Page 40 of Good Vampires Go to Heaven

“Hoity-toity my ass!” Cnut responded, giving his brother the bird, openly.

“It’s probably a sexual thing.” Trond waggled his eyebrows at Zeb. “You know what they say about bald men and how they can please women in certain sexual positions?”

“Do tell, brother,” Cnut said.

“NO!” Regina interjected. “Don’t tell.”

Zeb tried for his own levity. “Don’t the Navy SEALs have a saying when they rescue someone, Trond? ‘We are the Navy SEALs. Uncle Sam has sent us to bring you home.’”

“The only problem with that, my friend,” Trond said, “is that we, at the moment, are vangels, not Navy SEALs, and Uncle Sam is Michael the Archangel, and home, meaning the castle in Transylvania, is currently in lockdown.”

Uh-oh! Lockdown. What does that mean?

“Regina, have you any idea what you have unleashed?” Cnut asked then.

She shook her head slowly from side to side. “We’ve been cut off from the rest of the world here, no cable or Internet or cell phone reception.”

“In a nutshell, Jasper has declared a war against all vangels, and he has three thousand Lucies and demons at his disposal.”

Zeb could have predicted that; so, he wasn’t shocked. Regina and the others were, though.

“Plus, he wants you and Zeb, alive,” Cnut said.

She shivered but raised her chin. Defiant witch!

“How ’bout us?” Beau asked.

“Dead or alive. Either way, you’d end up in his hands.” Cnut didn’t look at all concerned. Why would he? Zeb asked himself. They were demons, after all, and Cnut didn’t owe them anything, like Zeb did.

“Then you have to rescue all of us,” Beau said, raising his weapon, as if that would do any good.

“Is that a fact?” Trond fingered his own weapon.

“Lower the piece, Doucet,” Zeb ordered in a soft voice that brooked no argument. “Everybody, settle down. Let’s sit down and talk this over. Surely, there’s a solution.”

“Do you have any beer?” Trond asked.

“No. Beau drank the last of it,” Zeb replied.

“There were only six bottles,” Beau said defensively.

“I have plenty of wine, though,” Zeb said.

“That’ll do,” Trond said. Just then, he seemed to notice that Patience’s bikini matched the curtain on the second set of windows in the kitchen. He looked at her, the curtain, then Zeb. And grinned.

Zeb just shrugged.

Grimelda left the room, trailing her rake after her. She said she had a boiling cauldron that needed tending on the patio.

“What is that smell?” Cnut said then, sniffing the air.

“Grimelda?” Regina asked. The old lady was a bit ripe.

Cnut shook his head and continued to sniff.

“Patience was making chowder,” Regina offered.

Cnut shook his head some more and continued to sniff. “No. It smells like rain. Do you think a storm’s coming?”