The Last Coven (The Tome of Bill Book 8)

by Rick Gualtieri

  It was probably an unnecessary step. Away from Sheila, the mages could easily pick us up if they were actively scrying. Chances were they already knew we were there.

  But if they didn’t, they were about to.

  Moving before I could think better of the idea, I raced off the safe path we’d marked, straight ahead toward the purple barrier. I put every ounce of speed I could into my gait, despite the foliage.

  It was necessary.

  When I first learned of what Christy was, I’d paid an uninvited visit to her apartment. There, Sally and I had gotten a firsthand lesson that magical wards weren’t just an invention by dungeon masters looking to blow their players into tiny chunks.

  Christy’s had been fairly benign – defensive, but meant more to dissuade than outright kill. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t be juiced up if the mage in question was in a mood.

  One moment, I was just a fool running through the woods. The next, I was a fool running through a magical minefield. Explosions rang out around me as I set off the magic that had been inlaid into the trees. I didn’t know what each symbol meant, but I had a feeling they were all some variety of “Fuck you!”

  In some cases, the ground blew out from beneath where I’d been a second before. In others, trees simply exploded, sending wooden shrapnel everywhere before toppling over. In all instances, I somehow managed to stay one step ahead of whatever nastiness happened.

  As I neared the barrier, I heard more explosions ring out; some close, others distant. The Templar were on the move.

  Just before I reached the force field, I veered hard left and doubled back, setting off more of the magical traps. A flash of heat from off to my right caught my attention and I turned my head just in time to see a red beam of energy dissipate.

  More joined it, searing into the forest from the direction of the monument – some from above, others at ground level. A few came close enough to make me want to shit myself, but none hit the mark.

  Hopefully, the Templar were having similar luck.

  I’d hate to think we’d all taken a filthy mud bath for nothing.

  I knew the mages could scry us coming, but I’d been willing to bet that once the shooting started, they’d rely more on their senses than some spell that probably required them to sit in a circle chanting.

  I’d started us off, but now the Templar were drawing fire, too, or hopefully their bright red cloaks were, easily spotted propped up on trees or bushes while their owners ran amuck.

  The mud had been my idea, the thought popping into my head as we crossed the swamp that had been the Charles River. It was one half camouflage, helping us to blend in with the surrounding forest, but it also served as a makeshift sunblock in spots where daylight couldn’t be avoided.

  I kept dodging and weaving, the dust and debris from the explosions making up for any cover lost as trees were felled. Though I wouldn’t pretend to even remotely like them, I still found myself hoping things were going as well for the Templar. This was not a situation where I wanted to find myself the sole survivor once the smoke cleared.

  The goal was simple: trip their traps and draw their fire from all sides, hopefully both confusing and panicking the shit out of them. All of this, while hopefully drawing attention from the grand finale, which, if timed correctly, should be happening any moment now.

  There!

  The purple dome turned a deep angry color as its power fluctuated. As planned, Sheila had made her way forward while we were drawing fire, then ignited her aura right before stepping into the magical barrier.

  Come on!

  The force field continued to strobe, the mages at the top of the monument no doubt putting their all into maintaining it, but a flash of white fire somewhere below fought back with equal or greater effort.

  The dome flared, darkened, then winked out of existence.

  Yes!

  Pity for the mages that vampires were particularly good when it came to coordinating. All it took was a single word.

  “NOW!!”

  The compulsion was weak and broadcast wide, but that was fine. It wasn’t meant to control. I wasn’t that much of a dick.

  No, I’d save that for later if Bernadette managed to piss me off with her fire and brimstone rhetoric. For right this moment, though, I did what hopefully every Templar still standing did – rushed the monument with the intent of hitting these enchanted assholes as hard as we could.

  * * *

  I was right. The multi-pronged assault had sent them into a tizzy. Mages ran back and forth, shooting at shadows, a few even taking shots at one another before realizing their mistake.

  Two wizards spotted me rapidly closing the distance. I didn’t have anything to return fire with as they unleashed their powers – the few guns we had were better spent in the hands of the Templar – but I did have memories of snowball fights as a child to draw upon. And the one harsh lesson from those was the person who won often was the prick who wasn’t afraid to fight dirty.

  I reached down, scooped a couple chunks of broken concrete from the sidewalk, then leapt into the air with everything I had. The first burst of red fire hit low and I landed safely past it, throwing my projectiles with abandon. Sadly for the wizard, what was headed his way was a bit harder than some slushball.

  Amazingly enough, I hit home. He doubled over screaming as I reached his friend and unloaded with an uppercut destined to put some orthodontist’s kid through college.

  Teeth and blood flew in every direction and the mage went down hard.

  Hah! I was so used to fighting creatures who outclassed me physically that I almost felt guilty fucking these guys up.

  Almost.

  Unfortunately, my hit had the unintended consequence of rubbing most of the mud from the back of my fist. I caught some daylight and my hand started smoking.

  Shit! No matter how many times I found myself on fire, it never ever stopped sucking. Adding to that mouthful of ball sweat was the first mage. He’d recovered from my shitty rock throw – it was no wonder I was always picked last for dodgeball – and was powering up again.

  Fuck that noise.

  I stepped up to him and threw a haymaker with my burning hand. “SUPER KAIO-KEN!”

  Sadly for him, he was more Yamcha than Vegeta.

  Taking a moment to glance around and beat out the flames on my hand, I saw other mud men charging in. At least some of the Templar had survived Phase One along with me. Swords were swung, guns fired, and several mages dropped.

  “Remember your faith!”

  It was Bernadette, looking like a fat turd in her mud covering. She was screaming at a few of her men who’d fallen upon their victims. Yeah, that was gonna rapidly turn into a shit show. Hopefully, they could come to some peace with their need to feed.

  At least one of the Templar was beyond listening, tearing into a witch like she was the main course at dollar burrito night. Sadly for him, he got caught up in the blood and ignored the warnings shouted his way. A moment later, a bolt of green energy slammed into the ground from above, erasing him from existence.

  The magi held the high ground, but I knew the interior was cramped and, while the view was pretty awesome, the line of sight directly below to the square wasn’t all that great. My parents had dragged me here one year on vacation instead of Disney World. Walking the Freedom Trail might have been historically relevant, but compared to Space Mountain, it sucked goat balls.

  I hoped the rest of the Templar took the cue that dinnertime could wait. They needed to keep moving. So long as they did that, the folks up above could only hope to get lucky with potshots. No point in making their jobs easy for them.

  I spied one of the Templar; hard to tell with the mud, but could have been Vincent. He was apparently thinking the same thing. He took cover behind a tree and aimed his gun at the monument entrance. Smart. What went up, must come down, and he’d be there to fill them with lead when that happened.

  Oh well, there were plenty more mages on the grou
nd floor to deal with and they were beginning to get their shit together – forming ranks, taking cover, and measuring their shots rather than going off half-cocked.

  It was to be expected. It was also why Sheila had hung back. After the shield came down, she had extinguished her aura and taken cover in the trees, letting the rest of us take the lead.

  Now it was her turn again.

  She’d used the trees to circle around. Now, she broke cover and made a run for the side of the lodge next to the monument, straight toward a group of about a half dozen mages.

  I dare say, a few wizard robes were probably soiled as she ignited her aura and leapt into their midst. Two were taken down before they had a chance to do much more than gape. The rest engaged her in hand to hand, seeing that their magic wasn’t worth dick now.

  That was gonna prove to be a mistake on their part. As for myself, I focused on the front of the lodge. It wasn’t a huge structure by any means, but it was certainly large enough to serve as a base of operations and – I hoped – perhaps a makeshift prison, too.

  Getting there was going to be tricky. There was a lot of magic between me and the door. There was also the itty bitty question of what was waiting inside. Stepping through the door, only to get blasted by a dozen Magi, wasn’t quite how I wanted to end this day. Besides, been there done that, or at least a barbarian I ran in one of Dave’s games some years back had. I didn’t care to LARP some of the less spectacular character deaths I’d suffered.

  Oh well, I’d deal with it when and if I got there. For now, there was still more of the herd to thin out.

  I spotted a trio, two witches and a wizard, just as the Templar knight they’d ganged up on blew apart into dust. It was too late to help him, but I could ensure his killers would be focusing less on their spells in the coming weeks and more on relearning how to walk.

  “No! This isn’t the way!”

  I glanced toward the sound of the voice to see the front of the lodge was now open and a woman stood in the doorway, facing the interior and blocking the exit. What the...?

  The distraction was ill-timed, though, so I forced myself to ignore her for the moment as I accelerated and took a flying leap.

  “Booga-Booga!” I yelled as the trio turned their wide eyes skyward just as my mud-encrusted self fell upon them. Hah! It truly was hilarious how easily unnerved some supernatural beings could become. I mean, we were the monsters under the bed, for fuck’s sake. You’d think the weird and unusual would be old hat.

  Pity for them, they didn’t have a chance to do more than fire a few sparks my way. It was a clumsy attack on my part, doing little more than knocking them all into the pile of dust that had been the Templar, but that was fine so long as I made sure they didn’t get back up.

  “Fuck you, you wand-sucking bitch!”

  What the...?

  That sounded like Tom’s voice.

  I spun back to the lodge where that woman was still blocking the entranceway. She had long brown hair peppered with grey. Wait, was that Decker’s cousin from before? Agnes, wasn’t it? If so, what was she...?

  A nimbus of blue energy surrounded the woman and she was flung to the side, twitching. That stun gun spell again. Oh well, better her than...

  Hold on, maybe not. With her out of the way, my view inside was now unobstructed. There were three other mages in there and they were in the process of dragging my roommate outside.

  What the fuck was he doing in there?

  Sadly, it was a particularly poor time to stop and speculate on Tom’s sudden reappearance. One of the mages I’d tackled managed to get up to his elbows. Before I could rearrange his jaw, he got off a shot of red energy.

  Thankfully, he hadn’t had time to charge up, or I’d have joined the dead Templar as a fine mist of particles in the air. It was, however, more than enough to knock me off him, cooking the mud still clinging to me until it felt like I was being fired in a kiln.

  “Shit, Bill!”

  I hit the ground and the hardening mud began to crack, leaving me partially exposed. That was the least of my worries, though. I looked up to see Tom racing toward me. That wasn’t so much my concern as the mages who’d been manhandling him just seconds earlier.

  They all wore humorless smiles upon their faces as they gathered explosive green energy around them.

  That’s when I realized they knew. They knew what Tom was, what he was made of. Of course they would. Their leader, or former leader anyway, was some kind of mage prefect.

  Worse, I got the impression the magic they were powering up was meant for him, not me.

  If I was right, they were planning on winning this fight with one shot, enough energy to vaporize anyone in the square – including themselves.

  Surely they couldn’t be that fucking insane.

  One of them cried out, “For the glory of The White Mother! May she reign eternal!” as the power coalesced around him and I realized I was about to be proven dead wrong on that point.

  GIVE ME LIBERTY...

  “Get down!”

  Even as I screamed out the warning, I tensed my legs for action. There was no time for anything but to hope I could knock him out of their line of fire in time.

  Their friends were ready for that, though. My shadow elongated beneath me for one horrifying moment and I launched myself to the side just as a bolt of magical energy slammed into the ground where I’d been, creating a shockwave that sent me tumbling end over end.

  No!

  I rolled to my feet, expecting to see a mushroom cloud followed by white hot oblivion.

  Instead, Sheila dove between Tom and the magical assault right as it reached him. Simultaneously, a rotund blob of sludge-covered Templar tackled my roommate from the other side, using her ample body to shield him.

  Way to go, Bernadette!

  Sheila’s aura activated just in time to cancel out the sizzling hot magic, but, airborne as she was, the recoil of her power meeting that of the Magi’s sent her careening through the air to slam into a tree with a dull thunk. She slumped down to the ground, stunned or worse.

  Goddamnit! Two of the people I cared most about in this world were sitting ducks and I was being forced to choose between them.

  I glanced over at Sheila. If things ever did work out between us, surely this moment would come up as a sore spot in couple’s counseling. She had her power to keep her safe, though, whereas one stray blast could potentially turn Tom into a briefcase nuke. Besides, I had faith in her abilities. Tom’s, a bit less so.

  Bernadette was already dragging him to his feet. He had a dazed look about him but otherwise appeared unhurt. Unfortunately, there were at least three groups of mages, two on the ground and one up in the monument, who had a bead on him.

  Before I could move, however, there came a scream from above, rapidly getting closer.

  A moment later, a body slammed face-first into the ground. Considering the ensuing blood splatter, I had to assume whoever had just taken up skydiving wasn’t a vampire. I didn’t think the mages were into using their own as living water balloons, so who...

  There came a sound, like wood splintering, followed by a blur of movement that just barely registered in my eye. I turned to find the three Magi I’d tackled were back on their feet. I expected an all-out assault from them, but they stood silent and unmoving. That’s when I realized their bodies were facing forward, but their heads were each turned a hundred and eighty degrees. They remained where they were a moment longer, then crumpled to the ground dead.

  Any of the Templar present would have been strong enough to do that, but none of them were nearly fast enough.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to consider the implications, as there was still a group of Magi standing at the entrance of the lodge.

  They were each powered up with their hands spread as if preparing to deliver as much damage in as short a time as possible.

  Before they could release their stored up energy, however, there came a crackle of power and the red
around them turned to blue as they all crumpled in a heap.

  Behind them sat Agnes, her body still twitching, but one hand held out and aglow.

  This battle had just gotten ever so slightly more interesting.

  * * *

  The Magi resistance was broken. Those still present on the battlefield, seeing their friends killed and their leader seemingly switch sides, took off. Most ran for it, but a few had enough juice left in them to apparate away in flashes of light. We’d won, but it would be a temporary victory if we didn’t act quickly. For all we knew, those who’d zapped away would return with fresh reinforcements. If that happened, we were screwed.

  Tom was complaining about the mud as Bernadette helped him to his feet. If he could still whine, then he was okay. Vincent shouted orders to his men to regroup and not give chase. I didn’t bother to stop and see if he was successful.

  Instead, I ran back to where Sheila was just now pulling herself to a sitting position. Thankfully, the sun was on its way down by then, enough so that the long shadows cast by the trees provided more than enough shade.

  I bent down and put an arm around her, heedless of the danger. “Are you okay?”

  “Just ... got the ... wind knocked out of me,” she said, taking several deep breaths. “Ever been in a car accident where the airbag deployed?”

  I helped her to her feet. “No.”

  “The airbag will save your life, but it’ll still break your nose. Never been caught mid-air like that before. Didn’t realize my aura would kinda work on the same principle.”

  “Good to know if you decide to go cliff diving.”

  She let out a weak laugh, then set to work healing the bumps and bruises she’d taken. I dutifully stepped back to allow her this, as I didn’t care to get fried.

  Speaking of cliff diving, though...

  I turned and started back toward the monument, passing the greasy spot on the lawn that used to be a mage. I glanced up. No way did this guy fall out. He’d either gone suicidal mid-battle, or...