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

by Rick Gualtieri

  On the second try, I got the weapon free. Without thinking, I lifted it up and pointed it back over my shoulder to where I thought Bang was standing. I pulled the trigger (Bang, meet a bigger bang), and for a second there thought I had blown my own head off, so loud was the explosion. Guess that explained why people wore ear plugs when they went shooting.

  The kickback from the gun tore it from my fingers. Hell, it almost dislocated my shoulder. It went clattering away, still smoking from the shot I had made – not that I could hear the clattering. In fact, it was probably going to be a while before I could hear anything.

  I flopped down again face-first onto the roof, the wound in my stomach again sending fresh waves of pain through me. Wait! I was free. Bang had let me go. Guess the shot had surprised him. Hey, maybe I even managed to wing him. I rolled over onto my back to check and saw him standing there above me, knife still in hand, but minus most of his head.

  Whoa. Hope there weren’t any low flying aircraft passing overhead when I pulled the trigger, was all I had time to think before his body burst into flame and a shower of Bang dust fell upon me. Ewww, some of him got into my mouth. I was going to be investing heavily in Listerine after this one.

  Still, dental hygiene was a concern for later. At that moment, I needed to concentrate on not dying from my injuries. I tried to stand, doubled over in pain for a few moments, and then managed to right myself. I put my hand over my stomach to try and staunch the blood flow. It was still going pretty good, although most of my other injuries had at least slowed to a minor drip.

  I looked around. Still no sign of Gan. Wait! There was a small blur on the rooftop next over. It was moving fast, but I caught a glimpse of a flower pattern. There was no mistaking one of the overpriced dresses Sally had purchased the other day. If she hadn’t been moving like the wind and screeching like a banshee, she might have looked cute in it ... for an ancient little hell-beast, that is.

  Gan reached the edge of the roof, maybe some five floors lower than the one we were on, and kept going. She leapt the distance between the two and then fell out of my sight. What the hell?

  I lurched over to the edge and looked down. Wow, she was actually scaling the side of the building, using her claws to gain purchase, and moving pretty damn fast at it, too. She’d be up at our level within moments. Good, I could use a little backup ... even if I had to promise to marry her to get it.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure I had a few moments. A muffled sound caught my attention and I turned around to check it out. I saw Decker down on the ground, the hilt of one of Nergui’s daggers sticking out of his leg. He was rolling around, screaming (I think, my hearing still wasn’t quite back to full yet), and more or less being pretty obvious about the fact that he was out of the fight. Oh crap. Where the hell did that gun fly off to?

  Nergui said something to the downed Decker, which I didn’t quite catch. He then turned and looked in my direction. A look of surprise crossed his face, as he no doubt noticed the fine dusting of Bang coating the area. He closed his eyes for a moment, appeared to mouth something, and then he opened them, meeting my gaze. He gave a respectful nod and started to walk slowly in my direction. He appeared to have taken a pretty good pounding from Decker and was noticeably limping. However, he didn’t seem to be in any great hurry either. No wonder. I didn’t really have too many places left to run.

  Still, there was no point in making it easy on the guy. I held onto my still bleeding stomach and hobbled over to where Sally was. She had again somehow managed to make it to her feet. She nodded as I approached and started to say something, but I gave her a shove, which put her back down where she had been.

  I leaned in and said in a low but firm voice, “Stay down and out of the way. He’s after me. The moment you have an opening, you get to the stairwell and get the hell out of here. For once, do as I say, please!”

  She looked as if she were about to mouth off, but then she averted her gaze and gave me a single nod of her head. I was half-amazed. Personally, I had given her about a ninety-five percent chance of telling me to go fuck myself. Maybe I should consider playing the lottery when this was all over.

  That would have to wait, though. Right then, I had a game of Russian roulette to finish ... or was that Mongolian roulette? Whatever the case, in this version of the game, five of the chambers held bullets and only one kept me from losing my head. Oh well, in the words of Han Solo, “Never tell me the odds.”

  Sally stayed down and scuttled out of sight. As for me, I ran – or at least tried to. If Nergui wanted me, he’d have to catch me first. Fuck that whole stand there and take it like a man crap. I’m more of a he who fights and runs away guy anyway.

  Unfortunately, the running part may have been a bit of a stretch. It was more like a gimp trot. Sorry, but I’d like to see anyone take a pig-sticker to the gut and then try running the Boston Marathon.

  Fortunately, most rooftops of office buildings weren’t the wide open expanses you might expect. There were plenty of obstacles, my plan being to keep them between myself and Nergui for as long as it took Sally to get out of there. Nergui, no dummy, saw what I was trying to do and put a little more oomph into his limp.

  “Do you really wish to die this way?” he called to me. Hey, I could hear again! Good to know my vampire healing wasn’t entirely on the fritz today.

  “Actually, I’m trying to avoid dying this way.”

  “You only delay your fate by moments,” he said, coming around an air vent I had just moved behind.

  “That’s a few more seconds to figure out how to kick your ass,” I replied without much conviction. As it were, I wasn’t exactly breaking the four-minute mile, and I could already feel myself starting to slow down. Too much blood loss was starting to take its toll. Another few minutes and I’d be done for.

  Sadly, even those few extra minutes were denied me.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Something heavy thudded into my leg. In my current condition, it was more than enough to trip me up. Down I went. I looked around for what had hit me and saw Nergui’s dagger. However, it hadn’t come from Nergui. If it had, it would have buried itself six inches into the back of my neck. No, this was a sloppy throw. What had hit me was the hilt, not the blade.

  I looked to my right. Fuck! In my insistence to run away from Nergui, I didn’t notice my path had taken me close to Decker. He was still on the ground, one hand over where Nergui’s knife had been just a few moments ago. He gave me a smile and flipped me the bird with his free hand. What a dick! Unfortunately for him, though, I wasn’t the only one who had seen what happened.

  I turned my head and saw that Gan had finally made it onto the rooftop. She screamed something in her native tongue. No idea what it was, but it sounded decisively unfriendly. She looked between myself and Decker, then launched herself in his direction. It wasn’t quite the assist I had been hoping for. I guess she was still a little pissed about him barbecuing her the night before. That tended to cloud a person’s judgment.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t see what happened next, as rough hands grabbed me by the back of my shirt and hauled me to my feet. “For kidnapping the princess, you must die. But I give you the honor of dying like a man, Freewill,” Nergui said in my ear.

  “Wait! Kidnapping? I...” I didn’t get a chance to finish as I was flung face-first into the side of one of the large, steel ... yeah, definitely steel, ouch! ... AC units I had been previously using for cover.

  CRUNCH! Oh well, I thought woozily, slumping to the ground, It’s not like I was all that pretty to begin with. Time for a good, long nap? Yeah, that sounded dandy. Sadly, I was again rudely hauled back to my feet.

  “Nap time over already?” I managed to crack my eyes open to see Nergui’s face looking back at me. Unlike Bang, there was no grin or snide Chinese comment. He didn’t look particularly happy about this at all. It was just business for him. I could almost respect that, if his business hadn’t involved bringing my head back to the Khan as a trophy.<
br />
  “Your end is...” Before he could finish that thought, I was dropped back down again. I was starting to dislike the feeling of the rooftop against my bruised and battered body.

  Hold on, what just happened? I shook my head to clear it. It helped. A little, at least. When I looked up, I saw that Nergui was busy trying to dislodge something from his back ... that something being Sally – stump, broken bones, and all. That bitch! Guess she decided that I could take my orders and shove it after all.

  On the other hand, maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on her, as she had done more to save my ass in the past ten minutes than I really deserved. If we lived through this, she could keep the black Amex. She had earned it.

  She hung on with all she had, but it wasn’t enough. Nergui grabbed her arms and started to pry her off. That was when Sally crossed the line from crazy to batshit fucking insane. Before he could completely shake her loose, she raised her head, extended her fangs, and bit down into the side of his neck. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. She had told me what would happen if a normal (as in: not me) vampire did something like that, and yet she was still doing it ... to save me.

  Blood started pouring from his neck, and still she bit down harder. The look on Nergui’s face was a combination of shock and pain. He couldn’t believe what she was doing either. I used the moment to pull myself back to my feet. If she could take enough blood out of him, he could potentially weaken to the point where he might be beatable ... emphasis on might.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  As I got to my feet, I saw flashes of light from the corner of my eye. At first, I thought it might have just been me, seeing as I was on the verge of passing out and all. Then I realized that it must have been Decker. He was putting up a fight against Gan, but there definitely didn’t seem to be as much behind it as there had been earlier. Too bad, so sad for him. I’d be sure to send flowers to his funeral or maybe piss on his grave, depending on which mood struck me at the time.

  My immediate priority, though, was still Nergui and the Sally-shaped growth still digging at his neck. She was definitely taking a toll on him. That was Sally, all right. She could drain the will to live from any man, one way or the other. Nergui wasn’t quite out of it yet, but he wasn’t moving quite as spryly as he had been. Unfortunately, that was when Sally stopped.

  She raised her head from his neck and looked at me. She gave me a sheepish smile and then projectile vomited a large gout of blood. If you’ve seen The Exorcist, you have a good idea of how this went. Gross didn’t begin to describe it.

  Unfortunately for her, it didn’t end there. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she fell from Nergui’s back. She landed on the ground and started violently convulsing, more blood spraying from her mouth. I wished I could do something to help her, but there was nothing I could think of. No, that wasn’t right. I could make sure she hadn’t taken on this kind of suffering in vain. I could finish off Nergui and end this ... for her.

  Nergui was still too stunned from Sally’s attack to notice me. He was holding his hands to his neck, trying to staunch the massive flow of blood. It gave me a chance.

  I didn’t have a lot left, but I summoned what I could. I rushed forward, and, just as his eyes were again turning toward me, I nailed him with a double-fisted upper cut. It was a clean, solid hit, and Nergui went flying. If luck was with me, the fucker would have a nice dislocated jaw to show for it.

  It wasn’t.

  He flew a good fifteen feet through the air and landed in a heap ... right next to the knife that Decker had thrown at me mere moments earlier. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!

  Nergui’s hand closed on the hilt. He slowly rolled to his feet as I looked for cover against what I knew was coming. Unfortunately, I was spent. Whatever I had summoned for that hit had truly been all that I had left to give. My body felt like it was encased in Jell-O ... and not in a good “wrestling with topless chicks” kind of way either.

  The next few seconds were like a slow motion scene from a movie. Several things happened at once, and it was like time slowed down for a heartbeat or two to let it all unfold.

  I heard Gan’s voice scream out, “BILL!” as Nergui steadied himself. I turned my head and saw her toss Decker to the side like a piece of garbage. I glanced back to find that Nergui had flipped the knife so that the blade was in his hand. He started to pull his arm back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tiny flower patterned blur moving almost faster than I would have thought possible. Nergui’s arm snapped forward, and I saw the blade leave his hand. His aim was true. I knew where it was headed, but for some reason, my body refused to respond with much more than a few twitches in the direction I was trying to will it toward. Stupid body!

  Then, just like that, time suddenly snapped back to its normal speed. The blade closed in on my heart just as that flowery blur leapt in front of me. There was a dull thud, and then Gan’s tiny body slammed into me with more than enough force to take me off my feet. I went down, and she landed on top of me.

  “Princess! No!” Nergui screamed right before he trailed off into his native language. Whatever he was saying sounded frantic, but I could no more understand it than if he had been trying to communicate in clicks and whistles.

  “Thanks for the save, Gan. Now get off me,” I said in a weak voice. She didn’t move. That’s when I finally understood what had happened.

  I gently rolled her off me and managed to get to a sitting position. What I saw confirmed my fears. The silver blade was stuck up to its hilt in Gan’s chest. She wasn’t moving.

  “Why?!” yelled Nergui. He ran to her other side and dropped to his knees. “Why would she do that?”

  “Oh, Gan,” I said with a sad sigh, gently stroking her cheek. “What have you done?”

  Nergui slapped my hand away. “Do not touch her, kidnapper!”

  “Are you fucking for real?!” I snapped back with more strength than I thought I had left. “Does it look like I kidnapped her? Would she take a knife for me if I had kidnapped her?!”

  “But my master said...”

  “Your master was wrong! Think about it. Gan came here after me. I didn’t ask her to.”

  “But why? She had everything...” he said, anguish in his voice.

  “Apparently not,” I replied, but then decided it was best to sugar coat the next part and leave my opinions out of it. “Gan got it in her mind that she wanted me as her mate.” He gave me a dubious look in return. “Yeah, I thought it was weird, too ... err, I mean, she came all this way, and I’m obviously not worthy of her.”

  He was silent for a moment as this sank in. Finally, he appeared to come to a decision as he looked me in the eye. “I ... I am...” he seemed to struggle with the word, “sorry, Freewill. Had I known, I would have acted ... different.”

  “Even though the Khan ordered otherwise?” I asked, not bothering to cover the doubt in my voice.

  “The Khan is wise, but he does not know all.”

  I was tempted to point out that, from what Gan had told me, the Khan knew all about this part. It was beginning to become obvious that he put out the hit on me in a fit of asshole anger. But then again, I also didn’t see the point in mentioning such to Nergui, as it was doubtful it would help the situation.

  “I had pledged to bring your head to him,” he continued with downcast eyes. “However, because of my foolishness, I shall only be returning with the body of his daughter and my worthless life as penance.”

  There was a moment of silence that passed between us as this started to sink in. But then my subconscious decided to speak up again, as it often did. For once, it actually had something useful to say.

  “Body?” I asked as the thought hit me. He raised his eyebrows. “Nergui, why do we still even have a body? Shouldn’t she be ash by now?”

  His eyes widened in surprise. We both looked at Gan and then back at each other. Then we smelled it ... the silver! Smoke had started wafting from the wound in her chest. Jesus Christ, we were
a pack of idiots!