Shining Fury: from the Tome of Bill Series

by Rick Gualtieri

  “It’s cool,” Kelly replied nonchalantly, adjusting her glasses as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.

  Glancing at Veronica, I doubted she echoed her friend’s easygoing sentiment. “So how long will she sleep?” I asked, hoping I sounded more conversational than confrontational.

  “About six hours, give or take.”

  “Unless we wake her up sooner,” Veronica hastily added. She was the youngest of the trio, barely out of her teens, and seemingly the easiest spooked.

  “Regardless, she’ll wake up feeling nice and rested,” Kelly continued. “Who knows? Maybe she’ll even chill out a bit.”

  “Doubt it,” Meg groused from her place behind the wheel of the SUV.

  I found it hard to argue with her.

  Before falling asleep, I’d found myself gritting my teeth as every time someone had said something, no matter how innocuous, Bernadette would offer some unhelpful advice as to how damned everyone was. Hell, ten minutes into the drive, Veronica had offered up her iPod in case we wanted something to listen to, only for Bernadette to shoot her and her devil music down.

  I’d resigned myself to another uncomfortably silent drive, having already suffered through one the previous day when I’d ridden to upstate New York with Bernadette and Bill’s amnesiac friend Sally. The tension had been so thick during it that one could have cut it with a sword.

  “So are we cool?” Meg asked, pulling me from my reverie.

  I thought about it for a moment, glanced back at Bernadette’s slumbering form, and smiled. “Yeah. I think we are.”

  “So no more fireworks?”

  “Promise.”

  “Good, because the headlights on this thing are shitty enough. I can barely see the road as it is.”

  I was about to offer my apologies for lashing out in my sleep when the driver’s side door flew open and a sword was pointed at Meg’s face.

  I’d momentarily forgotten about our Templar escorts, but they definitely hadn’t forgotten about us.

  CHAPTER 3

  “You could have just knocked.”

  “Speak not to me, witch,” the Templar, a knight by the name of Vincent, spat.

  I struggled to keep myself from rolling my eyes, a nasty habit I seemed to have picked up from a week of rooming with Sally. The Templar were well-trained, devout, and dedicated, but most of them had even less tact than the creatures they claimed to be protecting the world from.

  “Are you all right, Blessed One?” He leaned down a bit so as to peer into the car.

  “I’m fine, Vincent. You can lower your weapon.”

  “We saw flashes of light coming from within. We feared they were bewitching you.”

  The “we” caught my attention, and I glanced past him. Sure enough, about half a dozen of the Templar had the car surrounded. A few brandished swords, but just as many pointed guns at us. Though the firearms weren’t meant for me, a small trickle of unease wormed its way into my gut nevertheless. I tried to fool myself into thinking it was worry over my traveling companions – witches to be sure, but ones friendly to our cause. Deep down, I didn’t buy it, though.

  My mind briefly raced back to a moment about half a year ago, and I once again found myself staring down the barrel of the monstrous handgun a split second before blinding pain erased all other sensation.

  I willed my voice to be steady. “Lower your weapons, all of you.” The Templar misguidedly revered me as a heaven-sent warrior of God. It wasn’t an argument I cared to dispute at that moment, nor one I thought I would win. Besides, it wouldn’t be wise to risk their belief in me considering what lay ahead of us on this road.

  Vincent hesitated, and Meg gritted her teeth. We were maybe seconds away from her doing something that almost certainly wouldn’t help our fragile alliance.

  “You know I can’t be bewitched,” I said to him, allowing an ease I didn’t feel into my tone. “They’re no threat to me.”

  Meg turned my way, her eyes narrowing. I could only hope she understood that I was trying to diffuse the situation, not belittle her or her friends.

  “It was my fault,” Kelly said, speaking up from the back.

  Huh? The three of us, Vincent included, turned toward her.

  “I’ve never seen an Icon in action before. I was curious, so I asked if she could give us a little demonstration.”

  Meg and I locked eyes for a moment. There was no way Vincent was falling for such a lame...

  “The Blessed One’s power is not a plaything for your amusement, witch.”

  “I know.” Kelly leaned forward, her bare tattooed arms resting on the back of Meg’s seat. “It was stupid, but I was curious.” Her tone took on a playful quality. “C’mon, haven’t you ever been curious about anything before?”

  Vincent appeared taken aback by the question, or maybe it was the way it had been asked. Rather than answer her, he turned to me. “Does the witch speak true?”

  “My name is Kelly, not witch.”

  A look of annoyance crossed his face. “Does Kelly speak true?”

  “Yes. We were just messing around. It wasn’t anything serious. Heck, Sister Bernadette slept through the whole thing.”

  Vincent glanced past Meg toward the backseat again. Thankfully, there wasn’t any question of whether Bernadette was catching some shuteye. Her snoring was so loud as to almost make one think the engine was still running.

  Finally, after what seemed a near-eternity, he turned and signaled the others. One by one, they stood down and returned to their vehicles. That had been too close, and all because of a stupid nightmare.

  “Be wary, Blessed One.”

  “What?” I turned back to find Vincent still there.

  He lowered his voice to a bare whisper. “They might be testing the limits of your powers.”

  “You do realize we can all hear you, right?” Meg blurted irritably.

  “It’s quite fine, Vincent,” I quickly said, not wanting us to go right back to where we started. “I’ll be wary. I promise.”

  That seemed to mollify him. Thankfully, Meg kept her cool long enough for him to walk back to his vehicle.

  “God, what smug assholes,” she finally spat.

  “Oh, just start the car and get us back on the road,” Kelly chided from the backseat. “Otherwise they’re just going to come back and give us the Spanish Inquisition routine again.”

  “I don’t see how you can be this calm,” Meg replied, obviously still upset. She started the car and put it into drive. “That dickhead pretty much dismissed us like we weren’t even here.”

  “It wasn’t that bad. And also, he was kinda cute.”

  I spun around in my seat to stare at her as Meg replied, “You did not just say that.”

  “What? He was.” She turned to me. “Back me up here.”

  “I guess so,” I replied. The truth was, I’d been a bit too preoccupied with the situation to bother noticing.

  “I didn’t know you went for the Bible-thumping types,” Meg remarked.

  “Shows what you know. I dated a nice Catholic boy once. Sure, they flap their tongues a lot, but that just means they have lots of stamina when you put them to use in better ways.”

  CHAPTER 4

  As the miles continued to drift by, I found myself increasingly comfortable with my newfound traveling companions. The banter between us was surprisingly light, albeit slightly more on the X-rated side than I was used to. When it came to conversation, Kelly seemed to have more in common with Sally than her mentor Christy. She regaled us with tale after tale of the things she and her ex would do in private ... and sometimes public.

  Though I wasn’t about to admit it, I found myself a bit jealous. My last boyfriend, Robert, had been a good man. Hell, he’d taken me in when I’d been aimless, unable to think much further ahead than wondering when next I’d see a vampire hit squad gunning for me. To say that he was a bit ... bland when it came to our love life, though, was being kind. The final few months of our relati
onship had consisted of him drifting off to sleep with barely an acknowledgment of me by his side. Fortunately, by then I’d acquired my night “job,” sneaking out with my recently returned sword and patrolling the streets of Rochester for things that went bump in the night in an entirely different way.

  In the end that hadn’t worked out so well for me, I mused, just as Veronica asked if we could change the subject to something that didn’t involve indecent exposure.

  “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” Kelly replied, the grin apparent from her tone of voice.

  “You are such a ho,” Meg said with no real rancor.

  “Carpe diem, I say.”

  “Stop pushing her into me,” Veronica complained, shuffling around in the backseat.

  “She’s been drooling on my shoulder for the last ten minutes. It’s your turn.”

  I turned to find the two witches shoving Bernadette’s sleeping form between them. Bernadette, for her part, seemed oblivious to the manhandling.

  “Don’t make me climb back there,” I said, the jest escaping my lips before I even realized it.

  “Yeah,” Meg replied, “ass paddlings in the name of Jesus are the worst kind.”

  “Jeez, Meg!” Veronica gasped.

  I was about to ask what she meant, when Meg turned to me from the driver’s seat. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to say that.”

  “Say what?”

  “The J-word.”

  “Jesus?”

  “Yeah, I know you guys are a bit sensitive to those things.”

  “You guys?”

  “You know. You and...” She hooked a thumb in Bernadette’s direction.

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “I brought them with me because they can help us, but I’m not one of them.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  “Seriously?” Kelly asked.

  “Yes, seriously. I’ve actually been enjoying the ride a lot more ever since you knocked her out.”

  “No shit?” Meg asked, her eyes betraying a hint of surprise.

  “I don’t subscribe to their beliefs, no matter what they might say to the contrary. Heck, don’t tell her I said this, but I was raised Methodist. We went to church maybe once a month at that.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  My confession elicited another round of laughter in the car. It’s amazing how something so small could put me at ease. I hadn’t known what to expect when I learned that Christy had formed a new coven. Though she had been accepting of what I was, eventually anyway, her former mentor Harry Decker had turned out to be nearly psychotically obsessed with destroying me. I’d since learned the reason why. I, or someone with my powers at least, was prophesized to somehow destroy all witches and wizards alike.

  Even had I wanted to, I had no clue how to accomplish all of that by myself. But no matter how improbable it sounded, apparently a good deal of the Magi, as they called themselves, took it dead seriously.

  I debated saying anything about it, not wanting to spoil the mood, but I couldn’t help myself. “Thanks.”

  “What for?” Meg asked.

  “For not making me feel like a pariah.”

  She glanced at me sidelong for a moment, as if wondering what I was talking about. “Christy said you were cool. I trust her judgment of character.”

  “I know, but still, she’s not here now. You had no way of knowing.”

  “You don’t look like a killer to me,” Kelly said.

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” I replied somberly, but then quickly lightened my tone. “For instance, you don’t look like the type who enjoys defiling choir boys.”

  “I beg to differ,” Veronica said with a chuckle.

  “Bite my ass, V,” Kelly said before addressing me again. “I have a bit of talent as an empath, for real, and I just don’t get that vibe from you. Also, most of this prophecy bullshit sounds pretty out there to me. I really don’t buy into the whole cult mindset when it comes to these things.”

  Veronica chimed in with agreement, while Meg elicited a grunt that I took as similar assent.

  “I thought it was a pretty common belief in the ... witch community.”

  “It might be,” Meg replied, “for those who have drunk the Kool-Aid anyway. Personally, I’m still processing it all. I mean, up until a year ago, I’d never even heard about any of it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I knew I could do things that other people couldn’t. Made life much easier when it came to doing chores on the farm, but I mostly kept it to myself. I heard my grandmother had the gift, too, but she died before I was born.”

  “Then how…”

  “Google. One day I decided to see if there was anyone else out there like me. Joined a few chat rooms, mostly filled with delusional wannabes.”

  “I met Christy on Tumblr,” Veronica added. “She reached out to me after I commented on a post.”

  “Same,” Kelly said.

  “Wait, so you’re all fairly new to this?”

  “Yep,” Meg said. “Well, Christy obviously isn’t. Neither is Liz. They’re both lifers.”

  “Who’s Liz?”

  “She’s the fifth member of our coven.”

  “Fifth? Where is she? Is she...?”

  “We don’t know,” Veronica replied. “She didn’t show up when Christy gathered us so she could tell her side of what happened with the Grand Mentor.”

  I’d only caught pieces of that, as I’d been sort of busy being manhandled by vampire thugs at the time. However, from what I’d heard, Christy had turned on her old coven for the sake of her fiancé Tom … inadvertently helping me in the process.

  “She’s probably fine, guys,” Meg said reassuringly, dropping her gruff attitude. “Liz is an old school witch,” she continued, turning toward me. “Raised in the system like Christy, firmly indoctrinated in their beliefs, the works. “

  Kelly leaned forward. “Yeah, she used to be in another coven, but the mentor there started to get all skeevy with her, requesting one-on-one skyclad meditation sessions.” She held up her fingers in air quotes to get the point across. “That’s how she ended up with us.”

  “Yeah,” Meg continued, “she was also the main reason we left Brooklyn after the Grand Mentor showed up at our doorstep. I personally thought the guy was a creep, but she took his story at face value and insisted we had to shun Christy.”

  “Sucked too,” Kelly said. “I liked living there. It was rent free, and there was a good pizza place right down the block.”

  Christy had mentioned that to me. While I was living up in Rochester following my incident with Remington, her sisters had moved into Bill and Ed’s building to help out. Next time I saw Bill, I’d have to tease him about the revolving door of women in his place.

  That was, assuming we were still in a place where I could tease him about such things. I wasn’t sure about that.

  Depressing myself wasn’t exactly helping things, though. “Thanks, by the way, for that energy ball thing you guys set up in the basement.”

  “You saw it?” Veronica asked giddily.

  “How did the self-sustaining spirit sphere hold up?” Kelly added.

  “It’s not called that, and you know it,” Meg chided.

  “Yeah, well, what it’s called is stupid. I like my name better.”

  “It was working great,” I cut in. “Maybe too great. We were the only building on the block with continual power. We had to put sheets over the windows at night to keep the neighbors from asking questions.”

  “That was my first real spell,” Veronica explained. “I mean, the first time I’d ever done any major extra-dimensional magic. What a trip.”

  “Yeah, well don’t get used to it,” Meg replied. “Took all five of us to do that one, and I have a feeling Liz isn’t coming back. Pity, too. The prism was a lot more efficient than the generators I had running the farm.”

  “And sounds like it didn’t vaporize the apartment building either. Looks like you
owe me ten bucks,” Kelly said triumphantly.

  “I was hoping you’d forget that.”

  “No chance.”

  I was sorely tempted to question them further on that, when fate had other plans.

  One moment we were talking, and the next I was lurching forward, the seatbelt digging painfully into me, as Meg slammed on the brakes. “What the hell?!” she cried.

  Unfortunately, my powers picked that moment to flare to life again, blotting out anything save the white glow of faith.

  CHAPTER 5

  Thankfully, I was wide awake this time, in control of my faculties, and was able to rein things in quickly following the surprise.

  The sudden stop knocked the breath out of me a bit, but it was a lot better than crashing through the windshield.

  Meg, to her credit, was already on the move, digging through her handbag and pulling out the high-powered walkie-talkie the Templar had supplied for the trip. Cell coverage was spotty at best these days, so the walkies were to maintain contact in case any of the cars in our caravan fell behind or, in this instance, spotted anything noteworthy.

  The blinding light of my power contained, all that remained were the headlight beams of our car and the darkness beyond. It was just enough to see the cow being carried across the road, its hooves a foot above the pavement, and its sides bleeding freely from the two impossibly large claws holding it.

  Needless to say, I couldn’t blame Meg for thinking this might fit the definition of noteworthy.

  “Is anyone else seeing this?” she asked into the device.

  I wasn’t even sure what we were seeing. I caught a momentary glance of a wing – leathery and bat-like, but larger than any bat that had ever existed – and then it was gone from our field of vision, the tortured cries of the cow becoming fainter as it was carried away somewhere off to the left of the dark roadway.

  “Was that a freaking dragon?” Veronica asked.

  “Not big enough. More likely a Wyvern,” Kelly said, her voice far more calm than her friend’s.