A thin, meek looking guy by the name of Craig raised his hand. “I’m not really comfortable with the word master.”
Nods from the rest followed.
Oh boy.
I was instantly glad Sally hadn’t come armed, because I had a feeling every single vamp here would be eating a bullet to the face.
But apparently she had a different take on things.
“Fine. Your coven buddy asked me to come down here and speak to you. Call him whatever you want but remember he’s in charge. And in a vampire coven that means he has the final say over whether you live or fucking die!”
Okay, maybe not that different.
She stopped and took a deep breath. “But I’m not here to argue semantics. I’ve heard one of you had a question about feeding.”
Another of the vamps, Jessica, said, “That was me.” She had such a strong Velma vibe to her that I was surprised she didn’t add jinkies to every sentence. “I wanted to know if it was possible to ... I guess, drink from someone without turning them into one of us.”
“It’s a smart question...”
“Even if you’ll hopefully never have to,” I interrupted. “Remember, our number one goal is to not hurt anyone.”
“Which is nice but nothing more than a pipe dream,” Sally continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Bottom line is, you’re vampires. You need blood to survive and it’s the height of stupidity to imagine you’ll never be in a situation where bagged or bottled blood is in short supply.”
“I did pretty well.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “For a while anyway.”
“Exactly,” she replied, turning back toward the others. “Feeding isn’t exactly an art form, but it does involve learning to control your powers.” She paused for a moment, her demeanor instantly changing from aggressive to something else. What the? “Because without control, bad things can happen, even if you don’t mean them to. I ... lost control the other day and Stewart paid the price. I didn’t mean it to happen, but it’s something I can’t take back. I need to be better than that. We all do.”
Wow. That had totally come out of left field, mostly because I had a feeling if I’d asked her to apologize, she’d have told me to go fuck myself. But perhaps that was a good thing because it actually felt genuine – and not just to me.
“Thank you,” Leslie, yet another of the vamps, whispered.
Sally threw her a curt nod then said, “Getting back to the point, it takes time to build up the control necessary to feed without turning. I think it was maybe four or five years before I could do it consistently.”
“What did you do before then?” Bethany asked.
“Anything to make sure they didn’t rise again. Usually a crushed skull will do the job nicely.”
And so much for the touchy feely portion of our program.
“But you can work on that control with a few simple exercises...”
“How come you never told me any of this,” I interrupted.
She glanced back my way. “Because I didn’t expect you to make it four days, much less four years.”
That led to a few chuckles at my expense, until Jessica said, “Hold on. If he’s our coven master, how come you can talk to him that way?”
Before I could even flash her a smile of gratitude, Sally replied, “Because I’m an outside consultant. The rules don’t apply to me. Now, as I was saying...”
“Holy shit!” another of the guys ... Oswald I think ... cried.
“Relax,” Sally replied. “He’s used to me saying...”
“Not that. Sorry, I meant on the TV.”
I glanced that way, fully expecting to tell him to shut it off and pay the fuck attention, when I realized I recognized the place on the screen.
No doubt Sally noticed it as well, as she said, “Turn that up.”
“City officials have so far refused to comment, but some are claiming this video, which has been circulating on social media, is proof positive that not only have the Strange Days returned, but that monsters now walk among us. We warn you in advance, what you are about to see may be disturbing to some viewers.”
The video started innocently enough, someone filming a dark city street in Midtown. Then it panned up to reveal a familiar view – an out of focus chain link fence, and beyond it an abandoned pier and derelict warehouse.
“That’s...”
“Falcon’s place,” Sally finished for me.
All at once, the air in front of the pier appeared to shimmer. In the next instant, the mundane imagery which had previously filled the screen was replaced with one of chaos. A purple energy dome appeared around the warehouse, for a moment anyway, before dissipating to nothingness. That was small beans, however, compared to the battle playing out on the ground around it.
It was a scene I knew well, being that we’d lived it barely a week ago. A flash of red off to one corner confirmed that. The only upside was that whoever had filmed this was too far away to capture Christy’s face as she blasted a hole in the ground, sending several smaller figures flying.
The budding cinematographer apparently realized this, too, as they tried to zoom in on the battle, resulting in a still the newscast decided to pause on – a blurry closeup of a glowing fish monster, one of a race of beings called the apkallu.
“It was me, wasn’t it?” Sally asked, as the news team continued to blather on, turning to a so-called expert to discuss the veracity of the film. “I caused that.”
“Shit.” There was no doubt, though. There was no way the timing was a coincidence. Sally had been swarmed during the battle, at least until the strange power inside of her had activated, sending out a pulse of energy that had not only blown the shit out of the creatures closest her, but had shorted out the force dome protecting Matthias Falcon’s warehouse.
What apparently none of us realized at the time, though, was that the pulse had gone beyond that – frigging up the glamour surrounding the entire pier, the one that shielded the world from the weirdness going on inside.
And just our luck, one of the neighbors had been awake to capture it all.
I pulled out my phone and called up a few apps. Son of a... Sure enough, the video was trending on Twitter and already had millions of views on YouTube.
It wasn’t the first time the weirdness had been filmed, but it might’ve been the first time it had gone viral, or been allowed to. In the past, such things had likely been squashed by the powers behind the curtain – the vampire nation, the Magi, et cetera. The vampire nation was gone, though. As for the rest, they were either asleep at the switch or no longer gave a damn.
“Double shit!”
“What do we do?” Craig asked, a tone of panic edging into his voice. “You said they can’t know about us. You told us they’d hunt us down and...”
“I know what I told you,” I replied, trying to think quickly. “But the situation has obviously changed. We...” Come on, Bill, think! “We ... need to get out in front of this.”
“How so?” Sally asked, one eyebrow raised.
“I think it’s time we finally do it.”
“Do it?”
“Let the world know that vampires exist. That we walk among them, but we’re not their enemies. We need to tell them everything before they can figure it out themselves, that way we control the narrative.”
Sally inclined her head. “It sounds like you’re talking about a...”
“Exactly. We need to hold a press conference about this, and we need to do it now.”
To be continued in...
CARNAGE À TROIS
BILL OF THE DEAD – Book 3
Coming soon!
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I won’t lie to you. A small part of me is angry with myself for this book.
No, I’m not angry with how it turned out, the characters, plot etc. What I’m annoyed with is that it offers so many questions yet so few answers. Don’t get me wrong. I was tempted to sprinkle some in here and there but, in the end, pacing of the story kep
t it from happening. There’s also wanting to give certain plot points the details they deserve.
For instance, did you know that in the first few drafts of Strange Days (book 1 of Bill of the Dead), Sally actually woke up in the epilogue? No? Well, truthfully, why would you? I don’t show my early drafts to many people. But there you have it. However, I ended up rewriting the epilogue completely, to remove those details and change up the character interactions because the original ending simply didn’t feel fair to any of the characters.
It wasn’t fair to Bill and Christy as it suddenly upended things and placed the spotlight on a character who was absent for a good chunk of the book. And it certainly wasn’t fair to Sally as her miraculous resurrection deserved more than five hundred lines of text.
And I’ll also admit, it allowed me to have some fun with it in this book as it was like “Here’s the big mystery for book 2 ... which we shall now reveal in the very beginning of the story.” I’ll admit, I occasionally enjoy doing things like that – setting up a big plot point then, instead of drawing it out, being all, “Oh, hey. This shit’s happening NOW!”
Because the truth of the matter is, life isn’t always like a sitcom plot – where they can stretch out shit like this for seven seasons through a variety of bad timing and meet cutes. Life sometimes just happens, and my goal with every story I tell is to keep in mind the fact that reality doesn’t always follow a script.
Anyway, my point is that sometimes questions are best left to build for a while, and I’m not just talking about the wait between one book and the next. And we’re definitely in the building phase again. While I can’t pretend to know exactly where Bill of the Dead will ultimately net out, I’m foreseeing a similar size to its predecessor – The Tome of Bill. In short, there’s still plenty left to come. I can’t promise it’ll be a wonderful journey for our cast of characters or that all (or any) of them will survive it, but I can say that if you’re still with me after this long, you may want to strap in because the ride’s just getting started.
See you soon!
Rick G.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rick Gualtieri lives alone in central New Jersey with only his wife, three kids, and countless pets to both keep him company and constantly plot against him. When he’s not busy monkey-clicking words, he can typically be found jealously guarding his collection of vintage Transformers from all who would seek to defile them.
Defilers beware!
Rick Gualtieri is the author of several books, including:
THE TOME OF BILL
Bill the Vampire
Scary Dead Things
The Mourning Woods
Holier Than Thou
Sunset Strip
Goddamned Freaky Monsters
Half A Prayer
The Wicked Dead
Shining Fury
The Last Coven
THE HYBRID OF HIGH MOON
Get Bent!
Bent Outta Shape
Bent On Destruction
BILL OF THE DEAD
Strange Days
Everyday Horrors
TALES OF THE CRYPTO-HUNTER
Bigfoot Hunters
Devil Hunters
Second String Savior
Midnite’s Daughter
Join Rick on Facebook: www.facebook.com/RickGualtieriAuthor
Follow Bill the Vampire on Facebook: www.facebook.com/BilltheVampire
Bill of the Dead (Book 2): Everyday Horrors Page 38