Page 5 of Good Vampires Go to Heaven

“My hands are clean. I didn’t poison anyone,” she proclaimed, standing and dusting off her bottom. At least she wasn’t denying that poison was involved. She knew exactly what he was talking about. The witch!

“Thou made the bane drink. Thou sold it for coin. It was used carelessly, not that careful murder is any less offensive. Many innocent people suffered painful deaths.”

Immediately, he flashed a cloud picture in front of her so that she could see all the bodies in the rushes of the Winterstorm great hall, many of them lying in pools of vomit, others with blood emerging from their mouths and noses and even ears. Men, women, children, even the castle dogs. All of them dead.

Regina stepped back in fear, not at the sight of the dead bodies, apparently, but because she was seeing a picture in the air of an event that had already happened. “How did you do that? Are you a wizard performing some magic sorcery?”

“No sorcery. That is your business, witch, not mine. I am St. Michael the Archangel, and God is very angry with you.”

“God? Which god would that be? Odin, Thor? Baldr?” She was taking careful steps backward as she spoke.

“There is only one God, lackwit!” He raised a hand, and a bolt of lightning shot from his fingers, hitting the woman in her heart. She clutched her chest and fell to her knees.

“Am I to be condemned for one . . . um, mistake?” She batted her long eyelashes at him in innocence. For a brief moment, he noticed that she was not unattractive, for a witch, that was. Her neatly braided red hair acted as a frame for a sharply sculpted Nordic face and green eyes, which would turn blue before this day was done, if he had his way.

But her appearance mattered not a whit, he reminded himself. Women were ever the devious ones, using their feminine wiles to persuade men to their designs. Hah! He was immune. “Mistake? Mistake? Woman, thou hast committed many sins. Thy transgressions are so innumerable I can scarce list them. Dozens of babes killed in the womb, the addictive poppy used to make slobbering slaves of some men, and women, too, death potions for the elderly, murder . . . and, yea, killing men who came courting—”

“What? Those were potential rapists!”

“Not all of them,” he contended. “Thou art also guilty of the sin of greed.” He glanced pointedly at the leather sack attached to the donkey’s saddle.

“Just compensation for services,” she countered.

He arched his brows at that and showed her a cloud picture of her withholding a medicinal remedy for a starving family’s baby with lung fever.

“Well, that is the exception,” she lied.

“Then, too, there was fornication,” Michael told her.

“One time. One stinking, unsatisfying time,” she argued.

“Where in the Holy Book does it say that coupling has to be satisfying?” he asked.

“What about all the good I’ve done? There are many people I’ve helped with healing herbs.”

“Not for a long time,” he told her, then sighed. “On the celestial scales of good and evil, canst hear the thunk of weight on the one side?”

She ignored what he said and continued to argue, “And I never practiced any satanic rites, like some witches do.”

“Satan comes in many forms. Some would say that practicing evil is the same as worshipping Satan.”

“I still think—”

“Thou dost not think, that is thy trouble. Thou art a dreadful sinner, Regina Dorasdottir. Thou hast no morals. There is naught thou would reject doing if paid enough. If it were up to me, thou would burn in the fires of Hell.”

She pulled a long-bladed knife from a belt sheath and glanced briefly at him, assessing the chances of escape. But then, her shoulders slumped as she took note of the full-body halo that enveloped him, and she dropped the weapon. “So, that’s it then. I’m to die for my sins.”

“Not quite.”

Her head shot up at that.

“In his mercy, God is willing to give you a second chance for repentance.”

She narrowed her green eyes at him. “What would I have to do?”

“Thou wouldst join the ranks of vangels, fighting in the Lord’s army against evil forces.”

“Me? An angel?” she scoffed.