The Last Coven (The Tome of Bill Book 8)

by Rick Gualtieri

  We padded the litter with more moss, then lifted her as gently as we could onto it. Tom and I grabbed hold on either side and began to pull it while Sally stayed in the rear to make sure Sheila was okay and didn’t fall off.

  That would have been the height of incompetence – to find a doctor, only to look back and realized we lost the patient somewhere miles behind us.

  * * *

  By unspoken consent, we tabled the purpose of why we’d come looking for Grulg until a more opportune moment arose. Tom tried to bring it up a few times, but Sally kept changing the subject – or pelting him in the back of the head with acorns – until he finally got the hint. The Sasquatch army’s new allies had turned out to be an unexpected complication to our plan of tracking down and killing the person who just so happened to be their patron saint.

  Nothing could be straightforward and easy, could it?

  As we marched along, we began to see signs of civilization – utterly destroyed civilization, that is. Broken asphalt, billboards covered in vegetation, completely overgrown brownstones. Eventually, the shadows loomed long around us, and it wasn’t just the trees. The buildings became denser, all of them looking like a scene from some post-apocalyptic movie set hundreds of years in the future. The Feet had gone all out with their magic on this one.

  We saw no people, although at this point we knew enough about Sasquatch magic to understand what had happened to them.

  Sheila woke up a couple of times, bouts of semi-consciousness in which she mumbled for a few moments before passing out again. It was mostly incoherent, but I caught a few bits and pieces, including her talking to an imaginary Jim, our former manager at Hopskotchgames, prepping for some all-day meeting we were getting ready for. I couldn’t help but smile when she mentioned ordering lunch, but then argued against Jim’s apparent suggestion by telling him, “We can’t order from there. Bill doesn’t like their menu.”

  Sally kept an eye on her as we walked, having us stop a few times so she could readjust her field dressings and check to make sure we weren’t making things worse. Aside from that, though, conversation among us was few and far between. I was too worried to do much more than trudge on. Even Tom, someone who death itself had trouble silencing, was unnaturally quiet.

  More than once, I wanted to stop and question when the hell that goddamned cursed blood was going to wear off, but that was a question nobody in the group could answer.

  Dragging the litter kept me focused on a task. That was good, because the anger was slowly coming back, lurking just below the surface. I wanted to lash out – punch trees, throw rocks, slice Grulg’s fucking face off – anything violent. Staying the course, reminding myself who we were trying to help, kept me sane. It was my silent fuck you to Dr. Death, still somewhere inside me and seemingly more hell-bent than ever on turning me into a monster.

  Or so I hoped it was him. That this might be coming entirely from me was a thought too terrifying to consider.

  A break in the trees ahead caught my eye. The sun was setting, which was good news for Sally and me, but I could also see unmolested buildings and a city street beyond.

  As we got closer, though, an eerie sense of familiarity began to set in.

  No way.

  “Sally?”

  “Keep marching. Uber doesn’t make house calls to Tarzan. You can rest your feet when we get there.”

  “Not that,” I replied, pointing. “Look up ahead. Does that seem sorta familiar to you, or am I just imagining things?”

  “You’re probably just delus...” She paused for a moment. “Holy shit, I think you’re right. That’s the place where that asshole opened fire on us. There’s those concrete pilings you hid behind.”

  “We hid behind.”

  “No, it was my idea to shoot back. It was yours to hide.”

  “Whatever,” I replied, frustration edging into my voice.

  “How many trees did you guys grow, Grulg?” she asked, turning serious again.

  “Many,” he replied. “We grow many trees.”

  * * *

  Grulg wasn’t shitting us. Once we moved out from the tree line, we were able to turn back and get some perspective. The entire city seemed to end at a wall of vegetation. Within the space of a few steps, Boston, one of the major cities in the American Northeast, ended and a primeval forest began. Sure, some buildings towered over the trees, evidence a modern city had been here a few days back, but they were overgrown with what looked to be centuries of vegetation.

  It took a bit of back and forth with our tour guide, as the Feet’s concept of measurement was different than ours, but eventually, we were able to conclude that a spear of forest, perhaps half a mile wide but several long, had been grown down from the north into the heart of the city. Had we not been otherwise occupied, I’d have conceded that was some combination of ballsy and impressive.

  Grulg, amazingly, offered to continue along with us even after the trees petered out. He seemed genuinely sorry about what had happened to Sheila. The Feet apparently held the Icon – the so-called Silver Eyes – in high regard, partially because of their warrior prowess, but mostly because they tended to fuck up vampires wherever they went.

  I was happy to not lose track of him again, don’t get me wrong. I’d gone to the ends of the Earth and gotten hitched just to find his ass. I didn’t want to have to do that all over again. Even so, vampire or not, I was a bit weirded out to walk down the middle of a city street with an eight-foot-tall monster ape by my side. Shit like that might’ve been ignored in Manhattan, but up here, I had a feeling someone was bound to notice.

  Except there was nobody around.

  When Sheila, Sally, and I had gone out on patrol, the streets had been empty too, but signs of life remained. That and it was easy for someone with vampire senses to tell when people were hiding behind closed doors and looking through openings in their blinds. Not so now.

  “Kinda creepy,” Tom commented.

  “Each of us here is a creature straight out of a horror movie, and I still gotta agree with that.” I glanced back at Sally. “You sensing anything?”

  “A lot of nothing.”

  “Grulg not smell humans.”

  “Did your magic...?”

  “Probably not,” Sally interrupted. “Think about it. If you saw a wall of trees advancing upon you, like they did here, would you stick around to pick up pinecones?”

  “No, probably not.”

  “I might,” Tom offered.

  “Yeah, but you’re a fucking moron,” Sally pointed out. I started to laugh, but she shushed me pretty quickly. “That’s not all that’s wrong, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Take a closer look.”

  At first, I didn’t notice much. I mean, buildings, streets, some cars parked on the side. A decent amount of garbage blowing around. Looked like the place had fallen under a bit of disrepair during Vehron’s reign, but...

  Then I began to see what Sally meant.

  Cars riddled with bullet holes. Chunks of pavement missing from the street that didn’t look like ordinary potholes. Gouges in the facades of the buildings and what I thought to be grime wasn’t. There seemed to be scorch marks everywhere.

  “Looks like a dump to me,” Tom said. “There goes the neighborhood.”

  “This isn’t urban decay,” I replied softly, suddenly aware of how loud our voices sounded in the twilight-lit street.

  “No,” Sally finished for me. “This is a war zone.”

  PARANOIA WILL DESTROY YA

  “Fuck this noise.” I stopped and pulled out my cell phone. “I say we call 911 first and investigate second.” Sadly, it proved a moot point as I couldn’t even get a blip of a signal. “Goddamn it!”

  “Maybe we could break into one of these buildings and use the phone,” Tom suggested.

  “Not bad, meatwad,” Sally replied, “but I think we need to be a bit further in. I’m seeing a lot of downed lines. Even if we did manage to get a dial tone he
re, I’d be willing to bet you’re not going to find anyone willing to come this close to the green zone.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder toward the trees.

  “We could still try,” Tom said.

  “You just want to see if you can find any more toys to steal, don’t you?”

  He grinned like a jackass. Such a douche.

  I turned back to Sally and asked, “How is she?”

  “No worse than she was.”

  I sighed wearily. “Fine. Let’s head in further, toward HQ. If we can get a signal before then, we use it. If not...”

  “Don’t think Colin won’t see this as an opportunity,” Sally warned.

  “I know, but we have the weight of Alex’s word to back us up and he’s a fucking weasel when it comes to name dropping.”

  “And if he still tries to fuck us in the ass?”

  “Then I start biting every vamp I see and make him regret it.”

  Normally, I’d have expected Sally to laugh at my threat, idle as they often were, but something in the tone of my voice must have convinced her otherwise.

  She simply nodded and waved us on, for better or worse.

  * * *

  As it turns out, I’d have had a better shot of sending up smoke signals than getting cell service. The closer we got to the aboveground car wash that served as the entryway to the Boston Complex, the more pronounced the destruction.

  Cars were smashed into charred wrecks. Entire sides of buildings had collapsed. Piles of rubble lay everywhere, some still smoking.

  Maybe it was a result of the debris everywhere, but I couldn’t help but notice the layers of dust lying atop everything. Perhaps it was just shattered concrete, but my nose insisted differently.

  “Son of a bitch,” Tom remarked. “Did World War Z happen while we were out?”

  “Pick a different letter,” I said. “Pretty sure this wasn’t zombies. Besides, I don’t see any abandoned office supplies lying about.”

  Tom glanced at one burnt out SUV partially sticking out the side of a nearby building. “This must have been a hell of a paperclip fight.”

  “Whatever the case,” Sally replied, “it was costly for our side, or their side... Fuck, I don’t even know what side I’m on anymore. Either way, looks like a lot of vamps ate it.”

  “I don’t see any other bodies.”

  “Me neither,” Tom said, lack of night vision notwithstanding.

  “There wouldn’t be,” Sally replied. “Standard cleanup procedure. Vamp dust blows away, but in a major hub like this, they wouldn’t want to leave a mess behind.”

  “Even during the apocalypse?” I asked.

  “Some vamps are slaves to process.”

  I chuckled, knowing who she meant.

  Through it all, Grulg was silent. Hell, I almost forgot he was with us until I turned and saw the big wall of fur walking alongside Sally. Speaking of which...

  “We’re getting close to the complex, Grulg. Lots of unfriendlies there to all of us, but I think they might have a special place in their black hearts for your kind. Can you hang back?”

  “No reason,” Grulg replied softly. “But Grulg do as asked.”

  I was about to question what he meant, but he stepped into the shadows of the closest building and it was suddenly like he wasn’t there. I might have thought he’d actually ditched us, but I took a quick smell of the air and coughed when I caught his ripe odor.

  Yeah, I really had to stop doing that.

  We continued onward, the only sound the scraping of litter in the breeze against the asphalt. It wasn’t much further now, just around the next corner.

  Vehron had done a good job gutting the surrounding neighborhood of obstructions under his rule. Even if he hadn’t, cameras were hidden everywhere. There was virtually no chance of sneaking in. So, I tried to steel myself for a session of kowtowing to Colin. Ugh, maybe I should have taken a bigger whiff of Grulg. It would have better prepared me for the brown-nosing to come.

  “Okay,” I said as we rounded a bend. “Let’s do this...”

  The words died in my throat as I beheld the destruction before me.

  The parking lot was a mess of shattered asphalt and concrete. Dark stains covered much of it, easily detectable by scent as blood. That in itself was shocking, but nothing that should have blown anyone’s mind where vamps were concerned.

  It was the complex itself that stopped me in my tracks ... or the massive crater where it had once stood. The car wash itself was gone, completely leveled. The sinkhole went down farther than I could see from my vantage point. But even if I was standing at the lip, I doubted I’d have too clear of a view. Smoke still billowed out from it, as well as remnant wisps of flame – green flame.

  “My God,” Sally whispered, stepping up beside me, any trace of attitude gone from her voice. All that remained was hushed awe. “They did it. They actually did it.”

  “The witches.”

  “I don’t know. If so, it would have had to been a fuck load more than we saw back in the forest. And even then, Boston was equipped to deal with these things.”

  “Apparently not well enough,” Tom remarked.

  “You really have no clue,” she replied. “The place looked like an office, and that’s how it functioned most of the time, but it was a fortress ... built to act as a base of operations for an offensive or repel just about any invader you can imagine. Hell, from what James told me, a nuclear strike would have been a minor inconvenience to anyone on the lower levels.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  “What I’m saying is this shouldn’t have happened even with an army of witches, Feet, and a few primal gods backing them up.”

  Yet it had.

  Or maybe that was what we were meant to believe. “Stay here,” I said.

  “What?”

  I was on the move before Sally could finish. It was a long shot, but when Harry Decker’s bunch had leveled Village Coven’s loft, they’d created a realistic illusion, a powerful glamour of the place still standing. It was only when you got close enough that you realized it had been blown to hell.

  Maybe the vamps had a contingency similar to that, but in reverse. It was worth investigating.

  There was a good amount of heat radiating from the area, but nothing my fast healing skin couldn’t compensate for. If this was an illusion, they’d gone all out.

  I glanced off to the side and saw the remains of two burnt out firetrucks. Someone had responded to this mess, or at least tried to. That should have been my clue that I wasn’t going to step past a barrier and suddenly find the car wash intact with Colin sitting outside sipping a mojito. No idea why I was imagining him doing that, but whatever. Sometimes my mind was a strange place.

  I reached the edge of the crater and looked down, my eyes watering from the thick black smoke. Still, I had to know for certain. If there was even a chance this was a trick and we could get Sheila help inside, I had to take it.

  Stepping gingerly, I got to the very edge, balanced myself, and reached out with one foot to see if there was solid ground where my eyes were telling me there was only a chasm.

  And, of course, that’s when the asphalt beneath me crumbled. I was in free fall for a second, panic completely overwhelming me. Then, somehow, my hand grasped a finger hold on the edge, leaving me dangling over the abyss of a burning hell.

  Okay, I was convinced. Definitely not an illusion.

  “Bill!” Sally called from back in the direction we’d come from.

  Ah, it was nice to see she cared.

  “What the fuck are you doing, idiot?!”

  In a manner of speaking, of course.

  I didn’t often give thanks for my vampiric powers, but at that moment, I’d have signed over my paycheck to whatever deity saw fit to get me bit. I reached up, hoping this section of the sidewalk held, and managed to grab on with both hands so as to pull myself up.

  Just in time, too, as I was starting to smell singed cloth. With everything go
ing on, no way did I need my clothes burning off, too. I hauled myself to the top and double-timed it away from the edge.

  I guess that was what Grulg meant when he said there was no reason to check. He knew, but he probably also realized we needed to see it for ourselves. Or he wanted to laugh at our despair. I mean, honorable or not, he was one of our ancient enemies. I needed to remember that before I sent him a friend request.

  Dusting myself off, I walked back to where Tom and Sally stood.

  Sally glared at me, one eyebrow raised. “Care to explain why you felt the need to jump into the big gaping hole?”

  “I could ask your former clients the same thing.” Okay, perhaps that wasn’t helping much. “I wanted to make sure it wasn’t another glamour.”

  Tom stepped up and put a hand on my shoulder. “You know I’m your best bud, right? Well, I say this with all brotherly love, but have you gone fucking stupid?”

  “So says the walking illusion,” I replied. “It was a long shot, but I had to try. Never know what weird-ass tricks people have up their sleeves.”

  “Sounds like a stretch to me.”

  “Save that for your dick,” Sally said before turning to me. “It was actually pretty clever that you thought of it. Moronic in practice, but impressive that you considered it. Who knows? Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”

  Whoa, an actual compliment, and in front of witnesses, too. We were indeed living in the end days.

  “Stranger things have happened, but enough of that. I’m not going to shed any tears for this place, and we still need to find a hospital.” I paused to cough the last of the smoke out of my lungs, taking a deep breath. At first, all I noticed was the scent of burnt buildings, dried blood, and assorted debris, but then I noticed another scent buried beneath it. I took another sniff and realized it was getting stronger.

  Sally’s eyes opened wide. She’d noticed it, too.

  “We need to move now.”

  “And where will you go, Freewill?” Colin asked, stepping from an alleyway a few buildings down. He was dirty and disheveled, his expensive suit in tatters. It was the first time I’d seen him looking anything other than a poor excuse for dapper. “If indeed that is who you are.”