Zen and the Art of Vampires - By Katie MacAlister Page 0,35

can get out of here." Kristoff growled, indicating the two copies of marriage forms he'd produced.

I had discovered he'd spoken the truth about the elderly clergyman. Not only was he deaf to all pleas to save me, he performed what I had a horrible feeling was a marriage ceremony while I tried to reason with the insane man next to me. "This is ridiculous. This is 2008. You can't force someone to get married. There are laws."

"There are also bribes, and as I spent the night getting the correct documents and asking my old friend here to conduct the official ceremony, it will be completely legal and binding. As soon as you sign."

"But we're in Iceland! I'm not a citizen. Surely it can't be legal for noncitizens to be married without a ton of paperwork. And don't I have to be present to get a license? Surely I have to have been present!"

"There are ways to make it possible," he said grimly. "Sign the damned things."

"No," I said, folding my hands. "And you can't make me. Kill me if you want, but I'm not signing."

Kristoff snarled something rude that I chose to ignore, yanking a small blue object from his pocket.

"Hey! Where did you get that?" I tried to grab my passport back from him, but he held it out of reach, flipping through the pages until he came to the one with my signature.

"Your precious Alec gave it to me last night, when you were asleep," he said, snatching up the pen and thrusting it into my hand. Before I could throw it away he yanked me backward against his body, one hand clamping down on mine as he consulted the passport.

"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