Fuck it. This was how all battles should go: vamps lined up like a salad bar, waiting for me to top off the tank before moving on to the next.
Sadly, however, it seemed three freebies was all I was going to get.
I wasn’t sure if it was me, or if I’d simply been the straw that broke the camel’s back, thanks to the damage my friends were inflicting, but all at once the horde seemed to notice us.
Almost as one, a large portion of the vampires, fish men, and freaky ass leprechauns turned toward us, as if we were mosquitos who’d finally managed to annoy them enough.
Thankfully, by then I had enough of a boost to make me a legitimate threat.
I decked one vamp who charged at me, sending him barreling into a threesome of his buddies, enough to give me some breathing room.
Just then, my flank lit up with bright white. I turned in time to see two more vamps consumed by white flame as Tom headed toward where I was fighting.
“About fucking time you decided to join us.”
“Sorry. Got a bit sidetracked. Thanks for leaving some for me.”
“Anytime, bro.” He spun, directing his toy-born fury at a pair of gill-men. “Um, Bill?”
“Yeah, man?” I asked, kicking another vamp in the nuts hard enough to Marty McFly his future grandkids.
“I don’t mean to criticize your methods, but weren’t you supposed to, y’know, ixnay the blind chick?”
“The blind chick has a name, chica,” Char spat from where she was busy ninja throwing a vampire into a couple of his buddies.
“Change of plans,” I said. “Turns out she’s on our side.”
Tom glanced my way as the fish men turned into a fish fry – proving his aura was lethal to them, too, thank goodness. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Called that one like a pro, didn’t you?”
“Bite me. And it’s not like you were any righter. She actually is blind.”
“So, a blind vampire is now on our side. That makes me feel so much better about our odds.”
In response, I merely pointed toward where Char had waded into a pack of armbands. Despite being outnumbered, she dodged and weaved among them like a whirlwind – dusting assholes with her crowbar left and right – seeming to have eyes in the back of her head whenever one would try to flank her.
It didn’t hurt that these guys weren’t really fighting all that smart. If anything, they were attacking us with all the skill they’d used on Falcon’s force field. However, they very much had numbers on their side, which was apparently what whoever was directing them was counting on.
Hold on, directing them.
Goddamn, some things never changed. Five years later and I was still a fucking idiot.
By myself, I was on equal footing with most of these vamps, save perhaps in terms of experience. However, amped as I was, I had one big advantage over them – and I wasn’t talking about my effervescent personality.
Compulsion.
I mean, hell, I’d almost forgotten about it. Back during my first foray as a vamp, you couldn’t take a shit without someone throwing out a compulsion. It was a way of vampire life, practically engrained into the day to day dealings of covens. That was then, though. Nowadays, there wasn’t nearly as much reason for it.
And, truth be told, I was okay with that. Compulsion was, for the most part, evil as fuck: the act of asserting one’s will upon others, like an asshole pimp version of Charles Xavier.
Hell, Sally, brilliant as she was, had been relegated to little more than a sex slave under Night Razor, and one could argue she’d gotten off easy.
All of that said, I didn’t really have a problem using an asshole power against actual assholes. Yeah, I’d probably snag Char, too, but oh well. Sometimes the old omelet and eggs analogy worked best.
Time to see if I still had the touch.
“KNOCK IT THE FUCK O... Oh shit!!”
One moment I was standing there next to Tom, giving these dickweeds an order. The next, the world greyed out in a haze of pain so intense I was certain Sally had emptied her gun into the back of my head.
It was hard to explain. I’d had compulsions used against me before. They couldn’t actually control me – that whole Freewill thing being more than a stupid name – but a powerful vamp could make a compulsion feel like a boot to the face. One of them, a shit-stain by the name of François, had even postulated that a strong enough one could probably turn my brain to mush. And the truth was, I’d been hit by enough doozies to believe it.
But that was receiving. Sending out a compulsion was usually painless ... at least until today.
It was like in the same instant I sent out the order, it was somehow fed back into my brain, except amplified a thousand-fold. It was as if my own voice had been weaponized, exploding in my skull like a sonic hand grenade.
And it kept repeating itself, over and over again, until all I could do was curl up inside my own consciousness and pray that it would finally kill me, bringing the torture to an end.
CHUMBALAYA
“Kamehameha! Shining Finger! Um, fire photon torpedoes? Why won’t this shit work?!”
Three weeks on and it was still weird to hear Tom’s words spoken in Sheila’s voice. I had a feeling it would never stop being strange.
The bigger question was why the fuck was he bitching loud enough to wake me up?
I swear, some assholes just couldn’t let others sleep in...
Except I hadn’t been sleeping. Hell, I wasn’t even lying down. Nearest I could tell, I was on my hands and knees, and what was beneath me was neither bed nor floor.
I shook my head to clear the haze. Bad move. Not only did everything feel disturbingly wet, but it was like a boot to the face. Goddamned hangovers were the fucking worst I tell you. Especially while the party was still going on, as evidenced by all the fucking noise around me.
Not a party. Now wake up!
The voice in my head functioned kind of like a cup of coffee, except far less pleasant. In the space of a second, I remembered who I was, where I was, and what I’d been doing.
Shit!
But not what had happened.
Last thing I remembered was compelling these vamps to stand down and then ... and then something exploded in my head, like I’d been sucking on a live hand grenade.
“You alive over there?”
If Tom’s voice didn’t serve to jolt me fully awake, the sizzle on my skin did. In his worry, he’d gotten a wee bit too close with that death aura of his. I let out a yipe to let his dumb ass know.
“Sorry.”
I tried to nod my head, unsure if I was actually doing so, then opened my eyes ... to see nothing but red.
Except it wasn’t the red I normally associated with Dr. Death. That was more like a haze of anger clouding my vision. This was actually red ... and drippy, too.
A moment later I realized why. I was staring at the inside of my glasses and the lenses were covered in blood.
That was the least of my worries, though. I pulled them off to see the ground beneath me likewise covered in a spreading puddle of my second favorite bodily fluid.
Reaching up to my face, I realized I was bleeding from almost everywhere: my mouth, my nose, my ears, and ... eww ... even my eyes.
Whatever had just happened, it was like half the blood vessels in my brain all picked the same moment to explode.
Truth of the matter was, I was probably lucky it hadn’t blown my entire fucking head off.
Thankfully, the trickle was beginning to slake, no doubt my vampire healing starting to compensate for the metaphysical whisk trying to scramble my brain. Call me crazy, but I had a feeling the only reason I was still alive was because I was currently sporting the power of multiple vamps. Without that, I’d likely be enjoying the feel of my brain turning to dust inside my head, followed by the rest of me.
Taking a moment I likely didn’t have, I sat up and wiped my glasses as clean as they were going to get.
�
��Dude, what the fuck happened to you?”
I spit out a mouthful of blood and gasped, “N-no fucking idea.”
That was the god’s honest truth. A vampiric compulsion was usually a one-way thing. It wasn’t a boomerang that looped around, picked up a stick of dynamite, and then flew back in your face. Yet this one had seemingly done exactly that.
Had something changed? Was it possible that in reinventing vampires via his fucking hand cream, Dave had somehow mucked up the mix? I mean, if anyone could fuck things up in an epic way, it would be him.
That didn’t feel right, though. Call it instinct or whatever you want, but I didn’t think that to be the case. But if not, then what had just happened?
A ward that we’d missed perhaps? Or maybe some kind of protection that our foes somehow shared?
Either way, it didn’t seem as if answers were forthcoming. All I knew for certain was that I wouldn’t be trying that again.
Sadly, it had all been for naught anyway, as both Tom and Char continued to battle our seemingly undaunted foes, of which there were plenty left – the only upside being that they were still attacking us with all the skill of mindless zombies.
“T-this might be,” I sputtered Tom’s way, “a g-good time to make with the wave motion canon again.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, his aura burning around him but no death ray apparently forthcoming. “What the fuck do you think I’ve been trying to do? Goddamned thing won’t work.”
Of course it wouldn’t. Why would anything be easy? “For fuck’s s-sake.”
Another booming gunshot was fired from nearby, catching my attention. However, it was accompanied a few moments later by a cry of, “Shit!”
I turned toward the warehouse and the sound of Sally’s voice. She was further into the fray, having turned her gun against the fish freaks. Or she had anyway. Now she was holding it like a club, probably out of ammo, as a group of gill-men shuffled toward her.
“You guys ... hold the line or something, I need to help Sally.”
“Is that the Sally who owns the building or are we talking about someone else?” Char asked, but I was already on the move.
My gait was a bit unsteady for the first few steps, but I managed to find my sea legs, heading toward where Sally was busy trying to fend off a trio of glowing fish men.
“Tagging in,” I cried.
“Gladly.” She stepped back, doing a double take my way. “Holy shit! What the hell happened to you?”
“Spontaneous brain hemorrhage,” I replied nonchalantly, stepping up to the first creature and delivering a haymaker to the side of his stupid fish face.
FUCK!
The blow snapped the monsters head to the side, dropping it to the ground twitching. However, my hand had been left a bloody mess in the process. The hell?
There was no time to wonder why, though, as another stepped in, swinging a clawed ... um, flipper I guess.
Fortunately, these guys didn’t seem all that fast on land, giving me plenty of time to raise my arm to counter. Another upside was these things didn’t appear to possess much in the way of super strength. What a fucking relief to finally fight something I could overpower.
Sadly, that relief was cut short as pain lanced down my forearm and blood began to drip from it. No wonder, as there was now a deep gash in my flesh where I’d blocked the monster.
I reached out and shoved it away, sending it tumbling to the ground, but earning a bloody palm for my troubles.
Fuck me!
I took a closer look as the third tried to circle us, my glasses still a bit smudged. These things might not be the bodybuilders of the supernatural world, but I realized too late the translucent scales covering them from head to toe were apparently razor sharp. It was like their skin was a natural weapon, one I’d just scraped the shit out of myself against. Figures that nothing could be easy. You find a bunch of wussy monsters and it turns out they’re covered in broken glass.
I turned back toward Sally, finding her thankfully blood free. “I don’t suppose you brought any extra ammo.”
“Oh, I brought tons. I was just standing here like a dumbass out of a sense of good sportsmanship.”
“A simple no would’ve sufficed.”
“What fun would that be?” she replied, stepping up alongside me. The third gill man lunged forward, but she bashed it upside the head, using the handgun as a club.
“Be careful,” I told her.
“Careful and this job really don’t go hand in hand.”
“I’m beginning to remember that.” I glanced down at my arms, glad to see my healing was starting to take care of the cuts I’d suffered beating these things up. All that remained of the damage were a few scratches and some bluish goo I’d managed to scrape off these...
Wait, I don’t think that’s goo!
My subconscious screamed out the warning a moment before a wave of nausea hit me, doubling me over. Almost at the same time, both of my arms went numb.
“S-sally,” I sputtered, trying to keep from puking my guts out. “Be c-careful. I t-think, they’re poisonous.”
Just my luck. These things were like two-legged, razor sharp jellyfish. Well, kinky as it sounded, no way was I inviting Sally to piss on my arms.
That’s okay. Life was already shitting on me enough.
Another of the creatures stepped in and slashed me across the face. It wasn’t a hard blow, but it sliced open my cheek, spilling even more of my blood onto the ground.
Not good. I could feel the boost I’d gotten from those vamps starting to wane, and that wasn’t all. The hunger I’d temporarily sated was starting to come back in force. Whatever I’d lost in the last few minutes was rapidly catching up on what I’d taken in, if it hadn’t overtaken it already.
The side of my face went numb to match my arms, at least sparing me the pain of my face being fileted.
I wasn’t out of it yet, though. Useless lumps of flesh they might be, but I still had my arms and their vampire strength. I swung my body, smacking the fish creature upside the head with a sloppy uncontrolled slap, sending it stumbling back into a pair of its fellows.
I tried to shout out a warning for Sally to fall back. We needed to regroup and find Christy. With any luck, she could make short work of these assholes. Unfortunately, with my face now feeling like it was pumped full of Novocain, what came out was more an incomprehensible slur of syllables.
“What?” she asked, trying to fend off more of the things.
Sadly, she made the mistake of turning her head at the wrong time, the sight of me likely not helping matters. “Holy shit, Bill, are you all ... ARGH!”
She let out a cry as one of the fishmen slashed her in the side. Then another stepped in and got her arm, sending the gun clattering uselessly away.
I tried to stumble toward her, but two more of the creatures turned my way, their attacks not particularly skilled but a hell of a lot more effective than my numb-ass flailing.
Bad as this was for me, it was going to be much worse for her. Within seconds, she was surrounded as the creatures closed in.
Realizing I wasn’t going to get the job done with the useless meat clubs that were my arms, I kicked out at the creature nearest me, hoping my shoes were enough protection to keep my legs from turning to taffy. These fish things didn’t appear to have balls to aim for, but their spindly legs turned out to be conveniently brittle.
I struck the ugly fucker’s kneecap and it shattered with a sharp crack, dropping the beast to the ground to flop around like ... well, a goldfish out of water.
Unfortunately, this new offensive of mine was too little too late.
Sally screamed in pain as the creatures slashed at her from all sides, ripping her blouse and the flesh beneath it to ribbons.
Oh God. I’d just gotten her back from what I’d been sure was certain death. She’d been changed by the experience, but inside still seemed to be the same Sally. There was no way I was watching her die again.
N
o.
Fucking.
Way.
Come on! I screamed inside my head, hoping to finally coax the beast inside of me awake. I need you, Dr. Death. Sally needs us!
For a moment there was nothing, save me flailing about desperately with arms that felt like they were made of Silly Putty.
Then from inside my mind came an answer I didn’t expect.
I’m sorry, but I can’t.
The fuck?!
I wouldn’t have blanched at being told to go fuck myself. But an apology?
Was Dr. Death having the disembodied spirit equivalent of erectile disfunction or what?
The hell with this!
Once again, it was up to me to save the day. With waning strength, a growing hunger, and arms more suited to flapping in the breeze than anything else, I still refused to give up. I would not lose Sally again ... not ... ever ... again.
Except, I realized in the next moment, it wasn’t up to me.
I caught a glimpse of Sally’s face as the fish men continued to swarm her, biting and slashing. Her eyes met mine and they flashed a brilliant green, as if powered from within, right as her expression changed from anguish to something far less forgiving.
What the...?
Call it instinct, Freewill’s intuition, or just being freaked the fuck out, but in that moment I became certain that the person staring back at me wasn’t Sally. I had no idea how or why, just that it wasn’t her.
Whoever they were, though, one thing was obvious: they were pissed.
There was no way of knowing whether this was all in my semi-woozy head or not, but I dropped to the ground nevertheless – hitting the dirt as surely as if Christy had been there to zap me with a stun spell.
Lucky guess or not, it was the right move.
A split-second later, I was covered in guts, offal, and roly-poly fish heads as the creatures dogpiling Sally were, quite literally, blown to pieces.
Every single fish monster within ten feet of her was ripped apart as another of those shockwaves exploded forth from her. Those within twenty weren’t much better off, as arms, legs, and skulls were all turned to pulp. Further back, even more were knocked to the ground – and it wasn’t just them. My view suddenly unobstructed, I saw vampires and proto-leprechauns alike all knocked flat.
Bill of the Dead (Book 2): Everyday Horrors Page 32