Page 91 of Good Vampires Go to Heaven

He hoped there would be a later for him . . . for them both.

Sweeping up devils was dirty work . . .

Regina was with Jogeir and fifty vangels at the entrance to the castle dungeons. The same place she’d stood not so long ago when three witches had helped her bring Zeb out of Horror.

Déjà vu?

Yes.

Except there was no hot air balloon.

Except that Zeb wasn’t here.

And she wasn’t surprised. For some reason, she had been suspicious of him all morning. He hadn’t been acting quite right. She realized that he’d never intended to join them in this last foray through the dungeon corridors.

Where was he?

She found it impossible to believe that he’d been deceiving them all along, that he’d been deceiving her personally, that he was still a Lucipire. But what, then?

All questions had to be postponed as they saw their first batch of Lucipires approaching from the dungeon chambers. What followed was a frenzy of fighting. One beast after another, and some of those beasts in humanoid form. Still others . . . the regular demons, if a demon could be called regular . . . were almost scarier. Yes, they had the red skin and sunken red eyes and flicking reptile tongues and long tails and sharp claws which Zeb had described, and the overpowering sulfur scent of rotten eggs, but many had emaciated, bent bodies and sharp, jagged teeth, not unlike that character Gollum in Lord of the Rings. In fact, they made a scrabbling sound as they rushed over the stone floors, like a herd of rats. Still others were huge with hooves and horns, obviously the more powerful of these evil beasts.

One of the demons had guts hanging from its mouth, like the zombies on The Walking Dead. And it looked like it had deposited a pile of shit, right there in the dank corridor.

If she had the time, she would bend over and vomit, but Regina barely had time to remove her knives before another Lucie or demon was in front of her. Soon she switched to her revolver, especially handy since any mortal wound would do on the non-Lucie demons. She could see all her teammates, Jogeir leading them, facing the same seemingly unending deluge of demons, but popping them off. Bang, bang, bang!

Regina had never seen so many elongated fangs, from both Lucies and vangels. Nor had she seen so much slime and gore. She knew how a berserker felt now. Death, death, death was the only focus her brain could handle. Onward, onward, onward. Keep on fighting. Don’t think. Just kill.

She couldn’t even stop for those vangels who fell along the way, either killed or injured. Those killed would go on to Tranquility, no danger of being tortured by Lucipires into becoming one of them if the victors. The injured would be taken to Grand Key Island after the battle was over. Again, assuming the vangels won, however. If not, all bets were off.

They got as far as the dungeon where Zeb had been tortured for all those months. It smelled of evil . . . that rotten egg, sulfur odor associated with demons and hellfire and all things wicked. The dungeon was empty, which gave the vangels a chance to take a breath and regroup. Regina went back and picked a dozen of her knives out of the slime and brought them back to the gathering of vangels where she began to wipe them off with an old rag. Both the demons and Lucies were already evaporated.

“Where’s Zeb?” Jogeir asked right off. This must be the first time Jogeir had noticed Zeb’s absence, or the first chance he’d had to ask.

For her sins, Regina lied and said, “He’s back a ways, taking care of a few stray Lucies in the side corridors.”

Jogeir nodded, but she could tell he wasn’t convinced. “How many of ours lost?”

“Three dead and three injured,” Regina answered.

“Bring the injured in here and make them comfortable,” Jogeir told one of the male vangels. “We’ll take care of them later. No time now. We need to have the teletransport barrier removed first. Plus, we’ve got to move up to the main floors of this friggin’ castle.”

And then they were off and up the stairs into the next level of the castle. Through a window, she could see a major battle taking place outside. Hundreds and hundreds of the evil enemy spilling out of the castle onto the already slimy lawns where they were met by vangel swords, and axes, and firepower. Even from here she could hear the sounds of battle. Metal clashing. Guns firing. War cries. Screams and grunts.

On the main floor of the castle, Regina and her group joined up with Vikar, who was driving Lucies from the other end of the long, extra wide gallery-style corridors that held those disgusting “killing jars” of Jasper’s, the ones that still held not-yet-turned sinning humans who were killed before their time. As far as Regina could tell in passing, none of them were vangels. In addition, the vangels were fighting Lucies and demons who came out of the various rooms along the way . . . offices, lounges, conference rooms, whatever.

Cnut and Mordr and their teams were handling the Lucies on the second and third floors where the demon vampires slept in specially designed beds to accommodate their tails. The lower-level Lucies had their own TV and game rooms . . . games, as in torturing newly turned humans or activities attuned to the dark side of demons. Such as live dartboards, eyeball pool, thrustmaster exercise machines with female and male orifices in strategic locations, televisions showing nonstop sadomasochistic porno movies, a water dispenser that shot out not H2O but blood, real blood, a vibrating recliner that was not used for relaxation but something else, a fireplace where it wasn’t marshmallows roasting on long sticks but toes and fingers. The depravity went on and on.

It was more than an hour before they got these floors cleared, and Vikar had already ordered some vangels to make up litters and take the injured vangels outside beyond the no-teletransport zone. Harek hadn’t yet broken the force field code. In the meantime, Svein and Trond were scouring any hidden spaces inside where Lucipires might be hiding.

But still, there was no sign of Jasper. There had been powerful haakai and muscle-heavy mungs, and plenty of imps and hordlings. But the big guy was missing.

“Where is he?” a furious Vikar demanded, coming up to Regina.

“What? Who?”

“Zeb, that’s who.”

“Um . . . I don’t know. Isn’t he around?”