The Tome of Bill Series: Books 5-8 (Goddamned Freaky Monsters, Half A Prayer, The Wicked Dead, The Last Coven)

by Rick Gualtieri

  Christy eyed me skeptically. I got no respect whatsoever.

  “Fine, mostly Sally. Let’s just apparate out of here before I decide to go back and beg.”

  “I told you, that’s just in the books. We don’t apparate, we...” Her phone pinged, interrupting her.

  “Something cross the magical barrier?”

  She glanced at me like I had two heads. “It’s a cell phone, not a magic wand. That was my text alert.”

  I turned away, caution draining from me in an instant. It was probably Tom asking her something unimportant - hopefully. I found myself silently praying it wasn’t something else, like him sexting her. God, I really didn’t need to know what he wanted to do to her with his tongue, as if he hadn’t already shared such tidbits in gruesome detail.

  I heard her typing in response, followed by another ping as the other party replied again. Oh, crap. I made it a point to keep my eyes away from the screen and to try to think of anything else.

  Unfortunately, there was only one thing for me to think of. Despite everything - the war, the danger that Vehron represented, all of it - I couldn’t focus on anything but her. There she was, just a couple hundred yards away. She had a house, a boyfriend, a life. I tried desperately to push down the jealousy I felt at both the normalcy of it all and the fact that someone else was sharing her bed. I wasn’t sure if she was happy or not, but at least she was trying. And, by God, or whatever deities currently looked down upon me with raised boots, I reached deep down inside and found myself hoping that she succeeded. No matter what happened, I wanted her to be happy. If she could have that, then I could live vicariously through it - knowing that no matter what evils I faced, she was somewhere out there with a smile on her face.

  In the meantime, I’d do whatever I could to shit on the papyrus the prophecies were printed on and make sure I went against whatever...

  “Time to go,” Christy said, putting her phone back in her purse.

  “Huh?” I pulled myself from my reverie. “Please tell me he’s not wearing a leopard print Speedo.”

  A look of confusion passed over her face. “What?”

  “Never mind.” I stood up and offered her a hand. “Shall we get our butts back to Brooklyn?”

  She grasped my hand with hers, stood, and closed her eyes. “Nope. There’s been a change in plans.” A glow began to surround her...no, make that us.

  “Wait...what?”

  Unfortunately, a torrent of light swallowed up whatever answer she may have had as we were whisked away into the nothingness.

  The New Digs

  As usual, the feeling of being - oh fuck this, I didn’t care what she called it - apparated was a bit disconcerting. Imagine being someplace one moment, then being nowhere the next. For just a split second, I was nothing but mist surrounded by more mist. Then, just like that, I was spit back out into the world as if being birthed through a pinhole. It was pretty fucking freaky.

  I steadied myself, not wanting to look wobbly in front of a pregnant witch who seemed to take the entire experience in stride. I blinked, expecting to see my living room or some other familiar setting, but then I remembered Christy’s statement just before we zapped out of existence. What the fuck had she meant by “change of plans?”

  The room swam back into focus around us and I had to question her words even further. The grey walls, slop sink, various mops, and shelves of toiletries spoke of only one conclusion - we had reappeared inside of a janitor’s closet. Was this some kind of joke by my roommates or, even worse - was it some sick kink of Tom’s? If he thought I was gonna stand around while he plowed his girlfriend in a bathroom stall, he was out of his fucking...

  “Not bad. She did a halfway decent job,” Christy commented.

  “Huh?”

  She glanced down in response and I followed her gaze. We were standing in a circle of sorts, drawn on the floor with what looked to be a Sharpie. There were four additional symbols drawn outside of it at equidistant points.

  “The four elements at the four corners of...”

  “It’s a circle. It doesn’t have corners.”

  “Hence why you would make a lousy mage,” she shot back.

  “Sorry, I don’t dance naked in the moonlight.”

  “And for that, we are immensely grateful,” a familiar voice said just as the door leading out of the small room opened from the outside.

  “Let me guess,” I said to Sally. “You wanted to help us come back, but also needed to take a massive shit and couldn’t decide which was more important?”

  She rolled her eyes, surveyed the rest of the room, then rolled them again. “Considering your conspicuous lack of the Icon, I’d say conjuring you up in the shitter was pretty damn prophetic of me.”

  “I can explain...”

  “Do it later. Probably best we don’t hang around here having a powwow.” She turned and stepped out.

  “Why?” I asked, following, but any other comment died in my throat. The why was pretty goddamned obvious. The distinct lack of urinals told me all I needed to know. Most women didn’t take kindly to male intruders within the ladies’ room.

  Sally stopped to turn back and address Christy. “You’re welcome to come along. You can stop in and say hi, rest up a bit, and grab a bite to eat before heading back.”

  I waited patiently for the punchline. It wasn’t like Sally to just make a...well...nice offer without at least hinting at some horrific outcome. Much to my surprise, though, there was no snarky rider to what she’d said.

  “Thanks, but I have enough juice to get back. Besides, I’ve been gone long enough already. My sisters are warding the apartment, but as priestess, I need to get back and oversee their work.”

  “You don’t look like a reverend to me,” I joked.

  “It just means I’m the leader, the elder mentor of the coven.” She turned back to Sally. “That other one is beginning to worry me. Please tell me you brought him with you.”

  “Yeah, about that...” Sally trailed off into silence, grinning in a way that said she’d screwed something up but didn’t really care.

  “Who are you talking about?” I asked. “Not Dave, right? He’s...”

  “Gone,” Sally replied flatly. “Guess I should’ve reinforced a few extra compulsions into him. I didn’t realize he’d just up and leave.”

  “He can’t...he’s not covened...he...”

  “I know,” she snapped, “but there isn’t anything I can do about that right now. Orders are orders. He’ll either be fine or he won’t. It’s out of our hands.”

  “What orders?”

  Sally ignored my question and addressed Christy again. “Take care. Stay in touch. If anything gets too weird...”

  “I know,” Christy replied. “May the White Mother bless you both.” She raised her arms and began to glow. “I think we’ll need it,” she added right before vanishing.

  Sally stood and watched the light of the magic fade away. “I have a feeling we’re gonna need a lot more than that. I hope her White Mother has a father, brother, and some cousins too.” She turned and walked out, leaving me momentarily alone in the ladies’ room.

  Ah, the mysteries that were mine to explore. Sadly, I had no idea where we were, nor how long it would be until someone barged in, took a look at me, and called the cops to report a perv hiding in the stalls. Fuck! Why is it when I’m finally someplace cool, there’s never any time to make good on it?

  I quickly checked my pockets, but sadly didn’t have a pen on me. Goddamn it! I couldn’t even scrawl my cell phone number on the wall along with a message like “Call Bill if you want cock for days.” I always wondered if something like that would work.

  Oh well, I guess I’d have to keep wondering.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Thankfully, a quick check of the surroundings confirmed there was nobody but Sally present, so I stepped out of the restroom and moved away from the door to give myself some plausible deniabi
lity in case anyone showed up.

  “Let’s go.” She started walking. “This place is supposed to be for employees only.”

  “Compulsion?”

  “Nah. The only workers I ran into along the way were all male. No challenge required.”

  That wasn’t too hard to imagine. Sally was a petite thing, just barely over five feet in heels, but she made up for it by being stacked in all the other places that counted. She was stylish, sexy, and had a body that I would’ve happily run my tongue over for hours - if I thought I could do so and live. Her blonde hair was slightly past shoulder length and usually highlighted with some color to give it a little zing. Electric blue seemed to be the highlight of the week, and I caught myself stealing glances at it - amongst other bits.

  Sally wasn’t just good looks, though. She also possessed a keenly dangerous mind and an attitude that could’ve sunk a destroyer faster than any torpedo. All combined, she put the fatal into femme fatale. I could only picture what a terror she must’ve been even as far back as high school - probably Kelly Bundy on amphetamines.

  The nicest part of it all was that by walking alongside her, I probably automatically jumped up a few notches for any other woman who happened to notice us. Who says all side effects are bad?

  We turned a corner and I could see that the hallway stopped ahead - the area beyond opening up, way up. I realized I still had no idea where we were. We had teleported out of my living room on my Sheila-quest and I’d expected to return there. Instead, I glanced at the throngs of people moving back and forth, the luggage in their hands, and the various signs pointing toward gates.

  “Airport?”

  “Yep.” She kept walking, her pace deliberate, as if she knew where we were heading. Oh, fuck; not another plane. Since becoming one of the undead, my luck with airlines had been piss-poor at best. No matter where I was, no matter who I was with, I always seemed to end up traveling as a piece of fucking luggage. I’d wound up stuck in the freaking baggage hold for the entirety of the bumpy trip last time. First class it most certainly wasn’t.

  I was about to start grousing when we passed an interesting sight. It wasn’t all of the old people sitting around that caught my eye. That in itself was pretty common. It was what they were sitting in front of that made me do a double take: a row of slot machines. I knew New York was always hard up for cash, but...oh crap. No way! We had work to do back east. We couldn’t be where I thought we were.

  “We’re not in La Guardia, are we?”

  “Nope.”

  “JFK, Newark...maybe one of those shitty little puddle jumper airports?”

  Sally stopped in her tracks and raised an eyebrow, refusing to tell me what I suspected. Instead, she reached into her purse and produced a quarter, which she held out to me. “Might as well try your luck. Something’s gotta eventually go in our favor.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Needless to say, I didn’t walk out of McCarran International Airport, primary transportation hub of Las Vegas, Nevada, an instant millionaire. I did, though, manage to get some dirty looks from the old folks who’d been playing. Fucking geezers think they have squatters’ rights to any one-armed bandits in sight.

  Following my lost chance at an early retirement to a desert island where I might have ridden out the end of the world in peace, I stopped and asked Sally, “Why are we here?”

  “I just arrived myself.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yep, and the place we’re headed is warded against sendings, so I figured beaming you guys here made sense.”

  “Yeah, let’s get to that ‘here’ part. Spill.”

  She grinned shrewdly, the tips of her fangs barely poking out between her lips. “Doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid. You first.”

  “But...”

  “Seriously, what happened with your girlfriend?”

  We stared at each other for a few moments in a silent battle of wills, her green eyes boring holes through mine. I had the feeling she’d stand there for an eternity rather than give way - goddamned stubborn bitch. Oh well, fuck that. I’m sure to some my going first would look like a sign of weakness - capitulation against a superior foe. However, it was a means to an end lest we wind up standing there all night looking like two star-crossed lovers refusing to say goodbye.

  Oddly enough, that thought lingered in my head for longer than it should have. Oh well, it was probably a side effect of my heart being crushed like a paper cup. I quickly pushed it aside as I told her a greatly abbreviated version of my story, mostly sticking to Sheila’s reasons for not wanting to join us. Unlike Christy, Sally didn’t seem overly pleased at Sheila’s logic. A look of annoyance showed on her face when I was finished.

  “Fuck,” she spat softly. “I was afraid she might do that. Doesn’t help that she’s probably still squirrely from our last little adventure.”

  “Yeah, I got a bit of a sense of that.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “None at all.”

  “Good, then you still have that vial I gave you?”

  “Uh...not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, there was a little bit of trouble.”

  “A little bit?” she asked dubiously.

  “Yeah, she had a...” I mumbled the rest.

  Her face stretched into a wide, shit-eating grin - enough so that I would have gladly staked her for that alone had I a weapon in hand. “She has a boyfriend?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Her own personal pipe-layer.”

  “Listen...”

  “A man willing to deliver the sausage whenever she gets a midnight craving.”

  “Okay, I get the point.”

  “So did you kill him?”

  “What?!” I stopped and looked around. Thankfully, my little outburst hadn’t attracted any attention. I lowered my voice. “No, I didn’t kill him.”

  “Then what?”

  “I might’ve...compelled him.”

  “That blood was only supposed to be for an emergency, Bill.”

  “What? Protecting the Icon’s virtue sounded like a pretty big emergency to me.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  She got a pretty good laugh out of it in the end. “There’s hope for you yet.”

  “Maybe,” I groused. “Just probably not with her.”

  “Her loss.”

  “Really?”

  “No.” Bitch! “It’s probably for the best, though. If she’d said yes, we’d have been in a bit of a pickle.”

  “How so?”

  Sally made it a point to weave into the densest part of the crowd as she spoke. It was all I could do to use my enhanced hearing to concentrate on weeding her voice out of the many others around us. “Orders from on high. They came in right after you left.”

  “On high?”

  “The very top - the Draculas.”

  Oh, crap. “Who called?”

  “Colin; who else?”

  “Were these new orders from James?” We hadn’t heard anything from him since he’d left my apartment, still nursing his wounds following the fall of the Boston complex. Mind you, that wasn’t too surprising for me. I was lucky if I heard from him every other month. Sally, though, seemed to be able to reach him whenever she needed to. Go figure - when a perky blonde calls, guys answer.

  “Nope.” She stepped to the left to avoid a couple that was paying more attention to their squabbling kids than where they were going. “Colin made it a very specific point to let me know that this came from the First Coven as a whole.”

  “I bet he enjoyed that.”

  She glowered at me, her sour look saying it all. Colin was a grade-A dick. Even with the world crumbling around us, he was still more than willing to grease it up and stick it in whenever he could.

  “I assume that has something to do with why I’m two thousand miles further west than I thought I’d be.”

  “They knew what we were planni
ng to do.”

  “What? How?”

  “Relax. Just us; nothing to do with who you were going to see. They assumed that we’d be working on a half-assed plan to head back north and put a shank in that asshole.”

  “Rightfully so,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, I guess we’re getting easy to read. Anyway, they were very specific. We were not to do anything of the sort.”

  “How specific?”

  “Of the ‘we’re watching you and there will be consequences if you even think about it’ variety. I was told we’d better have our asses on a plane heading west by the time he was finished hanging up on me.”

  The “we” part of that line caught my attention. That was good. It meant they hadn’t been savvy to my plans to make contact with Sheila. Although I’d been uncomfortable including Christy, it had been the smart thing to do. If Colin had been telling the truth, and I had no real reason to doubt he was, and had I opted to drive to upstate New York, they’d have probably tailed my ass right to her doorstep.

  How was that for irony? I’d been trying to tell Sheila she had nothing to fear from me, while at the same time, it had just been dumb luck that I hadn’t led the vampire nation straight to her. Maybe she was right about her decision after all.

  “That’s kind of odd, don’t you think?” I asked, trying to push thoughts of Sheila from my mind for the time being as I continued pushing through the crowd.

  “Which part?”

  “All of it. Usually, the Draculas are far too happy to throw me to the wolves.” I stopped when I noticed that a young boy walking alongside me had looked up at my mention of the D word. “Errr...I’m talking about a movie I saw.” I quickly hurried my pace to catch up to Sally. “Also, it sounded like James was pretty sure they’d be keen on icing this guy as quickly as possible. What happened to that?”

  “That’s what I thought too, but Colin wasn’t overly forthcoming with information. It was pretty clear this was one of those disobey-at-your-own-risk-type things.”

  “It’s not like you to...”

  “I pick my fights. Making more enemies when we still haven’t killed the old ones didn’t seem like my idea of a smart strategy.” She glanced out of the corner of her eye at me. “Don’t worry. I have a feeling we’ll be pulled back into the loop when they’re good and ready to do so. For now, let’s just enjoy the break.”