Page 82 of Good Vampires Go to Heaven

Besides, for his sins, Zeb was wondering when the next opportunity would pop up where he could engage in sex again. With Regina. He had lots of ideas and centuries to make up for.

Chapter 17

The dead visiting the dead? . . .

And so, Regina found herself in Rome. Under Rome, actually. Okay, under Rome’s outskirts.

Here she was, plodding along the hundreds of miles of catacombs, which were underground burial crypts. In this case, for an unbelievable six-plus-million dead people, including a few martyrs.

Regina shivered and moved up closer to Zeb, who was leading the way through the narrow, underground tunnels, followed by their vangels, who were muttering about the disturbing atmosphere of their surroundings. They all carried flashlights or wore headlamps.

“Is it strange for a vangel to be creeped out by dead people?” she asked Zeb.

“Yep, especially since vangels are also dead people.”

“But we’re different kinds of dead people, right?”

“I don’t know. I would think that, from the perspective of those Up Above, we’re all the same.”

“Eew!” someone said behind her.

They’d just passed a monk—roughly five hundred years old, give or take—standing upright in an alcove, fully clothed with a monk’s cowled robe over his skeleton. The empty eye sockets seemed to be glaring at them for disturbing the deadly quiet.

“And so we find the origin of the hoodie,” Zeb joked.

Regina heard Inga and Dagmar giggle behind them a ways. Zeb’s voice did carry. They better be careful or they would wake the dead, or some hidden Lucies.

And then Inga said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if there were demon vampires hiding in some of these crypts?”

And Dagmar countered, “Not!”

They both giggled some more.

Hard to believe that these two dingbats had once been prostitutes.

Changing the subject a bit, Regina said, “I’m becoming quite the world traveler, though basement of a Roman crypt is a new one for me.”

“I, on the other hand, have seen my share of graveyards, mausoleums, or even the pyramids,” Zeb remarked.

“Actually, until a few years ago, vangels traveled back and forth in time and all over the world,” she told Zeb. “Then Michael assigned us to set up permanent headquarters in modern times, and we could move forward in time only as humans do. He said there was enough corruption in the contemporary world to keep us more than busy.” She was babbling nervously.

Zeb said, “I can’t argue with that. I contributed to a lot of that sin.”

“That was before you changed teams. You have a clean slate now.” Clean except for their not one, but two, recent indiscretions, which she wasn’t about to bring up.

“Hopefully.” Zeb gazed at the frescoed walls and decorative stone tombs they were passing, ones yet to be discovered, the so-called “lost tombs,” those six and more stories beneath the surface of the earth. “This really is amazing. To think, someone . . . probably a slave, or lots of slaves . . . carved this all out ages ago, long before power tools. I feel a little like Indiana Jones, coming down here.”

Actually, Zeb looked better than Harrison Ford ever did, even with a bald head. “Yeah, but Harrison Ford was in catacombs under Venice, which were nothing as grand as the real deal here. And he was looking for the Holy Grail. We’re just looking for demon vampires,” Regina pointed out.

“You’re probably right. The Vatican is very strict about opening these tombs to the public. Of the fifty or so known catacombs, they allow tourists in only a few, even though there are even actual churches belowground in some cases. And all those known catacombs are on higher levels than where we are now. Talk about digging all the way to Hell!”

“You sound like a travel brochure.”

“Maybe I’m as nervous as you are.”

“No one is as nervous as I am.”

A half dozen voices behind her chimed in, “I am!”