have I done? What have I done? She was not worth it, my friend. Truly, she was not. Oh, what have I done?

Ivak lowered the body to the floor and did not need to put a fingertip to Serk's neck to know that he had already passed to Valhalla. With tears burning his eyes, he stood, about to call for the stablemaster in an adjoining shed to help him release Serk's noose, when he heard a noise behind him. Turning, he saw the young Irish blacksmith, husband of the red-haired maid he'd bedded, running toward him with a raised pitchfork. Vadim and his crew were supposed to depart at first light. The man must have escaped his restraints.

Before Ivak had a chance to raise an alarm or fight for himself, the man pierced his chest with the long tines of the pitchfork. Unfortunately, he used the special implement with metal tines that Ivak had purchased this past summer on a whim, not satisfied with the usual wooden pitchforks for his fine stable. So forceful had the man's surge toward him been that he pinned Ivak into the wall.

"You devil!" the man yelled, tears streaming down his face. "You bloody damn devil! May you rot in hell!"

He was given a choice: Hell or something like Hell . . .

"Tsk, tsk, tsk!"

Ivak heard the voice through his pain-hazed brain. I thought I was dead. I must be dead. Opening his heavy lids, he glanced downward, beyond the sharp tines that still pinned him to the wall, to see his lifeblood pooling at his feet. Definitely dead. Raising his head, he saw that Serk still lay in the rushes where he'd lowered him. And the blacksmith was gone. Apparently, neither he nor Serk had been discovered yet. Well, it would be too late for either of them now.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk!" he heard again, and this time realized that the voice came from his right side. "It is never too late, Viking."

If Ivak hadn't been dead, and if he hadn't been immobilized by a pitchfork through his heart, he would have fallen over with shock. Standing there, big as he pleased-and he was big, all right-was an angel. A big, black-haired man with widespread, snow-white wings and piercing blue eyes.

Ivak knew what angels were since he practiced both the ancient Norse religion and the Christian one, an expedience many Norsemen adopted. Apparently, he would not be off to Valhalla today with its myriad of golden shields and virgin Valkyries. "Am I going to Heaven?" he asked the frowning angel.

The angel made a snorting sound of disbelief at his question. "Hardly!"

"Hell, then?" he inquired tentatively.

"Nay, but thou may wish it so."

Enough of this nonsense. Dead was dead. "Who are you?" Ivak demanded. "And how about pulling out this pitchfork?"

"Michael," the angel said, then eyeing the pitchfork, added, "Thou art certain I should do that?"

Before Ivak had a chance to reconsider, the angel . . . Michael . . . yanked it out, causing excruciating pain to envelop him as he fell to the rush-covered floor, face first. If he were not in such screaming pain, he would have been impressed at the strength of the angel to have removed, all in one smooth pull, the tines that had not only skewered his body but had been imbedded in the wooden wall behind him, as well. Like one of his muscle-honed warriors who hefted heavy broadswords with ease, this angel was.

He realized in that instant whose presence he was in. Staggering to his feet, he panted out, "Would that be Michael the Archangel? The warrior angel?"

The angel nodded his head in acknowledgment.

"Am I dead?"

"As a door hinge."

"Is this what happens when everyone dies? An angel shows up? You show up?"

"No."

"I'm someone special? I get special attention?"

"Thee could say that."

Ivak didn't like the sound of that. "Stop speaking in riddles. And enough with the thees and thous!"

The angel shrugged. "You are in no position to issue orders, Viking."

He sighed deeply and tried for patience, which had to be strange. A dead person trying to be patient. "What happens now?"

"That depends on you."

More riddles!

"You are a grave sinner, Ivak Sigurdsson. Not just you. Your six brothers are equally guilty. Each of you has committed one of the Seven Deadly Sins in a most grievous fashion."

"My brothers? Are they dead, too?"

"Some are. The others soon will be."

Ivak was confused. "Which horrible sin is it that I have committed?"

"Lust."

"Lust is a sin?" He laughed.

The angel continued to glare at him. No sense of humor at all.

Ivak laughed again.

But not for long.

The angel raised his hand and pointed a finger at him, causing him to be slammed against the wall and pinned there, but this time there was no pitchfork involved. Just some invisible bonds. "Sinner, repent," Michael demanded in a steely voice, "lest I send you straight to Lucifer to become one of his minions. You will like his pitchfork even less than the mortal one that impaled you."

"I repent, I repent," Ivak said, though he still didn't see how lust could be such a big sin.

"You do not see how lust can be sinful?" Michael could obviously read his mind. The angel gaped at him for a moment before exclaiming, "Vikings! Lackwits, one and all!" With those words, the angel waved a hand in front of Ivak's face, creating a cloudy screen in which he began to see his life unfolding before him, rather the lust events in his life.

It didn't take Ivak long to realize that not all the girls and women had been as eager to spread their thighs for him as he'd always thought, but most of them had. What surprised him was the number of husbands or betrothed who'd suffered at his hands-rather his cock-for his having defiled their loved ones. Serk hadn't been the only one. And babes! Who knew he'd bred so many out-of-wedlock children . . . and how many of them lived in poverty! He would have cared for any of his whelps brought to his keep, but these were in far countries.

And then there was this past night's events . . . the thrall he'd taken to his bed furs knowing she was wed. Worst of all, his betrayal of his best friend.

He shook his head with dismay as shame overcame him. Raising his eyes to the angel, he asked, "What can I do to make amends?"

Michael smiled, and it was not a nice smile. "I thought you would never ask, Viking. From this day forth, you will be a vangel. A Viking vampire angel. One of God's warriors in the fight against Satan's vampire demons, Lucipires by name."

Ivak had no idea what Michael had just said. What was a vampire?