Bill of the Dead (Book 2): Everyday Horrors

by Gualtieri, Rick

“About what?”

  “About you and him ... and me, and how this is all going to work, or not work?” Amazing that I didn’t have a career as a high priced motivational speaker, wasn’t it?

  “When have I had the time to?”

  It was a fair answer. After all, she’d been as busy as me, even busier if we’re being honest. In addition to helping me patrol for vamps, she’d been juggling a full time job with trying to contain her daughter’s burgeoning magical potency, amongst everything else on her plate.

  I was happy to leave it at that, for now, but apparently she wasn’t finished.

  “It’s ... it’s not that easy, Bill. Things are moving so fast now. I’ve barely had time to think of anything that hasn’t had to do with magic, vampires, or what happened to Sally. I know it’s not fair to you, but Tina is still getting to know her father and...”

  “And you don’t want to mess that up.”

  “I don’t want to mess any of it up.” She leaned in, put her arms around me, and our lips touched.

  I really should have left it at that, but I had to press my luck like the dumbass I am. “But you are going to talk to him about it at some point, right?”

  The moment instantly destroyed, she backed away and fixed me with a glare that would’ve sunk a battleship.

  “And I’m shutting up now.” Ugh. Why did I get the feeling that Glen might look like a canine, but I was the one getting put in the doghouse?

  Taking a deep breath, she pulled out her phone and called up the browser.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, trying my damnedest to adopt a businesslike tone.

  “I know the cross street where Mentor Falcon wants to meet, but I need to visualize it, so I’m calling up Google Maps.”

  “Makes sense. Where are we heading?”

  “To the Bronx,” she replied curtly.

  “Ah, such wonderful places you take ... oh shit!”

  The upside of sending circles, for Magi anyway, was they acted as a focus, allowing them to move quickly without the need for incantations, powering up, or holding hands. The downside, for everyone else, was there was little to no warning before it happened.

  One moment I was making a bad quip to try and break the ice, in the next intense light flashed in front of my eyes and I felt my very essence dematerialize. Ugh! It was like my body had been dropped into a giant blender set to atomize. For a split second, I was both nowhere and everywhere at once, a decisively unpleasant experience. And then it was over. I was reassembled at the speed of thought, finding myself standing in what appeared to be a playground that had seen better days.

  My stomach lurched, reminding me how much I disliked traveling that way, but fortunately my vampire constitution was more than up to the task.

  As the spots before my eyes cleared, I took note of a nearby chain link fence, beyond which lay a basketball court. “He invite us here to shoot some hoops?” Knowing my luck, this guy would be good at it, too.

  “I doubt it. Keep your eyes peeled.”

  Yep, I said to myself, that’s me, just keeping a lookout for a smarmy British millionaire with an epic porno stache. Considering the neighborhood, he probably wouldn’t be too hard to spot. Unless he was glamoured up the ass, he’d likely stick out like a sore...

  All at once, a shiver ran down my spine. It was that sort of feeling that screamed you were being watched. Forget searching for some Doctor Who reject, my instincts were demanding I get the fuck out of Dodge instead.

  What the hell?

  It was times like this I had to remind myself that I was a vampire, one of the lords of the night. Yeah, there was a predator roaming these streets tonight, and it was me.

  Now to only hope I could make myself believe that.

  Still, a part of me knew I was being silly. What out here could actually hope to threaten the two of us?

  Almost as if in answer, a sound caught my ear – like the drip of water from a leaky faucet. No, not water. More like the pitter patter of little feet, a lot of them.

  “You hear that?”

  Christy turned to me. “Hear what?”

  Of course she hadn’t heard it. The sound had been low enough for my vampire senses to pick up, but that was it. Duh! For all I knew, I actually was hearing a dripping faucet.

  “I am sensing some strange energy in the air, though.”

  Or maybe not. “Define strange energy. Are we talking bad cell phone coverage, short wave radio...”

  “Old energy, not of this world.”

  “Um, the Martians have finally landed?”

  The look she gave me was all the answer I needed. Too bad. I could’ve gone for an alien encounter. Would have broken up my week a bit. Not to mention, I really wanted to know who was closer when it came to faster than light travel: Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, or if we should all start sucking down spice.

  Alas, warp drive was probably the last thing I needed to worry about as there came a garbled scream from nearby.

  “What was that?”

  “Maybe someone having really good alleyway sex?” Christy narrowed her eyes at me, to which I sighed and forced myself to get serious. “Come on. That came from across the park, behind that building I think.”

  Though I could’ve left her in the dust with my vampire speed, I didn’t relish leaving her by herself out here – nor charging in alone, for that matter. Whatever was going on up ahead, I didn’t get a vamp vibe from it. No, the sounds I’d heard were unfamiliar, as if lots of little things were running around. Sure, it could’ve been midget vampires, but somehow I didn’t think so.

  Keeping pace beside me, Christy began to power up – a mix of colors suffusing her hands and body. Normally, Magi spells had this infuriating way of being color coded, letting you know in advance how fucked you were. I could only guess that she was maybe gathering noncommittal energy, waiting to see if we needed something defensive or face-meltingly hot.

  Good call on her part, albeit unsubtle as all hell out there in the dark. Still, I’d take easily spotted over dead, so I kept that opinion to myself as we rounded the corner of the building.

  Though my freshly regained vampire powers hadn’t done shit to fix my near-sightedness, they offered the perk of military grade night vision. That wasn’t always a good thing, though. Problem was, there was some shit you simply couldn’t unsee.

  Case in point. We were just in time to see some guy, probably homeless judging by the mismatched clothing he wore, being swarmed.

  Unfortunately, we were too late, judging by the sounds that reached my ears – the rather unappetizing smack of multiple mouths greedily slurping down whatever they could tear off.

  Whatever these things were, they were small – the largest being maybe a foot and a half tall. I could only see them from behind, but I got the sense of deformed humanoid bodies with short squat legs, arms long enough to drag on the ground, and hunch-backed bodies covered in crudely stitched clothing.

  “Hey, you fuckle draggers! Over here.”

  “So much for the element of surprise,” Christy said with a sigh.

  Some people have no sense of style.

  Most of the creatures ignored us, continuing to gorge themselves on the homeless guy ... and, um, pretty much everything else they could get their hands on. I saw cans, a bottle, and I’m pretty sure even a rock get stuffed into greedy mouths seemingly caught up in a feeding frenzy.

  A couple of the little buggers, however, turned to face us, giving me instant insight that their backs were their good sides. Scraggly reddish sideburns covered pointed ears. What lay in between wasn’t much better – a sloping forehead, bloodshot red eyes, a squat nose, and a mouth with exaggerated thick lips covering heavy yellowish teeth. Ewww.

  “Any idea what these things are?”

  “No,” Christy replied, worry coloring her voice. That wasn’t good. She was pretty much our resident expert in magic and the nasty shit it could produce. “If I had to guess, I’d say they’re either new or very old.”r />
  Old or new. Neither was a particularly encouraging concept. On the flip side, ugly as these little troglodytes were, they were still pretty small. A lone homeless guy caught unawares was probably easy prey for them, but I was pretty certain a vampire and a witch would make this a whole other ballgame.

  The few who spotted us immediately screeched something in a guttural language I couldn’t even begin to understand. Then, before their fellows could be bothered to pull themselves away from their appetizing meal of dead guy and garbage, they launched themselves toward us at a loping run that would’ve been almost comical had I not already seen these things fuck up someone’s shit.

  “Stand back,” Christy said.

  “Ladies first.”

  She held up her hands and the indiscriminately colored power she’d been gathering flared up in a flash of purple. A half dome of energy formed about ten feet in front of her, blocking the creatures’ advance...

  ... for about half a second before they stepped right through it.

  The fuck?!

  That was new.

  The a'chiad dé danann are magical parasites. Such attacks will do no good.

  I paused for a moment as I tried to process what my subconscious had just spat out. The what de’ what were magical parasites? What the fuck did that even mean? And during what drunken stupor had I heard that shit?

  Either way, it was pointless gobbledygook at a time when action was needed.

  Fortunately for us, where defense failed, there was always a solid offense to fall back on.

  “My turn!” I stepped past Christy – still staring wide-eyed at her failed spell – and punted the nearest of the little pricks.

  It went flying headfirst into a nearby dumpster, hitting it with a solid clong and the crunch of bone. It slid to the ground in a smear of strangely colored blood and landed in an unmoving heap.

  One of its friends was hot on its heels, leaping into the air far higher than I would’ve thought its stubby legs capable of. However, I was ready for it. I swung a left hook which caught it in the jaw, driving it into the side of the building we were still next to.

  Caught between the rock of solid masonry and the hard place of my fist, the creature’s skull popped like a zit, drenching my hand in brain goo.

  “Anyone else want some?” I asked idly, letting the creature drop to the ground and giving my hand a shake to knock some of the nastiness off it.

  “I think his friends are going to take you up on that.”

  I looked over and, sure enough, the rest had finished their meal – leaving so little of their victim behind that I was pretty sure the cops wouldn’t need more than a couple of wet naps to clean the rest up. “Um, care to try again?”

  “My pleasure,” Christy said, her body already alit with angry red energy. That was more like it. This was the color you saw when the Magi meant business. It was perfect for turning motherfuckers into flash-fried motherfuckers and, since this Falcon asshole was nowhere to be seen, I guess it fell to us to finish this fight.

  I quickly stepped aside, far enough out of Christy’s crosshairs that I wouldn’t lose my eyebrows from any ambient heat, and then she let loose with a blast of what could only be called pure hellfire.

  The spell slammed into the group of ... whatever my subconscious had called them, like the fist of God, engulfing them all as they were still helpfully huddled together for our killing pleasure.

  A wall of fire rose up, brilliant enough that we both backed away a few steps.

  And that was all she wrote for...

  “It can’t be,” Christy gasped, disbelief coloring her voice.

  Couldn’t really blame her on that one.

  The flames before us receded as quickly as they’d risen, but they didn’t disperse or disappear. No, they were ingested. A half dozen apparently still hungry mouths were pointed skyward as the power from the spell was quite literally eaten by them – sucked down like it was nothing more than strands of burning spaghetti.

  It was crazy. This was the same spell Christy and other Magi had successfully used against the Jahabich, rock monsters from the center of the Earth. Yet you’d have thought she’d thrown these fuckers a plate of guacamole instead of a flame strike hot enough to fuse stone.

  And the unpleasant surprises weren’t done yet. The creature I’d punted into the dumpster was rising again. It grabbed its head, hanging at an unnatural angle, and snapped it back into place with a crunch of bone.

  “Bill!”

  She needn’t have bothered. Sound and movement from much closer had already caught my attention, and I turned to find the one I’d smashed against the wall likewise rising. The damage I’d done to its skull was filling in, like attaching an air compressor to a deflated balloon.

  It was like the regenerative capabilities I’d seen on much older vampires, except even more so, since a splattered skull was usually something even a vamp couldn’t get back up from.

  Not so with this guy. Within seconds, he looked good as new and plenty pissed off.

  But I wasn’t out of tricks yet. No sooner had the little troll closest us gotten up, when I extended my claws and slashed straight down, carving a gouge right down the center of his pug-ugly face.

  Christy was likewise switching gears, going for the try try again philosophy when something absolutely refused to die. She screamed out an incantation in that unintelligible Enochian language of hers. A moment later, the dumpster across from us upended itself and landed atop the bulk of the nasties.

  “That should buy us some time.”

  Except that I was pretty sure it wouldn’t. As quickly as the metal bin settled over the creatures, trapping them inside, there came a horrific grinding sound from within as if something – or a lot of somethings – began scraping against the walls.

  “Is it me or are they eating their way out?”

  “Not you,” Christy replied. “Look!”

  Sure enough, the one whose face I’d just julienned was in the process of healing, its nose growing back between the two malevolent eyes that stared up at us.

  “Fuck! Maybe we should think mean thoughts at them.”

  “What?!”

  “Magic and claws aren’t working, so I figured we should try something new.”

  “Not helping, Bill.”

  “Neither is anything else.” I kicked the nearest one away, back toward where his friends were already chewing their way through the dumpster. We had maybe seconds at most before the world’s nastiest ankle biters were free again. “I don’t suppose you brought a gun.”

  “While I’ve always been partial to the classics,” a smarmy accented voice said from behind us, “alas, that won’t work, mate.”

  I turned, already knowing who I’d see. It was Falcon, mustache and all, making his grand entrance at last. He was decked out in that business casual action wear that only movie stars and wannabe male models could pull off – wearing a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a loosened tie around his neck.

  It did nothing to improve my opinion of him.

  He was carrying a couple of loaded down plastic bags for some reason. Guess he’d stopped off at the grocer before coming to watch us all get killed.

  “You’re late,” Christy said.

  “Couldn’t be helped, luv. Some poor blokes over on Tremont were stuck on a fire escape while a few of these little blighters were busy gnawing their way up the ladder.”

  “Whatever the fuck,” I replied. “I hope you brought some serious mojo with you, Matt, because otherwise you’re just in time to be the next appetizer.”

  “I prefer Mentor Falcon, Freewill.”

  Huh. Guess my reputation preceded me.

  He stepped to the opposite side of Christy, just as the metal skin of the overturned dumpster split, allowing the grime covered micro-demons to pour forth. Shit!

  “Listen. I’ll call you Mentor or even fucking Millennium Falcon if you want, so long as you brought something useful to the table.”
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br />   “An apt choice of words.” He threw something at one of the creatures. Whatever it was, it slammed home square into the beast’s nose with a solid thonk. Rocks? That was his secret weapon? Oh, we were so royally...

  That thought trailed off as the projectile seemingly melted into the creature’s face, which collapsed in on itself where it had been struck.

  It fell to the ground, where the rest of its body followed suit, until it looked as if it were merely a deflated balloon, instead of a nigh unkillable imp.

  Both Christy and I turned toward him, wide-eyed.

  “Here.” He handed us each a grocery bag. “Just do us all a favor and aim well. This is all they had.”

  I took one without question – now was not the time to argue – then looked inside where I saw the words Idaho Russet staring back at me.

  “Um, these are potatoes.”

  “You have a keen eye, Freewill,” Falcon replied, throwing another at the creatures.

  Christy glanced from him to me, then shrugged, pulled one out, and let fly, taking down one of our rapidly advancing enemies.

  Oh shit! They were almost on us.

  Suspending my disbelief for how freaking weird this was, I dug some spuds out of my bag and began chucking them at the monsters, feeling like a complete imbecile.

  Too bad I couldn’t aim for shit. Sorry to say, but growing up I was more likely to hide in my room with my Gameboy than play catch with my dad. However, being that our enemies were both numerous and disturbingly close, I hit more than I missed – each impact taking another of the stupid little gremlins out of the picture.

  And stupid they were. As we whittled their numbers down with our combined assault, they didn’t bat an eye. There was no sign of retreat or surrender, just a faceful of mashed potatoes followed by horrible death, until I eventually managed to peg the final one with a good sized spud right in the crotch – enjoying the confused look on its face as it collapsed from the dick on out.

  When at last all movement before us had ceased, we dared a look around. Whatever these creatures were, they’d pretty much dissolved into little more than piles of wet mud once they were dead. Come tomorrow, this place wouldn’t look anything else other than dirty ... minus maybe the overturned dumpster and murdered hobo.