Page 59 of Good Vampires Go to Heaven

“How about me? Haven’t I proven that I have some skills?”

Michael arched his brows.

“We need each vangel brain and body we can get,” Vikar surprised them by saying.

Does that mean Vikar considers me a vangel now? Zeb wondered.

Michael conceded, “Zebulan, you do have information that could aid in the campaigns. And, Regina, disregarding thy sins of stubbornness and lack of obedience, you did get inside Horror when others could not.”

Stiffening with affront, Vikar was about to protest, to repeat that he’d only been following Michael’s orders not to rescue Zeb, but he stopped himself, just in time. Zeb would have to learn such restraint.

Michael studied Regina and Zeb, pondering. “Yes, you two may join in the planning, but later. Whether you join in the fighting will be up to Vikar, your leader.”

Vikar bowed his head in acknowledgement of Michael deferring to him on this point.

“For now, as a newly betrothed couple,” Michael continued, “I am sure you two have much to discuss between thyselves, personal plans.”

“But—” Zeb started to say.

She jabbed him with an elbow.

Thus, he was left alone with his . . . dare he say, fiancée.

“I still don’t see why Michael is insisting on marriage,” Zeb complained.

“Because you’re not a Viking, and vangels have always been Vikings, and marriage to a vangel would make you a Viking-by-marriage.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Would you care to tell that to Michael?”

No, he wouldn’t. “What are we going to do?” he asked her.

She didn’t need to ask what he meant. She knew! “I don’t know what we can do. We have to find a way of turning lemons into lemonade, I suppose. Forgive the lemon association. Finding some good in a bad situation.”

“So, if we’re married, what are the benefits . . . the lemonade, so to speak?” Aside from the obvious, and he wasn’t even going there.

Several vangels looked in the room and were about to enter, then turned away when they noticed the room was occupied.

“C’mon. Let’s go outside. There’s a back exit through the parking garage,” she said and led him through several rooms and doorways, passing vangels at work. Mostly physical training or checking out weapons. Breaking down guns, oiling them, and putting them back together. Sharpening swords and knives. Taking out extra ammunition for weapons. Then making sure they had all been dipped in the symbolic blood of Christ.

Zeb didn’t recognize most of them, but Regina nodded here and there, or spoke briefly about Michael and the activity upstairs.

There were also strange men in their midst, giving quiet instructions or demonstrations. Most of them wore ancient attire, similar to what he’d worn as a Roman soldier. Thigh-length leather tunics with thick belts and cross-gartered sandals. They carried heavy swords or lances. An aura surrounded them, not unlike the full-body halo of Michael’s, but much fainter and more subtle. They also had a hint of wing bumps under their clothing.

“Archangel warriors,” Regina whispered to him.

“Of course,” he whispered back with a note of sarcasm. Why wouldn’t there be a legion of angels hanging out in the basement of a vangel castle?

She darted a reproving glance his way.

Just then, Regina’s cat shot out of a doorway, paused in front of them, hissed at Zeb, got in a position as if it was going to pee on his shoe, but ran away when Zeb said, “Don’t you dare!”

“Damn! Thor is still here,” Regina said.

“Your cat doesn’t like me,” Zeb told her.

“Thor doesn’t like me, either.” She shrugged, not at all offended.