Bill of the Dead (Book 2): Everyday Horrors

by Gualtieri, Rick

  “Well, this is unexpected,” he said, stepping aside.

  I walked out to find my friends lined up near the wall of the warehouse, in front of the spot where the leprechauns had broken through. They’d formed a last line of defense between the creatures and us.

  That explained why the incoming rush of creepy little fuckers had dried up, leaving us with only a handful to deal with. Albeit that handful had been more than enough.

  All of them were alive, if somewhat worse for the wear. Christy looked dead on her feet. Sally was next to her, covered head to toe in blood and fish guts. As for Tom, he appeared somewhat distraught – staring down at a ninja turtle that was now missing an arm. Well, I’m sure that was traumatic for him anyway.

  All around them lay piles of dust along with bodies of dead ... alpacas or whatever the hell Falcon had called them.

  The apkallu.

  “Thanks,” I whispered beneath my breath, seriously weirded out to find my subconscious had adopted a new cadence, the same I’d heard while underwater. Strange, that he now sounded like...

  The sound of feet hitting pavement caught my sensitive vampire ears, drawing me away from my thoughts.

  I turned and saw a handful of tiny red-headed creatures running off in the direction of the city. A moment later, there came the sound of splashing from the opposite end of the pier, as if multiple somethings had decided to go for a nighttime swim.

  “Yeah, that’s right!” Tom shouted after them. “How do you like that shit, you fucking chum stains?”

  I let out a laugh. He’d finally gotten a good one.

  A scant moment later, I was nearly barreled off my feet as Christy threw herself into my arms.

  “You’re okay!”

  “Mostly,” I whispered back, returning the hug, “although, and I hate to say this, you might want to keep your distance until I can refill the tank.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  That wasn’t going to be an issue, though, as Tom stepped in – his aura lit up just enough to make me backpedal a few steps. “That’s enough of that. Personal space, motherfucker. And no, you two should not get a room.”

  “Good to see you, too, man.”

  “Same, bro, although you look like you’ve been dipped in shit.”

  “Pretty close. I ended up in the Hudson.”

  Christy wrinkled her nose and laughed. “Next time tell me that before I hug you.”

  “You mean platonically, right?” Tom asked.

  She sighed then, apparently tabling this discussion for later, stepped past us both. “I’m glad to see you’re okay, Mentor Falcon.”

  “Thanks to you, Mentor Fenton,” he replied, adding a cavalier bow.

  Gah! Gay or not, this dude was still too smooth for my personal edification.

  “Hey, it wasn’t just her,” Tom said. “You should have seen it when Sally...”

  “Fought side by side with the Icon,” Sally interrupted, the look on her face suggesting she was swallowing the equivalent of a shit sandwich. “Without him, we would’ve been screwed. Right, Christy?”

  “Oh yes, definitely.”

  Tom smiled, no doubt enjoying the praise. “Much as I might agree, I was talking about how...”

  “How you protected us with your invincible barrier of faith?” Sally once again cut in. “Yes, I agree it was ... impressive.”

  Their odd banter caught me by surprise for a moment, exhausted as I was. Then it hit me. They weren’t kissing Tom’s ass, so much as trying to deflect the idiot from spilling the beans about Sally.

  Don’t get me wrong. Falcon seemed to be okay, even if I wasn’t quite ready to induct him into our inner circle yet. At the same time, dropping the whole great beast thing into his lap might not entirely be to our advantage.

  Seeking to change the subject so as to keep Tom from flapping his gums, I turned to Christy and asked, “So what happened out here?”

  She gestured to the area around us. “We tried to keep them off of you as long as possible. Not much else to it.”

  “Looks like you did a pretty good job.”

  She nodded, looking pleased. “We did okay. But this wasn’t all on us.”

  “Yeah,” Sally added, before Tom could open his mouth again. “A few minutes ago they simply stopped advancing. It was kind of like they all woke up. The vamps stood there looking confused, like the dumbasses they probably were. The others were a bit quicker to recover, and by that I mean they mostly went apeshit on each other.”

  “It was like a fucking battle royal,” Tom said. “You should have seen it. All we had to do was stand back and watch while they kicked each other’s asses. Wish I could’ve recorded it for Glen.”

  Sally rubbed her foot in a nearby pile of ash. “In case you’re wondering, the vamps got the worst of it.”

  I nodded. “I’m not going to call that much of a loss.”

  “Me neither. As for the rest, I guess they finally got tired of murdering each other.”

  “Can’t say I’m too...” I took a quick look around, realizing we were missing someone. “Hold on. Where’s Char?”

  Christy pointed back toward the city proper. “She took off right around the time the a'chiad dé danann did.”

  “She wasn’t following them, was she?”

  “I hope not.”

  I found myself hoping that wasn’t the case, too. At the same time, there probably wasn’t much we could do to track her if she had.

  Besides, we were fresh out of potatoes.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Christy and Tom stayed behind with Falcon to make sure he was okay. Well, Christy did anyway. She tried to convince Tom to go back to her place and relieve Glen, but he insisted on tagging along. Being that my best bud wasn’t exactly renowned for his altruism, I had a feeling his motivations for sticking around were the same as mine had been, before I knew better anyway.

  Fuck it. I could always clue him in later.

  That left Sally and me to make our way back to her place to clean up. Fortunately, Falcon’s warehouse wasn’t far from where Village Coven’s old safe house had once been, which meant easy access to the sewer tunnels – a good thing for me, as I really didn’t want to end the night murdering random pedestrians on the street.

  It was perhaps not the smartest move we could’ve made. The truth was, we had no way of knowing how safe the sewers were anymore, with all sorts of nasty things seemingly returning to this world. But at that moment, I was too tired to care.

  “You look like shit,” Sally said, matching step with me in the dark tunnel.

  I glanced at her. “And you look like you just made a snuff film with the Gorton’s fisherman.”

  That caught me an elbow to the ribs, probably not undeservedly.

  “Maybe I should’ve borrowed a t-shirt from Falcon.”

  “That’s assuming he could even find one after what you did to his place.”

  “True enough,” she said with a laugh. “What can I say? I’ve still got it.”

  “That you do.”

  After a few more minutes of walking, the only sound thankfully being our footsteps and the ever-present drip of water, I asked, “So what really happened back there?”

  “It wasn’t all a lie. Tom actually was useful for a change.”

  “Oh?”

  “In a dipshit sort of way, I guess. It also didn’t hurt that those things continued giving me a wide berth, even though I didn’t explode again. It was almost like...”

  “You smelled like a rancid fish market?”

  She glared sidelong at me. “I was going to say like I had a sign hanging around my neck that said off limits. But whatever. That gave Christy the idea for us to get in front of as many of those things as we could. It pretty much stopped them dead in their tracks. That gave Tom a chance to run through their ranks a couple of times, thinning the herd a bit.”

  “Then what?”

  “Just like we said. They all kinda woke up and went back to being the assholes na
ture intended them to be.”

  “You think whoever was – I dunno – calling the shots gave up?”

  “Hard to say. I mean, it seemed like they were all there to kill Falcon. But then why call off the dogs before the job was done? It doesn’t make sense.” She glanced at me, her eyes aglow. “Honestly, I thought it was something you did.”

  “Doubt it.” I brought her up to speed on my portion of the fight, leaving out the parts that were obviously nothing more than drug-induced hallucination – as much as I might’ve wished James had actually been there.

  “So you dumped them in the drink and that was it?”

  “Mostly...,” I trailed off, remembering the massive leprechaun-eating monstrosity that had appeared beneath me.

  “Mostly?”

  “I ... thought I saw something when I was underwater. Hard to say. I was high on leprechaun blood at the time.”

  “So glad to know you had time for a toke break while the rest of us were trying not to die.”

  “Don’t judge me.” Then, after a moment, I asked, “You don’t happen to remember what this great beast thing looked like, do you?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry, but I don’t remember even saying it, much less getting a chance to check out its profile picture. It was like all of it happened in the time it took for me to blink my eyes.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Not a word. It wasn’t like being compelled, where you’re like a puppet on a string but still aware. This was more like blacking out after a weekend binge.”

  “Can’t say I have any shortage of experience with those.”

  “Oh? Did you ever wake up surrounded by dead bodies and covered in fish goo?”

  “Hello? Are we forgetting about my Dr. Death-induced blackouts?”

  “Oh, yeah. He was quite the murderous stud-boy.”

  “Not quite the word I’d use, but I’ll give you the fish goo part. I did get the occasional dick drawn on my face, though.”

  “I have no doubt you deserved each and every one of them.”

  “Maybe, but I’m fairly certain none were drawn by fish monsters.”

  Sally shook her head, her expression turning serious in the dank tunnel. “Don’t get me wrong, Bill. I’m happy something caused those things to back off. It’s more the fact that I was that something which...”

  “Scares you?”

  “Pisses me off,” she corrected. “For three decades, I was nothing more than a glorified slave to every vamp old enough to compel me. And now ... now I find myself right back where I started, just another puppet again.”

  “You’re not a puppet.”

  “I don’t know what I am right now. But what happened back there tells me one thing. Whatever it is that I got nailed with in place of that little bitch,” she pointed to her head, “I’m not alone up here anymore.”

  Sadly, having seen what I had, I couldn’t disagree. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “I know.”

  I turned to her, surprised to not hear any sarcasm in her response.

  “I mean it,” she said, “crazy as it sounds. The game has changed, in ways we don’t know yet. I’ve changed. But for everything I don’t know, there’s at least two things I’m one hundred percent certain of. I’m back in it again, whether or not I want to be...” She raised a hand as I opened my mouth. “I am. Let’s not kid ourselves here. But I’m also in it with my friends ... including my partner, who I know would scour Heaven, Earth, and everywhere else he’s clearly outmatched, if it meant helping me.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “This new optimistic Sally is going to take some getting used to.”

  “Don’t get too comfortable with it. You’re still a dumbass.”

  “Maybe, but I’m a dumbass who specifically told you to stay out of the fight back there. You had no way of knowing that those things would leave you alone, or whether or not something even weirder would happen.”

  “True enough. In fact, I only knew one thing for certain.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you’re not my coven master anymore. So, you can take your orders and shove them up your ass.”

  A moment later, the tunnels rang out with the sound of our laughter, somehow making the darkness a little less oppressive.

  OF COURSE, THERE’S AN EPILOGUE ... DUH!

  We made it back to Sally’s place, only to find our wayward coven vamps had returned in the meantime. Turns out they’d left for nothing more important than to grab some pizzas for an all-night Sharknado marathon.

  Because why the fuck not?

  I was glad to see they were okay. But I was a lot gladder after I’d finished draining every last carton of pig blood they had on hand.

  Once my head was clear again, realization set in as to what a shitty coven master I’d been as of late. Night Razor had been a true monster, a murderous asshole who ruled over his coven like a dictator – but in some ways I’d been just as bad. Ever since Sally had awoken, my hands-off approach had turned into something akin to full-on neglect.

  After a quick shower, but before everyone could settle in for a night of mind-numbing B-movies, I sat down with them so we could talk – just that. I wasn’t stupid enough to think it erased all of my sins of the past few days, but it gave us a chance to clear the air a bit.

  It also served to remind me that there was a reason I was out there giving vamps a choice. Those who’d accepted didn’t want to become monsters like those armband-wearing creeps, and part of making sure that didn’t happen fell squarely onto my lap.

  I needed to be better, and perhaps the first step on that long road was simply hanging out with them for some movie time.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Amazingly enough, the rest of the night passed with no further incident – save me perhaps having my fill of fish stories for a while. I crashed on a spare couch and awoke sometime after noon the next day to find my hands and arms fully functional again. I went upstairs to check on Sally before heading out, but found a note waiting for me instead.

  Alfonzo’s flight got in early. Heading out for a hot date at the salon. Don’t even think of interrupting us or I’ll draw a dick on your face with a blowtorch.

  PS: Talk to you soon, partner.

  Oh well, guess it helped to have priorities.

  That left me to bundle myself up against the sunlight and make my way back home to enjoy at least a day of relative normalcy.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  One day turned into three, as it turned out, which I can’t say I had any issue with.

  During that time, there was no sign of explosive pulses, murderous leprechauns, or blind vampire vigilantes. Seems all the weirdness in the city had decided to retreat back to its own corner for the time being.

  Tom met up with Kara again in that time, convincing her to help him raid his old storage box down in New Jersey – which his parents had refused to clean out after his death – returning with all sorts of useless shit to fuel his special sort of crazy as the new Icon.

  We learned that Pop’s house had been utterly trashed during the assault the night we’d been there. The police were blaming wild animals, both due to the damage the werewolves had caused as well as the fact that they’d found the place practically covered in wolf shit.

  It was going to be a while before he could return home, not that he was in any rush. Now that he knew what was waiting for him there, he seemed pretty okay with taking an extended vacation down in Cape May.

  Left unspoken was the feeling that those monsters weren’t likely going to give up so easily, especially since we still weren’t sure why they had a mad-on for Ed. That meant keeping close tabs on Pop, even if the idea of werewolves invading Cape May was kind of amusing. Left even more unsaid was still wondering who our unexpected savior had been and why they’d jumped in when they had. Were they looking to save us specifically, or had it simply been to fuck over Hobart and Myra, since they were kind of assholes?

  At last, with most of us healed up, rest
ed, and with things settling down to a dull roar, we gathered at Christy’s place, or at least in the heavily warded apartment next door.

  Even then, despite all the precautions she’d taken, Christy still asked Tom to take Tina to the park for a while. Considering the tyke’s power and what we’d seen Sally do to Falcon’s warehouse, it seemed a fair compromise.

  That, and Tom was unlikely to add much to the conversation anyway.

  “Love what you’ve done with the place,” Sally remarked, eying some of the new wards etched into the walls. She was sporting a new do, courtesy of Alfonzo. Rather than going back to blond, like the old days, she’d done a one-eighty and gone dark – although I had a feeling it was more out of necessity than choice as I could still spy traces of green among her locks. A new pair of custom contacts completed the look, ensuring she could walk down the street without drawing stares – assuming, of course, she wasn’t accosted by any Jenga enthusiasts.

  “Hey, Dr. Strange has his Sanctum Sanctorum. Christy has her Sanctum Nextdoorum.”

  Sally glanced back at me. “I’m not even going to pretend that made sense.”

  “I believe I understood your reference, Freewill,” Glen replied. “You’re talking about the Marvel Comics character...”

  “It’s cool, man,” I said, cutting him off. “Once you have to explain a joke, it isn’t funny anymore.”

  He’d thankfully ditched the three-legged Irish Setter disguise. Sadly, he’d replaced it with a deceased tom cat he’d found in an alley somewhere. Unlike the dog, he didn’t quite fit into this one, resulting in him looking like a disgusting cat zombie with a severe obesity problem.

  Yeah, at some point we needed to have a talk about that.

  But I figured I’d save bursting his enthusiastic little bubble for another day. For now, I could deal with him looking like The Walking Dead meets Garfield.

  “Any word from Falcon?” I asked, turning to Christy.

  “Aside from a courtesy text asking if everyone was behaving? Not much. I figure he might be busy for a while, repairing the damage we caused.”