Sunset Strip: from the Tome of Bill Series

by Rick Gualtieri

  It also didn’t help that I was fairly sure he was a member of the group that Firebird had won over by use of her not-so-unique talents.

  Goddamn, sometimes I hate newbs.

  “Back off,” I said without turning toward him. “She’s not from the hotline.”

  Part of me was almost tempted to hold my tongue. Christy was a witch, a pretty potent one from what I’d seen of her powers. Flash-frying dipshit back there would probably barely work up a sweat.

  I waited for a moment. John-boy might decide to press his luck anyway. It would give me a good gauge as to how much of a reminder the others needed as to who was in charge.

  No attack came, though. He gave one more growl before going back to his duties. Good. There might still be hope for him yet.

  Christy had put on some weight since last I’d seen her, no doubt a result of having been knocked up by her halfwit boy toy, Tom. Otherwise, she looked surprisingly good. Motherhood worked well for some women. I just hoped the kid took after her. God knows there’re enough dipshits in the world as it is.

  “Sorry for that bit of rudeness,” I said. “They’re still being housetrained.”

  Christy gave a half smile in return. “It’s okay. I imagine I’m not...”

  “What the fuck is that doing here?”

  I stifled a sigh. I had thought Firebird was out for the evening, perfecting her blowjob skills.

  “She’s here under truce,” I replied, turning to face her. “Run along and play, Betty. I’m sure there’s an alleyway somewhere you can be making a quick buck in.” I should have paid her the same heed as the other vamp. The redheaded slut thought she was my equal, but she wasn’t even in the same league. Fuck that. She wouldn’t have been able to afford a goddamn ticket to my ballpark.

  She narrowed her eyes, probably more so at my dismissive use of her real name than my comment. She played the part of the not-so-blonde bombshell, but I’d known her before that. Hell, her hair wasn’t even naturally that color...more of a mousy brown.

  “Truce?” She raised her voice to get the attention of the entire room. “Isn’t she one of the witches who’s been trying to murder our leader, the illustrious Freewill?”

  I rolled my eyes. Illustrious Freewill? Someone must’ve subscribed to the Word of the Day. Her usage was laughable, though. She’d been badmouthing him behind his back since the day he took over from Jeff, our previous leader. Unfortunately, Bill tended not to notice such things - he was usually too busy staring at her tits. Legendary Freewill he might be, but that didn’t make him immune to being a desperate male.

  She stepped dangerously close to me. “Is your position so weak that you’d consort with the creatures who have been trying to kill our master?”

  Behind me, I sensed Christy tense up. Though I wouldn’t shed any tears at seeing Firebird turned into a roasted turkey, this was my problem. The bitch had stepped way out of line. “Back off, Firebird. This isn’t your concern.”

  “A real leader would have killed this thing the second the door was opened - but not you. My, how far you’ve fallen, little Lucinda.”

  Did she just say...? Oh, this two-bit tramp was definitely gonna get it.

  I turned my head toward Christy. She had one eyebrow raised questioningly. I smiled and gave her a single shake of my head.

  In that moment, Firebird - emboldened by the fact that I’d broken eye contact with her - stepped up to me. Some people are just so predictable.

  I waited for her to speak.

  “Maybe it’s time we picked a new...”

  Without bothering to turn around, I brought my hand up - claws elongating mid-swing. Firebird was a lover - an undiscerning one, at that - not a fighter. I turned back to her just as she shrieked and raised her hands to cover her ruined eyes.

  “You fucking bitch!” she screamed. “I’m going to...”

  I should’ve torn out her tongue, too. I hit her again before she could finish the sentence, which shut her up as she fell to the floor. Oh well, being overly merciful has always been one of my vices.

  I inclined my head to the two vamps nearest me, my meaning clear. They grabbed Firebird and dragged her from my sight.

  I would be well within my rights to have killed her. Hell, a coven master was more or less free to do as they pleased. I briefly remembered back to Jeff’s reign. He was an asshole for whom there was no such thing as too much abuse of power.

  Unfortunately, she’d done her damage. Most of the others hadn’t met Bill, but I’d been sure to fill their heads with as much bullshit about him as I could shovel. Firebird spilling the beans about Christy being one of Harry Decker’s crew wasn’t ideal. I didn’t have to answer to any of them, but things were tenuous enough as it was. It was probably best to discuss matters with Christy elsewhere

  All will be dragged screaming into a sea of boiling death!

  Shit! The fucking skull was starting up again. Definitely time to go.

  “Oh my God! That sounded like Har...”

  “Truce is over,” I snarled, grabbing Christy by the arm and steering her toward the exit. “Your kind is not welcome here.”

  Before she could say anything further, I opened the door and pushed her through. Turning back, I caught sight of Starlight.

  “I’m taking this trash out once and for all. You’re in charge while I’m gone.”

  I didn’t wait for her acknowledgement before I slammed the door behind us.

  Chapter 4

  “You in the mood for a drink?” I whispered once the door was shut. “Because I sure as shit could use one.”

  “Not with the baby,” she replied, confused.

  “Coffee it is, then. Come on, you’re buying.” I led her toward the elevator. Considering my show back there, it wouldn’t do for anyone to walk out and find us having a friendly chat in the hall.

  Unlike her boyfriend, Christy wasn’t a complete moron. She followed and kept her mouth shut rather than argue. The elevator opened at our floor and we stepped in. I’d feel better once we were out of the immediate area, away from where the others could hear, see, or smell us...oh shit!

  I put my hand in the door just before it shut. Fuck! I had forgotten about Monkhbat. Though tentatively under my command, he was far older than me. There was no way he wouldn’t notice Christy’s scent when he returned. That wasn’t good.

  I had lied to his master about her fate. Her having survived was easily explainable - magic, duh! - but me failing to sic the entire coven on her could be an issue if he blabbed. Thus, this needed to look a bit more convincing.

  “What’s wrong?” Christy asked warily.

  “How’s your magic?”

  “Fine...now, I guess. I mean, I’ve been self...”

  “That’s fascinating. Can you do me a quick favor?” She nodded. “Good. Blast the shit out of the door.”

  “Why?”

  “Monkhbat.”

  “Who?”

  “Gan’s lackey, the one I told you about.”

  Christy’s eyes briefly flashed with power at the mention of the little Mongolian bitch. Those two weren’t destined to be on each other’s BFF lists anytime soon. Heh, I knew there was a reason I liked the witch.

  “Don’t feel you need to hold back. If anyone is too close to the door, that’s their own fucking fault for trying to eavesdrop.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The elevator shut before the smoke cleared. Sure, it would mean some cleanup for the coven, but a little collateral damage was preferable to having my many lies unravel...lies that would, no doubt, leave me on the business end of an execution.

  At some point, my house of cards would come tumbling down, but today wasn’t that day.

  “You clawed out that girl’s eyes,” Christy said, breaking the silence.

  “They’ll grow back. How have you been?”

  “A little tired.”

  “Still puking?”

  “It finally stopped, thank goodness.”

  “So have you heard fro
m...” we asked in unison, just as the doors opened to the lobby. Neither of us needed to reply to know the joint answer was no.

  Goddamnit!

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Christy held her tongue until we reached our destination, a little café in SoHo that served killer espresso. It was busy enough that our conversation would be lost amongst the inane chatter of the other patrons.

  The waitress took our order and I finally got down to business. “Not a social call, I take it?”

  She shook her head. “I need your help.”

  “Bill-related?” A glimmer of hope weaseled its way into my voice. Damn that fucking nerd for making me care!

  “No. I was kind of hoping maybe you’d heard something.”

  “Yeah, but it’s amounted to Jack and shit. I know he hasn’t returned home, to his job, or his parents’ house.”

  “Do you think he’s...”

  “Well, yeah; we’re vampires. Of course he’s dead.”

  She chuckled. It broke some of the tension. Maybe now we could get to the point of the matter. It wasn’t particularly smart for us to be socializing in public. I had little interest in getting my ass handed to me, no matter how good the coffee might be.

  “It’s Tom...” she started. Immediately, my attention waned. “His sister, actually.” The twit had a sister? Now it was even less interesting to me.

  “I assume this gets better.”

  “She’s run off.”

  “So what? Is she, like, six?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Okay, well this has been fun,” I said, standing up. “We’ll have to do this again when there’s an actual world-ending...”

  “Wait, you don’t understand.”

  “Understand what? That she had a temper tantrum because her parents didn’t buy her a car or something?”

  “It’s vampires.”

  That caught my attention slightly. Normally I could give a shit about such things. I mean, I’m usually the cause of people’s disappearances, not the other way around. Two things stopped me, though. Bill wouldn’t have hesitated for a second to help his friend, and he’d certainly give me shit when he got back if I refused to do the same. Listening to him whine in my ear for all of eternity did not bode well for my continued sanity. Secondly, though I wouldn’t have admitted it under torture by the Draculas, his fucking gimp of a roommate had helped us out on more than one occasion. I probably owed him just enough to hear Christy out.

  I checked my watch. Oh fuck it, five more minutes wouldn’t kill me. I sat back down. “Vampires?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any of mine?”

  “No. They’re not from around here.”

  “Okay, start talking, but be warned; I’m ordering an appetizer too.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The waitress brought our drinks while Christy explained. She wasn’t sure if it was coincidence or if some vamps had figured out two plus two and were purposely targeting Tom’s family because of his association with Bill. Either way, his little sister had acquired a new boyfriend in weeks’ past. He’d been stirring up trouble at home, driving a wedge between the girl and her parents...a not entirely difficult thing to do with a teenaged girl.

  Tom, still preoccupied with freaking out at the concept of becoming a dad, hadn’t paid it much heed. Couldn’t say I blamed him. The prospect of siring a new generation of dumbass of his caliber could be off-putting to anyone.

  Christy had likewise been busy, trying to keep him from turning into more of a dumb fuck than he already was, as well as apparently attempting to build a new mage coven. Hopefully it turned out to be more successful than her last one.

  “So how do vampires play into this?”

  “I’m getting to that,” she said in between sips of a decaf cappuccino. Ugh, the very thought made me gag. Talk about a sin against mankind. “Two weeks ago, Tom and I went down to visit with his folks. His sister mostly kept to herself, but I happened to see her new boyfriend once when he picked her up. Something about him set off warning signals.”

  “Something familiar?”

  “Sorta.” She broke eye contact. Before Bill’s doofy charisma had won her over, she’d been firmly in the kill all vampires camp. “I didn’t trust myself, though. Things are better than they were when I first found out I was pregnant, but my powers have still been going a little haywire every now and then. I’ve been self-binding myself just in case. It tends to mute everything.”

  “Self-binding? If we’re gonna start talking kinks here, then I’m gonna need something stronger. Don’t get me wrong, I like being tied up as much as...”

  “No! My powers. I’ve been using a ritual to keep them in check.”

  “Oh, well that’s a bit less weird...sorta.”

  “Anyway, as I said, everything’s been muffled for me. All I got was a little feeling, like the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. The thing is, it kept nagging at me. So when I got back home, I decided to undo the binding and cast a scrying spell.”

  “In other words, you spied on them?”

  “More or less.”

  “We’re back to kinky again.”

  She ignored me. “I didn’t get much at first.”

  “I take it you kept at it for a while?” I asked, bemused.

  “Well yeah, she’s Tom’s sister. I mean, Kara’s probably going to be my sister-in-law.”

  “Really?”

  “Well maybe...someday,” she replied, blushing. It was cute in a deer-in-the-headlights sort of way. “Anyway, the guy must’ve been real careful because I didn’t see anything that would have set me off.”

  “Until…”

  “I was scrying again two nights ago and found Kara and her mother in the middle of a massive blowout. I really just caught bits and pieces, but it was mostly about his age.”

  “College boy?”

  “He’s definitely a bit older than her.”

  “She wouldn’t be the first girl to fall for a guy a few years her senior.”

  “I know. I have no idea what she sees in him, though. From the glimpse afforded me, he’s nothing special. If anything, she’s out of his league.”

  “Stupid and teenage girl tend to go hand in hand.”

  Christy nodded knowingly. “Anyway, the boyfriend showed up and got into it, too. That’s when I caught it. It was only for the briefest of seconds, and I thought maybe I was just seeing stuff considering all the craziness we’ve been through the past couple of months…”

  “He snacked on the mom?”

  “Nothing that obvious. But his eyes turned black for just a moment. Too fast for either of them to notice, but I did.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I jumped in my car and drove down there.”

  “Wait, why didn’t you just teleport? I’ve seen you do it before.”

  “Like I said, I’ve been binding myself lately. It takes a while to fully shake off. I wasn’t quite up to snuff to travel that way. I could’ve made it, but would have been too tired to do much else if trouble started.”

  “Okay, fine. I don’t need the details. So you and Tom…”

  “Just me. He can get a little over-protective about his sister and, well, if things got ugly, I didn’t want him getting hurt.”

  “Or fucking things up?”

  She stared me in the eye for a moment before averting her gaze again. “Maybe a little of that.”

  Hah! Good to see she wasn’t completely blinded by love. “And?”

  “And I was too late. His sister was already gone, run off with that...”

  “Filthy beast of the night?” I arched an eyebrow.

  “Sorry.”

  I put my cup down. “Did you ever consider that maybe he’s legit? Vampires aren’t all bloodsucking monsters. I mean, there’s Bill and…” I racked my brain, trying to think of another good example. Oh fuck it. “…and Bill. But I’m sure there are others like him. I mean, for all you know, they might really have something.”


  “Don’t you think I considered that?” Christy asked, her tone clear she felt slightly insulted. “I know that in many ways you’re just as human as I am.”

  I was tempted to correct her in that I wouldn’t fall for a dorkus like she had, but I stopped myself short. That wasn’t entirely true. Still, that was the ancient past, another life. I pushed aside those thoughts, avoiding that particularly gruesome memory lane.

  Even so, it bugged me a bit. There was something disturbingly familiar with Kara’s story. I’m sure it’s that way with a lot of girls who wind up seduced by our kind. Here in the city, we tend to forgo the lovey-dovey shit and just lure our victims into a dark alley. Of course, half the time they’re already hopped up on one drug or another. But not every place was like here, was it? In other parts of the country, they tended to move a bit slower. It still seemed like a lot of work for a meal, though.

  “So what about the situation convinced you otherwise?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “While I was down there, I did some asking around about this guy.”

  “Just asking?”

  “I may have befuddled a few minds in the process.”

  “When you've got it, flaunt it.” She smirked. Maybe we weren’t so different after all.

  “Something like that. Anyway, it wasn’t too hard to find out that he was from out of town…way out of town.”

  “How far?”

  “Vegas.”

  “Really?” My curiosity piqued again. “Been a while since I’ve been out there.”

  “But you know people, right?”

  “Well, yeah.” I rolled my eyes. Hell, I had an in with one of the Draculas, our ruling council. One didn’t get much more in-the-know than that.

  “Good, because that’s why I’m here. I’m heading out there and I need information.”

  “You’re flying to Las Vegas?” She nodded. “That might not be too smart. What if you…”

  “I won’t. That’s why I want your help. If you can find out how many there are and how old the coven master is, that’ll give me enough to at least not go in completely blind.”