Page 92 of Good Vampires Go to Heaven

“She told me he was in one of the side corridors in the lower level handling some Lucies,” Jogeir said.

Regina blushed. She thought about lying, but knew she was caught. “I haven’t seen him since we left the lodge meeting this morning.”

Vikar wagged a forefinger at Regina in an “I’ll handle you later” manner and turned to his brothers.

“Zeb has Jasper,” Harek concluded.

“What? I didn’t think of that. So, Zeb isn’t a traitor, after all. Whew!” Regina said.

“What? Are you crazy? Do you have reason to think he’s a traitor?” Vikar demanded of her.

“Uh, no,” she conceded, feeling foolish, and guilty, for having doubted Zeb’s integrity.

“He is in such trouble,” Vikar said, angry that Zeb had taken away his prize. “No sooner made a vangel than he transgresses.”

“Yes, but not the wrong kind of trouble,” Regina argued. “And not the worst kind of transgression, surely.”

“You are in trouble, too,” Vikar warned. “Watch yourself, witch, I can throw a few curses, too.”

She smiled, she couldn’t help herself. Zeb wasn’t a traitor.

Oh, the choices we make! . . .

Zeb found his ace-in-the-hole cowering under a table in the third-floor grooming salon, the place where Lucipires went to have their claws clipped, their scales thinned, and overall toiletry services. Including having their tails cleaned. It was amazing what a dragging tail could pick up, and they were too long for the creatures to reach back and clean themselves.

Beltane had been Zeb’s informant for years now. Sort of a double agent to a double agent. Jasper hadn’t a clue. To all outward appearances, the Creole hordling was a devoted servant and the newest member of the High Council, in a rather secretarial role, never having been trained in fighting skills. As evidenced by his hiding under a table during the Battle of the Ages.

“Where is he?” Zeb asked right off.

The boy, in the humanoid form of his nineteen-year-old self when taken from the 1700s Vieux Carré, New Orleans’s French Quarter, crawled out from under the grooming table and pointed upward. “He’s been outside all this time. Fighting like a madman. I saw him lop off two vangel heads. There’s no escaping him when he’s in this berserk mode. Best you go hide, Zeb. He has evil plans for you. I’m afraid what he’ll do to me.”

“Stop the babbling, Beltane. Jasper isn’t going to hurt you anymore.” At least, Zeb hoped he wasn’t. “Now, where is Jasper, exactly?”

Beltane shook his head. “On the roof. Assessing the casualties. Making plans. He sent me to find Gordon, that geek who set up the teletransport shields. I saw the IT guy trapped in the computer room with Harek Sigurdsson, who was carrying a big sword. Pfff. Gordo has fewer fighting skills than I do.”

Zeb shook Beltane to stop his rambling account. “Jasper,” he said once again.

Beltane nodded. “Up on the roof, like I said. He has two haakai with him, a mung, and a few imps.”

Zeb was about to go back out into the hallway, then up the stairway to the roof when Beltane asked, “How soon can I leave?”

Glancing back, Zeb saw that the boy had packed a suitcase and it sat tucked under the table. He couldn’t imagine what a Lucipire would want to take with him.

Before he could answer, Beltane added, “Will I become a vangel, like you?”

“What makes you think I’m a vangel?”

“Those blue wingy things on your shoulders.”

Wingy? Zeb tried to look over his own shoulders, and there was in fact a blue mist there. Which made him feel guilty. Here he was, being given the second chance he’d yearned for all these years, and he jeopardized it all with his need to confront Jasper on his own. He also jeopardized something else. Regina. But he couldn’t think about that now. He needed to focus.

“Beltane, I never promised you that you would become a vangel. Nor did I guarantee your safety once you were outside this castle.”

“I know, I know,” Beltane was quick to backtrack. “But you did promise to speak on my behalf to . . . to . . .” He glanced upward.

Did the fool think Zeb had an inside connection with God, or St. Michael? But something else occurred to him then. If Zeb was in fact a vangel now, maybe he could try saving Beltane, although he wasn’t sure a vangel could do a fang-saving of a redeemed demon. Usually it was evil humans on the brink of death-by-Lucipire. If it were that easy, surely Trond or one of the other vangels . . . Regina, his supposed lifemate, for example . . . would have completed the process on him long ago.

It was worth a shot, though.