The Tome of Bill Series: Books 1-4 (Bill The Vampire, Scary Dead Things, The Mourning Woods, Holier Than Thou)

by Rick Gualtieri

  I was just beginning to wonder what had happened when the smoke from his explosion thinned out, and it all became crystal clear to me. Standing directly behind where Samuel had been just a moment before was Sally, her own broken two-by-four still in hand.

  “What the hell?!” I cried.

  “Typically, this is the point where you would say thank you,” she replied, smug grin etched onto her pretty face.

  “I had him!”

  “Oh? Like you had him right before he punted your ass for a field goal?”

  “You saw that?”

  “Oh, I did better than that.” She pulled a Flip camcorder from her pocket and waved it at me. Bitch!

  “And you didn’t help why?”

  “I was curious to see if you’d get back up,” she answered with an even voice. “Just for the record, I was actually impressed that you did.”

  “Flattered, I’m sure,” I said dryly.

  “Oh, don’t be such a grouch. I’ll give you full credit ... again. Of course, we’ll both know the truth,” she said with another little shake of the camera. “By the way, is it me, or is this starting to become a habit between us?”

  “I didn’t need your help this time.”

  “Oh, really?” She bent and started rooting through Samuel’s ashes. “Then why was I the one who finished him off?”

  “That was a cheap shot.”

  “Exactly!” she replied, picking a few things out of his remains. “Thus proving my tactical brilliance compared to you both.” She tossed my roommate’s purloined silverware back to me. “Nice fork, by the way.”

  Not Exactly a UN Summit

  “All in all, that went almost exactly as planned,” Sally cheerfully explained as we walked back to the main meeting room where the altercation had begun. The sounds of battle could still be heard in the building, but it seemed like things were winding down.

  “Whose plan, exactly? My plan was to come here, hash out a truce with Samuel, and go home. Last I checked, my plan didn’t include spending the last hour trying to keep him from rearranging my face.”

  She shook her head. “Sorry to break it to you, but there’s no way your little cease fire would have worked.”

  “It might have, if you hadn’t decided to bring every psycho in the coven along.”

  “Like I said, all according to plan,” she pointed out in a tone one might’ve used on a particularly dimwitted child. “We killed two birds with one stone here. With Samuel gone, the rest of his gang won’t want to be within ten miles of us. As for our own side of things, I’m pretty sure we managed to purge some of the less pleasant elements of our own group. That’s what we like to call a win-win.”

  She had a point ... maybe, at least minus the excessive mass murder part of it. Still, I was pretty pissed off.

  “You could have told me,” I growled as we entered the now deserted meeting room.

  “You wouldn’t have gone along with it.”

  “Exactly.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Hence why I didn’t tell you. Duh!”

  Occasionally, I wished I was a wee bit more evil. If so, I’d have been almost tempted to make sure there was one more casualty added to the day.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We straightened up the room a bit while Sally coached me on what to say. Once we had gotten the table and chairs set up again, she said, “Okay, you can call them all back now.”

  “How? This whole building is a battle zone. There’s no way they’ll hear me.”

  “Send it out as a compulsion.”

  “And that will do what, exactly? I can’t control any of these vampires. They’re all older than me, or have you forgotten?”

  “God, you are dense sometimes,” she said with a sigh. “This has nothing to do with controlling them. If you send it out as a compulsion, every vamp in the building will hear it.”

  “Oh. Okay, then.” Yeah, I guess that made sense. Every compulsion I had ever heard (for lack of a better term) had been up close and personal. But since there was a psychic element to it, that probably meant it could carry further than the sound of the voice making it.

  “All right, so do it then.”

  I went to open my mouth, then hesitated. After a couple seconds of Sally staring quizzically at me, I smiled sheepishly back at her.

  As expected, her response was another eye roll. “Don’t tell me you don’t know how to compel. You were supposed to be practicing these things.”

  “I know, but since I haven’t met any vamps I could potentially control ... I kind of figured ... what was the point?”

  “And yet somehow you’re still alive while a two-century old master vampire is now a pile of dust. You must have a whole regiment of guardian angels looking out for you.”

  “No shit. I need at least half of them to protect me from you.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere. Oh well, if you want something done ... THIS BATTLE IS OVER. SAMUEL HAS FALLEN!!”

  It wasn’t the loudest compulsion I’d ever heard (or felt), but it was apparently loud enough. The faint sounds of vampires beating the snot out of each other stopped almost immediately. As planned, I positioned myself at the head of the table, with Sally standing behind me as my subordinate. I put an expression of calm determination onto my face as best I could, which was saying something since turning my back on her was about the furthest thing I could think of to give myself a state of calm.

  One by one, the various combatants began to walk back into the former meeting room. I said nothing. I merely gestured to the seats as each vampire arrived, waiting for the last of the survivors. It supposedly projected an aura of smug superiority regarding my victory, not to mention it also kept me from having to repeat myself over and over again. That was a good thing, as it lessened the chances of me saying something stupid that would probably start the battle up all over again.

  When a few minutes had passed since the last vampire returned, I took stock of the survivors. There was no mistaking which way the tide of battle had been turning. No matter the bloodlust some of my coven members might have been feeling, there were conspicuously fewer survivors on my side of things than on Samuel’s. That shouldn’t have surprised anyone. Jeff, the former master of Village Coven, tended to pick new members based on their looks and overall frat boy mentality. The HBC vamps, on the other hand, looked more like they had been recruited based on how many faces they had smashed during their mortal life. If further negotiations went badly, it would be in our best interest to get the fuck out of Dodge as quickly as possible.

  However, that possibility was still a major if. If I played my part well enough, there might be no need for that. Yeah, I know ... another if.

  As the last of the survivors took their seats, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the souvenirs Sally had dug from Samuel’s ashes. I tossed his fangs onto the table as one might toss a pair of dice in a craps game. They tumbled end over end before stopping near the far edge. I glanced around and noticed all eyes were locked on them. The expressions around the table were all nearly identical, regardless of coven allegiance ... abject disbelief. I expected this from the HBC vamps, but jeez, it would have been nice if even a few from my own ranks had a little faith in me. Assholes, each and every last one of them.

  I got things started again once the silence in the room became almost oppressive. “Who is Samuel’s second?” I asked in a neutral tone.

  There was no immediate answer. Instead, the various HBC survivors looked back and forth at each other, confusion evident on their faces. Sally had told me to expect as much. A vampire as old, relatively speaking, as Samuel tended to run a coven with an iron fist. A succession plan or even basic hierarchy was probably the furthest thing from his mind on a day-to-day basis. If that were the case, there would be confusion enough to distract these vampires as they sorted things out amongst themselves. It was sort of like the cartoons I used to watch as a kid. If GI Joe shot down Cobra Commander, they’d still have Destro and the Baroness
to worry about. On the other hand, if He-Man ever took out Skeletor, the forces of evil would be pretty well fucked, as the rest of them were a bunch of numbnuts. We had pinned our hopes that Samuel was the Skeletor of his bunch.

  “I am Samuel’s second!” one of the HBC vamps cried.

  “The fuck you are!” another vampire spat. Almost as if on cue, the rest of Samuel’s group started arguing amongst themselves. I couldn’t have planned it better had I tried.

  The survivors of my own coven looked to me as if seeking direction. It was about fucking time. If they had bothered to do that at the beginning of things, we’d have a lot fewer dead vampires to vacuum up.

  Oh well, there would be plenty of time to chew them out later. I motioned with my hand in a stay calm gesture, or what I hoped they interpreted as such. Fortunately, they did. Being on the losing side of a real life game of Mortal Kombat tended to have a sobering effect, even on a bunch of vicious nocturnal predators.

  I continued to let the HBC members argue amongst themselves for a few more moments. I knew they wouldn’t even come close to any conclusions in that time, but it made things seem more convincing. Finally, I raised my voice above them all. “ENOUGH!” It wasn’t a compulsion, but it got their attention. Being the dude who just tossed your boss’s remains in front of you tended to make one rate a few notches higher on the people to pay attention to scale.

  Once the table had again quieted down, I resumed. “Your internal politics are not my concern. Figure it out on your own time. What I care to know is whether any of you wish to continue Samuel’s quarrel with my people?”

  Yeah, that was total bullshit. Everyone here knew that the HBC’s grudge was against me and me alone. However, as coven leader, my fight was the entire group’s fight. Even I had to admit this job had a few perks.

  When nobody answered, I locked eyes with the closest of Samuel’s team. In as cold and dead of a voice as I could muster, I asked, “Do you still want to fight?” After a second or two of the stare-down, he slowly shook his head. I then went down the line, asking the same thing to each and every HBC vamp in the room. Now this part I wish someone taped because, damn, I bet it looked badass. I felt like Don fucking Corleone, I tell you.

  When I had reached the last one – and received the exact same answer from him as the rest – I said, “Regardless of whichever of you is now in charge, it appears that this coven war is over. We shall go back to where we were before and respect each other’s members and territory. Agreed?” When there was silence around the table for a bit too long, I repeated myself with a little more (empty) threat in my voice. “Agreed?!”

  This time, there were nods all around the table from HBC and Village Coven vamps alike. “Very well. It is done. Only one final business remains. In accordance with the laws of our people, as the victor of this battle, I may set forth further terms of my choosing.”

  There were a lot of ugly looks around the table at that. Sally had told me of this little clause in vampire turf wars, with perhaps a little too much eager glee in her voice. I could use this time to do something like expand our own territory, demand that the Howard Beach Coven cede some of their membership numbers to us, or any such thing so as to further weaken them. No wonder she hadn’t wanted a successful treaty. Little miss hot pants behind me had herself some ambition.

  I’d have to deal with that later. For now, every eye in the room was upon me. “The terms are … this safe house is pretty trashed. Clean this place the fuck up, okay, guys?”

  There was an audible gasp of relief from the HBC vamps, as well as a sharp intake of breath behind me that my sensitive vampire ears picked up on. I could feel Sally’s eyes boring holes in the back of my head. Heh! Fuck you, bitch. This would hopefully teach her to remember that I wasn’t her little boy toy to screw with as she pleased.

  Well, okay, maybe that was a poor way to phrase it. Sally had looks that would make her seem right at home on the cover of Cosmo. If she and the phrase “screw with me as she pleased” ever came up, who was I to argue?

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The peace conference adjourned, and the HBC members left to return to their territory. I likewise ordered my contingent back to Manhattan. There had been enough misadventure for one night, and dawn was only a few hours away anyway. While most of what people think they knew about vampires was total bullshit, the whole catch on fire under the rays of the sun thing was pretty much spot on. A few minutes of sunshine was enough to turn even the strongest of bloodsuckers into something you could pick up with a dustpan.

  Once the others finally left, I relaxed in my seat and let out a huge sigh of relief. Now that the action was over and the prying eyes were off me, all of my bravado evaporated. I was once again just Bill Ryder, an online game programmer who still had no idea how he wound up neck deep in a pool of vampire shit.

  “So are you really that dumb, or did you let them off the hook as a big fuck you to me?” said a voice from over my shoulder, jarring me out of my reverie. Somehow I knew Sally hadn’t left with the others. She was one of the few vampires who knew the real me, not the pseudo-scary “Dr. Death” persona I tried to make everyone else believe in. On the one hand, it was nice to have her around. I didn’t have to pretend to be anyone else with her ... and she wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes either, as I believe I’ve already mentioned. Any comfortable feeling, however, was tempered by the fact that Sally was a sarcastic bitch with an attitude problem that could have spanned the Verrazano Bridge and beyond.

  “Maybe a little of both,” I quipped without bothering to turn around.

  “Fair enough. I probably deserved it. Although you threw away a perfectly good opportunity to increase our leverage in the vampire community.”

  “Our leverage?”

  “Well, you are our fearless leader,” she purred, putting a little playfulness into her voice. Heh, times like this were when I trusted her least. At least you knew where you stood when she was in full-blown bitch mode. “I just keep the books in line.”

  “That you do.”

  “You’re pissed, aren’t you?”

  “Oddly enough, no,” I answered truthfully. “Don’t get me wrong, I should be. Your little game almost got me killed, and you definitely got a lot of other people dusted tonight.”

  “Nobody who’ll really be missed.”

  “That’s beside the point. We’re supposed to be partners in crime here, but it usually turns out I’m the partner while you’re the one committing all the crimes.”

  I could hear the grin in her voice as she replied, “You’ve probably got me there. I suppose it wouldn’t kill me to keep you in the loop a little more.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “But still, you’re really not pissed?”

  “No. That’s the crazy part. No matter what bullshit exploded in my face in the past few hours, I don’t feel anything but relief. I’m here in the middle of a murder scene that would give the NYPD a conniption, but the only thing I can think is that this is the first time in months that I don’t feel like someone is standing behind me holding a stake.”

  Sally cleared her throat. “Eh hem.”

  Sure enough, I turned around in my chair, and she was standing there holding a splintered off two-by-four.

  “Et tu, Brute’?” I asked.

  “Sorry.” She tossed it aside. “I was holding onto it in case the premises weren’t entirely clear.”

  “Allow me to rephrase myself. This is the first time in months I don’t feel like someone is going to try to kill me every five minutes – or are you going to pull out a shotgun and ruin that one, too?”