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

by Rick Gualtieri

  “Then Freewill T’lunta remembers that Grulg is sworn to kill you under broken Accord.”

  Uh...

  “Of course we remember, Grulg,” Sally replied. “And as signatories of the Humbaba Accord, we must act accordingly. Would you not agree?”

  “Grulg agree. Be ready to die.”

  Sally simply nodded in response.

  Fully awake now, I assumed a defensive stance, thinking that shit was about to get real. The Jahabich outnumbered us by a good amount, but I knew how powerful the Sasquatches could be. If Grulg decided to charge us, I had little doubt he’d knock them aside like bowling pins before they could respond.

  I was so intent on waiting for the attack that I nearly jumped out of my skin when a voice said, “It’s time to join us.”

  Being surprised with a full bladder is never a good thing. Thankfully, I managed to keep from pissing myself as I spun to find Mark had returned - once more wearing his human guise.

  “Come with us, Freewill. It is time for you to be enlightened.”

  Oh, crap.

  “Hey!” Brock elbowed past me. “Remember me? I’m the one who volunteered to help you.”

  Mark seemed a little surprised, but then said, “So you did. I guess the first honor is yours, after all. The Freewill shall join us soon enough. So sorry, Lucinda, but we’ll be saving you for last. I do apologize, but you may be in for quite a wait.”

  “Take your time, stud,” she shot back, sounding like her old self.

  Brock looked back at us, a smirk of triumph on his face. He stood next to Mark as the gates closed up again. Unsurprisingly, that look turned to one of confusion as Mark next gestured for the Jahabich holding the Sasquatches to open up.

  Grulg gave a nod and one of the others stepped forward.

  “Hey, Mark, what’s this?” Brock asked. “I thought I was going to help you.”

  “You are. He will too, as will one of each of the chattel.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will in short order.”

  Two Jahabich stepped to either side of the traitorous vamp, blocking any escape. The poor dipshit.

  “Call off your goons, man. We’re cool.”

  Mark raised an eyebrow. “They aren’t my goons.”

  “Wait, aren’t you in charge here?”

  “Of course not, fool,” Mark said with a laugh. “I am merely exerting my will because of this special occasion.” He glanced back toward Sally with a leer. “Once that’s over, I shall take my place back amongst the gathering.”

  “Gathering?”

  “That you are about to join.”

  By now, even Brock was burning off enough brain cells to realize he’d stepped in shit. He made to move, but the Jahabich were quicker. They swung their club-like appendages and hit home with solid cracks of bone, breaking both of his arms in the process. None of the Jahabich, not even Mark, showed any emotion at his cries of anguish, albeit the Bigfoot that had been plucked from Grulg’s group did sort of smile a bit.

  Leading their prisoners onward, Mark made a similar withdrawal from most of the pens. Some came willingly, but most had to be dragged kicking and screaming. At the end, the only cells left untouched were those that held singular occupants. I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but maybe...

  “The strongest saved for last,” Grulg growled, as if that explained anything. “Greatest warriors for the final conflict. All the rest, just fodder.”

  I tried to process the meaning of this, but then a thought hit me. “Hey!” That asshole had told Sally she’d be last. Talk about insulting. Christ, being the vampire Freewill garnered absolutely no fucking respect these days.

  “Oh, like you expected any different,” she replied with an eye roll.

  What the hell? Just a short while ago, she’d been Miss Catatonic. Now, she had that predatory gleam in her eye again.

  I knew that look. It meant she was preparing to fuck someone over. Hopefully it wasn’t me.

  “Just do what you do best, Bill,” she said. “Follow my lead.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  All in all, they led off probably a dozen prisoners. Their destination seemed to be pretty obvious: they were herded in the direction of the glowing pool at the far end of the cave.

  Before they got there, though, another commotion caught my eye. More of the Jahabich were marching in - a lot of them. It almost looked like a military procession, so perfectly in step they paraded. Side by side, multiple columns entered - dozens in all.

  “Soon they leave,” Grulg slobbered.

  “Where?”

  “Grulg not care. Grulg only know they leave.”

  “Well, that’s fascinating, but how...”

  “I don’t think we can wait that long, Grulg,” Sally interrupted. She pointed at something in the middle of the Jahabich procession. I’d missed it at first, lost amongst the sea of living stone, but now I saw what looked like a head of hair peeking up from their ranks.

  The procession stopped on the opposite end of the pool from the statue, about ten paces back from the edge. Their movement ended abruptly with no warning and the figure in the middle stumbled forward for a moment, clonking his head on the Jahabich in front of him. As he stepped back, I caught a momentary glimpse of his face. “It’s Ed.”

  “In the flesh,” Sally said.

  “What is an Ed?”

  “He’s the one who took a shit on Turd’s tree. Remember?”

  Grulg bared his teeth at that, but whether it was at my roommate or the mention of the Sasquatch chieftain, I wasn’t sure. Hmm, maybe that wasn’t the best scenario to jog his memory with.

  “It’s got to be now,” Sally said.

  “We wait. They leave soon,” Grulg countered.

  “You asked if we were prepared to die. Well, we are, but we’ll die at a time of our choosing, not yours. You can either accept that or go fuck yourself.”

  For a moment, I wondered if Sally had gone off the deep end after all, because she sure as hell seemed to have lost her mind. We were no longer under the protection the summit at the Woods of Mourning provided. Talking smack with a Sasquatch warrior was bound to result in them smacking back a lot harder.

  Much to my surprise, though, Grulg actually grinned - I think. He turned to me. “Grulg see your mate still have much fire. Grulg think you will have many fine cubs together.”

  “Uh...yeah.” I turned to Sally, but she just mouthed “not a word” back at me. Probably a smart strategy, all in all.

  The two remaining Sasquatches growled something at Grulg that I couldn’t even begin to hope to understand, but he bared his teeth at them until they looked away. I didn’t know what had gone down, but I would have bet it had been because Grulg hadn’t immediately ripped Sally in half for mouthing off.

  Finally, the ugly beast looked back at us. “Grulg can see that you will die well. So be it.”

  Oh great, so that was two death sentences hanging over our heads. Seemed like we were collecting them like Pokémon cards as of late.

  Screw that shit! My partner could trade threats with big hairy dirtballs all she wanted. All I knew was the target of our rescue mission was in sight. We would need to act fast, but how? We were surrounded, outnumbered, beaten, and bloody. There was little chance...

  Hold on...bloody!

  Glancing at Sally, I finally had an idea of how to hopefully get us out of this mess.

  She’d had her brain scrambled by the reappearance of her boyfriend, but I had to trust that when I made my move, she would back me up. I turned to Miranda. “How are you holding up?”

  “Pretty peachy. Thinking I might build a vacation home down here.”

  I sighed. Guess she’d been hanging out with Sally a little too long. “Just be ready.”

  “For?”

  “Be ready,” I repeated, not wanting to raise suspicions among the wall of Jahabich still staring at us. As it was, any chance we had wo
uld already be slim as all hell.

  “Look,” Sally said, pointing, “I think the show’s about to start.”

  Sure enough, it seemed like that was the case. Mark and his goon squad had marched the prisoners, Brock at the forefront, to the glowing pool of muck - right in front of where the statue stood.

  Mark stepped up to the towering effigy and bowed his head respectfully toward it, then began to speak - or at least I was pretty sure he was doing so. It was too low to hear, but I could see his jaw mov...

  “The eyes of the mother smile at the gifts we have brought her.”

  What the fuck? The voice erupted from everywhere around us as the Jahabich spoke in unison again like the world’s freakiest public address system.

  Grulg noticed me jump, his lips splitting back into a hideous grin. “Funny T’lunta.” Dickhead.

  Mark continued talking, and so did the Jahabich. If I had to guess, I’d say they were mirroring his words, like they were all connected via the rock monster equivalent of wi-fi.

  “We welcome the newly risen. May they serve until they can serve no more.”

  “Any idea what’s going on?” Miranda asked.

  “No, but I get the feeling we’re about to find out,” Sally replied.

  As Mark turned toward Brock, his body once more assumed the form of a Jahabich. Brock looked confused. His mouth opened as if to say something, but he was cut short as Mark savagely slammed his club arm into and through the vampire’s chest. Ouch.

  I had just a moment to register the shock on Brock’s face before he combusted from the inside out. Mark immediately resumed his human guise - cupping his hands in the rapidly expanding shower of dust that had been my former sparring partner.

  “What the fuck?”

  With a handful of dead vamp in each fist, Mark turned and stepped toward the pool. He opened his hands and flung the ashes into the magma-looking suspension.

  “What the fuck, indeed?” Sally asked, stepping up next to me. “Give me a boost. I want to watch.”

  “What? No...go away.”

  She ignored my protest and began to climb me like I was a human stepstool. She perched atop my shoulders like we were watching the fucking Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. So glad I could be her personal furniture. On the upside, there were far worse things to have pressing down on me than her firm ass.

  “I always knew I’d eventually wind up with your legs wrapped around me.”

  “Shhhh!” She smacked the top of my head. “Something’s happening.”

  Sure enough, the calm waters of the pool began to churn, bubbling as the surface took on an angry red color, bathing the cavern in its new, bloodlike hue. Neat special effect, but a little cliché - albeit it was still more sinister than, say, turning green or sky blue.

  The bubbling started to concentrate in one area of the pool. It began to move, as if something swam underwater - crossing to the opposite end where the rank and file waited with Ed stuck in the middle.

  A head broke the surface. At first, I couldn’t see any details - it was far away and covered in red-orange goop - but then, the figure emerged more fully and the sludge began to drip away revealing...Brock?

  “Okay, that’s a little weird.”

  He was somehow whole again. As he stepped out of the pool, his flesh shimmered and the clothes he’d been wearing appeared on his body again.

  “I thought when vamps died, they...”

  “Shut up; I’m watching this,” Sally growled, reaching down and twisting my ear.

  “Ow!”

  Brock turned and faced his killer on the opposite shore.

  Mark smiled and called out, “How do you feel?”

  “I feel fine,” he replied. He reached down and touched his body, seemingly surprised to be alive. “Hell, in fact, I feel...argh!” Brock stumbled, losing his footing and going down to one knee. He reached up and grabbed hold of his head, opening his mouth as if to cry out.

  “Don’t fight it,” Mark called back to him. “It’s easier that way.”

  With that, Brock’s form changed - losing cohesion as his body melted away. His clothes disappeared, seemingly absorbed back into him, and his skin hardened and turned grey as he shrunk in on himself until the form of a Jahabich stood in his place. Its orange lantern eyes burned brightly for a moment before settling down into the typical hue of the monsters.

  “How do you feel now?” Mark asked, an obsidian smile on his face.

  The thing that had been Brock chuckled. “We feel good. We are ready to serve.”

  “Holy shit,” I muttered.

  “Oh my god,” Sally gasped from her perch. “These things are just like us.”

  “What do you mean ‘just like us’? I don’t know about you, but I sure as shit am not made of rock.”

  “No,” she explained. “It’s like what we do, but worse. Vampires turn humans into other vampires. These monsters can do the same thing...but it’s not just humans. Judging by the prisoners up there, these fuckers can make more of themselves out of just about anything.”

  “That’s fucked up.”

  “It’s worse than that. These things could infiltrate both sides of the war. They could destroy us from within and we’d never know until it was too late.”

  Break Out

  Sometimes I hate it when Sally's right. Mark next dragged some three-armed imp-looking thing from the crowd. Now that the prisoners knew what was in store for them, he didn't waste any time with ceremony. He simply snapped the creature's neck and tossed it into the orange slime. A few moments later, another Jahabich crawled from the other side, this one wearing the skin, and presumably containing the memories, of the creature it had somehow been born out of.

  “That must have been what happened to Mark,” Sally stated, seemingly more to herself than anyone else.

  “Wait, I thought you said you killed him.”

  “I might have had a little help. If I'd known those things would have used his ashes, though...”

  “Though what?”

  “I'd have killed him and then maybe stuck around to finish those fuckers off too.”

  “There's something to be said for being thorough.”

  Speaking of thorough, I could either stand and watch this spectacle continue to play out - the Jahabich growing stronger with each victim - or I could do something about it. I doubted there would be a better time, and I sure as shit didn't want to wait around for whatever suicide pact Sally and Grulg seemed to have going on. “Sorry, doll, but it's time for Daddy to put you to bed.”

  “What are you yammering abo...”

  I tossed her off my shoulders and to the ground. Under different circumstances, I would've told her my plan, but I didn't trust her current state of mind. She could always thank me later if this worked...and, knowing Sally, by “thank,” I mostly meant cock-punch.

  Before she could get up, I was upon her.

  “What the hell?” Miranda cried, but I ignored it.

  Using my superior leverage, I managed to pin Sally's arms above her head with one of my hands. There was no way I could hold her like that for long, so I couldn't afford to do this gently. Extending the claws of my free hand, I grasped hold of the ragged Kevlar she wore, as well as the shirt beneath it, and tore with everything I had.

  The Sasquatches grunted in surprise as well as various other creatures. Apparently, my little attack hadn't gone unnoticed, but that was okay. If these fuckers were looking for a surprise, they were about to get one.

  I ripped off a large swath of cloth from Sally's midsection, then scrambled backwards with my prize. The look on my partner's face was more one of shock than anything, even more so when I balled up the fabric, stuffed it into my mouth, and began sucking on it with everything I had.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Earlier, once it had become obvious the Jahabich had intended to capture us, I had purposely held back. Letting loose against these monsters needed to wait until we'd fo
und Ed. Of course, it really hadn’t helped when they’d casually tossed our possessions to the side like refuse, including my last canteen. Then I remembered that Sally had been quite literally splattered with the mixed blood when the creatures had swatted her like a bug. We'd been locked up long enough for it to have dried to a disgusting crust on her, but thankfully, the laundry facilities had been sparse. I just had to hope that, even dried, it still had some bang to it and that I could work up the saliva to free enough of it to have an effect.

  I will say, for the record, it was vile work. We'd spent several hours trekking through a filthy sewer, not to mention walking, climbing, and fighting enough to work up a good sweat. As I sucked down whatever I could, I made a vow that if we got out of this mess alive, I was gonna subsist on a diet of nothing but Tic Tacs and Listerine for the next week.

  Sadly for me, my actions were drawing attention. Now the wall of Jahabich around us slowly turned their heads toward me. I guess interrupting their ritual was considered a social faux pas. Either that or they were wise to escape attempts.

  There was also the wee issue that Sally was back on her feet, a generous amount of underboob showing on her chest, and a look of pure murder upon her face.

  If this didn't work, I'd either have my balls torn off or find myself taking a nice long dip in a bubbling orange bath. Somehow, I had a feeling my Freewill exemption to compulsion wouldn't survive my rebirth as a granite-covered shit pile. No fucking way did I want that.

  I swallowed hard, feeling something go down. At first, a wave of nausea struck me as whatever gunk from the sewer hit my digestive tract, but then, finally, came that burst of heat from my innards that told me it was time to do some damage.

  I sensed the two Jahabich closest behind me step forward as volunteers for the crusted blood smoothie’s true test.