Strange Days (Bill of the Dead Book 1)

by Rick Gualtieri

  “I agree,” Sheila said, her gaze locking on Komak. “That is enough. Is he talking about Tina? She’s five years old, for God’s sake.”

  “You didn’t know?” Kelly asked.

  “Of course not,” she replied. “They were supposed to approach Bill for the spell we needed. Barring that, the plan was to...”

  “Attack Sally?” I offered.

  Her eyes opened wide. “No! Ask her.”

  “Didn’t really work out that way.”

  “What the hell is going on?” She stepped in further and faced Christy. “You have to believe me. I’m trying to help these people, but I would never condone...”

  Christy slapped her across the face before she could say more. Can’t entirely say she was in the wrong. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” She lowered her voice. “You picked the wrong friends, and they put my little girl in danger.”

  “Yeah, you tell her, babe!” Tom said, popping his head up from the floor.

  Oh, fuck me sideways with a blender.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Two of the guards opened fire at Tom’s dumbass reappearance. The bullets passed through him and hit the ground, thankfully not ricocheting into someone else ... like me.

  “Cease fire!” Komak ordered. “I should have known this was rigged.”

  If Christy’s slap was a surprise to Sheila, Tom’s appearance was a sledgehammer to the face. Her jaw practically dropped to the floor, a grab bag of emotions passing through her face in the space of seconds. “How? It’s not...”

  Tom, seemingly pleased with himself, replied, “Oh yeah! I am Powermaster Optimus Prime, bitches. Just when you think the Decepticons have won, I return and kick everyone’s ass.”

  I glanced down at him, nonplussed. “I would have gone with bad penny myself.”

  “That’s because you’re a small-dicked loser.”

  “B-but, how?” Sheila asked, horror dawning on her face as the modicum of authority she’d exuded upon her arrival slipped away. It was a far cry from her old confidence as the Icon, “How are you ... Tina ...”

  Despite being at the mercy of a group not entirely friendly to our cause, I immediately felt better at seeing her surprise. Whatever she’d come in here expecting, this wasn’t it. I knew Sheila. She wasn’t this good of an actress. I wasn’t dumb enough to think her hands were entirely clean here, but seeing she hadn’t been the one to give Komak his marching orders was a sizable weight off my chest.

  “None of this was supposed to happen,” Sheila continued, more to herself than anyone. “All I was trying to do was fix the lives I destroyed.”

  Hershel stood up and faced Komak. “As am I. There had better be a very good explanation for all of this.”

  “Yes, Ernest,” Sheila added. “There had better be. All we needed was the spell. There was no reason to hurt anyone.”

  “The spell is useless,” Liz snapped. “It’s the wrong one. You, the all-powerful Icon, were wrong about it.”

  “But...”

  “And we don’t have the time to refine it ourselves. So we did what needed to be done. End of story.”

  “But how could you even know that?”

  Ignoring Komak’s assertion that I was the tits on this bull, I added my two cents. “Because they kidnapped Sally and ripped the information from her mind.”

  When nobody said anything to the contrary, Sheila pointed a finger at him. “Is this true?”

  “I judged her unlikely to cooperate,” he said. “So we took what we wanted. Sadly, it wasn’t what we needed.”

  I turned to him. “Is she...”

  “Let her go, now,” Sheila interrupted, obviously feeling more optimistic than I was.

  “No,” Komak stated flatly.

  “What do you mean, no?” Ux cried. “The council did not agree to this.”

  “Yes you did. You all did. The moment you signed on to this endeavor. You want to go home, see your people again. Same with Glen. And you, Hershel, you’ve been in and out of rehab these last five years, desperate to get your old life back.”

  “He’s right,” Liz said, standing up. “Unspoken or not, we all knew what we were getting into.”

  “But this is...”

  “Exactly what you bargained for,” Jasper replied, sounding way too smug for my personal tastes. “And I offer the mosque above us as proof. None of you had a problem with that.”

  He kind of had a point there. What they’d done in order to reach this place was kind of hard to write off as an oops.

  Liz nodded. “So don’t any of you get on your high horses now. We all knew we’d need to get our hands dirty, probably more than once. Even if you didn’t pull the trigger, none of you did anything to stop it from happening.”

  “This is intolerable!” Ux banged one wispy, um, pincer on the table. “You can’t do things like this without consulting the rest of us first. And I won’t be a part of it.”

  It was like standing in the middle of a bunch of YouTube commenters. Much as I liked to see infighting amongst the other team, it wasn’t doing much to get us what we needed.

  I held up my hands, more as a peace gesture than surrendering. “Okay, I think we get it. None of us are the good guys, not even us.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Tom said.

  “No comments from the ectoplasm gallery. I’m trying to make a point here. We just want our friend back. No tricks. No deception.”

  Komak raised an eyebrow.

  “Okay, except for him, but he’s a ghost. What’s he really going to do?”

  “Bill’s right,” Kelly said. “What’s done is done. We can’t change that, but we can still move forward and make this a win-win for everyone. We have the spell you need. Give us our friend and it’s yours. We won’t stop you. Heck, I’m not going to lie and say I’d mind getting some of my mojo back.”

  The people on either side of us were silent as they continued to glare back and forth. I could tell there was unfinished business here, but that was their problem. I just wanted to rescue my friend and get the hell out of here.

  “How do we know this isn’t a trick?” Komak finally asked. He might’ve been stone cold with his poker face, but I could see hope glimmering in his girlfriend’s eyes. I had a feeling we were almost there.

  Jasper turned to him. “Surely they would know...”

  “That if we fucked you over, we’d end up filled with lead?” I interrupted. “Yeah, been there, done that. Don’t forget, I dealt with the First Coven, too. I know how this shit works.” Then, realizing my tone might have been a tad more aggressive than intended, I pointed toward the wizard still holding Sheila’s sword. “Besides, if we were planning on screwing you guys over, we wouldn’t have brought the Icon a peace offering as a show of, dare I say it, good faith.”

  Sheila turned toward the weapon, her eyes wide. “You kept it?”

  “How could I not?”

  “Yeah,” Tom added. “Fucking thing’s worth a mint. You don’t just throw shit like that away.”

  Goddamn it all. Was it too much to hope his batteries ran out anytime soon?

  GREEN-EYED MONSTER

  Things were still tense as we headed back toward the outer chamber, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. We had definitely moved the doomsday clock back a few minutes as evidenced by the fact that we weren’t all bullet-ridden corpses.

  That didn’t mean they trusted us by any means, but whatever the fuck.

  Liz and Jasper had stayed behind to start prepping the mages for the final pulse, the last ley line, the one that would make or break this deal, or at least they claimed. Personally, I hadn’t been counting.

  The rest of their leadership, friend and foe alike, accompanied us to make good on the first part of the deal: freeing Sally.

  Komak had tried to convince Sheila to go prepare, too, but she wasn’t having any of it. However, she did send Glen ahead with her sword, instructing him – after plunging the weapon, scabbard and all, into his goo
py form – to place it in her tent. Hopefully she had plenty of wet wipes in there to clean it off with afterward.

  We mostly marched in silence. Even Tom seemed to have little to say. Talk about awkward. As far as reunions went, I’d have sooner attended my high school one and I mostly hated that place.

  After several minutes of uncomfortable quiet, Kelly decided to cut the tension by sidling up to Sheila. “How are you doing?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  Sheila turned and looked at her, sorrow etched on her face. “I don’t think sorry begins to cover this.”

  Kelly, however, smiled. “It’s a start. So ... how are things down here?”

  Sheila nodded, no doubt grateful for the change in subject. “Boring mostly. The shower facilities suck, and don’t even get me started on chemical toilets.”

  “That’s fucking gross,” Tom replied, keeping pace with us now that the secret of his presence was thoroughly blown. “Although I have to admit I do miss the joy of a good shit.”

  I let out a sigh. “Thanks for sharing.”

  “Anytime, bro.”

  “I know this is going to sound ... wrong.” Sheila turned to him, a wide-eyed stare still on her face. I guess I couldn’t blame her. Last time she’d seen him, she’d been busy plunging a sword through his chest. “But how are you here? I thought ... we all thought...”

  Christy stepped forward. For a moment, I thought she might lay into Sheila again, but she appeared to have calmed down. “We all did. But then he appeared. Turns out he’s been here all along. We just didn’t know. And...” She took a deep breath. “We never would have if you hadn’t started this.” After a moment, she added, “Sorry about earlier. You have to understand...”

  “Don’t,” Sheila replied. “I deserved it. There’s no excuse for what happened, and I have to take responsibility for it. I could have...”

  “Asked me yourself instead of sending the goon squad girl scouts to my door?” I offered.

  The look on her face suggested she knew her apologies were not even remotely done for the day. “You would have said no.”

  “You don’t know that... Okay, fine. I would have. But you could have at least tried.”

  She shook her head. “No. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to see you.” No doubt realizing what she’d implied, she quickly added, “Not like that. But I knew you’d talk me out of it. And I didn’t want you to. I was trying to hold on to that same sense of purpose I had when I was the Icon. But it’s not that easy now. That unearthly confidence, it turns on and off with the flow of the ley lines. One moment I’m certain this is the right path. The next...”

  “This is the right path,” Komak said with a surety she didn’t have.

  “Perhaps, although we may have to disagree on the methods involved,” Ux said, a note of disgust in his voice, even if his weird imp face was unreadable.

  “When we’re finished, the world will be a better place. Just wait and see.”

  I chuckled. “For some of us.”

  “Why not for everyone?” he asked, actually sounding serious. “The old ways are dead and so are those who enforced them. They’re the ones who made the world the way it was, divided – one half in the light yet ignorant, the other confined to the shadows. We have a chance to change those rules, enlighten the denizens of this world as to its true nature.”

  “I disagree,” Hershel said. “The Magi will not be strong enough if the humans turn against us again.”

  “This isn’t the Dark Ages anymore.”

  “I’m going to assume you don’t use Twitter often,” I replied.

  Sheila watched us as we talked. “I just want the sadness, the suicides, to end. I want to wake up and not feel all of those lives I destroyed.”

  I looked hard at her. We’d discussed what cracking open The Source a smidgeon could do for vamps and mages but hadn’t considered what it might do to her. If I had to guess, it wouldn’t affect her much physically, but perhaps subconsciously she longed for enough of that old self confidence to stop second-guessing herself ... maybe even allow herself the happiness I began to suspect she didn’t think she deserved.

  I noted the sleeves on her shirt were rolled up, the scars crisscrossing her left arm plainly visible – scars I’d given her during our final battle all those years ago. She’d suffered permanent nerve damage as a result, but I realized she probably could’ve healed herself during those pulses, yet hadn’t. But maybe that was the point. Those scars were more than skin deep.

  And what about me? I’d been so happy to be in a relationship with her that I hadn’t noticed any of it. Maybe a part of this was my fault. If I’d been a better listener and less of a self-absorbed douche, perhaps this could have been...

  Tom stepped past me to walk beside her despite there not being enough room . One of the benefits of being a ghost was apparently not giving a shit about personal space. “Y’know, I’ve had a bit of time to think the last couple of years while everyone was busy ignoring me.”

  “We weren’t ignoring you,” I said.

  “Whatever.” He turned back toward her. “Anyway, the truth is, I’m cool with it. You should be, too. Most of the people who were down here when we blew the fuck out of this place were dicks. Fuck them.”

  Needless to say, our gracious hosts all glared at him, the looks on their faces ranging from outrage to anger.

  I raised a hand to the bridge of my nose. Why the hell did we think bringing him along was a good idea?

  “It was the right thing to do,” he continued, oblivious. “Even ganking me, which you actually didn’t. But if I had to do it all over again ... well, I’d try to figure out a way that didn’t involve having to watch Bill getting all cozy with my woman while I was invisible, but if I couldn’t find one, then I’d do it the same way.”

  Oh fuck!

  Both Gan and Sheila glanced toward me, eyebrows raised. So much for dead men telling no tales.

  “What?” I asked, doing my best to play dumb. “I’m her godfather. Of course I’m going to spend time with Tina. She needs positive...” and not fucking dumbass “...male role models in her life.”

  “That’s not what I...”

  Thankfully, Christy was there for the save. “Where are you taking us?”

  “To retrieve your friend, of course,” Komak replied. “We had to keep her ... segregated from the rest.”

  Hershel and Ux didn’t seem overly appreciative of that, but arguing was likely pointless, especially since we – and probably they – had no idea who was on Komak’s side. It was possible that most of the folks down here were in the hippy camp, assuming this was all lollypops and sugarplum fairies. I mean, Glen the blob had sure as hell seemed surprised, so why not others?

  At the same time, Komak didn’t strike me as stupid. I had a feeling that the majority of those escorting us to hopefully wherever Sally was were firmly in his employ.

  I wondered how many in my group realized that. Gan almost certainly. She was usually about ten moves ahead of me in the chess game of life. Christy probably, too.

  Tom, no. But at least he was immune to bullets.

  We were led into the far more sparsely manned outer chamber. If they decided to try anything out here...

  No. That was paranoid. I needed to remember that these fuck-weasels wanted their precious spell. Without it, they’d get dick all.

  Of course, only Christy knew how to cast it. The rest of us weren’t worth jack shit to them.

  Oh yeah, gotta love positive thinking.

  “Let’s hurry,” Komak said. “The time is near. The final ley line is almost ready to be harvested. You should go and get ready, Sheila.”

  “I’ll get ready once I see that my friend is okay.”

  “As you wish, Shining One. Although I must warn you, we still have a ways to go.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Komak steered us in the direction of the countless side tunnels. Smart. One could have held a hun
dred prisoners in them and nobody would have been the wiser.

  Surprisingly, though, it was the one lit tunnel out of all of them – the one leading back to the surface – that he guided us toward.

  Bundles of heavily shielded cables ran into it – power for lights and probably communications too. Pity that wiring wasn’t the only thing inhabiting it. There were armed guards inside, too. Lots of them. There was a pair stationed maybe every ten yards.

  And Komak had been right – this was no short jaunt. We kept walking and walking, passing more and more guards. I had little doubt they were mostly Magi, but none were taking any chances in the defense department. That meant there was a lot of firepower in this cave, perhaps enough to overrun the rest of the place if anyone balked at their leader’s methods.

  I did a quick calculation in my head as we walked. Far as I could tell, I’d seen a lot more people down here than in that video Gan had shown us. Either they’d been merely the advance force or others had been recruited along the way – a prospect that, judging by even Kelly’s response to this, might not have been all that difficult.

  We walked for maybe twenty more minutes. The tunnel was broken up every so often by larger chambers inside, big enough for supply caches, but for the most part it was a slog as the path gradually sloped uphill. Thank goodness that final pulse hadn’t hit yet, because otherwise – even with Christy’s magic charm – there was little chance of me making it.

  However, just as I was beginning to rue that normal me was starting to get winded, I spied something up ahead that perked me back up.

  There were lights, a small platoon of guards, and what looked like mounted weaponry bolted to the floor the cave.

  But it was what lay beyond that really caught my eye. A solid wall of rock, a dead end, but driven into that rock were two pairs of manacles.

  And attached to them, pinned to the wall, was Sally!

  SEGUEING TO THE FINALE

  The guards tensed as we approached, but thankfully Komak called out for them to stand down. That was good, because the rest of us had already started racing toward our imprisoned friend. Being gunned down in sight of her would have been the height of embarrassment.