“Any useful insight from the Freewill?”
“Nothing more than a theory.”
He laughed mirthlessly. “I don’t even have that much. So hit me with it.”
I hesitated for a moment, knowing he wouldn’t like what I was about to say. “What if you weren’t cured like the rest of us?”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean when we all became human again. What if we only thought you were, but you actually weren’t?”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know. Just hear me out. I’m applying Occam’s Razor here ... as opposed to the Occam’s woodchipper you threw that homeless guy into.”
Ed narrowed his eyes. “You’re fucking hilarious. You know that?”
“So I tell myself. But enough of my comedic genius. When The Source closed, collapsed, imploded ... whatever the fuck, the spirits, for lack of a better term, sharing our bodies got sucked away, leaving all vampires human again.”
“Thanks for the history lesson. I was there.”
“Yeah, but you’re also different – a new breed of vamp that nobody had ever heard of before. Not even Calibra, and that chick was older than dirt itself, literally.”
“Okay, and?”
“So, we kind of know what you can and can’t do, but we’ve always applied regular vampire logic to it. What if the changes inside of you went deeper than that? What if Sheila’s magic affected you even more than we thought?”
He reached a hand up to the scar on his neck, faded but still there. It was in the shape of her hand, where she’d touched him with her healing magic in a bid to save him from the vampire bite that was killing him. Fun times, I tell ya. “How so?”
“Beats the fuck out of me,” I replied. “I’m making this shit up as I go. But here’s a thought. What if the connection inside of you between that spirit, if you will, was also different than a regular vamp ... stronger, as in strong enough to resist being pulled out when everyone else was evicted?”
“Okay,” he replied, getting up and walking into the kitchen. “The problem with that theory is that I’ve been as normal as you these last five years. Correction – probably more normal.”
“What are you doing?”
Ed opened the refrigerator and peered in it. “Looking to see if they have anything to drink. We already stole their towels. I doubt they’ll mind if we swipe a few beers, too.”
“I see your vampire side is affecting your already questionable morals.”
“Eat a bag of dicks. You want one or not?”
“Fuck yeah.”
After we’d settled back onto the couch to enjoy our ill-gotten gains, I turned to him and continued. “I was thinking about that ... not the beer, but that you’ve been human. However, what if you only appear to be human?”
I got up, almost lost my towel, then began pacing once I’d fixed it enough to not give Ed more of a thrill than he deserved. “Think about that doll Tom is connected to. The magic in it wasn’t destroyed like we thought, just rendered inert. Well, what if the same thing happened to you? What if your powers were simply, I don’t know, turned off instead of removed altogether? And now, with these weird pulses, they’re activating again.”
“I suppose that doesn’t sound any crazier than anything I can think of.”
“But it gets better,” I continued. “That also explains why you went apeshit on that guy back in the alley. If whatever is inside of you didn’t get sucked out when the rest of our things got sucked out...”
He raised an eyebrow. “Phrasing.”
“Deal with it. Anyway, the thing ... spirit, inside you. What if it was dormant but still there? And now, with these pulses, it’s slowly waking up again. Problem is, that part of you hasn’t eaten in years, which would make it a lot hungrier than normal. Hence why you completely pulped that guy as opposed to taking a quick drink.”
Ed appeared to consider this.
“Or you could just be a sick fuck and have been hiding it well all these years,” I offered as a counterpoint to my argument.
♦ ♦ ♦
We continued to debate the ins and outs of my, admittedly hastily thrown together, theory. The more we talked, though, the more it made sense and the more dismayed Ed became.
“Kara’s really not going to like this.”
“Which part?”
“The part about me not being human, idiot. If you’re right, then that means I haven’t been human all this time. Hell, I might never be fully human again.”
I nodded. “Yeah, there is that. But, if we can figure out what’s causing these pulses and stop it, then the thing inside of you can go back to sleep again and you can go back to pretending to be a reasonable facsimile. I don’t see the problem.”
“Kara’s the problem,” he snapped. “She wants kids.”
“I thought you didn’t...”
“I got overruled,” he replied bitterly.
I waved my hand and made a whipping sound.
“This isn’t funny. She’s going to flip out when she learns.”
“Why? She was a vamp for a while, too. Looked like she fit in pretty well with the crowd.”
“At the time,” he explained. “But she’s not a teenager anymore. The further we’ve moved away from that time, the more she’s had to think about it. Those aren’t exactly happy memories for her.”
I opened my mouth, but no snark came out. It wasn’t much different than what had happened with Sheila. I’d assumed that because I’d made my peace with things, she had, too, but that wasn’t the case. “Sorry, man. I didn’t know.”
He shrugged. “It is what it is. I mean, on the upside, this might change her mind about kids. I guess that’s a plus...”
The dryer buzzed, sparing us from an unpleasant conversation that really was none of my business.
I stood up and walked over to it. “Let’s get dressed and head back upstairs.”
“What are we going to tell Dave?”
“Who cares? This is Dave we’re talking about. If it doesn’t concern him, he won’t be listening anyway.”
“Fair enough.”
We got dressed then I retrieved our phones from where I’d tossed them next to the washer. I was about to stuff mine back into my pocket when I realized there was a notification on the screen. “Hold on. I got a text.”
“From who?”
A part of me was hoping it was from Sheila, while another part hoped it wasn’t. “Probably Dave wondering where we are with his beer. He...” I glanced down at the phone for a better look and the words dried up in my throat.
“What is it?”
I held the screen up for him to see. A text had come in right in the middle of that last pulse. From the time stamp, it was probably right around the time we were busy hoofing it through the sewer system.
The text was from Sally, and it contained only two words.
They’re here.
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
I tried Sally’s number for perhaps the twentieth time. Ed was behind the wheel of my car, which was fine. I was far too worried to concentrate on driving.
We’d spared just enough time to run upstairs to grab my car keys. Dave was mercifully asleep in Tom’s old room by then, thank goodness. We didn’t need any stupid questions from him slowing us down.
I found my keys while Ed stepped into his old room, emerging a few seconds later with Sheila’s sword. “We might need this.”
I didn’t argue – just turned and headed out the door again.
The streets of Manhattan were never truly empty, but traffic was mercifully sparse during the wee hours of the morning. Even so, the trip seemed to take forever as I continued trying Sally’s number.
She’d have had no reason to be at the Office this late – her days as a night owl long behind her – so I directed Ed toward her apartment.
Ironically enough, it had also once served Village Coven, a former safe house that she’d purchased during a particularly dark time.
> After the world didn’t end, Sally had it renovated and then moved in. Morbid as that might have been to some, it was already paid for: prime real estate in one of the most expensive cities on Earth.
Of course, it was also located in the middle of fucking SoHo, because that seemed to be where my bad luck was centralized in this universe.
We parked in one of her reserved spots and ran to the door, heedless of the fact that we were carrying a broadsword in the middle of the city.
Ed hit the buzzer to be let in, but there came no answer. He tried again, giving the button an obnoxiously long press, guaranteed to wake even the dead – poor choice of words as that was.
“Come on, open up,” I muttered.
No response came, so I stepped to the outside door and began to bang on it. It swung open on my first hit, revealing the jamb had been snapped.
Definitely not a good sign.
Sadly, despite this once being a vampire safe house, it had since been remodeled more for function than fear. If we all got through this mess unscathed, I had a feeling it wasn’t a mistake we’d ever make again.
“Come on!” I cried, leading the way with Ed hot on my tail.
Please be okay!
Sally was the building’s sole tenant, her apartment occupying the entirety of the fifth floor. The walls and floors were made of soundproofed concrete. Good for vampires back then but, sadly, equally good for them now if any decided to pay a visit in the middle of the night, as I now feared was the case.
Those fears solidified in my gut as we reached her floor, only to find the door kicked off its hinges.
“Shit!” I stepped inside and drew the sword, heedless of the fact I was a normal guy, likely wading in way over my head. “SALLY!”
Ed hit the light switch, illuminating the living room enough for us to see that the place was trashed. Sally had impeccable taste when it came to her furnishings, sparing no expense when it came to hiring the best decorators. She may have run an organization tasked with helping the needy, but she’d never quite bought into suffering for the cause.
It was the space of seconds to take in the broken glass and overturned furniture which had replaced the carefully laid out Feng Shui or whatever the fuck it was called – a leather sectional upended, a chandelier lying shattered on the floor, bullet holes riddling the big screen TV that once hung on the wall. Whatever had happened here, there’d been a hell of a fight.
“Where is she?” Ed asked.
“I don’t know. You check that end.” I pointed him toward the kitchen. “I’ll check over here.”
Though the apartment was massive by New York standards, it didn’t take long to search. Sally had favored an open floor plan, no doubt from her years sharing communal living space with other vampires.
The bathroom was intact, if empty. Except for ruffled sheets on the bed and an open drawer in the night table, the bedroom was likewise untouched. I was no private eye, but my instincts told me she’d been woken by the sound of intruders breaking in and had stopped long enough to grab her gun before confronting them.
I stepped out and rejoined Ed, who’d likewise finished his sweep. “Anything?”
He shook his head. “No sign of her, but I found a kitchen knife in the living room with blood on it.”
“Whose?”
“That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question. I also found this.” He held out the remains of a cell phone, crushed beyond use. “I’m guessing she didn’t get a chance to dial 9-1-1.”
“I’m not sure she would have,” I replied, just barely holding it together. “Not if she knew who ... what they were.”
“Even if she didn’t at first, I think she figured it out quickly. Check it out.”
He directed my attention back toward the entrance. I’d been too focused on Sally to notice earlier, but the security panel next to the door was nothing more than a scorched mess of metal and fused plastic. That wasn’t all. Now that I took a moment to slow down, I could see strange burns marring the walls in a few places.
“The fuck?”
“Call me crazy, but I don’t think vampires did all of this.”
A wave of guilt immediately washed over me. “This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have told her. If she’d thought for one second this was a normal burglary she would have called the cops instead of me...”
“Don’t do that shit to yourself, man. Do you really think the police would’ve made a difference? That pulse was more than long enough for these assholes to do whatever they needed to do.”
He was right. That last pulse was the longest we’d seen so far, but I doubted it was long enough to organize a hit like this on the fly.
Had they been staking Sally’s place out, waiting for their moment to strike? Between the attack on my apartment and now this, the timing not only suggested it, but pointed to things escalating beyond just a couple of vamps.
But if so, how did they know when to act? Sitting around, waiting for the magic to randomly turn itself back on, didn’t seem like a sound strategy to me.
“I have a bad feeling about this.” Talk about the fucking understatement of the decade.
“Do you think she’s...”
“I don’t know what to think,” I snapped, it coming out harsher than intended. Taking some deep breaths, I tried to steady myself. I couldn’t help Sally while I was in a blind panic. Neither of us could. Mind you, I wasn’t sure what I could do otherwise, but thinking rationally was at least a start.
“She’s alive,” I said after several long seconds.
“How...?”
“It would’ve been easy for them to figure out she’d texted me. They could have simply left her body for us to find if they wanted to. They took her, which means she’s alive.”
“But why?”
“Beats the fuck out of me.”
“Do you think it’s because of you?” Ed asked. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You said they called you Freewill. If they knew that much, then it’s not hard to assume they could’ve known about your history with her. If they were trying to get to you, then kidnapping Sally would be the next best thing because...”
“I’d come racing to the rescue?”
“More like you’d offer yourself up in exchange. No offense, man, but I’m not sure you’re in any shape to rescue anyone.”
Much as I wanted to shout him down, he was right. I was powerless. They could dangle Sally right in front of me and there wouldn’t be dick I could do about it. This wasn’t my world anymore.
So then why were they trying to drag me back into it?
“Do you think it’s a revenge thing?”
Ed appeared to mull this over. “Let’s face facts. You did piss off a lot of people back in the day. But they’re all dead now.”
“Not all.”
“Sheila?” he offered.
I looked at him sidelong. “Maybe I wasn’t the best boyfriend in the world, but I wasn’t that bad.”
“You did keep her sword.”
“She left it behind. No forwarding address.”
“Okay, okay. I was just grasping at straws.”
“I meant the Magi,” I said. “They’re not the only group that hated me, but they’re pretty much the only ones left. Not to mention, look at this place.”
“You do make a compelling argument.”
I shook my head. “This still doesn’t make any sense, though. I mean, forget magic for a moment. If they wanted me dead, they could have run me over with a car. Why do all of this?”
Ed hesitated for a moment before saying, “Maybe they wanted to hurt you first.”
He may have had a point. People like Christy were the lucky ones – strong enough to survive in a world without magic. From the sound of things, though, the majority of the Magi community had been leading sad, broken lives, for which I was at least partially responsible.
Still, this all seemed too convoluted for petty revenge. And besides, none of it explained those vampires. I said as much.
“So where does that leave us?” Ed asked after a long pause.
“Fucked,” I said. “Utterly fucked. The ball’s in their court, whoever they are.”
“So what now? We wait for them to call with their demands?”
“Beats the fuck out of me,” I replied, leaning against the dining room table, one of the few pieces left relatively unscathed. This was all so unreal, more so because it was Sally.
She’d always been more the type to leave a trail of bodies behind, superior foes or not. Even now, it was hard for me to think of her as vulnerable. Of course, with bullet casings and knives scattered about, maybe vulnerable wasn’t quite the right word. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll turn her again. Then she can kill their asses for us.”
“That is a highly unlikely outcome,” a female voice replied from back near the entrance, causing us to whip toward it so quickly I’m surprised we didn’t snap our own necks.
Standing in the doorway was a lithe form topped by glittering green eyes and long black hair. “The Progenitor here is the only one with that capability. All the rest of the new breed are sterile. Mules if you will, myself included.”
I could only stare in horror as Gansetseg, adopted granddaughter of Genghis Khan, stepped forward into the light. Shit had been steadily going downhill for us ever since this had all started. But where I’d thought they were mere bumps in the road, I now saw we were actually on a roller coaster and had just crested the big hill ... one that went all the way down to my own personal Hell.
THE GANG’S ALL HERE
Ed backed up a step, his voice way too calm for my personal edification. “Bill, please tell me that isn’t who I think it is.”
As our guest continued forward, I offered silent prayers to every D&D god I knew of in the hopes that one might be real and in the mood to listen. Sadly, my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. And people wonder why I’m not a churchgoer. “Hi, Gan.”
She wore a sly smile on her face as she put one well-manicured hand on her hip, adopting a very mature looking pose. She’d definitely grown from when last I’d seen her.
Strange Days (Bill of the Dead Book 1) Page 10
