Bill of the Dead (Book 2): Everyday Horrors

by Gualtieri, Rick

  But first things first.

  “What were those things?” Christy asked. “I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  Once again, my subconscious offered an answer I’d neither asked for nor realized I knew. “They’re called the a'chiad dé danann,” I said idly, totally butchering the words I’d heard in my head. “Or at least I think they...”

  I trailed off as I found both Christy and Falcon staring at me, looks of disbelief on both of their faces.

  The latter stepped forward, getting so close that I could’ve licked his mustache had I wanted to ... which I really didn’t.

  All at once, his eyes flashed red.

  “How the bloody hell did you know that?”

  WIKI-FREAKS

  “Whoa, back off, Mary Poppins. I’m not even sure exactly what I just said. It just sort of ... came out.”

  Falcon’s eyes flashed again. “You’ll forgive my reluctance to believe you, but that seems an oddly specific string of syllables for one to simply spit out.”

  I opened my mouth to reply but, much as I hated to admit it, he was right. “I don’t know. Honestly. Maybe I heard it on Jeopardy or something.”

  “That name you just said,” Christy replied, looking at me like I had two heads, “it sounds similar to ...”

  “That’s because it is,” Falcon said, backing off a step, which was good because popping him in the face was starting to sound tempting. “The a'chiad dé danann are, in laymen’s terms, what one might call a primitive forerunner of leprechauns.”

  “How does that even remotely sound like leprechaun?” I asked.

  “The original pronunciation, obviously.”

  Yeah, obviously. “So, what? These guys were eating Lucky Charms back before they put those purple horseshoes in?”

  Christy, perhaps sensing that I was veering into territory that would likely get me blasted, stepped in. “I’m familiar with the tuatha dé danann...”

  “That makes one of us,” I muttered.

  “...but I’ve never heard of these.”

  “Not many have, luv,” Falcon replied, giving her far less shade than he was affording me. Already, I could feel myself entertaining fantasies of his gruesome death. “There’s not a lot written about them because they’re rather ancient.” He glanced at me. “Hence, why I’m curious to know how your friend here just so happened to have their name on the tip of his tongue.”

  “Well, if they’re so old then how come you know what they are?” I shot back, rather lamely.

  “I presume you’ve heard of the Falcon Archives,” he stated, as if that were common knowledge. “But if not, I can assure you it is the single most comprehensive library of magic on the planet.”

  “Quite the humble brag.”

  He let out an irritatingly polite chuckle. “False humility has nothing to do with it. The fact of the matter is, we have texts which predate even the Fertile Crescent. Put simply, once I started tracking these creatures, I was able to cross reference what I learned and use that information to identify probable suspects.”

  “Suspects?”

  “It was either the a'chiad dé danann or the xusia, an ancient race of pygmy demons from the Southern Andes. They’re remarkably similar considering the vast geographic schism between...”

  I held up a hand. “Yeah, that’s real fucking interesting. So, you’re telling us you followed a few footprints, then somehow had time to research a pile of dusty old scrolls and still get lucky? And yet you call me suspicious?”

  “Hardly, mate.” He reached into his pocket, causing me to tense up, but Christy stepped in and put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Hear him out.”

  “My thanks, Ms. Fenton,” Falcon replied, sounding annoyingly pleasant. “Or is it Mentor Fenton these days?”

  Christy nodded then smiled at him, looking far too charmed by his bullshit for my liking.

  “You were a student at the Academy, weren’t you?”

  “For one semester,” she replied.

  “It was a ways back, but I seem to recall us sitting together during a dreadfully dull lecture on the practical applications of phrenology.”

  Christy grinned even wider. “I’m surprised you remember that. I was barely able to stay awake.”

  “An inquisitive mind such as yours is hard to forget, especially when accompanied by such beauty.”

  “Yeah, this is all fascinating, I’m sure,” I replied, stepping in again. “But we’re on a timetable here. We need to get back so we can relieve the babysitter ... the one watching Christy’s daughter.”

  Maybe a bit petty of me. But fuck it, I was bringing a knife to a nuclear missile fight. I needed every advantage I could get. This guy was tall, rich, good looking, rich, British, and rich. I’m not saying I felt inadequate next to him – I mean, I’m the fucking Freewill, for Christ’s sake – but, if one of those proto-leprechauns decided to pick that moment to resurrect itself and rip this guy’s face off, I wouldn’t have complained much.

  “A daughter?” Falcon replied to her, sounding not the least bit put out. “How utterly charming. And I dare say, if she’s even half the witch you are then I foresee her making a fine mentor herself one day.”

  I made a hurry-up motion. “Hello? All that stuff I was busy accusing you of? Remember that?”

  “Ah, yes.” He glanced my way again, as if noticing I was there for the first time, then pulled his hand out of his pocket, revealing nothing more than a cell phone. “Tell me, Freewill, what do you think we’ve been doing these past five years?”

  “Considering I didn’t even know you existed? No idea.”

  “Fair point, friend, and not entirely surprising considering your former affiliation with the First Coven. No offense, but my organization preferred to do as little business with that lot as possible.” Before I could comment on that, he continued. “To answer the question, as part of an effort to modernize, we’ve had a team of volunteers working nonstop to digitize the archive and make it available via... What is that word again?”

  I stepped in and looked over his shoulder. “You put it on a wiki?”

  “Do you mind?” he asked, quickly covering the screen.

  “Not at all. Especially since you don’t seem to mind putting the text of the freaking Necronomicon on the web.”

  “First off, that’s not a real book. Secondly, unlike that messy ordeal up in Amherst some years back, I’ve been assured everything has been secured to the utmost degree.”

  “What messy...?”

  “Excuse me,” Christy said, interrupting. “Not to be disrespectful, but Bill’s got a good point about the risks involved.”

  “I understand the sentiment.” Once again, the tone Falcon took with her was far more cordial than the attitude he was throwing at me. “But the ability to cross reference texts in a fraction of the time it used to take is invaluable. In addition, there is one major plus in our favor. As adept at the arts as many of our kind are, it’s rare to come across a Magi who isn’t confounded by email, much less anything more elaborate. Not a lot of hackers amongst our number.”

  “Crackers,” I corrected.

  “Those either,” he said dismissively. “And access is strictly limited. Regardless, it’s a good thing that I was able to discern these blighters’ weakness. Because believe me, they don’t have many.”

  “Potatoes,” I said, more to myself than anything. “No offense to these shitbags, but that’s a really stupid weakness.”

  Falcon actually laughed, well, more a proper British titter anyway. “Indeed, Freewill. Dangerous as they are, there’s a reason they haven’t been seen since the dawn of civilization. Although the history books will have you believe that these beauties...” he held up a potato, “weren’t introduced to Europe as a food crop until the sixteen-hundreds, what they fail to mention is that they were in high demand as weapons thousands of years earlier. It just wasn’t until much later that some bloke dropped one into a pot of boiling oil, only to realize it tasted
divine with a pinch of salt.”

  “Um ... thanks for the history lesson, Alton Brown.”

  He smirked as if amused by my lack of enthusiasm. “Never discount the mundane, friend. Not to flog a broken horse, but most history books love to blather on about how humanity moved from being hunter gatherers to farmers as one of the key steps of civilization. Bollocks. Early agriculture was as much about waging war as it was about keeping one’s belly full. No offense, Freewill, but you should be glad this sort of knowledge is mostly forgotten.”

  “Why? Should I be worried that someone might try staking me with a carrot?”

  “Carrots, no, but you’d probably be chuffed to know that scarcosinum is extinct. And before you ask, it was an herb indigenous to northern Africa that also happened to be excessively potent as a vampire repellant.”

  I backed up a step. “Hold on. There’s such a thing as vampire repellent?”

  “Was such a thing,” Christy said. “It went extinct around the Dark Ages. From what I read, a group of Magi tried to recreate it about a hundred years ago but were unable to make it work.”

  “Don’t think that was by accident,” Falcon replied. “The vamps eventually got cagey to the fact that their enemies were cultivating it. That’s right around the time they started pulling back into the shadows, convincing the simple folk that they didn’t exist anymore. Within a couple generations, farmers began wondering why they were wasting field space on a junk plant that smelled bad and tasted even worse. It was killed off domestically, then the First Coven, clever nutters that they were, took care of the wild variant before making sure to burn every detailed reference, so that nobody could breed it back into existence. And they were damned thorough. There’s nothing but vague references to it, even in the Falcon Archives.”

  This guy sure did love saying his family name, as well as yammering on about random shit that had nothing to do with the point at hand. I was about to say as much when Christy steered us back on track.

  “We thank you for the insight as well as the assistance, Mentor Falcon.”

  “Please, call me Matthias.”

  Grrr!

  “I appreciate that, Matthias,” she continued. “But we should probably talk about the real reason Bill and I wanted to meet.”

  “Bill,” he repeated, turning toward me. “I have to say, many of us found it refreshing to hear a Freewill going by such a mundane title, especially after a long run of tossers with names like Vara the Unconquerable, Abdalla the Merciless, or Vehron the Destroyer.”

  “I’m familiar with that last one, thanks. But Christy’s right. Enough with the tangents.”

  Falcon nodded. “Fair enough. My assumption was that you wished to inform me you were active in this city.”

  “Partly,” Christy said. “But also to let you know we’re on the same side.”

  “The same side, eh?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “We’ve been busting our butts trying to corral the recent vampire problem.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Ah, so that’s been your doing?”

  Huh. I didn’t realize he was already aware. Guess maybe we’d been doing a better job than I thought. “Pretty much. We’ve been trying to rein in those willing to listen to reason. And those who aren’t...” I mimed sticking a stake through my heart. “Hold on. How did you even know someone was hunting vamps? It’s not like we leave bodies behind.”

  “No, but there is psychic residue,” Christy explained. “Easy to find, if someone knows what they’re doing.”

  Falcon nodded. “Precisely. Or in some cases there’s simply too much random dust to be anything else. I must admit, I’m impressed. Has it only been the two of you?”

  I shook my head. “No. We have some friends who’ve been helping out. Another witch, and a former Templar.” There was no point in mentioning Tom since, so far as I knew, he’d managed to kill nothing more than time. “And it’s not that impressive. I mean, I think between all of us, we’ve managed to dust maybe ten or twelve rogue vamps.”

  “Ten or twelve?” he repeated. “That doesn’t add up. I’m talking about scores over the last few weeks.”

  What? “Wait, how many?”

  “Believe me, I’m not exaggerating. I’ve asked the local hospitals to keep me in the loop regarding any bite victims who come in. When I first got here, it looked like we might have the beginnings of an epidemic on hand, but the number has been dropping steadily. Far as I can tell, someone, possibly plural, has been dusting the undead with great aplomb. And word is apparently spreading. I’m hearing that those who haven’t been hit have started laying low.”

  Christy and I shared a glance. Our small team had been pretty open about our numbers. We were all doing our part to keep New York from turning into open season on humans, so I couldn’t think of any reason the others might decide to be humble about their success. It’s not like we’d have given them shit for going over quota.

  So then who or what was responsible for the numbers Falcon was claiming?

  I remembered back to the other night. That woman I’d met, the one who called herself Char. She’d made short work of one of the vamps I’d been after. Still, impressive as she’d been, it seemed a stretch that she was responsible for racking up that high of a body count in such a short time. Unless that is, this Falcon guy was shitting us.

  “You’re sure it’s that many?”

  He reached into his pocket again, and once more I found myself tensing – as if expecting him to pull out the elder wand and go all avada kedavra on my ass. Instead, reality was far more mundane and infinitely more douchey. He pulled out a vape pen and proceeded to take a suck on it, blowing out a ring of smoke with a strawberry scent to it.

  I swear, if I found out this guy moonlighted as the barista at an upscale coffee house...

  “No doubt about it,” he said after another puff. “I’ve been keeping detailed records.”

  “And you’re certain it wasn’t these proto-leprechauns?”

  Falcon shook his head. “Positive. They’d have simply eaten them, dust and all.”

  That wasn’t a particularly pleasant thought. I didn’t relish the idea of ever being dusted. But being staked sounded preferable to ending up in some caveman’s colon.

  After a few more moments, he let out a sigh. “Bollocks. I was really hoping it was you lot. Would have saved me no small amount of headache.”

  “So you could arrest us and be done with it?” I asked, testing the waters. Though I knew it made sense to make contact with this guy, a part of me had wondered if I’d simply be signing my own arrest warrant in doing so. Better to get that out of the way now, so at least the option of knocking his block off was back on the table.

  “Hardly,” he replied with another puff. “The boys in blue won’t take kindly to vigilantes in their city, don’t get me wrong. That sort of nonsense only works in the comic books. But fortunately for you, I’m merely a consultant. My job is to assess and curtail these happenings, and if I so happen to require outside assistance, well, that’s strictly at my discretion.”

  “Good to know.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “Funny you should even ask, though.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you know full well that I’d be hard pressed to bring you in, even if I wanted to.”

  That caught my attention. “I do?”

  “How so?” Christy asked.

  “You’re having a laugh, right?” Falcon replied, no doubt noticing the confusion on our faces. “The old treaties. The ones between the vamps and the authorities of this fine state.”

  “What about them?”

  “They’ve all been reinstated.”

  What?!

  CRAMPING MY STYLE

  “What do you mean the old treaties are back?”

  Falcon shrugged. “Well, not old, as in dawn of time, but the ones your kind seemed to have in place in nearly every metropolis of note. I imagine the ones in Europe and Asia are older. However, only a handfu
l of those...”

  “I don’t need a history lesson.” I glanced at Christy and then back to hipster Harry Potter. “You mean the treaties that kept the cops from forming an anti-drac task force back in the day?”

  “One and the same, as I’m sure you’re fully aware,” Falcon replied. “The current Commissioner pulled me aside when I first got here, for a little locked door tête-à-tête on what I could and couldn’t do. I was informed in no uncertain terms that vamps were off the table. Anything having to do with their kills I was to call in and that was it, no matter how distasteful I might find it.”

  “But you just said...”

  He waved me off. “I know what I said. Vamps killing humans might be outside my charter, but I was never told I couldn’t investigate whatever might be killing them instead.”

  I turned to Christy. “Did you know about this?”

  She shook her head. “How would I? Back when there was a vampire nation, they didn’t exactly keep the local Magi in the loop.”

  That was a good point. Stupid question on my part.

  “I have to say, Freewill, you move fast.” Falcon took another hit from the metal dong of his vape pen. “The eldritch energies have been flowing again for mere weeks, yet it sounds like you’ve wasted no time. Word on the street is that the Shanghai treaty was reinstated five days ago, and Los Angeles right after. You must have one hell of a little black book in your back pocket.”

  “Me? You think I did that?”

  “Didn’t you? Far as I’ve heard, you’re one of the few vamps of note to survive the purge of five years ago.”

  Flattered as I was to hear it, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, shit, I wouldn’t even know who to talk to in my own city, much less in fucking Shanghai.

  Wait a second. Shanghai... Goddamn it!

  I could tell by Christy’s face that she’d reached the same conclusion – Gan.

  “Bill didn’t reinstate those treaties, Matthias,” she said, making me cringe at hearing his name on her lips.