“Why would you do that?”
Now that was the first good question she had asked. Why had I done a lot of things as of late? There I was, saving Christy and Tom’s asses. I had put my own on the line for Bill and his wannabe girlfriend. Hell, I was even developing a soft spot for his human roommate. What the fuck was wrong with me?
It was a rhetorical question. I knew the answer: Bill was what was wrong with me. He had started off as a means to an end, a way for me to finally claw my way out from being Jeff’s plaything. At some point, though, things had changed. Despite my best efforts, he had become the first real friend I had made in decades. The fucker’s humanity was starting to rub off on me. Now, with all this Icon crap, I even found myself thinking back to my own early days of being turned ... something I really was not particularly nostalgic for. What was the world coming to?
Rather than give Gan that insight, though – not that she would care – I simply said, “I was curious as to what would happen to him.”
“He is awake?”
“Not yet.”
“You should kill him.”
“Why?” I asked, genuinely intrigued. It wasn’t like her to take an even passing interest in a human, other than as lunch perhaps.
“He is ... an anomaly. Turned by one of us, yet saved by the Icon. He is undoubtedly changed by the experience, but into what, I do not know. The seers speak not of such a thing ever occurring. Such an aberration is not foretold.”
I hadn’t considered that. I figured he’d either wake up normal, or turn anyway regardless of the Icon’s ministrations. Now I was more intrigued than ever. Talk about living in interesting times.
“I’ll take that under advisement.”
“Do so. Alas, I cannot see to it myself at this time.”
“Oh yeah, you had mentioned something about departing,” I said offhandedly, the sarcasm zooming way over her diminutive head.
“Yes. I must leave for home. The Alma have made their first strike against my forces. It was repelled easily enough, but I do not doubt they were simply testing us. I wish to be there to ensure they are laid low like the dogs they are. The rest of my people are securing transport even as I speak.”
“How’d they fare?”
A look of irritation passed through Gan’s face for just a moment. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take some amusement from it. “One of the Magi, perhaps two, escaped. There is no sign of them. My assassins are well aware of my displeasure at such.”
Well that was just fucking great. “Shit really is starting to pile up.”
“Crude, but apt. Indeed it is. Do not fret, though. I shall return when it is time for my beloved to fulfill his destiny.” She took my silence as cue to go on. In reality, it was because I was confused. “I had thought that the eve of his glorious fate was upon us. I have since come to the conclusion that he needs further maturing. His destiny is still yet to come.”
She stopped as her eyes focused on something leaning against the wall behind my desk. I knew exactly what she was looking at.
Without invitation, she walked around me. Gingerly, she reached out toward it, but then pulled her hand back without touching it.
“The Icon’s sword?”
I nodded. “I figured it would raise too many questions if the cops found it. Besides, it’s an antique. Seemed a shame to leave it behind.”
“I am surprised you could touch it.”
“I can’t, at least not without my hands blistering to all hell. Fortunately, Remington didn’t need his trench coat where he was going. It made for an excellent oven mitt.”
“Interesting,” she said, strolling to the front of my desk, a thoughtful look upon her face. “She will no doubt want it back when the time comes to face my beloved in their final conflict.”
I guess she had missed that part earlier about the Icon buying the farm. “I hate to burst your bubble, but you might want to consider that the whole prophecy was nothing but bullshit.”
“Why?”
“Wasn’t it foretold that Bill would kill the Icon, or the Icon kill him. Well, it didn’t happen.”
“I know. That is obviously still to come.”
“Newsflash, sweetheart, since you missed the show, but the Icon is dead.”
“No, she is not.”
“Yeah, she is. I was there. She took a fifty-caliber slug to the face. You don’t get up from that.”
To both my surprise and undying irritation, Gan actually started to laugh. It quickly turned into a full-on cackle. I looked to her companion for some clue, but he stood there silent and stoic. Lot of fucking help he was.
“Oh, I thank you,” she said after a few moments. “I have not laughed like that in some time.”
“Am I missing something here?”
“Indeed, child. Tell me, was your weapon consecrated in the sacrament of the Black Tngri?”
Black what? My only reply was a blank stare, not understanding a word of her gibberish.
“My apologies. It is known in the West as the Ritual of Baal.”
Yeah, like that helped at all. “Never heard of it,” I replied, reaching up to twirl an errant strand of hair that had fallen out of place.
“That is not surprising. Very few of our kind have. Even during the days when Freewills and Icons waged war openly on the battlefield, it was a secret known only to a handful. Still, I would have thought the other vampires would have come prepared with sanctified weaponry. Odd they did not.”
“I’m not following.”
“To put it simply, if it were so easy to kill the Shining Ones, they would not be considered the great threats they are. We would have merely launched volleys of arrows at them from afar and been done with it.”
My mouth dropped open. She couldn’t be right. Wouldn’t James have known about this? I could understand Colin being in the dark, but I found it unlikely one of the Draculas wouldn’t know. What the hell was going on?
“To that end, I shall leave Monkhbat here when I depart.”
“Huh?” I muttered, entirely distracted by her revelation. The phrase holy shit didn’t begin to do it justice.
“I said I shall be leaving Monkhbat behind.”
What? “Not even gonna try hiding that you’re spying on us, are you?”
“No,” she replied smugly. “He shall remain here as my eyes, but I do not leave him as a burden to you. He shall be entirely at your disposal. Use him as you will to help rebuild your coven.”
“And he’ll be reporting in to you at every step of the way?”
“Of course.”
I considered this. It irked me, but perhaps the devil you knew was better than the one you didn’t. Before then, we hadn’t even been aware she was keeping an eye on us. Now, at least... “Entirely at my disposal?”
“Yes. He shall serve you loyally. Albeit take care.”
“Let me guess, don’t cross the line or he’ll turn on us?”
“No,” she replied, looking slightly offended. “I simply wished to convey that you should keep your commands simple. His English is not so good.”
“Oh.”
She turned to leave. “Farewell, Sally. We shall meet again.”
Sally? What happened to whore? “Wait a second. You said you stopped by to see me, not Bill.”
“Ah yes,” she replied, addressing me over her shoulder. “I had almost forgotten. I wished to convey to you my respect. You have proven yourself far more capable in this endeavor than I had foreseen.”
“Thanks ... I guess.”
“Dr. Death has chosen well for his second. He could do far worse. I am comfortable leaving, knowing he has you to guide him.”
I was nearly stunned. That was the closest the little witch had ever come to being remotely civil with me.
“I’ll do my best,” I replied, finding myself at a loss for a wittier comeback.
“I know you shall,” she replied before again turning to leave. “There is just one more thing.”
“Yes?”<
br />
“Have a care, whore. Bill is still mine. Should I perceive that your intentions for him are anything more than the physical services you provide, I shall kill you without a moment’s hesitation.”
With that, she walked out.
Motherfucking little bitch!
♦ ♦ ♦
I finally put down the phone. Several hours had passed since I had ordered Starlight to get me the numbers to every morgue in the city. Gan’s warning had completely freaked me the fuck out.
After Bill had run off, the rest of us had gotten off the roof ASAP before the authorities could arrive. I hadn’t even given consideration to Sheila’s survival. Hell, I had seen Remington plug her at close range with a silver bullet. Something like that would have put down a vampire of even James’s power. It was nearly inconceivable that someone could take that and live.
Now, having made call after call, I was forced to reconsider. No one even remotely resembling her appearance had been delivered to any of the bone houses I had contacted.
♦ ♦ ♦
Two hours later, my questions were at least partially answered. After sending Monkhbat out on a bullshit errand to get him out of my hair, I had turned on the police scanner. Turns out an ambulance had gone missing shortly after our battle ended. It had just been found parked in an alley in northern Manhattan, the driver unconscious. There had been nobody else on the scene. Nothing had been stolen except for the driver’s coat. The address the ambulance had been en route from when it disappeared: the Office.
My feelings were decisively mixed. On the one hand, I was sort of glad. She gave Bill hope and I didn’t want to see that die. The flip side of that, though, was she was also a distraction for him, a dangerous thing in these times. Her survival had been Bill’s – our – goal. Everything we’d gone through over the past few days hadn’t been for naught after all, but it also meant all of those fucking prophecies were still in play. Fate wasn’t finished with us. That was perhaps the most frightening thought of all.
Then there was that ritual Gan had mentioned. Had James purposely kept Colin in the dark, letting him send those vamps on what was surely a suicide mission? In that, I had more questions than answers.
Either way you looked at it, things were just beginning. I stepped to the window and surveyed the darkness beyond. The weather had let up a little, but I wasn’t fooled. If anything, this was the calm before the real storm.
“Bill, where are you?” I said to myself more than anyone.
“Any sign of him yet?” a voice asked from behind me, Starlight.
“No, but he’ll be back.”
“How can you be sure?”
“He always comes back,” I said with more certainty than I felt, the burden of leadership finally beginning to weigh on my shoulders. “The dopey little fuck is full of surprises.”
She was silent for a moment, but then asked, “So what do we do now?”
I smiled. That part, at least, was easy. Freewill or not, this coven wasn’t rudderless. Not to toot my own horn, but I could keep the fires burning until he got back. “We do what we need to. We rebuild and recruit.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to...”
“There’re bad things coming, Star, and I want this coven up to full strength. I don’t know what’s out there, but I don’t want us caught with our pants down again.” A small grin tugged at my lips as I said that. It was something that Bill would have had an assholish reply to. Amazingly enough, I actually missed the sound of his voice.
“And then what?”
“And then we hold tight for the Freewill to return.”
“To lead us into battle?” she asked, repeating the oft-said prophecy.
“Maybe,” I replied, keeping my true feelings on the subject to myself.
“But what if he doesn’t?”
“He will,” I said, silently adding I hope to that. A thought then hit me. With it came a smile and even a little chuckle at the irony of it all.
“What’s so funny?”
“Bill will be back and maybe things will even turn out okay in the end.” I turned and put a hand on Starlight’s shoulder. “We just need to have a little ... faith.”
THE END
Sally Sunset will return in:
Sunset Strip (a Tome of Bill series companion)
Bill Ryder might return in:
Goddamned Freaky Monsters (The Tome of Bill, part 5)
♦ ♦ ♦
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this tale and I’d absolutely love it if we could stay in touch – whether you’re interested in new releases or just shooting the breeze.
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Bonus Chapter
Sunset Strip
A Tome of Bill Series Companion
“I’m doing my best!” Cynthia protested.
God, how I hated when they whined.
She’d been brought on board less than a month ago after approaching me on the subway platform to beg for change. Possessing a keen eye for these things, I could tell she hadn’t been on the streets for long. She had a glimmer of intelligence in her eyes, didn’t reek of drugs, and quite obviously wouldn’t be missed. In short, a match made in heaven.
Well, maybe not quite heaven. I’d put her to work manning a desk for the suicide hotline which served as the main source of food for the coven – gotta love takeout. Unfortunately, though relatively bright, she obviously wasn’t cut out for the life of a counselor. At least, not the type I wanted.
“You’re spending twice as long on the line as the others.”
“I know, but I feel bad...”
I leaned down until my face was an inch from hers. “You need to get over feeling anything. This is a pure numbers game. If they’re serious, or just a fucking attention whore, they go on this list. If they can be saved, you give them one of these referrals and get them the fuck off the line.”
“I know, it’s just...”
I tuned out the rest. Vampire newbs typically came in two flavors: ravenous monsters hell-bent on spilling as much blood as possible, and whining pussies unwilling to let their past humanity go. I wasn’t sure which was more annoying.
Before I could chew her out, though, my overly-sensitive vampire ears picked up the elevator dinging open at our floor. I tensed up and turned toward the door. Considering the events of the past several months, one couldn’t blame me for adopting a bit of a paranoid streak.
Cynthia continued to make pathetic excuses, but I ignored her and waited to see who or what was approaching. The cleaning crew had already made their rounds for the evening. The only member of the coven I was expecting was Monkhbat, and not for a few hours yet. Anyone else ... well, with a single compulsion, the others would grab the firearms stashed around the Office and fill the doorway with enough silver-coated lead to down a herd of undead elephants.
Sure, it was technically against the rules for me to arm the coven. The NYPD, the higher-ups who knew the truth about us, anyway, wouldn’t be pleased if they found out. But fuck them. If the prophecies were true, they were all on the cusp of becoming an endangered species anyway.
I listened. A single pair of feet made their way to our front door. The owner wore what sounded like sensible pumps – definitely not Monkhbat. I held up a hand to Cynthia and she immediately shut up. She might’ve been new, but she knew the drill. I made sure that all the new vamps understood that powerful did not mean invincible. Most of the recently dusted members of our merry little bunch had been arrogant fucks, which hadn’t exactly helped them in the end. A little bit of humility could go a long way during these crazy days in which we lived.
I directed all my senses toward the main door. There came a knock just as a familiar scent reached my nostrils.
The tension left me. Even had I not recognized our visitor, supernatural enemies hell-bent on destruction typically didn’t waste time knoc
king. Go figure. Common courtesy is a dead concept in the world of the unnatural.
Curiosity immediately replaced apprehension. Why would she be visiting here? It didn’t make sense. We weren’t enemies, but we weren’t exactly all buddy-buddy either. There was also the fact that we currently had a resident for whom her presence would incite quite a bit of violence. I had told Monkhbat’s true master that she was dead. Finding out otherwise could cause some issues.
She was aware of it too. I had let her know during the last time our paths had crossed, months ago when I had called to check on – and maybe threaten with bodily harm – her dumbass boyfriend.
Intrigued as to what would cause her to run the risk, I walked to the door and opened it.
“Hey, Christy. What brings you here?”
♦ ♦ ♦
Sunset Strip
Available in ebook, paperback, and audio
Author’s Note
This has been yet another installment in the ongoing saga of a foul-mouthed, undead geek named Bill Ryder. I find myself nearly flabbergasted in writing this note, in that I can’t believe how quickly things change. When I wrote the closing words for The Mourning Woods, Bill’s third adventure, I was speaking to an audience of perhaps a couple dozen at most. Now, well, I suspect that number may have grown ever so slightly. To say it blows my mind would be an understatement. I am absolutely humbled by the awesome people who have decided to take a chance on a monkey-clicking hack from New Jersey.
So... is it getting hot in here, or is it just me?
My stage fright issues aside, each new book in this series brings with it fresh challenges. This one is no exception. As Bill and his friends become further immersed in the dangerous world of the undead, I find myself facing a dilemma of sorts: How to marry the character’s growth (and maturity) while keeping these books fun. Even ignoring that roadblock, it can be an uphill battle. Everyone’s tastes in humor are different. I laugh at things my wife finds about as funny as a train wreck and vice versa. The larger the audience the greater chance one is going to bomb for at least a few. No pressure there.
Holier Than Thou (The Tome of Bill Book 4) Page 31