The Tome of Bill Series: Books 5-8 (Goddamned Freaky Monsters, Half A Prayer, The Wicked Dead, The Last Coven)

by Rick Gualtieri

  I walked toward my bedroom and noticed Ed was listening to the messages on the machine. Most of it was crap - a telemarketer, some charity asking for a donation, and a political message. As I opened my door, Dave’s voice caught my ear. He was babbling excitedly about something, but I found myself not really paying attention to the voicemail.

  “That one’s for you.” Ed said, walking past me to disappear into his room.

  “...and shoulders you gave me is turning out to be a goldmine of information. Thanks, man! Oh yeah, and don’t forget to show up to the game this week. Give me a call when you get a chance, I want to talk about...”

  Oh, Jesus Christ. The guy couldn’t give me a fucking day to relax. I tuned out the rest as I slammed my bedroom door behind me. Whatever he was calling about could wait until the next day.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Shoulders?!

  I sat bolt upright as Dave’s words finally sank in. It was dark, but that didn’t mean anything to me. I quickly grabbed my glasses and checked out the alarm clock. 10:42, but the display was blinking. Oh yeah, I hadn’t bothered to set it before going to sleep.

  I grabbed my purloined cell phone, glad to see that it was both charged and hadn’t been remotely deactivated. A small part of me wondered whether the vampires had anything to do with that. Maybe they’d found Doughboy’s unconscious form in their search for me. If so, a stolen cell phone would be the least of his worries.

  I shook my head to clear that thought. There was nothing I could do in that case. That problem was about three thousand miles behind me at that point.

  Checking the time, I saw about four hours had elapsed. It had felt like five minutes, no doubt owing to the fact that, even with my supernatural stamina, the events of the past few days were bound to have caught up with me. Hell, I felt like I could have easily used another several hours to charge my batteries, but Dave’s message was eating away at the back of my skull.

  Hopping out of bed, I walked back into the now empty shared space of my apartment and hit play on the machine, hoping I’d heard Dave wrong.

  “...I can’t believe the reaction it’s had. If this keeps up, I might not even need to bother you for any more samples. That head and shoulders you gave me is turning out to be a gold...”

  I hit pause, a bad feeling starting to sink in. A small part of me hoped he’d been referring to the dandruff shampoo, but I knew better - especially since that hadn’t been what I’d handed him before leaving.

  Nah, it couldn’t be. That thing was deader than a doorknob.

  Then I remembered something I’d been told before. Vampires were tough. Once they were dead, though, you got dust. Anything less than that and you’d be in for a world of hurt once they healed up.

  Was it possible?

  I had no idea. This was uncharted territory for me. I mean, the thing had sure as shit seemed dead. Then I considered Dave. He wasn’t one to just toss it on a shelf somewhere and forget about it.

  “You crazy fuck, what have you done?” I muttered, dialing his mobile number. Being a resident and perpetually on call, it was his ass if he didn’t answer. It likewise served his players well, as it allowed us to harass him at all hours of the day about our characters.

  All I got was his voicemail. After leaving a quick message for him to call me back, I dialed 411. There was always a chance he’d been called in and was on duty. Even he wouldn’t blow off a patient to take a personal call, especially if he was currently on the administrative staff’s shit list. So, I did the next best thing: I called the hospital where he worked and asked for him to be paged.

  That was a dead end. He wasn’t on the current roster, and I hung up before the person on the other end could ask if I wanted to be transferred to the resident on duty. Fuck. Twenty-four hours, was that so much to ask? I couldn’t even be back for one fucking day before the world decided it needed to shit down my throat the second I opened my mouth to breathe.

  Well, okay, this one was potentially my fault, but still...

  I ran back into my room to get dressed, holding out hope that the only thing I’d find once I got to his place was a sleepy, pissed off DM. That wasn’t so bad. I mean, what else could he possibly do to my character?

  I stopped that one mid-thought. The answer was a lot. Dave was a master at fucking us over if we ticked him off.

  Either way, I had the disturbing feeling that I wouldn’t be coming home from this trip unscathed.

  A Good DM is a Terrible Thing to Waste

  “Where are you going?”

  Ed’s voice stopped me before I was halfway to the door. I turned, not quite knowing what to say. It hadn’t been my intention to drag either of my roommates into this mess. So I decided to be clever about it. “Um...”

  Yeah, I never did perform well under pressure.

  “Well?”

  “It’s nothing you need to be worried about.”

  “That means it is,” he said, leaning against the door of his room.

  “Well, no. I was just jonesing for some...pizza.”

  “Pizza?”

  “It’s been a while. Even a fiendish monster of the night gets tired of snacking on nothing but people.”

  “Don’t move,” he commanded.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m coming with you.” He stepped back into his room, leaving the door open. His eyes continually darted back toward me as if he expected me to bolt. It would have been insulting had that not been exactly what I’d planned.

  He slipped out of his sweatpants and tossed on a pair of jeans.

  “I really didn’t need to see that.”

  “Yeah, well, I really didn’t need to be woken up by you clomping around like a fucking herd of elephants,” he shot back. “Christ, whatever happened to vampires being all stealthy?” He finished dressing and stepped back out, grabbing his jacket. “Let’s go.”

  “I have a confession to make. I’m not really going out for pizza.”

  “I kinda figured. You can explain on the way.”

  “How did you...”

  “Because I haven’t turned stupid in the past three months, Bill. I know you. You’re more than capable of telling people to go fuck themselves if it’s something unimportant. The only reason you’d be running out and mumbling like a retard is if some shit were going down. So can we cut the crap and get over to Newark?”

  “Wait, you know...”

  “Did Dave not call before we went to bed? Duh.”

  Okay, I guess it was sorta obvious. “Tom?”

  “Leave him.”

  I hesitated at that. Part of the reason Christy’s magic had worked to turn him against me had been because I’d been keeping secrets. I wasn’t sure I wanted to start off my homecoming the same way I’d left. “Are you sure?”

  “He’s fucking useless with a hangover and you know it. We’ll fill him in when we get back.”

  “Okay.” I shut the door quietly behind us. “It’s probably nothing anyway. Just me being paranoid.”

  “Being sodomized by a greased-up Macedonian conqueror can do that to a person.”

  “I wasn’t sodomized.”

  “Do you know that for sure?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Maybe Dr. Death is into all sorts of things your subconscious isn’t ready to admit yet.”

  I could practically feel his grin as I walked down the stairs. “Asshole.”

  “Happy to be home?”

  “You have no idea.”

  Ed offered to drive. At this time of the morning, he surmised, it would be a shitload faster than relying on the trains. His logic was sound, and being that I wasn’t exactly running on full, blood-wise, I wasn’t sure I was up for the third option - making a run for it.

  We walked a few blocks, parking in Brooklyn being the motherfucking nightmare it always was. Even in the midst of an apocalypse, some things will apparently never change.

  Finally, Ed stopped a
nd pulled out a set of keys. He pushed a button and the lights on the car in front of us came on.

  “What the hell is this?” I asked, staring at the shiny new Honda Accord.

  “What do you think it is?”

  “What happened to your car? I mean, last I checked, you were driving that hunk of shit that was pretty much being held together by duct tape.”

  He smiled as he opened the passenger side door for me. “I may not be making big CEO bucks, but believe me when I say that it’s good to be king.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I was tempted to rue the passing of an era, but then had to remind myself that Ed’s old car had been a complete piece of crap. People tended to get too nostalgic for such things, not realizing that there is very limited pride to be had in torturing oneself just for the sake of doing so.

  Besides, his new ride had heated seats - nice.

  I filled him in on things as we drove. We chanced Staten Island in the hope that this was one of the few times of day that 278 wouldn’t be a goddamned parking lot.

  We were crossing the Goethals into New Jersey when he asked, “So you just gave him the fucking thing, just like that?”

  “How many CDs does this thing hold anyway?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Sorry. It seemed preferable to letting him cut anything else off me.”

  “And you really thought it would be useful for us otherwise?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied, playing with his dual climate controls. Damn, this thing was pretty sweet. I might have to let him drive me places more often. “I wasn’t really thinking too far beyond getting the fuck out of the kingdom of the undead.”

  “So the vampires own Switzerland. Really?”

  “Tell me about it. Fucking crazy.”

  “Explains a lot, though.”

  “I can’t argue with that.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We arrived at Dave’s apartment complex a short while later.

  “Stay here,” I said, getting out of the car.

  “Fuck you,” Ed replied, following. I almost wished Alex were there to see it. Would his faith in his beloved prophecies be so strong if he observed that my leadership prowess didn’t even extend toward getting one of my friends to follow a simple request?

  “Dave’s gonna be mad if there’s nothing going on.”

  “So? I’m not in his game.”

  He had a point there. We walked over to the door. Light shined through the closed curtains. “I guess he’s up.”

  “Well, then let’s stop him before he makes some sort of Franken-vampire or whatever.”

  That wouldn’t be particularly great. Technically speaking, Dave wasn’t supposed to be experimenting on vampire blood at all. Hell, nobody was. It was considered off-limits - verboten. I wasn’t sure why, but probably really didn’t need to know. What I needed to care about was that the Draculas were known for coming down hard on anyone caught doing so.

  Dave was my friend and I owed him. There was also the off-chance the crazy bastard might one day come up with something useful from his experiments. Even so, I had little doubt we were living dangerously.

  I wasn’t worried about Ed spilling his guts...even if Sally promised him the mother of all blowjobs. He wasn’t that type. Tom was, but I doubted she’d make him that same offer anytime soon. What worried me was Dave getting sloppy. There’d already been an incident with his fucking vampire mice. It was only a matter of time before something happened that we wouldn’t be able to cover up so neatly.

  I resolved to talk him down from the craziness before it got away from him and ended with both of us taking a permanent dirt nap. If that didn’t work, maybe I could convince Sally to compel him to drop it. It wouldn’t be ideal for her to have anything else to hold over my head, but she was already in pretty deep. Her involvement in helping me with Sheila was more than enough to bury her. If she could keep her mouth shut about that...

  “Are you going to knock, or are you hoping that maybe he’ll hear us breathing from inside?”

  “Since when are you in such a rush?”

  “I have a meeting with some potential investors in the morning.”

  “I so do not know you.” I raised my hand and knocked softly so as to not rouse the neighbors.

  “Maybe he’s out.”

  “I don’t think so.” My ears picked up movement from inside. It wasn’t near the door, but there was definitely someone shuffling around inside. I knocked again, a little louder this time. The movement inside ceased as if someone was listening.

  “It’s too late for this shit,” Ed said. “Just open it.”

  He had a point, but all I could see was a future full of pain for my character if I broke the lock and just strolled in. I shrugged and pushed the doorbell instead.

  “You are such a pussy.”

  I opened my mouth to respond as the chime sounded inside, but the words died in my throat as the noise immediately cut off - replaced by the sound of something being smashed.

  I glanced toward Ed, and the look on his face told me all I needed to know. “You heard that?”

  He nodded. “Open it.”

  I mentally kissed Kelvin goodbye and turned the knob until the lock broke with a sharp crack. The door began to swing in, but a chain lock stopped it - fucking useless things. I reached through and gave it a quick yank, clearing our path inside.

  We stood there for a moment, waiting. Dave’s apartment was quiet again. Whatever had been moving about had stopped. His living room looked as it normally did. It all gave the impression that nothing out of the ordinary was going on. If I heard a toilet flush, followed by him stepping out to greet us, I was gonna feel mighty stupid indeed.

  “Dave?” I called out quietly.

  “Oh, this is stupid,” Ed said from behind me. “Get the fuck inside before someone calls the cops.”

  Again, he had a point. I did as told and he entered behind me, closing the door as best as he could.

  Feeling a bit foolish that my roommate was keeping his shit together better than me, I tried to muster what little pride I had left. “You check the bedroom. I’ll check his lab.”

  “What do you think I’m going to find in there?”

  “With any luck, an angry, naked Dave.”

  He gave me a withering glare in response, but he did as asked - probably realizing that the longer we bantered, the greater chance we had of this operation blowing up in our faces. It was safe to say that neither I nor my friends were cut out for a life of espionage.

  I didn’t bother to let him know that my vampire ears had picked up enough extra to let me know that whatever had made the sound had originated from the direction of the lab.

  Well, okay, “lab” was probably putting it kindly. For anyone else, it would have been an extra bedroom or perhaps used for storage. Dave lived frugally, though, minus maybe his gaming supplies, and he sure as shit didn’t have a roommate. I doubted anyone would last long without outright killing him.

  I stepped into the back room and that thought caught in my mind. My eyes opened wide at what lay before me.

  One didn’t need to be a blind seer to occasionally be right in foretelling a dark future.

  Showdown in Newark

  “Dave!”

  He lay there, eyes glazed over - looking at nothing - while what I assumed was the head I’d dropped off earlier sucked on his neck like a leech, taking great pulls as if trying to get the very last drops. I say “assumed” because he was a bit different from last I saw him. Though still desiccated, with pale cracked skin and thin white hair, he’d grown a little.

  His head now sat atop a body. It was sickly in appearance - damp and clammy like a wound that had just had a bandage peeled off. He was frail and ancient looking, kind of like that guy at the end of the video for Metallica’s Unforgiven. Regardless, no matter how pathetic he looked, I knew better - especially as the front of him was covered
in blood, at least some of it Dave’s, from the look of things.

  The room itself was a mess. Tables had been overturned and shelves smashed. Dave’s mini-fridge was torn open. The IV bags once contained within littered the floor, sucked dry of all contents. It told a tale of a creature starved for blood. That point was further driven home as the ghoul paid me almost no heed, greedily trying to suck the last of the life from his victim.

  That finally snapped me out of it. No fucking way. I hadn’t let the forces of darkness take any of my friends to date. I had no intention of breaking that streak.

  “Hey, gramps, why don’t you chew on this instead?” I stepped forward and kicked his head with everything I had. If only I’d had my vampire powers back in high school, I could’ve been a star punter instead of having the entire football team give me atomic wedgies. I connected with the fucker’s chin with enough force to upend a small car.

  The creature’s head snapped back and...and that was it. It turned its black eyes toward me, seemingly noticing me in full for the first time.

  “Drop my friend, buddy,” I ordered, hoping my words carried sufficient menace.

  “Bill, what’s...”

  “Get the fuck out of here, Ed,” I said over my shoulder.

  The other vampire dropped Dave. He rolled bonelessly to the floor. I wanted to cry out, but there was no helping him so long as I was in a Chinese standoff with Gollum’s body double. I needed to get rid of that asshole and then...then, well, I had no fucking idea.

  The other vamp tilted his head in confusion, looking like the world’s oldest stupid dog, then bared his fangs and stood up. He was naked, sadly giving me full view of his shriveled junk. Why is it always the dudes? Why couldn’t someone like that Theodora chick have flashed her goods at me instead?

  That, thankfully, wasn’t all that caught my eye. Odd markings seemed to cover his body. They weren’t much, just darker patches of skin on his chest and shoulders. I could almost make out shapes within them, but that might have just been my brain trying to connect the dots.