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

by Rick Gualtieri

  “It is not spoken of openly, but many despise the institution of the First and the coven system. They serve only out of fear - the knowledge that retribution shall be swift and brutal - not understanding that order is necessary to our continued prosperity.”

  “How does this cult play into that?” Sally asked.

  “They represent change. That is all any vampire tired of being compelled into their duty will care about. Soon, that which was buried in our past will become known again. It is inevitable. The Cult of Ib were cruel in their tactics and narrow-minded in their acceptance of those falling outside their ideals, but their methods involved choice - freedom for us to be the monsters we were perhaps meant to be. It was their downfall in their struggle against us, their inability to work as a cohesive unit. Now, though, the lessons of the past are forgotten.”

  “So you’re afraid vampires are going to ditch the Draculas in droves for this asshole?” Ed asked.

  “I wish it were only fear.” James started toward the door. I’d never seen him look so...defeated before. It was as if, in his mind, the war was already lost.

  He stopped in the doorway and turned toward us. “Stay safe, my friends. These are dangerous times, more so by the minute. Dr. Death, I have no doubt the First shall call upon you soon.”

  He left before I could ask whether that last part was a threat or a warning.

  A part of me was sure that was on purpose.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “What are you thinking?” Sally asked me once we’d shut and locked the door.

  “I’m thinking I need to clean up my mess.”

  “At least when you make a mess, it’s a spectacular one.”

  “Bill is a master of extreme fuck-uppery,” Tom said, drawing a grin from me. I couldn’t exactly deny that one. When I stepped in shit, it was often up to my neck or deeper.

  Sally walked over to the corner where she’d dropped off her bag upon our arrival and retrieved it. Carrying it over to our coffee table, she unzipped it. “Well then, I guess it’s time to discuss those big guns I mentioned.”

  “Going to lap dance Chuck to death?”

  She raised an eyebrow at me as she reached into the bag. “If you fuck this one up, that may be the only option we have left.” Wincing briefly, she stopped whatever she was doing long enough to extract a pair of leather gloves and put them on. “Almost forgot.”

  Tom, not being smart enough to keep his mouth shut, chuckled. “What, are you going to throw some nasty, crusted underwear at him?”

  “Here’s an idea,” she replied. “Why don’t you go stand way over there and I won’t kill you.”

  The look on her face stopped his grin dead in its tracks and he immediately backed up toward our kitchen nook.

  “Much better.” She resumed digging through the bag, finally pulling out something long wrapped in a blanket. My eyes nearly popped out of my head as it was unfurled. She was smart to wear gloves. The three crosses on the hilt gave it away, but I would have otherwise known it anywhere.

  “Is that Sheila’s sword?”

  “The sword of Joan of Arc,” Sally said, holding it aloft. “The Icon’s weapon.”

  “Is it...”

  “Yep,” she replied. “Touch it with your bare hands and get used to the idea of scratching your ass with hooks.”

  I stared raptly at the deadly blade. “How did you...”

  “I retrieved it after the battle. Didn’t seem right to let the cops just stuff it into some evidence locker.”

  Multiple emotions ran through me at once: sorrow, grief, regret...but I was amazed to find the one that stood out amongst them all was hope.

  Upon my return, I’d pledged to take up the mantle of humanity’s last defender. Now that position was needed more than ever. I’d unleashed a great evil upon the world, one that I couldn’t put back in its jar. But now...

  “Let me go get a pair of gloves. I need to start training with that thing right away.”

  “That’s not what I had in...”

  Ed, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since James’s departure, interrupted her. “We don’t have time for that, Bill. Besides, it’s not yours.”

  “I know that, but we don’t have a...”

  “It belongs to Sheila. We need to give it back to her.”

  Silence fell upon the room. A part of me wondered whether the pressure had finally gotten to Ed and had caused him to snap.

  I gritted my teeth for a moment, not wanting to say the words aloud, but it seemed nobody else was speaking up. “Sheila is dead.”

  “No,” he said. “She’s not.”

  The Earth-Shattering Epilogue

  “You know that?” Sally asked.

  I quickly turned toward her.

  “I mean...how do you know that? We...uh, saw her die...”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Never better,” she snapped. “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Uh, yeah, what Sally said. We saw her die.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Ed walked over and took a seat on the couch. “She survived.”

  “But...”

  “Her powers saved her,” he said, refusing to meet my eyes. “All she got was the equivalent of a really hard kick to the face. She was bruised to all hell, probably had a concussion too, but she lived.” He chuckled a little. “Scared the shit out of the ambulance driver, too, when she woke up.”

  “Whoa whoa whoa, hold on.” I noticed Tom’s eyes were nearly as large as mine. He had a stake in this game as well, but I waved him off for the moment. “How the fuck do you know that?”

  “Because she told me.”

  “What?! When?”

  “Maybe a week and a half after you disappeared. Thought I was seeing a ghost, that maybe whatever she’d done to me when I got bitten had turned me into that kid from the Sixth Sense.”

  “That’s a fuckload better than becoming Anakin Skywalker,” I mumbled, barely even aware I was doing so.

  “Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out, Bill.”

  “How the fuck was I supposed to do that?”

  “Seriously? How do you think I got my new position? People don’t just walk in the door of a company and proclaim themselves the new president. There’s paperwork to be filled out.”

  “He does have a point.”

  “Not helping, Sally,” I growled. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, man.”

  “You?” Tom asked, jumping into the fray. “At least you were off being a dungeon bitch for the past three months. I’ve been here this entire time. Christy is going to fucking freak.”

  “Why do you think I didn’t say anything?” Ed replied defensively. “The last time this happened, she wigged out and flash-fried your brainpan.”

  That gave Tom pause to consider, allowing me to resume my line of questioning. “That still doesn’t answer why you didn’t tell me the second I got back.”

  He stood up and faced me. “She asked me not to.”

  “What?”

  “She was confused. Can you blame her? The whole thing with Remington went to complete shit in the end. She felt guilty as all fuck about what happened to you, me, Tom, Gan...even those Templar assholes.”

  “Gan survived, by the way,” Sally said.

  I turned to her. “You knew about that?”

  “Of course. How else did you think I wound up with Monkhbat?”

  “The bottom line is,” Ed said, ignoring her, “she thought that teaming up with us had resulted in more harm than good. She wanted to disappear for a while, let the world - especially the vampires - think she was dead. That way, she could fight the good fight anonymously.”

  I glared at him, sure that my eyes had turned black. “Us? You mean me, don’t you?”

  “I was trying to be nice. I think she might’ve also been a bit freaked out by how you finished off Remington and then disappeared.”

  “You to
ld her that?”

  “She asked.”

  “Thanks,” I replied sarcastically, slumping down in a chair.

  “You’re missing the point here, Bill,” Sally said.

  “Oh? And what do you know about this?”

  “Um...nothing,” she replied quickly. “I just swiped the sword - that’s all. You and your roommates can hash this shit out amongst yourselves. I just want to point out one very important tidbit.”

  “What?”

  “She’s alive, stupid.”

  “I know, but...”

  That’s when it really hit me. Holy shit, what a fucking moron I was. I was busy arguing bullshit better left in a bad sitcom when the reality was there was only one item of importance: everything I’d blamed myself for was a load of crap. We’d set out to save Sheila from the vampire nation. For the past three months, I was certain I’d failed miserably - becoming a monster in the process. Now I was learning that I was wrong. Amazingly, we’d somehow pulled it off. She was safe. She was alive.

  “She’s alive,” I repeated out loud - softly at first, waiting for it to sink in. And sink in it did. I bounced to my feet. A big, stupid grin covered my face despite everything. “Did you hear that? She’s alive!” I threw my arms around Sally and hugged her hard, holding her tight.

  “I’m the one who gave you the news,” Ed complained.

  “Yeah, but she’s a lot softe...argh!”

  Sally reached up, grabbed hold of my ear, and pried me off. “Moment’s over, jackass. Besides, I wouldn’t celebrate quite yet.”

  “Why?”

  “Think about it, genius.”

  “What’s to think about? She’s fine and...”

  “She’s still the Icon.”

  “Yeah, so? And I’m still the Freewill...” Oh, fuck. “The prophecy?”

  “The prophecy,” she echoed.

  Well, wasn’t that just a wonderful bucket of ice water with which to douse my excitement.

  “Uh, guys,” Tom interrupted, “we might have bigger problems to worry about.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I’m not sure even she’s going to be able to put that musclehead down for good.”

  “What are you blathering about?” I turned to find him standing near the kitchen - leafing through several sheets of paper. Colin’s envelope, all but forgotten by me in light of recent news, lay open on the counter.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s some kind of file...like a dossier,” he said.

  “Holy shit. Colin ID’d him? You’re telling me he figured out who Chuck is?”

  “Not Chuck,” Tom replied, looking over the top of the pages. “Says here, this guy’s name is Vehron...known more commonly as the Destroyer.”

  “Vehron the Destroyer?”

  “Yep...also known as Vehron the Render, Vehron the Hater of All Life, Vehron the Sun Strider, Vehron the...”

  “Sun Strider?”

  “It doesn’t elaborate.”

  “Dude has a lot of aliases,” Ed remarked.

  “Tell me about it. Why don’t I have any cool nicknames like that?”

  “Oh, remember Johnny Collins from fifth grade?” Tom, asked looking up from the file.

  “No.”

  “He used to call you Rytard. I thought that was pretty cool.”

  “Give me that!” Sally stomped over and yanked the pages out of his grasp. She flashed her fangs, as if daring him to object, then began reading. “It’s definitely our guy. There’s a crude drawing of him here, but the tattoos seem to match.”

  “What else does it say?”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “We’ve already established that. Is there anything in there that we can use against this asshole?”

  To my surprise, her face appeared to have turned a shade paler.

  “What is it?”

  “This guy has a rap sheet a mile long, Bill. Born in Germania about twenty-two hundred years ago...”

  “Whoa.”

  “That’s not the half of it. After being turned, this guy rose in rank to become one of our best generals, and not the armchair variety, either. There are battles listed here I’ve never even heard of, against foes I can barely pronounce.”

  “That’s not promising.”

  “Oh no...”

  “What now?”

  “He’s credited with killing at least three members of whatever passed for the Draculas back then.”

  “How did they...”

  “It says they were all honorable duels, but who the fuck knows what that means? It gets worse, though. Before disappearing...”

  “Disappearing?”

  “Yeah. About fourteen hundred years ago. All records of him just ceased. It’s as if he fell off the planet.”

  “Or into someone’s closet,” I mumbled.

  “What was that?”

  “Never mind,” I replied, waving it off - feeling a chill creep down my spine.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “according to this section, even more honor and glory were draped upon his shoulders after...”

  “After what?”

  She looked up and held my gaze. “After he killed two Icons.”

  Now it was my turn to blanch. “Oh my God.”

  Silence descended once more as we digested this.

  “Good job, Bill.” Tom sat down next to me and clapped me on the shoulder. “Only you.”

  “Huh? What do you mean by that?”

  “Think about it. Someone else might have grabbed any other head there: Burko the Lover of Puppies, Silas the Grower of Flowers, but not you. You somehow walked out of there carrying a guy called the Destroyer.”

  “He does have a point,” Ed agreed.

  “Jeez, you guys are all acting like this is somehow my fault.” Two sets of incredulous eyes stared back. “Okay, I will admit, perhaps I have a slight responsibility here. But come on, how the fuck was I supposed to know?”

  “I don’t think you had a choice,” Sally said flatly, her nose buried in the pages again.

  “How so?”

  “Fate.”

  “What are you blathering about?”

  “The prophecy.”

  “What about it?”

  She looked up from the papers. “I’m not sure it applies to you.”

  “What are you...”

  “Vehron. He’s not just some cultist asshole with a penchant for killing everyone. There’s one last fact about him here.”

  She looked at us one by one, finally meeting my eyes.

  “He’s a Freewill.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  To say Sally’s revelation made my head swim was an understatement.

  “Bill, are you okay?”

  “I’m gonna need a moment.” I leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Such an interesting pattern of swirls up there. It helped me think non-horrifying thoughts as the pieces started falling into place one by one.

  That certainly explained the whole brother thing he’d been yammering about, as well as why he’d so casually put the bite on me. Chuck...err, Vehron had realized it from the start, but I didn’t have a clue, having never met another of my kind before. Albeit, now that I had, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to meet one again.

  Sadly, that didn’t seem to be in the cards. This guy still needed to be stopped. “It’s going to be harder than ever now.”

  “What is?” Ed asked.

  “I doubt he’s talking about his dick,” Tom said, snapping me out of my funk.

  “No, shit-for-brains. It’s even worse than James thought. He was worried about this cult of assholes gaining a foothold again. But think about it. How much has been heaped on my plate because of this whole Freewill crap - even when I haven’t really done anything?”

  “This guy is the real deal, though,” Sally rightfully, if unhelpfully, pointed out.

  “Yep.�
�

  Ed’s eyes opened wide as he realized what we were saying. “The vamps are going to flock to him like sheep.”

  “Again, yep.”

  “Do you think he can do everything you can?” Tom asked.

  “No idea,” I replied, remembering that I was currently one power short of a full set. “All I know is that he took everything we threw at him and laughed it off.”

  “I’m not laughing,” Sally said.

  “Neither am I.”

  “There is one good thing,” Tom said offhandedly.

  “What?”

  “That thing Sally said about the prophecy not applying to you.”

  “Oh yeah, great. The Freewill shall lead our troops to victory against our enemies. Well, they wanted a leader; now they’ve got one.” I stood up and began to pace, my mind reeling.

  “Not that part.”

  “What are you getting at, meatsack?” Sally asked him.

  “Yeah, care to clue the rest of us in?” Ed asked.

  “I mean the end of it,” he explained. “Doesn’t it talk about Sheila kicking Bill’s ass in their final battle?”

  I raised an eyebrow at his somewhat liberal interpretation. “I don’t think it’s quite phrased that way.”

  “Yeah,” Sally added. “The outcome is hazy, or some bullshit like that.”

  A grin lit up my roommate’s face. “I forgot about the hazy part, but whatever the fuck. The main thing is, what if it’s not your ass she’s supposed to kick?”

  For a second, my brain refused to process what he’d just said. I was used to his words often being the opposite of insightful. “You mean I might not be the one who’s supposed to fight her?”

  It wasn’t just me, either. Sally’s jaw nearly dropped to the floor as comprehension dawned in her eyes. “I hate to admit it, but shithead here actually seems to be making sense.”

  “It might be even better than that,” Tom continued, no doubt enjoying the spotlight. “If this prophecy is so fucking noncommittal on the outcome, I’d be willing to bet it’s also pretty goddamned vague, too, on whether she has any help in that final battle. Am I right?”

  I turned to Sally. She knew the actual texts better than any of us, having done her homework while I’d been fucking off. She shrugged in the affirmative, even though I knew it killed her to agree with Tom on anything.