Page 84 of Good Vampires Go to Heaven

Zeb looked at Regina and grinned.

“If it starts to rain, we’re in trouble,” she said to Zeb.

“You’re right. I don’t think having sex in the middle of a church with the angels and Jesus and twelve disciples looking down on us would be a good idea.”

“What? Who said anything about sex?”

“Yeah. Who said anything about sex?” Cnut asked, coming into the chapel space, from a doorway on the opposite side.

Regina was pleased to see that Zeb was still blushing, as much as she probably was.

Cnut was in full vangel warrior garb, like all of them, but he stood out because of that Ragnor Lothbrok hairstyle he’d adopted lately, shaved on the sides with a dark blond braid running from his forehead to his nape, then tied off with a leather thong. Rather nice, actually, and a wonderful contrast to Zeb’s almost bald head, which was, truth to tell, equally attractive. Actually, more so.

“Follow me into the sacristy. I need to discuss a change in plans.” Cnut motioned with a forefinger for Regina and Zeb to follow him.

Before they left, Zeb repeated his warning to those left behind. “Don’t touch anything. When this level of catacombs is discovered sometime in the future, if it is, we don’t want to have left evidence that we were here.”

“That includes the candles,” Regina said to Inga who was about to pocket one of the votive candles sitting in a rack of several dozen. At one time, every Catholic church had these candles that parishioners could buy and light with a small donation to get special favors.

“Where are your vangels?” Zeb asked Cnut.

“Back in a large, half-cleared space about a quarter mile from here. It was probably going to be another worship area eventually,” Cnut answered.

They stepped into the small sacristy, a room used to store church vestments and sacred objects and, of course, candles. Lots of candles. Even after all these years, the room smelled of beeswax.

“Don’t touch anything,” Zeb repeated, for their benefit now, too. “Sorry,” he added when she and Cnut looked askance at him, as if they needed that kind of reminder.

“It’s just that vestments like that laid out over there have remained relatively intact, but will probably degrade just from our breathing in here, let alone touching,” Zeb said defensively.

Regina wasn’t knowledgeable about the combination of moisture, temperature, and whatnot that affected historic fabrics, but Zeb was probably right. “I hope we’re not going to be fighting the Lucies here, on this level,” she told Cnut. “It would be a shame to destroy that beautiful chapel.” She waved a hand to indicate the space they’d just left.

“No. That’s what I wanted to discuss.” Cnut pulled out two rolled-up pieces of stiff paper and spread them over a table in the center of the sacristy that was probably intended for folding vestments or filling holy oil cruets. He also turned on a high-intensity, battery-operated lamp that he must have carried with him so they could see better. Regina recognized the two maps, which Zeb had been responsible for drawing up while they were still back at the castle. Not that Zeb had ever been here before, not for centuries, anyhow, but he’d seen many diagrams, he’d told the VIK. And he had a good memory! Add to that the fact that when he’d gone rogue demon, he’d secreted many documents out of Horror and copied them for his own insurance.

The parchments showed in detail the labyrinth of catacombs, not just the ones known to the public or the Vatican, but the “lost ones,” as well. “There isn’t any way that we can fight the Lucies down here. First of all, they know these passages better than we do.”

“You got that right. Hector has maintained a headquarters here for about four hundred years,” Zeb said. “Calls it Terror.”

“What an odd place for a demon headquarters, though. Below the Vatican. Hardly an unholy place,” Regina observed.

“Are you kidding? All those sinners coming to Rome for forgiveness . . . a gold mine for Lucipire harvesting,” Zeb told her.

“That’s sick.”

“That’s life.”

“If you two lovebirds are done squabbling,” Cnut interjected.

“Huh?” she and Zeb said at the same time. And both blushed.

“There are no secrets in vangeldom, my children,” Cnut said and winked. “As I was saying, we can’t fight the Lucies in these catacombs because they know the passages better than we do, even with maps, which are only as good as Zeb’s memory. But also, if they’re in demonoid form, the spaces are too tight for fighting. Don’t get me wrong. We’ve taken down a ton of the beasts, but it’s been one at a time. Slowly. And no sight of Hector. We have to lure them aboveground.”

“How many Lucies does he have with him?” Regina asked.

“I can answer that,” Zeb said. “Unless things have changed dramatically the past six months, he doesn’t have any more than a hundred Lucies, and only a few of those are haakai. For obvious reasons. The logistics of these catacombs don’t require large numbers.”

The first map showed a cross-section of the catacombs, down ten levels. The other map showed diagrams of the tunnels on each of the levels. “This is where I think Hector has his headquarters.” Zeb pointed to a large clearing in the center of a series of corridors on the eighth level. That was two levels above them. Regina and the vangels were on the tenth “story” down.

“I have close to seventy-five vangels stationed outside the perimeter of Rome along the Apian Way. Let’s use the twenty-five I have inside and your forty or so to push the Lucies out. See all these X marks. Those are exits, twenty-seven in all. That’s where we’ll have two vangels posted at each one. There are no other means of escape.”