The Last Coven (The Tome of Bill Book 8)

by Rick Gualtieri

  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...

  “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.”

  “Doesn’t mean we can’t try,” Sally offered.

  “You wouldn’t,” Tom replied.

  Sally, in response, merely gazed back at him.

  “Okay, maybe you would.”

  DID SOMEONE LEAVE THE OVEN ON?

  My worries about spending the night at the Brooklyn safe house, a dump if ever there was one, were fortunately for naught.

  As the afternoon grew late and the shadows began to lengthen enough so a vamp could venture outside, we finally turned onto our block. I was happy to see the normal row of apartment buildings loom over us. Though there were far more boarded up windows than we were used to seeing before the world turned to shit, the neighborhood otherwise looked as it always did. Even better, our building hadn’t been reduced to a pile of smoking rubble.

  Sadly, that didn’t mean it hadn’t been affected by our absence.

  “Motherfucker!”

  “What?” Tom asked. “They fucking burned it down, didn’t they? Oh, I am so sending the Draculas a bill when this is all over. Somebody turn my head so I can see what’s going on.”

  “Relax, the building is still there.”

  “It’s the door that isn’t,” Sheila added, pointing out the source of my annoyance.

  “Goddamn, people suck. You can’t even leave for a long weekend without some asshole deciding to help themselves to everything you own.”

  “We don’t know that’s the case.”

  “Oh yeah,” Sally scoffed. “I’m sure it was just a concerned neighbor deciding to check on you guys, make sure you were dead, that sort of thing.”

  The second car in our two-vehicle convoy pulled in behind us. If there was only one benefit to the impending apocalypse, it was that the parking situation in Brooklyn had improved dramatically. Of course, even if it hadn’t, it wasn’t like any of us would care much if we got towed. Heck, the only one of us who even owned a car...

  Shit! I let that thought trail off as I considered Ed. Wherever he was, it was a safe bet his situation made ours look like paradise in comparison. That was something to keep in mind.

  This homecoming was temporary at best. None of us could afford to get comfortable. There were too many lives at stake. Maybe it would be a good thing if we’d been cleaned out. It would give us cause to move more quickly in our efforts as opposed to letting the malaise of familiar surroundings sink in.

  Regardless, if the building had been emptied, there wasn’t much we could do about it. If the vandals were still around, though, well, they were in for the rudest homecoming party they could imagine.

  “Let’s go.” I made it all of two steps toward the door when the stench hit my overly sensitive vampire nostrils. “Ugh!”

  “What’s wrong?” Sheila asked from behind me. Whereas in the past I’d found myself envying her Icon powers, now I couldn’t help but be jealous of her human sense of smell. Ratcheted up senses weren’t always a blessing.

  “Smells like melted body fat,” Sally said casually.

  “Why would you even know that?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Serves them right for touching my shit,” Tom said.

  “Shut up or you’re going into my back pocket,” I warned my roommate as we crossed the threshold.

  I glanced back as the rest of our contingent approached. Two vamps, an Icon, and four witches. Unless a primal god had taken up residence here, anyone still inside would be in for a nasty surprise.

  Actually, it really wasn’t outside the realm of reality for a god to have done so. I mean, shit, hadn’t I already met at least one?

  “What’s the hold up?” Sally
complained from behind.

  “Just contemplating theology,” I replied before forcing myself to continue onward.

  * * *

  Once inside, the stench became more concentrated, like a pig roast gone insanely wrong. I took another breath, letting the unsavory aroma assault my olfactory receptors. “Smells like it’s coming from the basement.”

  “The basement?” Christy asked from near the rear of our lineup. “Damnit! Out of the way!”

  “Huh?” I barely had time to open my mouth before I was elbowed to the side. The hallways of our building were fairly narrow and Christy had bulked up just a wee bit in her current pregnant state. So I found myself pressed up against the wall as she shoved her way past me.

  “Where you going, babe?” Tom asked.

  “Hold up,” I said. “We don’t know if it’s safe or not.”

  A second later, Sheila pushed past me, too. “Don’t just stand there; let’s go.”

  Sally was hot on her heels, both of them hurrying after Christy. So much for caution. Oh well. With fingers crossed that some demon from the Abyss wasn’t waiting for us below, I made my way after them.

  The top of the stairs were dark, not that it was an issue for those of us with night vision. However, that changed as we made our way down. The door leading into the basement, normally kept locked, had been kicked in much like the front door.

  However, unlike the front entrance, shimmering light came from inside. That’s when I remembered the glowing energy ball Christy and her coven had set up in there to keep our power on while the rest of the grid suffered from increasingly common outages.

  Sally’s confirmation of what we were smelling, combined with that knowledge, gave me a sinking feeling in my gut. However, that was still more pleasant than the sinking feeling from my feet once I entered the basement and stepped in something with the consistency of pudding.

  Sheila voiced what I was certain all of us were thinking. “What the hell happened in here?”

  That was an understatement. At least five charred skeletons, maybe more – it was hard to tell – lay around the room. The bones had the consistency of a rack of ribs that had been sitting in a smoker all day. As for the rest, burned scraps of clothing lay here and there amidst the puddles of, well, what I assumed were the rest of them. Christy herself stood almost ankle deep in human soup as she studied the glowing ball of magic connected to our main breaker panel.

  “Holy fucking hell!” Kelly said from behind me as she and the other two witches joined us.

  “I’d say that about sums it up,” I replied before focusing on Christy again. “Any idea why this place looks like a scene out of Hellraiser?”

  “Good,” she murmured, seemingly more to herself than any of us. “It’s still salvageable.”

  I cleared my throat. “Seriously, what the fuck happened here?”

  She no more than glanced over her shoulder as if she had better things to worry about. “They messed with power beyond their understanding and paid the price. They’re lucky they didn’t vaporize the whole building.”

  “Yeah, about that. ‘Lucky’ isn’t quite the word I’d use.”

  She stepped past me as if I wasn’t there. “We have a lot to do, sisters. The prism needs to be stabilized if this is going to work. The rest of you should check the upstairs while we get started.”

  “I don’t suppose we could maybe mop down here first,” Kelly said from the doorway.

  “I’m pretty sure I’m gonna barf if we don’t,” the auburn-haired member of their coven, Veronica, added.

  Christy simply glared at them, a shimmer of red power crackling around her for just a moment.

  Neither of them moved until Meg stepped past them and squished over to Christy’s side. “You heard the lady. There’s work to be done if we don’t want to be reading by candlelight tonight.”

  “Or blown to bits,” Kelly added under her breath.

  * * *

  Unsurprisingly, Sheila wasn’t too happy at casually brushing off the deaths of nearly half a dozen people. Sure, they were probably scumbag looters, but being liquefied might have been a somewhat harsh punishment for their crime.

  Still, she seemed to realize that sticking around and arguing was pointless. That, or the gnarly smell was finally getting to her. We headed upstairs to check on our respective apartments while the witches worked their mojo ... and hopefully also took Kelly’s advice on mopping.

  Amazingly enough, the apartments were still locked up tight, necessitating me breaking into mine since I’d lost just about all of my possessions during the trip up north. It seemed our would-be burglars decided to start at the bottom and work their way up, much to their own detriment.

  I flipped on the light switch, then quickly turned it back off again after seeing how everything flickered. Though I couldn’t help but think it shouldn’t be her top priority, I still wished Christy well in fixing the glowing thingee.

  Alas, lights or not, the place felt disturbingly empty. My roommates had been with me last time I’d been inside. Though a cloud of impending doom hung over us, at least our number had been whole. Now, Ed was kidnapped for God-knows-what nefarious purpose, and Tom was dead.

  “Let’s check out my room and make sure everything is okay.”

  Dead, but not quite gone yet. A small miracle, but in the gloom of the apartment, it gave me hope. And so long as there was hope, we’d keep pushing forward.

  “I said to check things out, not touch anything. Hands off Cheetara!”

  Oh, fuck this noise. I laid out the ThunderCats figure on his dresser, then positioned Tom on top of it missionary-style.

  “Dude, the fuck? Hmm, actually, this is kinda hot.”

  I closed the door to Tom’s room behind me. Yeah, hope would keep us moving forward, but a little douchebag spite didn’t hurt either.

  DOWN TIME IN THE DUMPS

  Three days ... three fucking days!

  I slammed my fist onto the cheap countertop of our kitchen nook, cracking it down the middle. Hell, I was tempted to tear the entire fucking thing out and throw it across the room, security deposit be damned. Not like there was anyone around to refund it anyway.

  I steadied myself and took several deep breaths. When that didn’t calm me, I opened the top cabinet, grabbed the bottle of Jose Cuervo sitting in it, and poured myself a shot – a Sasquatch-sized one.

  This wasn’t the first time I’d almost flown off the handle since arriving back home, and that had me worried.

  A part of me was convinced it was just the stress of waiting, but I wasn’t sure I believed that. Dr. Death had been silent in my head ever since I tried blowing myself up in a bid to rid the world of Vehron. That act had somehow shut him up and resulted in the nice – if minor – perk of not needing to wear my glasses to see. I was hoping that last part was permanent but was still paranoid enough to carry them in my back pocket just in case I went all nearsighted again at the worst possible moment.

  The thing was, what if my fraying temper was also a side effect? What if this wasn’t frustration, but his essence oozing into the pores of my subconscious? He hadn’t been able to win by browbeating me. What if he was trying something more subtle?

  What would that mean for me? For my friends? For any innocents who happened to be around if I finally lost it and went batshit vampire insane?

  * * *

  The days were toughest for us. The witches had sequestered themselves in the basement. I assumed they were hard at work reverse-engineering the ancient spell we hoped to use against the Jahabich and a few other folks. At the very least, the smell of human bacon had dissipated from the place. But beyond that, I was mostly left in the dark.

  Hell, Christy had even retrieved Tom to be with her, leaving me alone in my apartment with nothing but my thoughts. At least the lights had stopped flickering, meaning I could amuse myself with some single player video games, but they served as little more than a temporary distraction. Also, I lost one hard fought level at the l
ast second and almost pounded my desktop into mush. Damn thing was liquid cooled and had cost me over a grand.

  The nights weren’t an issue, though.

  Sheila apparently liked being cooped up as much as I did, despite having the freedom to go out during the day. She’d suggested the three of us – she, myself, and Sally – start patrolling together at night, not entirely different from what we’d done up in Boston ... albeit hopefully more competently.

  Sally had demurred. I’d hoped she’d bounce back quickly once her memories had returned, and at first that seemed to be the case. However, the more time that passed, the more withdrawn she seemed to become. I also saw the way the fire went out of her eyes whenever I mentioned Starlight. I got the impression – between Alex mind-raping her and that – she was barely holding it together.

  Though she kept her thoughts close to the vest, I knew from experience when someone was busy overanalyzing things and beating themselves up over it. Unfortunately, despite my entreaties to the contrary, she didn’t appear to want to talk about it.

  So that left the two of us – Icon and Freewill – to team up as a dynamic duo of sorts. Manhattan was currently devoid of vampires, but that didn’t mean shit these days. It was a big city, full of tasty people, and there were plenty of things more than happy to treat it as an all-you-can eat buffet.

  We’d taken to patrolling the seedier areas, places where the power was out and where the red and blue flashers of the police didn’t seem to have a presence. For two nights we’d done so, and it hadn’t been boring in the least. Monsters, both human and otherwise, turned out to be not so hard to find. Sadly, their victims were plentiful, too.

  But that’s also where my salvation lay. Though neither of us talked about it, the irreparably wounded or very recently deceased could still help us. With bagged blood no longer in ample supply, we couldn’t afford to risk the two vamps in the house getting peckish.