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

by Rick Gualtieri

  “Bill’s right,” Sheila said, all eyes turning toward her. “It would be chaos. An army of super powered beings unleashed against the world without any checks against them. No sun, no masters to order them back into the shadows. Lots of people would die.”

  “Lots of people are dying right now,” Sally responded.

  “That's not all,” I said, hating myself a bit for doing so. “History has proven what happens when you have one group with more influence or power than another.”

  “An underclass,” Kelly said. “Humanity would be relegated to a sub species – second class citizens.”

  “Or slaves,” Sheila added.

  “I can’t believe we’re fucking arguing this,” Sally spat.

  “I am forced to concur with the ... with Sally,” Gan said, showing a rare display of tact. “Albeit, perhaps for different reasons.”

  “I kind of figured it was too good to be true,” Sally replied.

  “Compulsion has always been abused by the First and their delegates. It has led us to where we are today, why so many under The Destroyer’s rule chose to stay there willingly.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. This was the nutcase who’d ordered her men to commit seppuku for the barest of offenses, and she was preaching how much of a crutch compulsion was to the Dracs?

  Gan turned to me, almost as if reading my mind – a concept I found ever so slightly creepifying. “My father taught me to use compulsion as a tool, a weapon if need be. However, it was to be used sparingly for control. My people are raised to know what it is to be loyal.”

  “Loyal?” Why didn’t it surprise me that Gan, of all people, didn’t quite see that supernatural compulsion and good old-fashioned brainwashing were the same fucking thing? Her method might be slightly less icky in the long run, but it still involved a lifetime of people being put in their place by those who thought themselves their betters. I was about to point this out, but Sally was quicker on the draw.

  “Good. Never thought I’d be saying this, but we’re in agreement on this one.” She glanced my way. “We can discuss boring shit like ethics later. For now, we have two devils, neither of which is really the lesser of evils. They need to be dealt with and I want to be the first recruit in this new army.”

  Gan nodded. “Yes, we are in agreement. Alas, while this is a fascinating discussion, it is all elementary at best. The answer is no.”

  Sally stood up, grabbed the table she was sitting at with Sheila and Kelly, and flipped it over. As loud as the resulting crash was, though, her voice was louder. “What?!”

  Holy crap. I’d never guessed Gan to side with the logic that humans shouldn’t be enslaved, especially since she had designs to enslave them. Before I could say anything, however, she held up a placating hand.

  “It is not because I am unwilling,” she said slowly. “It is because I cannot. Whatever the process was that changed me, it has rendered me a mule, infertile. In short, I can no longer turn anyone into one of us.”

  Two Mules for Sister Sheila

  “Wait, you can’t turn anyone? How do you know?”

  “Is it not obvious, my love? All that we are discussing now, I realized it prior to coming here.”

  “You tried it, didn’t you?”

  “Of course. Many times, against both cattle and our kind.”

  “What happened?”

  “The humans bled out. The vampires healed as they normally would. Alas, I am slightly embarrassed to admit that the effect of ingesting our blood has not changed for whatever it is I have become.”

  The thought of Gan locked in a bathroom, puking her guts out, was enough to give me cheerful pause for a moment.

  That gave Sally a chance to jump back in and she wasn’t happy. “Why the fuck did you let me get my hopes up, then? Why didn’t you fucking say so earlier?”

  “It was neither my intention nor concern to affect anyone’s expectations. As for your latter question, I believe you were the ones interrogating me. So why did you not think to ask?”

  I stepped between them before Sally could do something she might regret, almost losing my footing in a puddle of syrup in the process. Ugh, that was gonna be a pain to mop up later. “But Ed...”

  “Is capable of spreading this new strain, yes. In doing so, however, he renders a host such as myself incapable of siring.”

  “What about that thrall he turned?” Kelly asked.

  “I do not know. His lifespan was tragically cut short before he was given the chance to procreate.” Gan’s eyes glittered, telling me she was once again attempting a joke. Thankfully, this one wasn’t nearly so close to being disastrous as her last. Who knows? Maybe she was learning.

  “That’s a potential X-factor,” Meg said.

  “Yep,” I replied. “But we can’t worry about what we don’t know. Think about it, though. Maybe this is a good thing for us.” Hope started to form in the pit of my stomach. Premature, definitely, but from what I was hearing, maybe we weren’t as late to the saving Ed party as I’d first thought. “Whatever Ed is, he’s important to Ib and, honestly, I think I know why.”

  “Sunlight,” Sally replied as if it were obvious.

  “Yeah. An army of day-walkers changes the game, but the process isn’t quite perfect. The whole compulsion thing, and now this. Calibra might be willing to create some more day-walking minions to go forth and wreak havoc, but until she can figure out a way past the limitations, she isn't going to sign up for the treatment herself. It would make no sense. Sure, she could take in a day at the beach, but she’d be incapable of controlling other vamps as well as making sparkly new day vamps.”

  “Day vamps,” Tom said. “We should call them Damps. No, wait. Sunlight vamps, or sumps.”

  I ignored him. “If she did that, it would be one big step forward, but at least two steps back. What would that leave her as?”

  Christy turned to me and looked as if she was about to say something, but then glanced sidelong at Sheila and stopped herself.

  It took me a moment, focused as I was on the new information we had, but then I remembered. Fuck! Everyone in the room was up to speed, except for Sheila. We’d purposely kept her in the dark about the fact that Calibra was not only the first vampire, but was also known in the mage community as Kala the White ... pretty much the real life equivalent of Merlin.

  By Christy’s reckoning, discovering that the vamps and Magi shared a common great-great grandma, one responsible for all sorts of nasty little acts throughout history, might be the catalyst that finally turned Sheila against them.

  I didn’t buy it, but arguing with a powerful witch who was both hormonal and grieving had seemed a one-way ticket to Hurtsville to me, a place I vacationed at far more than I really wanted to.

  The problem was twofold. One, we all felt this was the endgame. Two, I’d seen enough B-movies to know that the best way to walk right into your bad ending was to do everything you could to avoid it. Keeping Sheila in the dark could just as easily backfire against us as anything else.

  I tried to convey as much with my eyes, which I’m sure amounted to making me look like a fucking moron. A wordless battle of wills ensued between us. A subtle plea from me, an even more subtle shake of the head from her.

  “You do realize, beloved, that your silent conversation with the witch is painfully obvious.”

  Fucking A!

  Christy’s eyes narrowed. Despite not saying anything, I’d pretty much spilled the beans that something needed to be said. There’s a reason my mom stopped telling me what she’d gotten my dad for his birthday by the time I was five.

  Oh, fuck it all. I was right in this case. Tom might have had his balls in her pocketbook, at least when he still had them, but it was time I extracted mine and screwed them back on. “We can’t have any more secrets.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tom replied. “I’m sure everyone here already knows you’re gay.”

  Gan turned to me. “I am glad to k
now my presence lightens your heart so.”

  Goddamn, I was surrounded by fucking morons.

  “That’s enough,” Christy said quietly to her fiancé turned action figure. “You’re probably right, Bill. I just...” Her hands went to her stomach.

  “I know, but I promise you nobody here wants that to happen.”

  Christy’s eyes met mine and in them I saw hope, but then – for just one moment – they hardened and I remembered what she’d said before we’d left to confront Vehron.

  “I would kill every vampire, every Icon, every single decent person on this planet if it meant saving my baby.”

  She’d meant it, too. I just had to make sure it didn’t come down to that.

  “You want to do the honors?” she finally asked with a sigh.

  “It’s yours to tell,” I said.

  She nodded knowingly and turned to Sheila, who wore an expectant look upon her face. “Calibra ... Ib isn’t just the first vampire. It’s not nearly that simple.”

  “She’s also Kala the White,” Sheila replied without missing a beat. “Your law giver, if I recall correctly.”

  Holy shit! She’d figured it out? Someone remind me never to play a game of Clue with her. Judging by the wide eyes in the room, there were more than a few of our number surprised by this. Mind you, Gan did not appear to be one of them, little fucking know-it-all.

  Christy appeared completely taken aback by this, but she quickly composed herself and replied, “She’s more than just our law giver. She’s the progenitor of the entire Magi way of belief. She’s considered the first to have truly mastered the subtleties of magic. Everything we respect about life, nature, the balance of power...”

  “Is all bullshit,” Meg added bitterly, “since this bitch is apparently a total fucking psycho.”

  Christy glared at her for a moment but then nodded. “Unfortunately, that’s true as well. Our entire existence is built upon a lie. The number one tenet all covened Magi are instilled with is that there are some lines that are not to be crossed. The circle of life is sacred.” She turned and glanced sadly at Tom.

  “Should I be singing Hakuna Matata?” he replied, blissfully clueless as always.

  “No, dear,” she replied with a small smile before turning back to Sheila. “Kala the White, for all of her sins as Ib, is also the creator of the Jahabich. She is the one who brought them forth. She found a way to capture the souls of her defeated enemies and enslave them in stone.”

  “Using The Source?” Sheila asked, one eyebrow raising.

  “Okay, now this is getting spooky,” I said.

  “When?” Sally simply asked.

  I turned to her. “When what?”

  “Back in Boston,” Sheila replied. “When you were all down in the ruins digging through the rubble.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “She was eavesdropping, genius,” Sally said with an eye-roll.

  Oh. Well, that kind of explained it. I’d gotten so used to doing it with my enhanced hearing, I sometimes forgot all you had to do was sneak close enough and keep quiet.

  For a moment, Christy looked as if she was teetering on outrage, but then – quite suddenly – she started to laugh. I glanced at Sally, who shrugged. Even Christy’s sisters seemed to be wondering if their leader had gone off the deep end.

  “You okay there?” I finally asked.

  “Yes,” she replied, getting herself under control. “I just needed an outlet and these days, it’s either laugh or cry.”

  “Glad it was the former.”

  “Me too.” She turned to Sheila. “It’s just that I was all set to scream out ‘how dare you?’ when I realized the utter ridiculousness of it. Not only was I keeping secrets from you, someone who I should trust, but I can’t even say I’ve never tried to scry on anyone here.” She then looked at me. “And with your hearing...”

  “Hey, you’ll notice I’m not casting any first stones,” I replied.

  “I can’t help it if I hear well and everyone else talks loud.” Sally’s voice was nonchalant, but there was a grin upon her face.

  “I really am sorry,” Christy said. “I panicked when I found out about Calibra’s true identity. All I could think about were the ramifications that would have among my people, among our position as a neutral party in this war, and...”

  “And how I might think that one bad apple might mean the rest of the bunch was rotten and in need of pruning?” Sheila offered.

  “Something like that.”

  “We shouldn’t be held accountable for the sins of our forefathers, especially that far removed. While some of my former associates might prefer to think of the world in terms of black and white, I’m lucky enough to have had my eyes opened.” She glanced my way for just a moment, so quickly I wouldn’t have noticed had I so much as coughed. “Whoever she was or is, she’s not you. I know that, and I would never hold you accountable for what she’s done. And if anything ever did happen where I got possessed or somehow turned against you, I wouldn’t hold it against anyone here if they did what needed to be done to stop me.”

  This time, she glanced my way and held my gaze, forcing me to remember the promise I’d made to her months back – that if she ever endangered Christy’s child, I’d take her down. The unspoken implication was that she’d do the same if I ever went rogue.

  My hope was that neither of us would ever need to call the other on their promise. Problem was, with all the chips falling into place and us seemingly being pulled by destiny, I had to pray it wasn’t a hope that would prove to be futile.

  Of Fists and Feet

  Much hugging and such ensued.

  With Gan in the room, that meant I had to be very nimble and ensure there was always a warm body between us at any given time. Not the easiest thing to do with someone as swift as she.

  Sadly, despite the full stomachs and having the air cleared a bit, there was still a shadow hanging over us all. There were friends to be saved and, despite the revelations of the past few hours, we were still back to square one on how to find them.

  The Source, the giant pool of Jahabich spooge, was somewhere far underground. It was both the home and former prison of the rock-encrusted fuckers. We’d originally thought it was located somewhere beneath Las Vegas, but Christy explained our folly. Vegas happened to reside over a fairly major ley line, basically the equivalent of a Magi power grid. It’s why so many mages flocked there and, in general, why the place was so fucking quirky.

  She’d done a little research into the legends surrounding the area and found that the Native Americans of the region seemed to be familiar with the Jahabich or creatures like them. That and the presence of the ley line suggested that perhaps the prison walls were thin there, creating a natural portal to allow both the occasional escapee and give Calibra a convenient spot to stage a full-on prison break.

  Made about as much fucking sense to me as anything.

  Unfortunately, Sally and me had pretty much blown the shit out of the entrance, thinking we were sealing the Jahabich in for good. Doing so had brought down the cave, and – as Christy explained – almost certainly disrupted the magic within it. Same apparently with the tunnel Calibra had used to escape from the Boston complex.

  This wasn’t an issue for Calibra, Christy surmised. She’d tapped into The Source to create the Jahabich. She was in tune with it. Opening a new way there would probably be as easy for her as using a GPS would be for the rest of us. Sadly, she was the only one with this particular address.

  Knowing how it probably worked was one thing, but it didn’t really give us anything even remotely close to a lead. Calibra was magically masking her presence. Even if she hadn’t been, The Source was considered nothing more than a legend by the Magi. If it was so easy to trace back, then surely others would have done so many times in the past.

  After realizing we were banging our heads against the proverbial wall, Christy and her sisters excused themselves to head b
ack to the basement, taking Tom with them. I could only hope that whatever they were doing down there would provide us with a lead soon.

  After the witches left, Sally decided to go back to bed, although I had a feeling it was just an excuse to not hang out with Gan longer than necessary. She’d rapidly lost interest in the little psycho after Gan revealed she couldn’t transfer her new abilities.

  Sheila said that since she was up, she might as well stay up. She stuck around to help me clean up the place, which was cool since Gan didn’t seem overly inclined to do much more than gaze at me creepily.

  I think she’d meant to help with the mess left from breakfast, but once we got started, Sheila began wrinkling her nose at pretty much every corner of my place. Despite the end of the world looming nigh, we spent a good chunk of the morning and afternoon spring cleaning.

  Once that was done and Gan declared my apartment less offensive than normal, Sheila wanted me to come clean in a different way, namely the full story of what happened during my sojourn in Jahabich central. I figured it couldn’t hurt. Between her and Gan, one of them might have some insight the rest of us had missed. Worst case, everyone in our merry group would be up to speed.

  I told about how Ed had been kidnapped by the Jahabich and our journey to rescue him. I mentioned our capture – perhaps making my stand against our foes sound a bit more robust than it had been. Sadly, that only seemed to excite Gan more, so I immediately toned it back down and told the rest in as business-like of a manner as I could.

  “All of those prisoners,” Sheila said, rubbing her arms, “condemned to a fate worse than death.”

  “Some of them got away when we did. As for the rest, it’s hard to say. I mean, I wasn’t about to volunteer for that shit, but Mark, Sally’s ex, seemed to be pretty okay with his newfound rocky outlook on life, and I didn’t get the impression it was because of mind control.”

  “I got a similar feeling from the one I ran into up in Boston, at least while she was in her human form.”

  I thought back to Starlight. I couldn’t shake the feeling there had been some of her talking to me despite being one of them, that parts of what she’d said were genuine. “Seems like maybe they have a modicum of freedom in their original forms. It’s definitely limited, though, almost like they’re on a timer to revert back and rejoin the hive mind. Say, are you okay?”