Page 102 of Good Vampires Go to Heaven

“Yes.”

“What makes you think that Vikar’s sin of pride was any less for wanting to be the master executioner?”

Zeb hadn’t considered that. He frowned, not fully understanding. “The things Jasper told me at the end . . .”

“Pfff! Now you listen to a demon?”

It sounded ridiculous when Michael said it like that. But what Jasper had said couldn’t be discounted so easily. “He said my wife cursed me for abandoning my family.”

“Sarah forgave you long ago. Where she is now, there is no place for blame or resentment.”

“But . . .” Zeb made a motion with his hand to indicate what had just happened in this room. “I don’t deserve forgiveness.”

“When will people learn? It is for God to decide whom to forgive and whom not to forgive.”

“My guilt is huge.”

“Mayhap thou needest what modern folks call closure,” Michael advised in a rather tongue-in-cheek manner. But then he wagged his forefinger at Zeb. “Stop flailing thyself. Trust in the Lord.”

On those words of advice, Michael turned to speak with the next person waiting for his attention. As he was about to walk away, Zeb could swear he saw Michael wink at him.

In a sort of daze, Zeb made his way through the crowd, both incoming and exiting, many of them bunched up around the hall table signing the register for Tranquility. Zeb should have looked for Regina, but first he had some other things to do. Closure, that’s what Michael said he needed. In that instant, Zeb made a decision.

He was going home. For the first time in one thousand, nine hundred, and forty one years, he was going back to Israel.

Letting go . . .

Regina didn’t bother to wait for Zeb. She’d seen him go up to Michael, and she’d heard part of the conversation. It was about Zeb’s wife. Was Zeb being given a chance to live his human life over with Sarah and his two children?

Michael hadn’t quite said that with his announcement today, but he hadn’t discounted it either. Surely, that must be what Zeb was asking. When Michael had offered the option of living out a human life, had he meant here or in the past? Either/or?

Well, Regina, for one, had no interest in returning to the old Norselands and her life as a witch. But what did she want?

Regina decided that she would be the better person, if she was going to live a rocky human life. Despite the pain in her heart, she could only wish Zeb well. Being given a second chance to change the course of his family’s history . . . that was a blessing she couldn’t deny him. Sometimes, love really did mean letting go.

She made her way through the corridor and back through the kitchen where Lizzie was doing what she always did. Cooking. Regina gave her a little wave as she passed through, wondering what the old lady would decide in her own case. Would she stay or go?

When she got to the rental car that she’d parked in the back parking lot, she saw that Thor was sitting on the passenger seat, waiting for her.

“So, now you’re my best pal again, huh?”

Thor just meowed.

“Let’s go then,” she said. “I sure hope you like gumbo.”

You can’t go home again . . .

Zeb had only been in Israel for a day when he realized how foolish he’d been. He’d never considered himself naïve, but how could he have thought he’d find answers in a land which in no way resembled the place of his birth?

In fact, his old vineyard was now covered by a shopping mall. A shopping mall! It boggled his mind. All these years, when he’d been forbidden to return to his homeland, he’d been imagining it staying the same, or at least that there would still be a vineyard there in the good earth. The only beverage coming out of that ground now was Coke coming out of the counter dispenser at McDonald’s.

Alas! Technology had taken over even that remote region, which of course was not so remote anymore with the advent of cars, planes, and other modes of transportation. Not wanting to make his trip a totally wasted effort, Zeb spent many hours in the museums . . . both regional and big city ones, like Tel Aviv.

At Masada, he found his answers. And his closure.

Masada was located on a plateau high atop a mountain in the Israeli desert, not easily accessed by foot. The first day, he traveled up to the top in a cable car, like all the other tourists. Who wouldn’t be touched by this tragic site where 967 zealots, including men, women, and children, held off more than ten thousand Roman soldiers for three years? In the end, they’d supposedly committed mass suicide.

Zeb knew differently, or at least he had viewed, personally, a different side of the final outcome there.