The Tome of Bill (Book 8): The Last Coven

by Rick Gualtieri

  The prophecy was fulfilled. Alex and Calibra were both dead. The side of light had won. Oddly enough, it seemed the other prophecy had been met, too, albeit not quite as expected. Aside from our friends, there weren’t many mages still alive in the cavern, but it was obvious, from watching the few survivors desperately trying and failing to perform magic, that the effects weren’t limited to us. In destroying The Source, Sheila had severed the Magi’s connection to their power, effectively destroying them as foretold, just in a much less genocidal manner.

  Though we couldn’t be certain, Christy seemed to think that, with The Source gone, the effect would spread. Whether it was days or weeks, soon enough, every mage on the planet would have to start taking the bus to work and dealing with their problems in ways that didn’t involve zapping things.

  That was fine, though, because she also didn’t think there would be much need for fending off supernatural threats anymore. The gates were closed and sealed tight. Sure, some godlike beings could probably force their way through, but it would be like breaking through a concrete wall armed only with a toothbrush.

  Sadly, our resources for magical healing seemed to have joined the rest of our abilities.

  After we’d had our chance to get the tears out of our system, for now at least, we turned our attention to patching up our friends. Thankfully, we had Dave with us. He wasn’t an idiot by any means, and eventually he realized that shutting up and doing his job would ensure he, too, didn’t need medical attention.

  Sheila and Christy would both need hospital stays when this was done, but we managed to get them stitched and splinted as best we could.

  Of course, that still left the issue of actually getting them to a hospital, which meant the very real problem of getting the fuck out of here.

  “So ... anyone got a really big shovel?” Kelly asked.

  “I don’t know about the rest of you,” Ed replied, “but I don’t fancy living out the rest of my days as a Morlock.”

  “Still beats being adopted by the Feet,” I added, to which he wholeheartedly agreed.

  “We’ll be okay,” Sally said after a few moments.

  “Suddenly an optimist, are we?”

  She shrugged. “It’s weird, but I was remembering what Calibra told us about becoming a vampire, essentially two souls fusing into one. Well, it’s hard to explain, but yes, that driving force in my head always pushing me to do ... not so nice things. It’s not there anymore. Doesn’t mean I’m applying for sainthood anytime soon, but I find myself actually feeling hopeful.”

  “Does that mean you won’t pull anymore knives on me?” Sheila asked with a weak laugh.

  “Relax, hon, I only have so much pocket space in these jeans.”

  That set the group to laughing. Amazing how quickly things could become water under the bridge, especially in light of what we’d accomplished.

  “But, anyway, I wasn’t talking about hope. I was serious when I said we’d be okay.” She turned to me. “Remember that other thing Calibra said, the part about a natural tunnel leading out of here? Anyone up for visiting Damascus?”

  “Oh yeah,” I replied. “But there’s dozens of caves in the outer chamber. Going to take us a while to find the right one.”

  “I don’t seem to have any pressing engagements at the moment,” she said.

  Christy looked up from the rock where she’d been sitting, silently staring at the doll that had been Tom, and wiped her eyes. “That won’t be necessary.”

  “What do you mean?” Sally asked.

  “Look around us.”

  “It’s a cave.”

  Christy shot her a pained look. “The ambient light.”

  “Yeah?” I asked. “Crystals, glow worms, psychedelic moss?”

  “Energy from the ley lines,” she replied. “Their source is cut off, but, much like a damned up river, it takes a little bit of time for them to run completely dry. I’m willing to bet there’s enough residual energy left in them to power the portals leading out of here.”

  I gestured toward Sheila. “Will it work for all of us?”

  She looked down at her heavily bandaged arm held in a makeshift splint. “I have a feeling it’s not going to be an issue this time.”

  “How will we know where we’ll end up?” Kelly asked.

  “Offhand,” I replied, “anywhere topside has gotta be an improvement.”

  There were nods all around, but then Christy stood up.

  “There’s just one small catch,” she said. “They probably won’t work for long. So I would suggest we don’t dawdle.”

  * * *

  Sheila and Christy were the most injured of our group. Dave, Kelly, and Veronica went ahead with them to the outer chamber while Ed worked with a few of the military types Alex had brought, so as to help round up any other stragglers for us to lead out of here. Vampire, mage; none of it mattered anymore. There were just people here now and most of them were scared and confused.

  Sally suggested she and I make a circuit of this place before catching up to the others, to ensure there weren’t any loose ends.

  I really wanted to get the fuck out of there, but that was topped by my desire to never want a repeat performance of any of this ever again, so I agreed.

  “Slow down,” she said. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”

  “Looks like you’re holding up pretty well ... for someone of advanced age.”

  She held up the gun she was carrying. “You do realize this thing is loaded and I still know how to shoot, right?”

  “So...” I said, turning serious. “How are you doing, really?”

  “It’s a little weird, the whole spontaneous aging, but it somehow feels fair.”

  “Fair?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I got to spend the last thirty years or so in the prime of my life, with more money and energy than I knew what to do with.”

  “Most of that was as Jeff’s slave.”

  “I know,” she replied, “but I won’t lie and tell you it was all bad. This ... well, this is just balancing the books.”

  “What now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try tennis, find myself a hot young stud of an instructor that I can corrupt.”

  “Well, I don’t know how to play tennis,” I said as we passed a circle of former Jahabich, “but I am always open to being corrupted.”

  She laughed. “You have the young part down at least. Still need to work on the hot stud piece.”

  “Bitch.”

  “You know it. Besides, don’t you have a former Icon who you should finally be asking on a date?”

  It was about as gentle of a put down as Sally was capable of. I thought about that one. “I don’t know. We’ve been through a lot.”

  “Don’t blame her. Fate put you on different sides of the coin.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Think about it,” she said. “I hate to point it out to you now, but life is short. Too short for regrets.”

  I didn’t quite know how to answer that. “We’ll see. After everything, who knows what she’d say? I don’t even have my massive pecs to flex anymore.”

  She eyed me up. “Don’t sell yourself short. You didn’t get off too badly in the deal.”

  I looked down at myself, something I hadn’t thought to do since we’d destroyed The Source. I mean, I assumed I was just me.

  I was, but I’d somehow changed, too. I wasn’t sporting Dr. Death’s physique, not by a fucking long shot, but judging by my waistline, I seemed to have dropped a good twenty pounds. Not too shabby. “How?”

  “I was wondering that myself,” she replied, “but after hearing what Calibra had to say, I think our bodies might have been less dead and more in a kind of stasis while we were vamps. Anything we did or ate could’ve still affected us. It just did so at a much slower rate.”

  I considered this, remembering how I’d seemingly dropped a pant size after my three-month sojourn in a Swiss prison cell.

  “And now, with that stas
is gone,” she continued, “our physical forms are catching up to what they would have been. Hence why anyone over a century old basically turned into a pile of bones.”

  “So if we stayed active, we’d be in good shape. But if we sat around on our asses...”

  Sally held up a hand to stop me. She was looking at something off in the distance that I couldn’t make out. I so needed to consider LASIK when we got back home. “What?”

  “Sat around on our asses, or spent most of our time on our backs,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.” She turned to me with a predatory smile, eerily reminiscent of her old self. “Come on, I think I see that loose end I was looking for.”

  I followed her, past where the Jahabich had once stood as living cages, back toward Calibra’s former castle. “What are we looking for?”

  “Not what. Who.”

  “Stay back,” a voice warned from somewhere up ahead. It was thick and throaty, like the owner had led a harsh life of cheap liquor and too many smokes.

  I caught up to Sally. The person before us was cowering against the wall of Calibra’s castle, bag in hand. Apparently, she’d been in the process of trying to sneak out when Sally spotted her. Whoever she was, she was a mess – grossly overweight, jowly, bad skin, sallow eyes. Ugh! Not even beer goggles were going to help this chick.

  Then I noticed her hair, stringy and unkempt. She was going grey, but the deep red it had once been was still evident. “Firebird?”

  “Going somewhere, Betty?” Sally asked with a grin.

  Firebird snarled at her, but there was very little threat behind it. “What the fuck did you do?”

  Sally ejected the magazine from her gun and casually checked it before sliding it back in with a click. “Oh, you know me. Can’t leave well enough alone.”

  “Look what you did to me, you whore!”

  “Me?” Sally asked innocently. “You’re the one who laughed while I kept up with all those classes over the years. Remember? Jazzercise, aerobics, Pilates, all of it.”

  “Jazzercise?” I asked.

  “It was the eighties,” she snapped. “A weird time even for vamps.” She turned back to Firebird, the gun barrel casually pointing her way. “I guess you should have listened to me ... about a lot of things.”

  “Doesn’t change what you were, what you’ve done,” Firebird spat.

  “No, but it definitely changes who we are now. Me, well, see for yourself. You, on the other hand, would be lucky to get by with fifty-cent blowjobs behind a truck stop ... would being the operative word.” She leveled the gun at Firebird, who cowered pathetically at the sight of the weapon.

  Though a part of me would have loved to see her pull the trigger, I put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s over, Sally, Lucinda, whoever you are now.” She glared at me, her eyes hard, so I quickly continued. “You said it yourself. Look at her. You won. All she had going for her were her looks, and those are gone and never coming back.” I glanced again at Firebird. Yeah, definitely not coming back, not even with a team of plastic surgeons. “This is the best revenge you could ever ask for, letting her live out the rest of her miserable life.”

  Sally stared at me for several seconds, but I held her gaze. Finally, she lowered the gun. “You’re right. This is the best revenge for me.”

  “Good, because I...”

  “But this is the best revenge for Starlight.”

  Before I could react, she shot Firebird in the head. Her brains splattered on the wall behind her and she slumped to the ground dead as a person could be.

  “The fuck?!” I cried when the echo from the shot had died down.

  “Rest in peace, Alice.” Sally tossed the gun to the side, then turned and walked past me. “Coming?”

  I gritted my teeth in frustration, then turned to follow. Truth be told, I felt very little sympathy for Firebird. That surprised me, but at the same time didn’t. Dr. Death might have been gone, but perhaps it would take some time for all of his influence to be forgotten. “I thought you said the part of you that told you to do bad things was gone.”

  “That was the last echo of it,” she replied. “The thing I needed to do to settle the score from that old life. Now it’s over and I can move on.”

  I let out a heavy sigh, but didn’t argue the point. “Is it? I mean, over?”

  “I think so,” she said as we headed toward the tunnel leading to the outer chamber. “There’ll be hell to pay up above, a world left in chaos, but at least there’s still a world to return to. It’ll take some time for the higher ups to get used to the fact there are no longer monsters dictating things from the shadows, but humanity will survive. And so will we.”

  “So what’s next?” I asked. “Aside from getting out of here.”

  “A long shower, a nap, then maybe a few days at the beach. I have some tanning to catch up on.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Taking it one step at a time, Bill. I think we all need to.”

  “Says you,” I replied. “I have a feeling Ed and I are going to return to find overdue rent bills waiting for us.”

  She laughed. “That’s one other thing I’m going to do.”

  “What?”

  “I have a card with your name on it. It’s about time I gave it to you.”

  “A card?” I asked. “You do realize it’s not my birthday.”

  “I mean a bank card.” Then, when I looked at her incredulously, she added, “You’ve earned it.”

  “You’re finally giving me access to coven funds?”

  “Some of it anyway,” she replied with a chuckle. “There’s no coven anymore, but that doesn’t mean those accounts just disappear. Would be a shame to let them go to waste, and even I can’t spend that much on my own.”

  “I’d be willing to bet on that one.”

  “And, as usual, you’d lose.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “What do you say we get the fuck out of here?”

  “Best plan you’ve had all day.”

  With that, we entered the tunnel leading away from this place.

  We didn’t speak again until we’d rejoined our friends, but we didn’t need to.

  The future was uncertain, but it was finally ours to do with as we pleased.

  THE HATE MAIL INDUCING EPILOGUE

  I looked at each of my friends as we stood around the headstone in a moment of silence.

  It was three years to the day since we’d sent Calibra and Alex to whatever hell they deserved. Though the world as a whole had chosen to mostly forget the strange events that had nearly consumed it, we hadn’t.

  Ed was the only one missing from our core group, but it was more than forgivable. I knew he was there in spirit. Flying out from California so soon after moving was asking a lot. In the days following our victory, Tom’s sister had come back to New Jersey for her brother’s funeral. She’d matured quite a bit following her ordeal as one of the undead, as had most of us. While in town, she and Ed had started a dialogue, a sort of mini Vampires Anonymous, if you will. Soon, they were doing more than talking and things had moved forward from there. Now, they were busy setting up an apartment close to Silicon Valley where Ed had landed a cushy gig thanks to his stint as President of Iconic Efficiencies.

  Tom would have understood, although that still wouldn't have stopped him from making some snide comment about Ed porking his baby sister.

  That thought brought a smile to my lips as I took in those present.

  Kelly stood hand in hand with Vincent, the now former Templar. He and the others of his order had reverted back to human following The Source’s destruction, much to their surprise. Some had continued with their cause, seeing it as a sign from God. Others, such as Vincent, had moved on – in his case, starting a relationship with a girl he might have burnt at the stake just a few years prior.

  Veronica stood next to them. From what I heard, she was now a college student working toward a degree in physics. Kinda hilarious, considering all h
er time spent breaking the laws of nature.

  Dave looked bored. Go figure – his days as a bloodsucking fiend hadn't done much for his personality. We still occasionally gamed together, but he’d been busy lately trying to find funding for his continued attempts at cashing in on the little progress he'd made deciphering vampire blood. Word on the street was some shady venture in Argentina was potentially interested in letting him set up a lab. If that happened, I'd have to make it a point to avoid any future vacations to South America.

  He tried to subtly glance down at his watch, but caught an elbow to the gut instead from my former coven partner.

  Sally had changed her hair, opting to lose the multi-hued stripper locks in favor of something a bit more professional – probably the work of Alfonzo, who she’d made it a point to entice back to New York. She had an image to maintain, after all.

  Much to both my chagrin and amusement, upon our return to Manhattan, she'd set to work re-establishing the suicide hotline that had once been used as a means to supplement Village Coven’s supply of blood.

  This time, however, it was legit. That didn’t mean Sally hadn't benefited greatly from it, though. As Sally Carlsbad, CEO of the nonprofit Pandora’s Light Foundation, she established herself as a media darling, helping the hopeless in the time of their greatest need.

  I volunteered there in my spare time. It was partially to help make amends for having started Armageddon in the first place, but mostly because she was still Sally. A part of me would always consider her my partner in crime, even if she was now old enough to be my mother – something I took great delight in reminding her of, despite her retaining a mean left hook. Regardless, it was always fun to trade barbs when she wasn’t busy, which, in all fairness, wasn’t often enough.

  Indeed, the phone, chat, and email lines had buzzed nonstop in the days following the end of the Apocalypse. There were so many people whose lives had been left in shambles and there she was, like an angel sent from heaven to help them ... and get her picture in the New York Times at every possible opportunity.