Page 25 of Good Vampires Go to Heaven

“I was once more guilty of pride, thinking I could do things on my own.”

Just like a woman! Actually, I am guilty of the same sin. It’s called conceit. “But you had help. Where is your help now, by the by? Gone back to Horror?” I hope.

“Don’t you wish!” She continued washing and rinsing and drying off his legs as she talked. Very efficiently. Causing hardly any pain. You’d think she had been a nurse all her life, not a witch. “Beau is rechecking that shield thing you have around the island. Then he’s planning to catch a ‘bigass fish fer dinnah.’ His words. Patience is making a bikini out of your kitchen curtains so she can go swimming. Being a Puritan, she never had an opportunity to wear such immodest garments, and even though she’s been a Lucipire for a few hundred years now, she never had the occasion to need a bathing suit. You’d think this was Club Med or something. And Grimelda has a cauldron going on your patio barbecue, brewing up a potion that’s going to cure all your injuries. I’m not sure what’s in it, along with some herbs from that overgrown garden of yours, but I do know that she asked Beau not to throw away any fish guts.” She gave the wash cloth a final wringing out and laid it on the side of the metal basin of water. “Which brings me to my biggest problem with Vikar and St. Michael. It’s going to be that I brought not one, but four demons out of Horror.”

“I’d like to be a fly on the wall when you explain that one to Michael.”

“You’ll probably be there with me. Be careful what you wish for.”

He tried to smile, but then he noticed that she was examining his penis, trying to figure how to remove the wires which had become embedded with the jolts of their journey here. There was a time when a woman looking at his male part would have caused it to blow up like a . . . well, a balloon. Not now.

She pressed a glass tumbler against his lips and said, “Drink.”

He sniffed. Tasted. Then exclaimed, “That’s my fifty-year-old Genlivet. It cost me five hundred dollars at an online auction. You can’t waste it on—”

She pinched his nose with the fingers of one hand and tipped the shot glass so he was forced to drink. “Don’t argue. And drink it all. You’re going to need it.”

He was halfway drunk by the time he finished his second glass, so potent was the brew. But then his eyes went wide when she picked up several tools which she’d laid on the sheet beside him. A pair of long-bladed, pointy pliers, the kind used by electricians for fine wiring. I always said I’m hot-wired different than other guys. Cuticle scissors. A manicure now? Or pedicure? Doesn’t she realize that I don’t have any finger or toenails left? Tweezers. My eyebrows do need a bit of shaping. Some first-aid butterfly clips. Uh-oh. I know what those are for. A needle and thread. Alarm ripped through Zeb. Seeing as I’m naked, there’s nothing here to sew except . . . me.

He tried to jackknife into a sitting position and barely managed to raise his shoulders. Beau stepped up to his one side, and Patience to the other, both pressing his shoulders to the bed. Wasn’t Beau supposed to be off fishing and Patience off swimming?

“This is going to hurt,” Regina said, taking the pliers in hand, like a sadistic dentist. At the first tug of the barbed wire, it felt as if his cock was being roasted over a red-hot flame, and someone was prodding it with a pointy poker. Here, there, everywhere, even his balls.

“No, no, no! Wait! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” he screamed and passed out again.

It was his wedding night, Zeb realized as he drifted in and out of a deep, torturous sleep. Well, not really his wedding night. He had been betrothed to Sarah for more than a year, which was as good as marriage (without the living together), and the consummation had taken place (embarrassingly short for him and painful for his bride), when they’d been wed seven days ago at the beginning of their marriage feast. But now, he led Sarah to the home he’d prepared for her over these many months. This humble house in the midst of a small vineyard would be a place of love and contentment for the two of them, and God willing, their many children to come over the years. But first, there was tonight. Just him and Sarah. And, oh, the plans he had!

Sweet dreams followed. Ones in which he and Sarah enjoyed the benefits of the marriage bed and their budding life together. Full of hope and goodness. Yes, there was goodness in those days. His love for Sarah grew and grew. Years flew by like butterflies. They had two children, twins, whom they adored. The small vineyard flourished, if not in the large quantities Zeb would have liked, but the wines were of such a quality as to be prized throughout Judea.

And then the drought came. Two years and no end in sight.

“I have to go. I have no choice,” he told Sarah.

“You have a choice. Stay here with our people. Pray. Yahweh will bring us rain,” Sarah argued with him.

“When?”

“When it suits His plan for us.”

He threw his hands in the air with frustration. “It is a wife’s duty to defer to her husband,” he reminded her.

“Not when he is about to go off and fight for their enemy. How can you, Zebulan? How can you betray your own people?”

“That is your brother Benjamin speaking. He is a rebel whose head will soon end on the pike outside the Roman garrison.” ’Twas true. Benjamin and his loud-mouthed comrades had staged one too many protests. At the bloodless expression on her face, he softened. “It is only for one year, Sarah, and I will not be fighting against any Hebrews. I have been promised.”

“Roman promises!” She spat on the ground.

“I will be stationed in Briton where I am to build a fortress. Any fighting to be done will be against the Celts. I have General Julian’s word on that.”

“Words! All words!” She gazed at him sadly. “This is not about the drought, but about greed. You want the gold coins to buy more hectares of land for your vineyard.”

“Our vineyard, Sarah,” he corrected her. “I do not deny my ambition, but my agreement to military service is about the drought, as well. The adjoining lands have a stream which has not gone dry, despite the drought. It is for my family, I do this. And that is the final word.”

They made up, somewhat. Leastways, there were no more angry words, but there were tears. From his wife, as well as his two precious children. “Take care, my love. The workers will help you with the grapes.” They had only two men, Caleb and John, but the vineyard was small. “Be safe, little ones. I will bring you presents. A surprise.”

In the end, he was gone not one year, but two, and when he returned, it was to an abandoned vineyard and a burned-down house. What had happened? Where were Sarah and Rachel and Mikah?

He could not think of that now. It was too painful. Or was it the actual physical pain in his body. He was wracked with fiery torment in the region of his groin. No, his entire body was afire, like the time as a youth when he’d gotten a sunburn so bad his skin had broken out in blisters. Was it the drought with its merciless sun? Had the drought continued through those missing years? No, this was a different kind of heat. It came from within.