Zen and the Art of Vampires

"Stop it!" I yelled, struggling as he forced my hand to write a scraggly version of my name. "This isn't legal! You can't do it!"

"It's done," he snapped, forcing me to sign the second form before releasing me. I jumped away and rubbed my abused hand.

"You don't have witnesses, Mr. Smarty-Pants," I pointed out. "You may have your buddy there falsely conduct the ceremony, and you may have a version of my signature, but there were no witnesses to the ceremony, and I'm sure that even in Iceland you have to have witnesses."

Kristoff put two fingers to his mouth and blew a piercing whistle that seemed earsplitting in the confined space of the small church.

Two men emerged from what I assumed was a back room. They both eyed me as they came forward, speaking in a language that I didn't understand.

"Do either of you speak English?" I asked sweetly.

"The one on the left is my brother Andreas. The other is my cousin Rowan," Kristoff said, almost smirking at my look of consternation. "They both speak a dozen languages, English included."

My hand itched to slap that look off his face, but I hung on to my temper.

"I don't suppose it would do any good to tell you that your brother is insane?" I asked the man named Andreas. There wasn't a lot of family resemblance, although he, too, was the sort of man who made women stop and stare.

"No more so than any one of us," Andreas answered, then signed the forms.

My heart sank as the second man did the same. The three of them spoke quietly for a few minutes while I contemplated my choices. I'd run for it, except Kristoff retained a hold on my arm, not to mention the fact that I wouldn't stand a chance of outrunning any one of the men present—other than the priest, and even he looked unusually spry for someone his age, laughing at something that the vampire named Rowan said.

That thought struck me oddly, somehow.

"Do you have… you know… fangs?" I asked Kristoff, making a little fangy gesture with my fingers. "Like Dracula fangs?"

The three men all stared at me as if I'd just turned into a giant ice-skating sloth.

"You don't, then? So the whole fang thing is a myth?"

The look of disbelief on Kristoff's face was almost worth the experience of being there.

Rowan burst into laughter. Andreas frowned, saying something in what sounded to me like Italian.

"You know, I'm normally a pretty circumspect person," I told Andreas. "But since I woke up this morning, I've found a murdered woman in my bathroom, run away from the police, been kidnapped by a vampire, and been forced to participate in a pretend wedding, so what inhibitions I normally hold are pretty much gone. I'm sure you'll excuse me if I say that it's very rude to speak in a language that not everyone can understand."

Rowan laughed even harder.

Andreas's frown darkened for a moment, then he suddenly smiled. Although his face wasn't nearly as hard as Kristoff's, his smile was just as chilling. "I told my brother that he should have simply killed you rather than wed you."

"We're not married," I said, crossing my arms over my chest in a show of what I hoped looked like bravado. Surrounded as I was by three tall, extremely handsome bloodsucking fiends, I certainly felt anything but brave, but it wouldn't do to let them know that. "It wasn't a legal ceremony."

The two men looked inquiringly at Kristoff.

He gave me a bitter look. "It was entirely legal."

"It was not! I didn't understand anything that priest said, let alone agree to it! He could have been performing the last rites for all I know!"

"No, but I can arrange for that, if you like," Kristoff said with smooth menace.

I raised my chin. I may not be the bravest of women, but I hate being bullied. "You didn't even kiss me. Weddings always end in a kiss. So there!"

Silence filled the church for a moment before Kristoff made a low noise deep in his chest and yanked me toward him.

"Are you growling at me—?" I just had time to say before he kissed me.

My mind, never the most reliable of organs in times of stress, shut down and left me flailing in Kristoff's arms. This was not the same sort of kiss that Alec had pressed all over me the night before—this was a kiss of aggression, a punishment, an invasion. He didn't even wait for me to invite him in, his tongue was there, inside my mouth, sweeping around as if it owned the place. Not even Alec had kissed me so intimately!

I shoved hard on Kristoff's chest and jerked out of his grip, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. "If you ever do that again, so help me god, I'll… I'll… I don't know what I'll do, but you can bet your butt it'll be horrible!"

"The marriage is legal," Kristoff said, shoving one of the signed sheets into my hands. His eyes glowed from within, looking oddly lighter than I remembered them. "Complete with kiss. Tell that to your reaper friends."