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

by Rick Gualtieri

  That’s me, a glass is half full kind of guy.

  “We’ll go,” I said. “But how will Alexander be able to...”

  “Do not doubt for one moment, Freewill, that the esteemed First Coven can find you no matter where you are.”

  “Uh, okay. And if we need to get in touch with them?”

  “The phone lines are being reestablished even as we speak.”

  Of course they were. Colin was a cock, but even I couldn’t deny he was an efficient cock.

  Still, it felt wrong to leave without at least a parting shot at the creep. Fortunately, I had just the thing to plant a seed of paranoia in his shit-stain of a head. It was still a sore spot for me, but there was something to be said about sharing the misery.

  I turned, then stopped, feigning as if something had just come to mind. “Oh, I almost forgot. That whole pertinent information thing?”

  “What of it, Freewill? I have a great many matters to take care of and this discourse grows tiresome.”

  “Remember Starlight?”

  Colin’s face went blank for a moment as if he had no idea who I was talking about. Then recognition dawned in his eyes. “Ah. Alice Kessler, you mean? Former member of Village Coven. Was good enough to let me know the location of your coven’s safe houses about a year back.”

  I gritted my teeth at the memory. “Yes, her.”

  “She is officially listed as missing, presumed deceased at the hands of the Destroyer.”

  I could feel Sally’s gaze boring into me, no doubt wondering where this was going. “Well, she’s not. She’s one of the Jahabich now.”

  “Oh,” Colin replied, nonplussed. “A pity, I’m sure, but I fail to see why that is a concern.”

  “It should because she fooled me.”

  “The tells of the Jahabich are well documented. Just because you didn’t think to check her teeth...”

  “I did, though. They were normal, like ours. She was a perfect duplicate.”

  “I saw it too,” Sheila added.

  “Starlight?”

  “No. Another one. We ran into her on our way here. Normal teeth and all until she changed. Somehow, they’re evolving.”

  “Maybe,” I said before turning back to Colin. “Either way, I think that’s something Alex should know. These things...” I leaned in close. “They could be anyone.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Thanks for playing along,” I said to Sheila as our group walked away. “He’ll be going nuts with that info.”

  “What do you mean ‘playing along’?”

  “Wait, you really did see one?”

  “Yes. The damn thing almost killed me.”

  I’d hoped maybe Starlight was a fluke, a mutation of some kind. But now, what Sheila said about them evolving ... no, that didn’t seem right. Calibra had created these things. Perhaps she’d been working on improving upon her design. I didn’t voice my concern, but in the back of my head, I was kind of glad I’d passed this on.

  Who was to know how many of these Jahabich 2.0 existed? If so, maybe Colin wasn’t the only one who should’ve been worried about being paranoid.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The hours before dawn found us regrouping with the Templar, or at least their unsightly leader Bernadette. Though I wouldn’t have minded ditching them, we owed them one. Also, taking a steaming dump on one’s allies was more Alex’s modus operandi. Not exactly a person I cared to emulate.

  We compared notes and discovered that nothing much had changed in the interim hours. We still had no idea what our next steps were. And without that, there wasn’t much we could do except wait.

  I was the one who suggested we return to Brooklyn. Hanging around in a city where our presence wasn’t wanted didn’t strike me as appealing. If we were going to be banging our heads against the wall, it might as well be against familiar walls. We needed to come up with some plan of action quickly if we were to save Ed, and I had a feeling we’d all think more clearly in a place we knew. At the very least, I would.

  Bernadette declined to join us for now. Her knights had found renewed purpose in helping the citizens of Boston. Sure, New York was likely to be as big of a cluster fuck, but it hadn’t recently suffered three months of rule by a muscle-bound madman. Also, Manhattan was currently vampire-free. Despite Colin’s assurances to the contrary, Bernadette didn’t trust him. Hell must’ve frozen over, because we finally found something we could agree on.

  That said, she was still set on helping us. Fuck it. Crazed Bible thumpers they might be, but I’d take whatever I could get these days. Assuming they didn’t come to blows before then, we figured we could get in touch with her through the Boston complex since the Templar planned to make it well known to the vamps they were sticking around for a while.

  For a few moments, I worried Sheila might decide to stay with them. However, she merely gave Bernadette a hug and wished her well. I just barely suppressed a sigh of relief. I mean, I didn’t buy into this fate bullshit one way or the other, but the feeling that we were entering into the endgame wasn’t an easy one to shake. Besides, even though she didn’t need my protection, I felt better having her near. I’d already failed too many friends as it was.

  That just left the getting home part, which seemed easy enough. Christy had gotten some sleep, but, more importantly, her three coven sisters – Meg, Kelly, and Veronica – had as well. Seven months pregnant and with her boyfriend, my best bud Tom, currently inhabiting the body of a cheesy action figure ... well, that was bound to leave its mark on a person. But with three fresh witches around to amp up the mojo, it wouldn’t be an issue to zap us back to the Big Apple.

  At least until it was.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “I can’t help but notice we’re still standing in this alleyway.”

  “Brilliant observation as usual, Bill,” Sally replied.

  “Hold on.” Meg backed up and looked around. “One of you probably broke the circle.”

  “Nobody moved,” I said, double-checking that I hadn’t accidentally taken a step backward. For the amount of eldritch power we had at our disposal, they sure as hell had drawn a really fucking cramped magical circle.

  Don’t get me wrong, as the lone non-plastic male in our octet, I didn’t exactly mind having so much boobage pressed against me. Add some music, cheap liquor, and a couple of jays to pass around and this would have been my idea of a party.

  No, I corrected myself. This was not the time to let little Dr. Death take over. There was too much to do and too much at stake.

  “The circle is fine,” Kelly said, distracting me from thoughts of tits, wonderful tits.

  “Try it again,” Christy replied. “And this time, I’m joining hands, too.”

  “It’s okay, you know,” Meg countered. “We’ve got this. You can just relax.”

  “I wasn’t asking.” The tone of Christy’s voice was unmistakable. She was in charge of this coven and was asserting rank. Hell, I was tempted to grab her hand, too. Sheila had a commanding iconic presence when she wanted to, but I had little doubt Christy could have given her a run for her money.

  No further argument was put forth, unsurprisingly, although a tinny little voice from inside Christy’s handbag asked, “Are we there yet?”

  Being killed and subsequently resurrected in the body of a crappy action figure hadn’t done much to put my roommate Tom out of sorts. Regardless, it was still really fucking weird and definitely at the top of our list of things that needed to be fixed. Oddly enough, he wasn’t the only sentient object on her person. However, I wasn’t about to say Harry Decker’s name aloud and risk having to listen to the asshole.

  There came another brief flash of light, but it was muted – little more than a camera flash as opposed to the normal brilliance resulting from being blown into one’s base atoms and rearranged in a different location.

  Once it cleared, it was obvious that we'd again gone nowhere. “You guys out of frequen
t apparation miles or something?”

  Christy shot me a quick glare of annoyance before furrowing her brow and focusing elsewhere. I realized she was staring at Sheila. After a few seconds of this, Christy lifted her hands and turned her palms to face each other. An anemic ball of energy flared to life between them, little more than one might expect from a cheap sparkler on the Fourth of July. “Could you do me a favor and step out of the circle for a moment?”

  Sheila nodded and did as asked. Almost immediately, the faint spark of power sizzled and roared to life, becoming a crackling globe of energy that caused my hair to stand on end.

  “Holy shit. Even in a magic circle?” Kelly remarked.

  “It’s me, isn’t it?” Sheila asked. “I’m causing the problem.”

  Christy doused the ball of lightning. “Looks like it. That’s unexpected.”

  “What is?” I asked. “I mean, we know she has resistance to magic.”

  “Yes, that’s why we’re using a circle. It concentrates our energy, keeps it fully contained until we’re ready to let it go. I was pretty sure by doing it that way...”

  “See?” Kelly asked Sheila. “You’ve been beating yourself up all this time about abandoning them.”

  “Whoa there,” I interrupted. “What? Who said anything about abandoning anyone?”

  “I told you,” Kelly continued, ignoring me, “you were right where you were meant to be. Almost as if fate wanted you there helping us.”

  “Besides, it was more like she just ditched Bill,” Sally said before turning to Sheila. “I wouldn’t worry about it either way. If I were a betting girl, I’d happily wager that’s not the first time it’s happened to him.”

  I was about to reply with something pithy when Kelly’s words registered with me. Had things worked out how we’d planned it, it would have been a group effort to take down Vehron, with Sheila leading the charge ... the prophesied Freewill vs. Icon matchup to determine the fate of mankind.

  It hadn’t, though. In fact, things had worked out in such a way that she hadn’t even been present for that final fight. It had been Freewill against Freewill with only one left standing in the end.

  And now, here we were – the lone Freewill and the last Icon. The fate we’d been trying to avoid now stared us back in the face again. I didn’t want to believe it, but enough weird coincidence had occurred to even make me begin to wonder. Still, it seemed impossible. Sheila was my ... friend. Things were too fucking complicated for anything more, especially with Sally firing again on all cylinders – or most of them anyway.

  Regardless, we were on the same side. There was no reason for us to duke it out, and I just couldn’t see what might give us cause to fight to the death.

  Unless Dr. Death took over again, I considered.

  That was the six-hundred-pound gorilla in my room. If that happened, hell, I might gladly let her slice and dice me.

  There was also the other prophecy, the one that stated Sheila would be the end of the Magi. It was a big enough concern that Christy had sworn me to secrecy over the fact that the White Mother, a Christ-like figure to the Magi, was actually a psycho hose-beast who’d told the laws of nature to eat a dick before creating the Jahabich from the souls of the dead.

  The thing was, Sheila had forced me to swear that I’d kill her if she ever threatened Christy or, perhaps more importantly, Christy’s unborn baby.

  That was the kicker. Present-company excluded, most mages I’d met hadn’t exactly taken a shine to me. I wouldn’t shed many tears if I opened up the New York Times and saw a headline proclaiming that wizards and witches were being exterminated like bugs. But what if Sheila turned against Christy for some reason? And what if she threatened her baby?

  I couldn’t foresee that happening, but my life had taken plenty of unforeseen twists as of late. Too many for me to outright dismiss anything, no matter how absurd.

  Great! As if I didn’t already have enough piled on my plate.

  Home Again, Home Again

  Thankfully, I was able to push aside my rapidly darkening thoughts for the more immediate concern of how the fuck we were supposed to get home if we couldn’t teleport.

  Sheila was quick to volunteer to stay behind, make her own way back, but I ixnayed that and wasn’t about to back down this time.

  “No way. It’s bad enough the Templar are staying behind ... well, fine, that’s not really all that bad. I’m sure they’ll make fine company for Colin. But unless there’s a damn good reason, we stick together. All of us. That way, once we figure out what the hell we’re going to do to save Ed, we don’t have to play hide and seek wondering where everyone else is.”

  “Yes, but it makes more sense for you all to get back there and get to work...”

  “I don’t care if it makes all the goddamned sense in the world,” I said, interrupting her. “The world doesn’t make sense anymore, so what good is logic? Sorry, but I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

  I’d been so caught up in the sentiment, I hadn’t realized I’d stepped closer, well within her personal space in the cramped confines of the now-useless magic circle. What I’d meant was that we needed to watch each other’s backs, but from the slight blush in her cheeks, I got the impression I’d inadvertently conveyed more than intended.

  Either way, it was like time stopped for a moment as we locked eyes.

  It was just for a moment, though, for just then, Tom’s voice again came from Christy’s purse. “What if she needs to take a shit?”

  After we got home, I really needed to find some firecrackers to strap him to.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Once upon a time, the concept of grand theft auto was nothing more than a video game to me. However, since becoming one of the undead, I’ve had to develop an appreciation for occasionally bending the law. At this point, the concept of driving around in a stolen car was barely a blip on my moral outrage meter. Of far greater concern was making sure whatever we boosted had sufficiently tinted windows to withstand the rapidly approaching dawn.

  So it was that we found ourselves driving back to New York City in a couple of SUVs that Sally procured for us. Christy had handed Tom to me, then hopped into the other with her coven sisters. She wanted to discuss potential next steps with them. Left unsaid was probably wanting to discuss the issue of Calibra without Sheila overhearing. Oh well, at least she didn’t give us Decker’s skull, too. Otherwise, he’d have ended the day in a rest stop trashcan.

  During the drive, Sheila brought us up to speed on her journey to Boston with the witches and the Templar, including how they’d knocked Bernadette’s ass out with a sleep spell along the way. I didn’t know Christy’s new coven too well, but that immediately ratcheted them up several notches in my book.

  Seems they’d also had their fair share of freaky adventure on the way up. It was a somber reminder that, despite our victory, the world as a whole was still fucked. We’d only slowed its slide toward Armageddon a bit. There was a lot of work left to do before we could consider celebrating.

  Thankfully, it wasn’t only vampires who had an aversion to sunlight. While not a hard and fast rule, it seemed the supernatural allies of both the vampire nation and the Feet took a step back to recharge during daylight hours.

  The trip back was slow going, some parts of the road a bigger mess than mere asphalt patching could fix. However, that was the worst we encountered during the daytime portion of our drive. Though it remained to be seen what fate ultimately had in store for us, apparently it wasn’t so big a cock to not throw us a little bone for having just vanquished a big scary fucker with the surname The Destroyer.

  A part of me expected us to crest a rise and see nothing but a mushroom cloud where Brooklyn once stood, but thankfully that wasn’t the case. Despite feeling like I’d been gone for ages, it had only been a few days since James had called to tell us to bug out or be burned out, thankfully not enough time for things to completely go to...

&
nbsp; “Oh fuck!”

  “No thanks,” Sally murmured from her spot next to me in the back, engrossed in some vacuous women’s magazine.

  “What is it?” Sheila asked, glancing back from the driver’s seat.

  “Oh, nothing. Just the realization that we might be coming home to a pile of ashes.”

  “Shit,” Tom said from where he was propped up on the dashboard. “You don’t think they actually did it, do you? I mean, we left when they said to.”

  “Who knows? Never discount the Dracs’ ability to be spiteful assholes.”

  “What do you mean?” Sheila asked.

  “Sorry, I forgot you and Sally were out at the time ... and Sally was still out of her mind.”

  In response, she lowered her magazine to glare at me from the corner of her eye.

  “But that’s why I had to leave a note for you guys to find us at the Brooklyn safe house. We needed to get out or risk the place being burnt down around us.”

  “You gotta admit,” Sally said, “threats from people not known for their love of bluffing do have a habit of motivating folks to action.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Tom replied. “You were just squatting in the downstairs apartment. All of my stuff is at my place.”

  “Mine too,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah, but yours isn’t worth shit. I mean, fuck, Bill, what if they carried through with it? Do you know how much stuff I’ll lose? And it’s not like you fuckers ever went back to get my body...”

  “I’m sorry...”

  “...and all the stuff I stole.”

  “Or not so sorry.”

  “You could have at least grabbed those Star Wars figures off me, y’know, to honor my memory.”

  “Not sure how that would have helped you,” I countered. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law and, so far as I can tell, the only thing you’re currently possessing isn’t worth dick on eBay.”