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

by Rick Gualtieri

  “Bill?” Tom asked.

  “Yes?” I replied tentatively, being that I was totally creeped out.

  “Is there a reason why I suddenly seem to be so small?”

  “Well...”

  “And can’t move?”

  “Um...”

  “And everyone keeps making doll jokes?”

  “I did this,” Christy said from behind me. I turned and found her back on her feet, tears streaming freely from her eyes.

  “You meant to do this?” I asked. Christ! What the hell had my friend done to piss her off that much?

  “No!”

  “Then how?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Not really following here,” Tom added.

  “This isn’t even remotely normal.”

  “I think we can all agree on that,” Sally said.

  “The only way for something like this to happen is through magic,” Christy explained, taking a moment to wipe her eyes. Though obviously still upset, the weirdness of the whole scenario was a bit too much to allow for the grief we should’ve been experiencing.

  “Yeah, fine, magic,” Tom said, sounding a bit exasperated. “But can maybe someone tell me what the fuck is going on?”

  Considering the circumstance we were in, I didn’t see much point in sugarcoating things. “You died.”

  “Really? I find it hard to believe that...” I held him up and pointed him toward where his body lay. “Holy fuck! That’s me! How the fuck can I be over there?”

  “You’re in one of the toys you stole from that house.”

  “Which one? Anything good?”

  “Max Adventure.”

  “Oh Jesus Christ! I couldn’t be goddamned Darth Vader?”

  “Hey, at least nobody’s going to throw your ass onto eBay and then stuff you into a glass cabinet somewhere.”

  “True. I could see how ending up like the Prospector in Toy Story 2 could drive someone crazy.”

  It was only then that I realized the absurdity of the conversation I was having. Glancing back over at my other friends, I saw it wasn’t lost on them either.

  “So, what happened to me?” he finally asked.

  Before any of us could answer, though, a low muffled chuckling caught my ears. Sally and I both glanced over to Tom’s corpse. The laughter was coming from him. No, make that from on him. From the sound of things, his backpack, to be precise.

  It was Harry Decker.

  The three of us marched back over to Tom’s body. A part of me was tempted to kick it over and then tear open the pack to see what that asshole had done. However, giving in to my emotions might not be the best thing to do, especially since Christy might take offense to that. Instead, I gently turned him over and stripped the backpack off.

  “Shouldn’t you say a few words?” Tom asked.

  “Huh?”

  “I thought it was customary. I mean, shit, you’re robbing my corpse. The least you can do is tell everyone what an awesome guy I was.”

  “It’s not like I’m going through your pockets for spare change.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m watching in case you do. Damn, why didn’t anyone tell me my bald spot was that wide?”

  I held him out to Christy while I fumbled with the backpack. However, she shrank away as if it were a rattlesnake. Poor girl was probably holding on by the barest of threads. It didn’t help that she couldn’t even properly grieve without Tom making some asshole comment about it.

  I handed him to Sally instead, who seemed to be taking this weirdness in stride – one of the benefits of having been around the supernatural longer than the rest of us, I suppose.

  Once I unzipped the pack, I saw the sickly purplish light that continued to glow from within. I grabbed Decker’s skull and pulled it out.

  “What did you do?” I demanded of it.

  Me? I did nothing, fool. I simply gave a warning and it was ignored.

  I couldn’t help but notice one difference between the two disembodied ... err ... entities. Decker sounded like a radio broadcast, almost distant, whereas Tom’s voice was pretty much normal – except maybe a bit more diminutive.

  That’s when it hit me.

  Crap! We’d been so caught up in the part of his prophecy about Vehron that we’d ignored the rest. “Tears will fall for those who die...” I repeated.

  Just as I proclaimed.

  “Wait,” Christy snapped. “You knew? You knew it was talking about Tom?”

  Again, Decker’s skull did nothing but chuckle – a fucking douche to the very end.

  “Why?”

  Because, my child, he was your undoing. You were always such a good pupil, such a devout witch. You were meant to follow in my footsteps, but then you met him. He was only supposed to be a tool, a means for us to get to the Freewill, but instead, he swayed you. He confounded you, turned you away from your path – from me. Because of him, I died. Because of him, your sisters died. And because of him, you have doomed all Magi to die!

  Decker might have had more to say, but in that moment, Gan’s forces faltered.

  What had happened to Tom had so consumed us that we’d neither helped nor noticed that the Jahabich continued to reinforce their ranks while continuing to thin ours.

  We’d been so distracted by Decker’s grinning skull, that we didn’t notice the soulless orange eyes surrounding us until it was too late.

  Infiltration

  The Jahabich were like fire ants. Tough enough for a younger vampire, but individually, not much of a challenge to either an older vamp or me after I’d gotten a power boost. Their real strength lay in a hive mentality that dictated overall victory trumped any individual needs.

  Strategically, I could see how that could be their downfall given sufficient resistance. Against a small group with no hope of reinforcements, though, it was a pretty damn effective shock and awe tactic.

  Had Gan’s people been at full strength, they might have held off our attackers indefinitely. However, she was coming off a brutal campaign against the Feet, followed by tracking our asses through the forest, and then having Vehron playing compulsion-pong with their brains.

  I half expected her to order her troops to fight to the death for her glory, which I would have done my best to ixnay. Surprisingly, though, once it became painfully obvious this fight was unwinnable, she told her troops to lay down their arms. Even she, nutty as a fruitcake, understood the logic of surviving to fight another day.

  The Jahabich, thankfully, had been ordered to bring us in, as opposed to pounding our skulls to mush. We were forced to leave our weapons; no surprise there. I was afraid they’d make us abandon the talking skull and possessed toy that happened to be in our possession too. However, curios such as those were apparently rare, even for monstrosities from a hellish cavern deep beneath the Earth, so in the end, they confiscated both and brought them with us.

  Well, okay, after hearing Decker’s bullshit, we really just wanted to make sure Tom didn’t get left behind, but it seemed to be all or nothing. Alas, Tom’s body wasn’t a part of the deal. It was left where it lay, along with the other discarded treasures he’d brought with him. I could only hope we’d have a chance to retrieve it later and put him to proper rest.

  Thankfully, we weren’t sent back the same way Vehron had gone, as the sun was still shining. No idea how that dude did it, but none of the vamps in our current group would have made it twelve paces, much less all the way back to the Boston complex. The Jahabich solved that problem, though, by forcing us to use the underground passage they’d dug to ambush us.

  Once down below, they lined us up and marched us forward. Much like when Sally and I had been taken prisoner far below the streets of Vegas, the Jahabich showed little interest in us so long as we kept moving and didn’t try to escape. Thus we were able to at least converse.

  Sadly, any additional info that we might have pried out of Decker went unanswered. He fell silent in the grasp of
the Jahabich who carried him. It had assumed a human form so as to have fingers to hold our disembodied comrades.

  Whereas Decker seemed content to let his words from earlier stand, Tom wasn’t nearly so inclined to the silent treatment. “So anyone have a clue why I can’t fucking move? I mean, I’m not looking to pull a Child’s Play or anything, but what if my nose gets itchy? What if I need to take a shit?”

  “Off the top of my head,” I answered, continuing to march along, “I’d say it’s because dolls don’t have muscles.”

  “Action figure, asshole.”

  “Whatever the fuck. Oh, and since you don’t have an asshole either, chances are you’re safe when it comes to number two.”

  “Yeah, thanks for explaining the mechanics of plastic, Bill. You’re forgetting something, though. My mouth is just a line of molded plastic, yet I can still talk. Oh, and I’m pretty sure these painted-on eyes don’t really have retinas, yet I can see your ass trudging along in front of me just fine.”

  “Enjoy the view. As for the rest ... honestly, I have no fucking idea.”

  “He’s a golem,” Christy said. She’d been silent ever since we entered the tunnel. I was afraid she might’ve finally snapped, but her voice was surprisingly steady.

  I considered that for a moment. “Aren’t those usually big honking monsters?”

  “That’s just a modern conceit. Legend has it that golems could be made of anything, large or small, so long as they were a representation of the original soul.”

  “Hey, I don’t have a porno-stache!”

  I ignored Tom’s outburst and asked, “Legend?”

  She took a deep breath. I realized she was trying to stay strong, analyze the situation, but it was taking a toll on her. “It’s ... it’s because that’s all it is – legend. Artificial life; it goes against our beliefs.” She paused for a moment. “Most of our beliefs anyway. No Magi, true to our ways, has dabbled in such things in recorded history. As far as I was aware, the concept of golems was little more than a fairy tale – at least up until recently.”

  “Seems to be a lot of that going on in my life,” I muttered, before raising my voice again. “But what about Decker? Isn’t that what he is?”

  “That’s different. His remains were still tethered to his spirit, even if only by a thread. All we did was strengthen that thread and use it as a sort of fishing line to bring the rest of his soul back.”

  “But isn’t that the same idea?”

  “No! It’s temporary, only because we thought it was a necessary evil. When the spell ends, he’ll return back to where he belongs. The tether will be broken. He’ll be at peace.”

  I sincerely doubted an asshole like Decker would ever be at peace, but I kept that opinion to myself. “So, you didn’t try to do the same thing with Tom?”

  She turned at once to glare at me, her eyes momentarily glowing red. Yeah, not a great color for her – or me, for that matter. “I was using healing magic on him at first. When that didn’t work...” She faltered for a moment, the words she was trying to say obviously distasteful to her. “...I switched to stronger stuff – meant to reshape a broken body, fill it with vitality from another source ... nature, the plants around us in this case. Besides, what we did with Harry, it wouldn’t have worked. Tom isn’t a Magi. Our life force isn’t the same as a normal human’s. The magic that infuses us goes much deeper than just our bodies.”

  “So then how did that happen?” I hooked a thumb back toward the Jahabich who held Tom.

  “I don’t know,” she snapped. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “What else did Decker say?” Sally asked suddenly.

  “He’s been pretty much yammering about all sorts of shit,” I replied offhandedly.

  “No, in that crackpot prophecy of his. When I had him on my desk in Vegas, he used to spout them all the time. They were cryptic, but concise – not a lot of wasted words. Once things came to pass, it was usually pretty easy to figure out everything in hindsight.”

  “He spoke of being drowned in the flow of false life,” Gan said, nearly causing me to jump into the arms of the Jahabich marching silently on my other side. She’d somehow sidled up next to me without me noticing.

  “The only thing I was drowned in was rock monster jizz,” Tom said. “And, no, you are never to quote me on that.”

  “Like hell,” I replied. “When we get home, I’m updating your Twitter profile with that. I’m...” I trailed off as realization hit. Holy crap. Was that it? “I am a fucking idiot!”

  “It’s about time you accepted yourself for who you are.”

  “Not that, moron.” I turned to Sally. “When we were underground, in the Jahabich’s lair.”

  As I said that, I couldn’t help but notice our silent guards all turned their pumpkin-sized heads in my direction. A few in the front pulled a complete one-eighty with their necks to do so. Apparently, I was finally saying something of interest to them. Shit! If so, I’d already spilled the beans. If they really wanted me to continue, it’s not like they couldn’t just beat the truth out of me.

  Ignoring their creepy gaze, I turned back to Sally. “Yeah, I know, you don’t remember, but I do. The pool, that glowing orange pool of gunk. These fuckers submerged the remains of their enemies in it. That’s how they made new baby Jahabich, sorta.”

  That caught Christy’s attention. “The power the White Mother used to trap captured souls in these false bodies. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Mother,” all of the Jahabich present repeated, the sound echoing in the tunnel. Yeah, definitely a bunch of creeps. After a couple more seconds of their dead-eyed staring, they all turned away, apparently having concluded we’d finished the interesting part of the story.

  “Uh yeah,” I replied. “The stuff the white ... chick did, I guess. Anyway, my point is that goo is basically the Jahabich’s blood. Tom got absolutely drenched with the shit.”

  “Don’t remind me,” he said.

  Christy held up a hand to her mouth. “Oh God!”

  I turned to her and nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking. Maybe that blood somehow acted as a catalyst.”

  “But we all got it on us during the battle,” Sally said.

  “Yeah, we did. Same thing back in NORAD, but the main difference is none of us died.”

  “That is not entirely true, beloved,” Gan replied. “Following your trial, many died covered in the remains of these creatures. None, so far that I am aware, rose again.”

  “It was me,” Christy said, her voice low. “The power I poured into him, the dark magic. The blood was the catalyst, but it needed a power source to activate it.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Sally replied. “These things are walking, talking monstrosities. The meatsack is just an immobile piece of cheap plastic.”

  “You do know I can hear you, right?”

  “They’re golems too,” Christy said, certainty filling her voice. She turned to me, her eyes gleaming, but thankfully this time, it wasn’t with anger. “This pit you mentioned; it’s full of this stuff, right?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “An Olympic-sized swimming pool of it at least. No idea how deep, but it’s pretty much in a pit of rock...” I trailed off, realizing the rock surrounding it wasn’t all too different-looking from the things marching us forward to our doom right now.

  “To infuse life where there is none would require a lot of power to sustain, far more than I could generate myself,” Christy continued. “All I did was make a spark by comparison.”

  “But it was enough,” I concluded.

  Indeed it was, Decker said, breaking his silence with a chuckle. Congratulations, my dear. No one can say how this power was first found. That is lost to the mists of time. Even I cannot peer through them. But I can hazard a guess that perhaps it was an accident – maybe not much different than today. They say those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. It wo
uld seem ignorance of those lessons leads to the same result.

  “Shut up,” Christy hissed.

  In turning your back upon our ways, spitting upon the glory of the White Mother, you have become her. All hail the new White Mother.

  Unsurprisingly, the Jahabich were right there to once more add their voices to the chorus. “Mother.”

  I could only echo their sentiment, but added my own twist for our current predicament.

  “Motherfucker.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We marched in silence for a while. There wasn’t much else that needed to be said.

  Okay, maybe not total silence. Tom kept up with his bitching. Oddly enough, though, I found his voice comforting. Despite all that had happened, at least he was still with us – in a manner of speaking.

  At one point, maybe an hour after we’d started our trek, the tunnel ahead forked. As we neared the split, we found a few more Jahabich waiting for us. They weren’t alone.

  “You guys okay?” I asked Dave and Adam after reining in the whoop of joy I wanted to let out. Now was not the time to celebrate. Also, it would have probably just gotten us pummeled.

  “Aside from getting the fuck beaten out of us, sure,” Dave replied bitterly.

  “What happened to you two?”

  “What the fuck do you think? We ran.”

  “Our heroes,” Sally commented as they were integrated into our group.

  “Nothing wrong with a tactical retreat,” Adam said.

  “Exactly,” Dave replied. “Remember those beholders you guys pussed out on a few years back?”

  “Who the fuck throws beholders at a first level party?” I snapped.

  “The whole concept of a random monster encounter is that it neither need be fair nor level appropriate.” Dave glanced around, taking in our group. “Your roommates get away?”

  “Nope, I’m still here,” Tom replied.

  “Vehron captured Ed,” I added.

  Dave spun around, no doubt looking for Tom, until his eyes settled on Max Adventure. One of our Jahabich captors, not particularly appreciative of having their forced march interrupted, clubbed him in the chest and shoved him forward.