The Last Coven (The Tome of Bill Book 8)

by Rick Gualtieri

  A massive structure stood on the far end of the cavern away from the pool. It was partially obscured by all the various entities milling around, but my first impression was of the pueblo dwellings I’d read about in American History class. It appeared to be made of the same stone as the rest of the cavern. Where those were squarish in shape, though, this architectural monstrosity was all curves and domes. It didn’t look built so much as melted off the wall and then reformed before it cooled down.

  As I focused on it longer, I realized it looked less like a Native American dwelling and more like some infernal fortress. Dave had once taken us on an adventure through the nine hells, and his description of the city of Dis could have easily applied to this.

  I would definitely need to check that out, assuming I was allowed. If there was one place down here that looked like it was a seat of power, that was it. Calibra was most likely in there.

  If what Ed had told me was true, then so was Dave ... currently playing muff-slave to Firebird. Some assholes had all the luck.

  Had some of my other friends been brought there as well?

  It was definitely a possibility, but first I needed to check out the holding pens.

  * * *

  A part of me felt like a kid walking up and down the lines at the dog pound, trying to pick my lost puppy out of the crowd. Most of the holding cells were easy to dismiss, containing things that I was pretty certain I’d never met.

  Last time I’d been here, I’d been one of the attractions, far more focused on escape than sightseeing. Now, I found myself losing focus as I stopped to gawk. I mean, shit, they had a fucking dragon in one – the size and shape of a Tyrannosaurus, but with two sets of wings that looked big enough to attach to the side of a passenger jet. It wasn’t going to be flying anytime soon, though. It was stuck fast to the floor, massive boulders pinning down all four of its wings while a living chain made of Jahabich was wrapped around its neck.

  I wasn’t here to throw peanuts at Smaug, however, so it was with some reluctance I forced myself to turn away and keep moving.

  There! I spied a pen of vamps. Though I didn’t recognize their faces, their uniforms stood out. It was some of the guys Alex had brought to Boston after I’d beaten Vehron. He’d sent them on a search and destroy mission, mostly that latter. They’d been in the process of mercilessly mowing down all the vamps in the Prefect’s chamber when Calibra had made her grand entrance.

  I didn’t actually know these guys from a hole in the wall, but it was nice to finally see something recognizable.

  Things had definitely changed, though. Last time, we’d seen other vampires here too, but they’d been feral. They’d been starved and had turned on each other while their uncaring captors did nothing to stop it. New security protocols had obviously been instituted since then, quite possibly as a result of my meddling. These vamps looked hungry, pale, and gaunt. They’d seen better days. But they weren’t attacking each other. They weren’t doing anything at all, as a matter of fact.

  They stood in precise formation inside the walls of their living cage. It didn’t take a genius to realize they’d been compelled into obedience. Interesting. They’d almost certainly been insulated against betraying the Dracs, but Calibra was no idiot. A neutral compulsion, basically telling one’s victims to do nothing at all, required far less effort. Considering the size of this place and the number of prisoners I’d seen, it made sense. As Gan had told us, even the most powerful vampire in the world could only control so many.

  This was her cannon fodder, no doubt waiting for her to perfect whatever she was doing to Ed.

  I heard footsteps approach and turned to see a column of Jahabich walking my way. Marching four wide, they took up almost the entirety of the row where I was standing.

  I’d stepped to the side so as to not get trampled when I realized they weren’t the only ones in their little parade. There was an open space in the middle of their column where other figures were being herded along – a Sasquatch, a couple of imps, and one or two other figures I didn’t recognize. I was just about to turn away when I spied a wisp of what I thought might be blonde hair, just barely visible even over the somewhat short statures of their Jahabich captors.

  No, what were the chances?

  Nevertheless, I had to be certain. I stood up on my tiptoes so as to make sure ... OOF!

  One of the Jahabich in the lineup abruptly stepped away from his buddies and slammed a club arm into my side. Confusion gave way to pain as my ribs cracked and I went down to my knees. The fuck?! I hadn’t interrupted anything, at least not yet. I’d just been looking.

  Sadly, this particular blockhead didn’t seem to have gotten the memo. It raised the same arm again and then brought it down across the back of my head.

  I guessed that meant the show was over as my sight exploded into a mass of stars followed by blackness.

  FIRST IN LINE

  I couldn’t have been out for long. I knew how hard these things could hit when they wanted to, and this hadn’t been anywhere close. If anything, it had seemed to pull the punch at the last second.

  Feeling bruised and a bit trampled, I opened my eyes and sat up. Next to me stood the wall of Jahabich still acting as both warden and jail cell for Alex’s vamps.

  “No, it’s okay. I don’t need any help,” I said to absolutely no reaction. Humorless fucks.

  Forgetting myself for a moment, I tried to use one to pull myself back to my feet and got a lacerated hand for my troubles. Yeah, I really needed to remember to look, but not touch, around these jokers.

  I stood up, dusted myself off, and prepared to continue with my sightseeing. If this pen housed Alex’s men, then perhaps I was getting closer to where I might find some trace of my friends. Still, I hesitated. There was something about the Jahabich who’d clobbered me. He hadn’t merely brushed me to the side. It had felt ... deliberate.

  Then there was that wisp of blonde hair I thought I’d seen. If there was even a chance, however small, I had to know for certain.

  Letting curiosity get the better of me, I turned and walked back in the direction they’d been headed.

  I reached the end of the aisle and looked around. At first, I saw nothing but more mages involved in their hippy-dippy shit, although if any wanted to send any free love my way...

  No! Enough of that. I was here for a reason, not to take a ride on the magic bang bus.

  Tearing my eyes away from one couple fucking each other’s brains out three feet above the ground, I turned the way I’d come in. Nothing there to be seen. I then glanced back toward the glowing jizz pool. Looked like the Jahabich were lining up prisoners to take the last bath of their lives. Poor fuckers.

  I spied several creatures in the lineup, including a petite redhead. Sadly for them, I couldn’t help without...

  That’s when I did a double take. The woman’s hair wasn’t red at all. It just looked that way due to her proximity to The Source. I started that way, focused on her.

  Her head just barely cleared the Jahabich around her, so it was hard to tell. But then she shifted her stance ever so slightly and I caught a glimpse of her profile.

  It was Sally.

  Shit!

  * * *

  She was third in line – no, make that second. I watched as a Jahabich up front dispatched some sort of two-legged slug thing, then threw its body into the pool. I didn't wait to see what happened next. I’d already been to this matinee once before. No need for an encore, especially when one of my closest friends stood in a line that definitely didn’t lead to the concession stand.

  I put on speed and raced toward them.

  Thankfully, the path to The Source was fairly clear. It was either off limits, considered sacred, or everyone in this fucking place was smart enough to know there were friendlier shores to sunbathe upon. I made it there just as the next in line, a vampire I didn’t recognize, was clubbed in the head like a baby seal. The Jahabich who’d done it shifted back to human form so as to catch the a
shes in the cup of his hand.

  God fucking damn!

  Harry Decker grinned my way as he tossed the vamp’s remains over his shoulder into the pool, where the surface immediately began to bubble.

  “Sally!” I cried to no avail. She stood there, still as a post, waiting her turn. Fucking compulsions! Sadly, I had no way of telling by who. If it was Calibra, I’d have a better chance of fighting off this whole place by myself than breaking it.

  That didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.

  Two Jahabich stepped up to either side of her and began to nudge her forward toward Decker, shithead that he was.

  All the while, he watched me coming at them, his grin growing wider with every step I took. I expected him to shift back into his rock monster form, but instead, he remained as he was. As I closed in, he reached behind his back and produced a wooden stake.

  The meaning was clear – this was personal, and he wanted me to know who did it.

  * * *

  Thankfully, I had a little more to give and put it all into my legs as I rushed forward at a speed that would have made even my fourth grade gym teacher stop giving me shit. I lowered my shoulder, braced for the hurt to come, and slammed into the Jahabich on Sally’s right – cracking my collarbone but sending it tumbling end over end until it landed in the goo pool with a splash.

  I didn’t stop to gawk at what two dips would do to these cocksicles. Instead, I stepped between Sally and Decker. “Nice try, asshole. But, much like your last marketing campaign, this scheme of yours is gonna fall flat on its fucking face.”

  Decker’s eyes narrowed at me as Sally bumped into my back, still trying to march to her doom.

  “A failure?” he asked. “I wouldn’t call two million views on YouTube plus over fifty thousand Facebook shares something to sneer at. If anything, the shoddy code of that game caused its downfall, or have you forgotten the privacy debacle that followed?”

  “Fuck you! I told Jim people would freak out if we harvested their browser histories, but I got shot down.”

  “So that’s your excuse? You were merely at the mercy of the whims of others?”

  “Whatever works.”

  “True enough. Pity for you, history is doomed to repeat itself.”

  “How so?”

  “Do you really think I care anything at all about your trollop? She is as far below me as I am beneath the glory that is the White Mother.”

  Cries of “Mother!” rang out.

  Goddamn, that was starting to get annoying.

  “No,” Decker continued, twirling the stake like he was trying out for high school marching band, “I simply wanted to draw you in.”

  “Well, it worked. So what now, magic man? Gonna dazzle me with a card trick?”

  “I wasn't finished. I wanted to draw you in, so you would interfere.”

  Oh, shit. I’d forgotten all about the one rule that had been dropped in my lap upon arrival.

  I looked around, and, sure enough, all the Jahabich in the immediate vicinity were closing in on my direction. And here I was, still stuck trying to keep my friend from marching forward.

  “Sorry, Sally. Please try to understand.” I spun, quick as I could, and decked her in the jaw with an uppercut. She landed on the ground, dazed. Okay, that was one problem solved. No way could I defend us both, especially with her intent on taking a swim.

  “So tell me, Freewill,” Decker said, “how does it feel to know that, once again, you are a victim of nothing more than your own stupidity?”

  I tried to keep an eye on all directions at once. Sadly, all of them looked equally bad.

  “Hold him,” Decker ordered. “But feel free to rough him up first.”

  Shit! There was only one option so far as I could see. I’d wanted to save it, but now it looked like I had no...

  “Enough.”

  The voice wasn’t loud – or at least it shouldn’t have been – yet it seemed to cut across everything, somehow drowning out every other sound in the cavern.

  Almost as if a switch had been thrown, all of the Jahabich who’d been approaching me stopped in their tracks.

  The voice had seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, except it hadn’t been psychic like a compulsion or how Decker had talked in his much more preferable skull form. I’d definitely heard it, though. But where...?

  Movement registered in my periphery and I turned toward it, putting my back to Decker, which was probably the stupidest thing I could do. However, no stake pierced my heart, or my ass, as the figure approached us – a flowing dress around her, somehow still a brilliant white despite the glow from The Source.

  Once again, the Jahabich called out in unison, “Mother.”

  Calibra seemed to almost float toward us. Hell, for all I knew, that was exactly what she was doing. She was a witch, after all.

  I’d never put much credence into the whole Clark Kent / Superman transformation, but she was living proof how much difference a few changes could make. She couldn’t have stood out in greater contrast to how I’d first met her if she tried. Before, you’d have thought she ate coal and shit diamonds. She had been pretty, as just about every other chick I’d seen in the vampire world up to that point was, but everything about her had been severe – from her prim office attire to the strict bun of her hair.

  Now her hair was down, jet black in stark contrast to her dress, and she was wearing makeup to suggest perhaps she’d managed to kidnap Sally’s ex-hairdresser Alfonzo, too.

  Despite her beauty, though, there was something sinister, predatory, about her gaze. I had little doubt that as far as she was concerned, we were all cannon fodder or less.

  Never let it be said that makeovers were necessarily a good thing.

  Regardless, if she’d deigned to make an appearance now, then my odds had just gone from almost nil to fucking laughable.

  “What is this?” she asked softly, her voice again rising above everything else as if this were a badly mixed soundtrack.

  Before I could offer my opinion on the myriad ways she could go fuck herself, Decker stepped past me and dropped to one knee. “White Mother.”

  “Mother.”

  He wasn’t quick enough to suppress the sigh that escaped his lips. Glad to see I wasn’t the only one who found that increasingly annoying. “Mighty Kala,” he began again, “the Freewill has broken your covenant, spit upon the generous boon of peace you offered. I was merely seeing that he be duly punished.”

  “Oh?” she asked. “How so?”

  “The Source. He would make an excellent slave. Compliant, yet truly joyous to torture.”

  “I see,” she said with a smile.

  Perhaps sensing he’d won some primo brownie points, Decker rose to his feet. From the look of things, it was a visible effort for him to keep from humping her leg. Fucking pathetic. “Your will is my own.”

  “And yet,” she replied, “here you are subverting it.”

  “Glorious one? I do not understand.”

  “Oh, Harold. You claim to be one of my most loyal servants, a devout student of my teachings. Yet here you stand, feigning ignorance of my commands, pretending you did not purposely goad the Freewill into attacking you. Truly I had hoped that in remaking you, perhaps you would show promise. Instead, I see the petty concerns of your former life still hold sway. Yet another disappointment, as are all your siblings.”

  “Mother,” the Jahabich all sounded off, unbidden.

  “All of you are the same,” she said, her tone oozing disgust. “Such low creatures, unworthy of the new dawn approaching.”

  “But...”

  “I may be in deep shit, Harry,” I interrupted, “but it looks like you just waded in next to me. It’s always more fun to swim with the buddy system.”

  “Spare me your tiresome prattle, Freewill,” Calibra said. “You will find no receptive audience here.”

  “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  “Harold.” She turned back to Decker. “Know that my power here
is absolute, but that does not mean I am without mercy like those pretenders who would claim title to the First. I offer you this: face the Freewill in single combat. Defeat him and all shall be forgiven.”

  Decker turned toward me without any hesitation. I had to assume she was exercising her will upon him. I’d never known the dickhead to be the first into a fight, at least not unless the odds were heavily stacked in his favor. Sadly, they still leaned his way. The Jahabich were tough, hard to hurt, even harder to kill for a vamp my age. Each of them weighed more than a quarter of a ton and was covered in razor sharp shards of stone.

  Still, the odds were a fuckload better than they’d been seconds earlier, and the fact that it was Decker’s smug face I’d be punching added a little extra zing to my step.

  “Know this, Freewill,” Calibra added. “I am not without mercy for my enemies either. Defeat Mr. Decker and I shall release your friend from my thrall.” She said that last part with a bitter undertone. Obviously, she hadn’t forgotten how Sally had mouthed off to her back when she’d thought her to be nothing more than a vampire Prefect. One of the most powerful beings on the planet she might be, but her accusation about Decker’s petty concerns was little more than the pot calling the kettle black.

  “Fight well, little men,” she said, “for the winner shall know my favor, whereas the defeated only the cold embrace of oblivion.”

  DECKER THE HALLS

  Harry Decker, former wizard and VP of marketing at my old company, was not entirely without a sense of sportsmanship.

  Of course, that might’ve been unintentional.

  He telegraphed his attack from a mile away. I’d watched enough professional wrestling to know when someone was pretending to pay attention to someone else only to turn and do a surprise chair shot. Albeit in this case, substitute stake for chair.

  I caught him easily. The Jahabich were quick for beings made of living rock, but they couldn’t hold a candle to vampire reflexes. I grabbed hold of the stake, wincing as I picked up a good many splinters, snapped it in two, then tossed away the pointy end.