Ah, yes. Lousy one-liner or not, this was much, much better.
♦ ♦ ♦
The next few hours were actually pleasant for a change. Along with my promotion came an instant change in attitude toward me. The men were more respectful and the women were flirtier. In case you missed that last part, the women were all flirting it up with me. I could get used to that shit.
Finally, in the wee hours, I excused myself to leave. One of the nice perks of my new position was that nobody questioned where or why I was going. I decided to enjoy the night air – I’d earned it.
Strolling leisurely, I had walked a couple of blocks when Sally caught up to me.
“So, how's it going, master?” she said with a mock bow.
“I could definitely get used to this.”
“I thought you could.”
“Speaking of which...”
“Why did I hand credit over to you when I could have easily made myself the new leader?”
“In a nutshell,” I replied
“Did you see some of them in there? Remember what I told you about Jeff stocking the coven with guys who were mostly clones of himself?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, duh. Do you think that one of those macho assholes would have let me assume command for even a minute before challenging me?”
“You could have taken Dick Reaper.”
“Maybe. But what about the next one, and the next? I wouldn't be able to turn around without being challenged. You, on the other hand...”
“Are, for the most part, weaker, and less experienced than you?” I mused.
“Yes, but the rest of them don't know that. To them, you're the fearsome Freewill. They'll all think twice before getting in your face. And if they do ... well, luckily for you, some of that bullshit we've been spreading around just so happens to be true.”
“I guess. Although you could have told me first rather than putting me out there with a potential target on my back.”
She laughed. “Yeah, I could have, but I gotta get my fun somewhere.”
“Fair enough. Speaking of fun, though, that reminds me ... what about my decree back there?”
“What about it?”
“Well, I've abolished all of our dopey little superhero names. So, what should I call you now? I believe it was Lu ... something,” I said with my own laugh.
“Sally will be just fine, thank you,” she replied. “I've gotten used to it. But not Sunset. That has to go. Maybe I'll be Sally Smith, or something like that.”
“I could order you to tell me your real name. I am your lord and master, now, after all.”
She gave me the mother of all eye-rolls in return. “You can shove your orders up your ass sideways. And as for that lord and master crap, sorry, it doesn't fly with me.”
“No?”
“Nope,” she said sternly. “On the contrary, being that you're still new and all, I think I'll be calling most of the shots from behind the scenes.”
“You will?”
“Yes,” she responded with a tone of finality. “In fact, I think it might be best to think of me more as your partner than your servant.”
“And what makes you think I'll go along with that?”
She stopped walking and faced me. “Oh, just a little insurance.”
“What kind of insurance?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“This kind.” She pulled something out of her pocket and held it up. “Look familiar?” It did. It was Jeff's camcorder. Contained within it was, no doubt, footage of my less than stellar fair duel with our former leader. “I figured I'd keep it as a souvenir. A little something to remind us of that day ... just in case we forget.” A grin spread across her face.
I couldn't help but laugh. Throughout everything, I had been so enamored of James's power and so scared of Jeff's that I hadn't realized how much of a force Sally was to reckon with.
“You really are a bitch,” I said with a laugh.
“No,” she replied. “I'm the queen bitch ... more precisely, I'm your queen bitch. Don't worry, you'll get used to it. You have all of eternity.”
As we walked off into the night together, I had to wonder whether eternity would be long enough.
THE END
Scary Dead Things
The Tome of Bill
Part 2
Just Another Brick in the Wall
CRUNCH! Yep, no matter what way you put it, being hurled through a wall hurts.
It’s funny – just a few short months ago I would have argued that the dreaded atomic wedgie was the most common indignity I had suffered throughout my life. That’s not such a bad thing, especially when one considered that the proportion of ass-crack related incidents in one’s existence tended to decrease dramatically post high-school. After all, most people just won’t give a wedgie to another grownup.
Why? Well, my personal theory was that part of becoming an adult meant that we started asking ourselves much deeper questions than when we were kids, such as: do I really want to put my hands where this person’s dirty ass has been?
That being said, getting thrown into, and sometimes through, solid objects was becoming a disturbingly common occurrence in my life as of late. Considering the overall painfulness of such experiences, I began to find myself oddly nostalgic about having my underwear bunched up my ass by some prankster.
Just in case you’re taking notes, brick and concrete were easily the least fun barriers I had been smashed into. However, your basic wooden load-bearing wall – which oddly enough was what I found myself plowing into at that moment – wasn’t exactly a vacation in the Caribbean either. If this kept up, I might have to consider starting a blog about all the scenic walls in the Tri-State area and what it felt like to be flung through each and every one of them.
Although, perhaps right then wasn’t exactly an ideal time to think about blogging. I was just starting to pull myself back to my feet when a dark, angry form emerged from the shadows. It was Samuel, the leader of a coven of vampires from Queens that called themselves the HBC. This was because their home territory included the Howard Beach area. It was a stupid name, but considering my own group was known as Village Coven – due to being headquartered in fucking SoHo – I was probably in no position to throw stones.
It was apparently a tradition to name covens after their territories. Sure, you wound up with some silly names. I had even heard there was a Scotrun Coven in Pennsylvania, which was bad for them because they would forevermore be known in my mind as the Scrotum Coven.
All things considered, though, it probably beat the alternative. If every group were given free rein for names, I have little doubt we’d wind up with dopey crap like The Blood Brotherhood, The Midnight Raiders, or maybe The Sons of Darkness. In short, we’d all sound like retarded local chapters of the Legion of Doom.
Trust me, I speak from experience here. My own coven had a rule not too long ago regarding taking new personal pseudonyms upon joining. As a result, we ended up with stupid shit like people calling themselves Rage Vector, Night Razor and, of course, Dr. Death. Taking all that into account, I could probably live with Village Coven.
Still, worrying about minor things like coven names was probably best left to moments when I wasn’t in danger of getting my head torn off. This was not such a time. Samuel leapt at me, no doubt going for the kill.
Well, okay, maybe that’s a bit obvious. After all, one typically doesn’t fling themselves through the air at people they’re having a polite conversation with. Fortunately for me, I may not be able to dish it out as well as others, but I can definitely take it.
See, I’m a vampire, too – in case you hadn’t figured that out yet. I also had a lot of aforementioned experience getting tossed around. You built up a tolerance to it after a while. Those two things combined allowed me to recover quickly enough to snatch a busted two-by-four from the rubble of the safe house wall I had just smashed through. Before Samuel could fully cover the distance, I swung the beam and conne
cted with a solid KAPOW. He went flying back into the shadows from whence he came. That gave me a breather, but I didn’t have any delusions that it would be nearly enough to finish him.
I had been told that Samuel was nearly two-hundred years old. As vampires tended to get stronger as they get older, that made him both a lot more powerful as well as much more experienced than me. Neither was a checkmark in my favor. Under different circumstances, I should have probably been counting my lucky stars that I was still standing. If this had been my first tussle with a vampire way out of my league, I’d probably be busy either begging for my life or kissing my ass goodbye. However, it wasn’t.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m no Chuck Norris, and this fight was a long ways from being decided in my favor. However, once you’ve been in one pissing match with a monster who outclassed you in nearly every way and lived (sorta) to talk about it, you started to get a little jaded about the whole thing.
It’s like when I was a little kid. I remember watching wrestling on the TV and listening to Mean Gene Okerlund talking about how any given wrestler on any given night could potentially become the new champ. It wasn’t too different from what I was doing now. No matter how old the vampires, things weren’t one-hundred percent settled until one was dust.
Of course, that logic ignored the fact that professional wrestling was bullshit. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have Vince McMahon off behind the scenes scripting a big upset victory. If I wanted to win this, I couldn’t count on “Stone Cold” Steve Austin running out to save my ass with a steel chair.
Fortunately, I still had a few tricks up my sleeve, one of them being that I had my wits about me. Samuel might’ve been much older, but he had a major weakness that I could exploit. According to the info I had been given, he was old enough to have been born a slave in the deep South before the days of the Civil War. He had been owned by an exceptionally cruel master and spent the first four decades of his life enduring a mix of excruciating labor and relentless beatings. Things like that would fuck up anybody’s outlook on life, and Samuel was no exception.
From what I had been told, it was actually his owner that first had a chance encounter with a vampire. He was turned, then shortly afterwards, he attacked and subsequently turned Samuel. Why? Who knows? Maybe he wanted to hold dominion over his slave forever, or maybe he was just thirsty.
Either way, it’s safe to say this guy was a dick sandwich and a half. He was also a complete dumbass, too. Being a brand new vampire himself, Samuel’s master had no idea what he was doing. I’d heard the act of turning brings out the feral nature in some people. Samuel was the perfect poster child for this. Upon awakening as one of the undead, he completely snapped. He turned on his former master, who was too new to know how to control him. Then, when he was done, he attacked his now former owner’s family. He didn’t stop there, either, slaughtering every living thing on his plantation and the next two over before his rage burned itself out.
Since by that time the Civil War was raging full force, nothing odd was thought of the carnage. After all, when you had an invading army with a scorched-earth policy rampaging about, most people weren’t going to look at a few dozen dead bodies and immediately say, “Hey! It must be vampires.” Samuel was thus able to escape without much notice. If anyone did try to stand in his way, the archives make no mention of it. However, if someone did, it’s a safe bet as to what happened to them.
If you’re thinking that all of this caused him to spend the next century and a half nursing a massive chip on his shoulder, then bingo! Even up to the present day, it was well known in the vampire community that Samuel only accepted minorities into his coven, and even in that he was particular. Don’t get me wrong – I might be a little bit jaded, too, if any of that shit had happened to me. However, it also meant that it wouldn’t be too hard for me, your quintessential dorky-looking white guy, to push his buttons. A two-hundred-year-old vampire in a mindless rage was actually easier to fight than a two-hundred-year-old vampire who was thinking rationally and planning his every step. Fortunately for me, pissing people off was one of my specialties.
“Damn, you people have hard heads,” I said in a condescending manner. Yeah, I felt like a massive dick saying it, but I’d rather be a living dick than a politically correct corpse.
“What the fuck did you say?!” Samuel growled as he rose and once more began stalking me.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Forgot you don’t understand proper English too well.” I increased the mocking in my tone. “How’s this? Yo, nigga! You gots yourself one motherfucking hard head!” Oh yeah, I probably erased about a lifetime’s worth of good karma on that one. But it worked. Samuel came right at me with little more than an inarticulate snarl. If I didn’t time this right, I was going to get a front row seat to watching my head shoved up my own ass.
As he charged me, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my secret weapon, glad I’d decided to bring it. Considering this was supposed to be a peace conference, I almost hadn’t. Thank goodness for paranoia. As Samuel closed the distance, I kept the fork hidden from his view, waiting for the right time to strike.
Yes, I said fork – not a cross, not a gun, and definitely not the holy hand grenade of Antioch. Trust me on this one. For starters, forget what you know. Crosses by themselves don’t do shit against vampires. If you ever found yourself cornered by vamps and figured you could get out of it by holding two popsicle sticks together, well, you were going to be in for a major disappointment. Sure, maybe you’d get lucky and they’d laugh so hard at your idiocy that you’d be able to slip away, but I wouldn’t count on it. I’m a glass is half full kind of guy, but that’s a stretch even for me.
Anyway, Samuel crossed the distance between us almost faster than I could see. I barely had enough time to brace myself before he hit me in the side of the head with a wild backhand swing, knocking my ass to the floor. I had to admit that under normal circumstances the blow would have probably put me down for the count. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and I wasn’t a normal vampire ... if there even was such a thing.
You see, I was already juiced up from earlier. At the start of the fight, one of Samuel’s goons had come at me first. I had stepped into his punch and sunk my teeth into his arm – managing to suck down a few mouthfuls of blood before he could pry me off.
Ignore the shit you see on your typical late night vampire softcore flick – the kind in which everyone was biting and sucking on everyone else. In reality, when a vamp chomped down on another, bad things happened to the biter. The effect was kind of like what you might expect if you were to drive down to Tijuana and drink your fill from the first water fountain you came across – only amplified a couple dozen times. Forget fighting; most bloodsuckers wouldn’t be strong enough to stand for several hours after drinking another vampire’s blood. But not me.
I’m what the other undead called a Freewill. Apparently, we’re rare ... as in it’s been at least half a millennium since anyone has seen another. Whatever the case, it did seem to come with some perks. For starters, I’m immune to psychic domination, or compulsion as it was called.
Perhaps even cooler than that, though, is what happened when I drank another vampire’s blood. Instead of puking my guts out, I somehow temporarily added their strength to my own. How? Fucked if I knew. All I cared was that it had saved my ass on more than one occasion.
I didn’t know how old the vampire I bit was, but I was easily running at about two-hundred percent of my normal level. Not powerful enough to engage Samuel directly, but strong enough to take blows that would otherwise turn my head concave. Thus I was able to shake his hit off and jump back to my feet. Maybe I was a little wobblier than I would’ve preferred – he hit me pretty damned hard, after all – but standing was definitely better than lying down and letting him go all ape-shit on me.
The Tome of Bill Series: Books 1-4 (Bill The Vampire, Scary Dead Things, The Mourning Woods, Holier Than Thou) Page 29