Oh, shit. That, unfortunately, answered yet another question I should have asked, but hadn’t thought to. Once again, it stung, even though it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise. It was going to suck majorly come payday, though. “Let me guess. He didn’t appreciate my little sabbatical?”
“Something like that.”
“So what happened with you? You grow a work ethic while I was gone and get promoted or something?”
“Close. I quit.”
“Why?”
“Well...I had another offer.”
“Oh, this should be good,” Tom muttered as he turned his chair toward us.
I glanced at him sideways, then back toward Ed. Something was definitely up. One didn’t need to be a blind seer to see that. “What? Oh, don’t tell me you got a job as Sally’s gigolo or something like that. Because let me tell you, the severance package is gonna be a real motherfucker once she gets bored with your skinny ass.”
“Nothing like that.” He tossed his jacket onto a chair, stretched, and then unbuttoned the top two buttons of his dress shirt. It was a casual gesture, but I immediately noticed the nasty burn mark peeking out from underneath. It was in the shape of Sheila’s hand. She’d somehow given it to him as she’d attempted to drag him back from the precipice of life and undeath. He’d gotten lucky, but it had been close - so close that none of us had any idea at the time whether she’d been successful.
Ed saw where my gaze was focused. “You’re halfway to guessing my sudden career change.”
I blinked confusedly in response. What the fuck did that mean? “So...you have a palm print on your neck. What, are you the assistant manager in charge of giving out hand jobs?”
Tom snorted laughter, earning a withering look from Ed.
“No, stupid. It’s who gave me the palm print that’s important. Before you burn off any brain cells trying to figure it out, allow me to elaborate. You are looking at the acting president of Iconic Efficiencies.”
* * *
It’s a pity I’d been sipping from my cup at that moment - I immediately doused Ed’s nice white shirt with a spray of soda.
I couldn’t help it. Iconic Efficiencies had been Sheila’s company. She’d left her job as my group’s administrative assistant and formed it. It had been part of the change in her attitude that had let her belief in herself blossom - a chain reaction that ultimately changed her into the Icon, dreaded foe of the vampire race.
But how the hell did that lead to Ed taking it over? I mean, the guy was a graphic designer. As far as I knew, he had zero business acumen and even less desire to obtain any. I summed this all up in a nice, succinct manner. “How the fuck did that happen?”
“Can I answer, or do you want to spit on me some more?” He walked into the kitchen and grabbed a few paper towels with which to blot himself dry.
“I repeat, how the fuck did that happen?”
“Sorry. I would have told you after all that shit with Remington was over, but you were missing and I was busy being unconscious.”
“But when?”
“Over lunch. Remember that?”
I did and still felt guilty about it. There had been a momentary break in the weather, the first of what was apparently a string of supernatural storms since then. Ed and Sheila, being the lone occupants who couldn’t survive on blood, had left the coven safe house in search of some food. Only Sheila had returned, with the cops hot on her tail following a run-in with some witches.
I nodded, indicating he should continue.
“Well, it’s simple really. Before Christy’s coven barged in and zapped me, Sheila and I had a good, long talk.”
“About what?”
“Lots of things, but we eventually wound up on the subject of her company. Needless to say, she was really bummed that she’d finally gotten something of her own off the ground and then all of this shit had to start.”
“I get that, but why you?”
“What? You don’t trust my impeccable business sense?” he asked in a wounded tone. I raised one eyebrow, waiting for him to continue. “Well, okay, that’s basically the same thing I told her.”
“Yet here you are.”
“She didn’t want her company to go under. I guess she sort of saw it as her baby. I mean, I can dig that. At the same time, her eyes were open as to what was going on. She was aware of how the Templar took over things and set that trap for us.”
“I think it was mostly for me.”
“Yeah, but I got my ass kicked as a consolation prize.”
“Not my fault you’re a wuss.”
“Says the guy who spent the past quarter of a year being Alexander the Great’s dungeon bitch,” Tom added.
I stopped my verbal sparring long enough to glare at him.
Ed continued. “Anyway, as I was saying, she wanted someone to run the place in case...”
“The worst happened?” I offered, my voice cracking a bit.
Ed put his hand on my shoulder, about as close as he typically came to being comforting. “Listen, Bill...”
I held up a hand. “Let’s not right now, okay?” He nodded, understanding showing in his eyes. “So, why you?”
“That’s what I was getting to. I mean, I wondered the same thing. We were always friendly when she worked for Jim, but it’s not like I was her best bud or anything.”
His words from moments earlier rang through my head and I suddenly understood. “You’re one of the few people who know the truth.”
“Exactly what she said. That, and I guess I was as close to a neutral party as she was going to find. Obviously, I’m not a wizard. I don’t work for the Sasquatches, and I’m sure as shit not your thrall - no matter what anyone says. In short, I don’t really bring a hidden agenda with me, but know enough to keep my eyes open and make sure her staff stays safe.”
“And how are you supposed to do that?”
“Well,” he said with a grin, “for starters, I used my very first executive-sized paycheck to pick myself up a nice new Mossberg along with a bunch of shells filled with silver shot.”
“It’s a start.”
“And I hired a few of the surviving Templar as security.”
My jaw hit the floor, bounced, and landed there again. I was tempted to question his sanity, but then saw the shit-eating grin he wore from ear to ear.
Asshole.
It was good to be home again.
* * *
The rest of the evening was awesomeness personified. No other vampires, no magic-wielding girlfriends, nothing teleporting in and trying to disintegrate the building - just the three of us, bullshitting and passing around a celebratory bottle of tequila. I brought them both up to speed on what had happened to me - the parts I could remember, that is - being sure to add in a chapter about the hot Freewill groupie who helped me escape, but not before demanding I make furious love to her as payment for her services.
Hey, it’s my story, and I’ll embellish it as I damn well please.
They likewise filled in the rest of the blanks of what had been my life, which seemed to mostly consist of keeping their noses out of the supernatural world and making up excuses for me. I had to laugh. It had only been little more than a year, but I’d nearly forgotten how so unexciting our lives had been pre-vampire. Take that out of the equation and things apparently went right back to normal.
If it weren’t for the impending end of the world, that might have given me pause. Without me around, the forces of the weird and unnatural had no interest in my friends, sans maybe Christy. Sadly, my leaving again would only be a temporary balm for my roommates. There could only be so much normal to be had when the clouds threatened to belch out supernatural death at any moment.
I pushed those thoughts away as the evening went on. Enough guilt already weighed me down. Much more and I wouldn’t be able to do anything other than listen to hipster music and write depressing poetry.
Fuck that. If I was gonna save the world, I needed a clean head and any advan
tage I could get - including being on my home turf.
The phone rang a few times as the night continued, but we ignored it - letting it go to the machine - especially while they got me caught up on a few of the shows I’d missed. Goddamn, I really needed to invest in a DVR with an extra-large hard drive. After updating my resume, I’d need to get my ass to some pirate sites and start downloading. The penalties for copyright infringement weren’t so scary compared to all the shit I’d seen.
Tom finally passed out, leaving Ed and me to mock him for a little while. Soon enough, he’d be dragging his ass for completely different reasons. I had no idea what was worse: waking up with a hangover or being dead on your feet from changing shit-filled diapers all night, but I knew which one I’d prefer. I had a feeling Christy wasn’t going to tolerate too much of the former. Poor guy. Of all of us, he was the least prepared to grow up.
Of course, that didn’t stop us from scrawling “dickless” on his forehead with a Sharpie while he snored away.
Finally, we decided to turn in. Ed looked beat and, despite my vampire stamina, I’d have no problem getting to sleep. Hell, the prospect of doing so in my own bed - and not atop a pile of rotting corpses in a dank cave - had me practically excited.
Ed locked up as I dragged Tom to his room and tossed his unconscious ass onto the bed. I threw a blanket onto him, swiped a micro-USB cable so I could recharge my stolen phone, positioned his Cheetara figure to look like she was going down on Leader 1 from the Gobots, then turned off the lights and stepped out.
I walked toward my bedroom and noticed Ed was listening to the messages on the machine. Most of it was crap - a telemarketer, some charity asking for a donation, and a political message. As I opened my door, Dave’s voice caught my ear. He was babbling excitedly about something, but I found myself not really paying attention to the voicemail.
“That one’s for you.” Ed said, walking past me to disappear into his room.
“...and shoulders you gave me is turning out to be a goldmine of information. Thanks, man! Oh yeah, and don’t forget to show up to the game this week. Give me a call when you get a chance, I want to talk about...”
Oh, Jesus Christ. The guy couldn’t give me a fucking day to relax. I tuned out the rest as I slammed my bedroom door behind me. Whatever he was calling about could wait until the next day.
* * *
Shoulders?!
I sat bolt upright as Dave’s words finally sank in. It was dark, but that didn’t mean anything to me. I quickly grabbed my glasses and checked out the alarm clock. 10:42, but the display was blinking. Oh yeah, I hadn’t bothered to set it before going to sleep.
I grabbed my purloined cell phone, glad to see that it was both charged and hadn’t been remotely deactivated. A small part of me wondered whether the vampires had anything to do with that. Maybe they’d found Doughboy’s unconscious form in their search for me. If so, a stolen cell phone would be the least of his worries.
I shook my head to clear that thought. There was nothing I could do in that case. That problem was about three thousand miles behind me at that point.
Checking the time, I saw about four hours had elapsed. It had felt like five minutes, no doubt owing to the fact that, even with my supernatural stamina, the events of the past few days were bound to have caught up with me. Hell, I felt like I could have easily used another several hours to charge my batteries, but Dave’s message was eating away at the back of my skull.
Hopping out of bed, I walked back into the now empty shared space of my apartment and hit play on the machine, hoping I’d heard Dave wrong.
“...I can’t believe the reaction it’s had. If this keeps up, I might not even need to bother you for any more samples. That head and shoulders you gave me is turning out to be a gold...”
I hit pause, a bad feeling starting to sink in. A small part of me hoped he’d been referring to the dandruff shampoo, but I knew better - especially since that hadn’t been what I’d handed him before leaving.
Nah, it couldn’t be. That thing was deader than a doorknob.
Then I remembered something I’d been told before. Vampires were tough. Once they were dead, though, you got dust. Anything less than that and you’d be in for a world of hurt once they healed up.
Was it possible?
I had no idea. This was uncharted territory for me. I mean, the thing had sure as shit seemed dead. Then I considered Dave. He wasn’t one to just toss it on a shelf somewhere and forget about it.
“You crazy fuck, what have you done?” I muttered, dialing his mobile number. Being a resident and perpetually on call, it was his ass if he didn’t answer. It likewise served his players well, as it allowed us to harass him at all hours of the day about our characters.
All I got was his voicemail. After leaving a quick message for him to call me back, I dialed 411. There was always a chance he’d been called in and was on duty. Even he wouldn’t blow off a patient to take a personal call, especially if he was currently on the administrative staff’s shit list. So, I did the next best thing: I called the hospital where he worked and asked for him to be paged.
That was a dead end. He wasn’t on the current roster, and I hung up before the person on the other end could ask if I wanted to be transferred to the resident on duty. Fuck. Twenty-four hours, was that so much to ask? I couldn’t even be back for one fucking day before the world decided it needed to shit down my throat the second I opened my mouth to breathe.
Well, okay, this one was potentially my fault, but still...
I ran back into my room to get dressed, holding out hope that the only thing I’d find once I got to his place was a sleepy, pissed off DM. That wasn’t so bad. I mean, what else could he possibly do to my character?
I stopped that one mid-thought. The answer was a lot. Dave was a master at fucking us over if we ticked him off.
Either way, I had the disturbing feeling that I wouldn’t be coming home from this trip unscathed.
A Good DM is a Terrible Thing to Waste
“Where are you going?”
Ed’s voice stopped me before I was halfway to the door. I turned, not quite knowing what to say. It hadn’t been my intention to drag either of my roommates into this mess. So I decided to be clever about it. “Um...”
Yeah, I never did perform well under pressure.
“Well?”
“It’s nothing you need to be worried about.”
“That means it is,” he said, leaning against the door of his room.
“Well, no. I was just jonesing for some...pizza.”
“Pizza?”
“It’s been a while. Even a fiendish monster of the night gets tired of snacking on nothing but people.”
“Don’t move,” he commanded.
“Why?”
“Because I’m coming with you.” He stepped back into his room, leaving the door open. His eyes continually darted back toward me as if he expected me to bolt. It would have been insulting had that not been exactly what I’d planned.
He slipped out of his sweatpants and tossed on a pair of jeans.
“I really didn’t need to see that.”
“Yeah, well, I really didn’t need to be woken up by you clomping around like a fucking herd of elephants,” he shot back. “Christ, whatever happened to vampires being all stealthy?” He finished dressing and stepped back out, grabbing his jacket. “Let’s go.”
“I have a confession to make. I’m not really going out for pizza.”
“I kinda figured. You can explain on the way.”
“How did you...”
“Because I haven’t turned stupid in the past three months, Bill. I know you. You’re more than capable of telling people to go fuck themselves if it’s something unimportant. The only reason you’d be running out and mumbling like a retard is if some shit were going down. So can we cut the crap and get over to Newark?”
“Wait, you know...”
“Did Dave not call before we went to bed? Duh.”
“Leave him.”
I hesitated at that. Part of the reason Christy’s magic had worked to turn him against me had been because I’d been keeping secrets. I wasn’t sure I wanted to start off my homecoming the same way I’d left. “Are you sure?”
“He’s fucking useless with a hangover and you know it. We’ll fill him in when we get back.”
“Okay.” I shut the door quietly behind us. “It’s probably nothing anyway. Just me being paranoid.”
“Being sodomized by a greased-up Macedonian conqueror can do that to a person.”
“I wasn’t sodomized.”
“Do you know that for sure?”
“Fuck you.”
“Maybe Dr. Death is into all sorts of things your subconscious isn’t ready to admit yet.”
I could practically feel his grin as I walked down the stairs. “Asshole.”
“Happy to be home?”
“You have no idea.”
Ed offered to drive. At this time of the morning, he surmised, it would be a shitload faster than relying on the trains. His logic was sound, and being that I wasn’t exactly running on full, blood-wise, I wasn’t sure I was up for the third option - making a run for it.
We walked a few blocks, parking in Brooklyn being the motherfucking nightmare it always was. Even in the midst of an apocalypse, some things will apparently never change.
Finally, Ed stopped and pulled out a set of keys. He pushed a button and the lights on the car in front of us came on.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, staring at the shiny new Honda Accord.
“What do you think it is?”
“What happened to your car? I mean, last I checked, you were driving that hunk of shit that was pretty much being held together by duct tape.”
He smiled as he opened the passenger side door for me. “I may not be making big CEO bucks, but believe me when I say that it’s good to be king.”
* * *
I was tempted to rue the passing of an era, but then had to remind myself that Ed’s old car had been a complete piece of crap. People tended to get too nostalgic for such things, not realizing that there is very limited pride to be had in torturing oneself just for the sake of doing so.
The Tome of Bill (Book 5): Goddamned Freaky Monsters Page 12