Bill of the Dead (Book 2): Everyday Horrors

by Gualtieri, Rick

  “Let me guess,” I said, as we stepped inside, “whatever happened out there necessitated a quick outfit change.”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Oddly enough, didn’t get a drop on me.”

  “A rather ... nonchalant response, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “Would you rather I be like those screaming pussies you recruited?”

  “In all fairness, I can kinda see why they might be upset.”

  “Point taken,” she replied, walking over to the wet bar. “And it still beats some of the crew we used to run with. I swear, most of those assholes would’ve been out there rolling around in that mess.”

  “I don’t doubt that. I’ll take freaked out over freaking dickheads any day of the week.” I stood where I was, watching her go about her business. “But enough of them for the moment. How are you?”

  Sally spared an eyeroll my way, a very familiar gesture. “You can stop walking on eggshells, Bill. I’m still me. Although what me we’re talking about is maybe up for debate.”

  “Not following.”

  She pulled two glasses out. “I should be upset, like really upset. I know that. And a part of me is...”

  “But the rest?”

  She let out a bitter laugh. “It’s strange. I’m not sure if it’s having this body back again or simply a result of what I went through down there, but all at once it’s like the last five years never happened. All that time, relearning how to be a normal person, learning to let my guard down and let people in. And yet, despite all of that, those old defense mechanisms were still up here,” she tapped her forehead, “waiting for the day when I needed them again. I’ll say this much, Night Razor did a hell of a job acclimating me to this life.”

  “By being a murderous asshole.”

  “True enough.” She filled the glasses with ice then turned my way. “What are you taking?”

  “Tequila works for any day that ends in a Y.”

  “You are such white trash,” she said with a chuckle before pulling out a bottle of Patrón and pouring it in both glasses, filling them to the brim. If she was trying to kill us via alcohol poisoning, at least it was with the good stuff.

  She walked over and handed me a glass, raising hers in a mockery of a toast.

  “Sure you can handle all of that?” I asked. “I mean, I’m a vamp, but you’re...”

  “Guess there’s only one way to find out,” she replied, downing a healthy slug of tequila.

  Fuck it. I followed suit, then we both sat down, half-empty glasses in hand. “All right, spill. Tell me why the wall out there is going to need at least a dozen fresh coats of paint.”

  Sally took another sip then nodded. “It ... just happened, right before I called you...”

  “Glad to hear it wasn’t yesterday and you’re just getting around to telling me now.”

  “Don’t make me kick your ass.”

  Considering what had apparently gone down just a few feet away, it wasn’t really my ass I should’ve been worried about. “Let’s back up a bit. You say it just happened?” She nodded. “And shall I assume that’s what’s left of Stewart out there?”

  “The sweaty guy? Then yeah, that’s him.”

  “So what did he do? Threaten you? Try to break down the...”

  “He knocked on the door and asked if I wanted to play Jenga with him and the others.”

  I glanced back toward the still open doorway, my keen vamp ears telling me none of the others had mustered up the courage to follow. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume that you really didn’t want to play.”

  “Don’t be a jackass, Bill. You think I wanted to do that?” I held up my hands in a placating manner and she continued. “He asked, I said no. He tried again. I said no again. He started to get mildly annoying, telling me they didn’t want me to feel left out and all that bullshit. I wasn’t in the mood, so I meant to tell him to go the fuck away ... and that happened instead.”

  I hooked a thumb back at the door. “All of that from mildly annoying? Seriously?”

  She nodded, draining her glass. “Yeah. It wasn’t anything more. I wasn’t angry or pissed off. Heck, I didn’t even know the guy from a hole in the head. All I wanted to do was go back to bed.”

  “So he woke you up?”

  “Not exactly. I’ve been awake all night. I tried reading, watching a movie. I even popped a few Ambien.”

  “Okay, so you were tired and cranky?”

  Sally narrowed her eyes at me, making me wonder if perhaps I should put in slightly more effort to not be mildly annoying. “Cranky yes, but not tired. I’m wide awake. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the fact that I just woke up from a three week dirt nap.”

  “Could be.”

  “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is I didn’t mean to kill him. I don’t like board games, but even at my worst, I never murdered anybody over one ... except maybe that one time with Dreamweaver, but that bitch was a cheater.”

  “Dreamweaver?”

  “She was a bit before your time.”

  “I’ll assume I don’t want to know.”

  “Probably a good call. Anyway, what I mean is that I just wanted this guy to go away and leave me alone. But what happened instead...”

  I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to hear this next part, but I kinda needed to. “Go on.”

  “Remember back at Christy’s apartment, when I picked up Tina?”

  “Kind of hard to forget.”

  “Well, it was like that, but more so ... and there was a focus to it that wasn’t there before. It was like one moment I felt a tingle inside of me, but before I could even stop to think about it, he exploded. You saw...”

  “Oh, believe me, I saw it.”

  She shook her head. “I’m telling you, I’ve seen vamps blown to bits before, but never like that.”

  “Do I want to ask?”

  “Save it for another time.”

  “Noted. And then afterward you called me?”

  “Your voicemail anyway.”

  I grinned guiltily. “I was busy dealing with Tom stuff.”

  “Oh. Let’s assume I don’t care then.”

  “Fine with that, but I tried calling you back. You didn’t pick up.”

  She stood and walked over to the kitchen counter, where she gestured to a small pile of broken plastic and electronics. “That one’s easy enough to answer.”

  “What the hell did you do to it?”

  “I had just finished calling you when the others came looking for Stewart. They freaked the fuck out, which I was afraid was going to set me off again. So, I screamed at them all to go back downstairs and...”

  “And what?”

  Sally looked slightly embarrassed. “And I might have thrown it against the wall to drive home the point.”

  “Oh.” I can’t say that didn’t make me feel slightly better, knowing she was trying to protect them, even if I doubted she’d admit it. “Better the phone than them.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  I got up and walked over to where she stood, looking down at the ruined mess of electronics.

  She glanced up at me as I approached. “So, what do you think?”

  “I think,” I replied, meeting her eyes, “that you can borrow someone else’s cell next time you need to make a call.”

  “Don’t make me go all Jenga on you.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  There was little doubt we were well outside my area of expertise with this one. Although, the fact that I’d been able to crack jokes around Sally and not be blown to bits was a promising sign. It told us that perhaps there might be more than base annoyance at play here. That was good because otherwise the simple act of going out to grab a bite to eat could end up being disastrous, much less anything more stressful.

  Unfortunately, that was the limit of my insight. All I could do beyond that was be there for her.

  This required knowledge above and beyond what I had to offer. I wasn’t sure who might have that kind of know
-how, but I had a good idea where to start.

  Now to hope she wasn’t still pissed at me.

  I dialed Christy, hoping she wasn’t planning on ignoring me because this really couldn’t wait.

  Fortunately, though, she picked up on the third ring.

  “Hey.”

  “Um, good morning. How are you feeling today?”

  “Okay, I guess,” she replied cautiously, sounding as if perhaps she didn’t want to start anything over the phone. Couldn’t exactly blame her for that. “Listen, I just got to work...”

  “Yeah, about that...”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I proceeded to fill Christy in on where I was and what had happened, with Sally adding color commentary from the background.

  “How’s she doing now?”

  “She seems fine to me. Well, not fine, but okay, if that makes any sense. Um, what are you doing?”

  “Me?”

  “Sorry, not you,” I said, glancing at Sally, who was calling up Skype on her laptop.

  She waved me off then walked into her bedroom, presumably to complete her call in private. How rude. “Never mind. Just Sally being Sally.”

  “All right. Stay with her. I’m heading over.”

  “But I thought you had work.”

  “I do. Just give me an hour or so to hex the office so they don’t realize I’m gone.”

  Huh. I’d almost forgotten how useful magic could be for day to day fuckery.

  We said our goodbyes and I hung up. There wasn’t any cutesy couple stuff about counting the minutes until we saw each other – which probably wasn’t surprising considering the topic of discussion – but there also wasn’t any curt iciness either, or at least none that I could sense. I kept my fingers crossed. The last thing I needed was the cold shoulder on top of what was already looking to be a stressful day.

  Sally rejoined me about five minutes later, stepping back out of her bedroom.

  “Let me guess. Time to renew your Pornhub subscription?”

  “Does my name look like Bill Ryder?” she replied. “I made a quick call to the cleaning crew.”

  “Cleaning crew?”

  “Yep. Same company that used to service Village Coven. I knew there was a reason I kept re-upping their contract.” She paused to take note of my expression. “Don’t look at me like that. They do good work. Do you know how rare it is to find a place that’ll clean an apartment top to bottom, including windows?”

  “Not really.”

  “And if any special circumstances arise,” she said, adding air quotes, “they don’t ask questions, provided one remembers to tip them well.”

  “That’s ... disturbingly convenient.”

  “No. That’s the beauty of the human race. There’s always someone willing to step in and fill a niche.”

  “They must be a hit with the mob.”

  “How do you think we found them?”

  For the sake of plausible deniability, I decided against asking further questions. Instead, I tried to steer the conversation back to the reason I was here – her. “So, getting back to what happened. You were telling me how you felt before...”

  “Before I changed the subject with a generous splash of tequila?”

  “Pretty much,” I replied with a grin. “But seriously. How are you really doing with all of this?”

  “I’m still trying to figure out what all of this is.”

  “No doubt, but I meant with what happened to Stewart. Because, no offense, you seem pretty chill.”

  “Do you really have to ask that?” At my raised eyebrow she let out a humorless chuckle. “Who am I kidding? Of course you do. And you’re right. A small part of me is hoping it all comes crashing down, that it’ll hit me all at once and the next second I’ll be in tears lamenting the loss of inhuman life. But I’m pretty sure I know myself by now, and I don’t think that’s going to happen. Don’t get me wrong, Bill, I’m not happy about it and I sure as shit wish I could take it back. The thing is, I guess there comes a point when you have so much blood on your hands that you barely notice a few extra splashes.”

  “Yeah, but that was the old you.”

  “Is it? Are you certain? Because I’m not. Remember what I said when you first got here, about the last five years feeling like they didn’t happen? Did you ever wonder about that, that all this time we’ve been living in nothing more than a pleasant illusion?”

  Taken aback by the question, I simply replied, “Can’t say I’ve really ever thought about it.”

  “I’m starting to. For thirty years I was a killer, plain and simple. I didn’t start out that way, but I grew into the part and, after a while, even learned to enjoy it. Don’t look at me that way. Talk to me in another half century or so and see how you feel. I mean, yeah, there was something inside of me driving that urge, fanning those flames, but let’s not pretend I was a hostage in my own head because I wasn’t. When that ... part of me left, you’d think it would’ve been a relief. But over the course of all those years, the rest of me grew up, accepted who I was. And I’ve had time to think about it since then and the truth is, I can’t lie and pretend every person I ever killed was because some devil made me do it. Does that make sense?”

  I wanted to say no but couldn’t. “Yeah. It kinda does.”

  “And does it scare you?”

  “A month ago I might’ve said yes, but today ... not really. Old habits really do die hard.”

  “Interesting choice of words.” She took my glass from me and headed back to the bar. “Top you off?”

  I nodded and she poured us both another generous libation. Hmm. The beauty of being a vampire was it took a lot to knock me on my ass. So, it’s not like I needed to be stingy with the liquid courage. But Sally was something else now, so I was curious to see how this went. Worst case was she’d sleep it off while Christy and me tried to figure out what was going on.

  She returned, handed me my glass, and continued. “If it had all been because of that thing inside of me, I’m pretty sure I’d be having nightmares until the day I died. But you know what? I sleep like a baby at night, or at least I used to. How’s that for fucked up?”

  I shrugged. “We did what we had to do to survive.”

  “Don’t fool yourself there, sport,” she said with a grimace. “Hell, for a while there ... after it all ended anyway, I really did wonder if that meant I was an evil person.”

  “But...”

  She held up a hand. “I know, I didn’t say anything. This is the sort of stuff that only haunts you when you’re alone and it’s late at night. But if I was really bad then doing good wouldn’t feel good. And I like doing good – back at Pandora Coven before it fell, then later at the Foundation. Then Tina came along and – don’t tell Christy I said this, it’ll ruin my rep – but I just love that little girl to the dickens.”

  “Did you just say dickens?”

  “Bite my ass, fuckface. Better?”

  “Much.”

  “Anyway, what I’m saying is...” She paused. “Actually, I’m not sure what I’m saying.”

  “You were talking about the last five years being an illusion.”

  She nodded and put down her glass. “Guess this stuff is going to my head. But yeah, it’s exactly like that, as if we were allowed to live in a dream world for all that time. But then, the moment you told me about those magical pulses, I got the impression that it was finally time for us to wake up again. In a way, I think that was the moment that old mindset started waking up again, as if knowing I’d be dragged back in. That’s probably why I seem so nonchalant about everything.” She gestured back toward the door. “And apparently I was right. I mean, look at you, back to being the Freewill, and me back to ... well, looking good – amongst other things.”

  “It’s the amongst other things part that kind of worries me.”

  She met my gaze, her strange emerald eyes staring at me hard.

  “Me, too, Bill. Me, too.”

  BIRD WATCHING

 
; Christy arrived at Sally’s place a short while later. By then, the cleaning crew had shown up to take care of the Stewart shaped mess congealing in the hall.

  Having seen my fair share of movies, I expected either some surly no-neck goons or a suave talking gentleman in an expensive suit. Instead, what we got was a quartet of meek Hispanic ladies who set to work immediately, as if this was nothing more than the turn down service at a hotel. However, rather than checking if we needed more toilet paper, they stripped the wall down to the studs, shoveled the mess into heavy-duty plastic bags, then carefully matched the paint and built it back up again.

  All of it without asking a single question.

  Holy shit. I had no idea what Sally was tipping these ladies, but I had a feeling it was way past the limit of my credit card.

  When Christy finally got there, they simply stepped aside with polite nods and continued cleansing the murder scene of any trace of evidence. Gotta admire a strong work ethic.

  Sally let her in then shut the door, as if nothing of interest were going on outside. It was no doubt to give us some privacy, because covering up blatant homicide was one thing, but talking magic in front of some randos might actually make it weird.

  Either way, that train of thought derailed almost immediately once Christy stepped up and poked a finger into my chest. “I am seriously annoyed with you right now, mister.”

  Oh crap. She wanted to do this now in front of Sally? I could practically feel my balls shriveling up at the prospect. Go figure, back when he’d been in his own body, I’d taken great joy in giving Tom shit regarding his nuts being in Christy’s purse. Wow. It really did suck for the shoe to be on the other foot.

  With nowhere to run, I saw no other choice but to fall on the proverbial sword.

  “Listen. I’m sorry about the way I acted. It’s just that I can be ... a bit insecure at times and...”

  “I’m not talking about that,” she replied, adopting a wry grin. “I meant Tina. Ever since you and Glen left last night, she’s been asking nonstop when we can get a dog.”