Bill The Vampire - 01

by Rick Gualtieri

  “Exactly,” agreed Ed. “Which should give either you,” he indicated Tom, “enough time to run in with your little doll, or you,” motioning toward me, “enough time to do something vampiric to them.”

  “Action figure,” corrected Tom.

  “What?”

  “It's an action figure, not a doll,” Tom insisted.

  “It doesn't matter!” Ed rounded on him. “It could be My Little fucking Pony for all I care. As long as it works.”

  “Nah,” Tom said. “Last I checked, the market value for My Little Pony wasn't all that high.”

  Ed pumped the shotgun again. “Don't you have a job to go to?”

  Vampire on Vampire Action

  With the exception of Tom's trips to and from work, the rest of the week was spent with us more or less all acting like shut-ins. I just couldn't shake the feeling that I, and by extension, Tom and Ed, was now a target. Fortunately, Brooklyn is a pretty good place to be a recluse, as almost everyone delivers. The problem, though, with being extra careful, was that it was sometimes hard to tell the difference between reasonable precautions and being outright paranoid.

  Friday night came and went with no word from Sally or any other denizens of the night (except maybe this homeless guy who accosted Tom for change on his way home). I was lying awake in my bed during the wee hours of Saturday morning, contemplating my weekly trip back to the coven and debating whether I should borrow Ed's shotgun, when someone buzzed to be let in from the downstairs door. I glanced at the clock, 4:28 a.m. Probably some drunken asshole forgetting where they were.

  A minute or so passed and the buzzer rang again. Maybe one of the other tenants had locked themselves out? Possibly, but it’s not like any of us had a master key. Fat lot of good it would do them. Although I guess they could just hang out in the hallway until the landlord could show up to let them in. Another buzz, this one persistently longer. Okay, now it was sounding deliberate. I was starting to let the paranoia creep back in when I realized that a gang of vampires hell-bent on killing me would probably not bother with such trivial matters as waiting to be buzzed in.

  I got up, walked out of my bedroom and crossed to the door. As I did, I noticed light shining from under the doors of my roommates’ bedrooms. Our early morning caller had succeeded in rousing the entire place. I pressed the button to let them up and waited, hoping that the next thing I heard was not the clomping of lots of angry feet on the stairs running up to exact undeserved revenge upon me. Being taken out by an angry street gang was one thing, but being taken out by an angry street gang that I had purposely buzzed in... well that would just be sad.

  However, no sound of multitudes of running feet drifted up. All I heard, after a minute or so, was one small set of footsteps taking their sweet time coming up. A moment later I spotted a head of blonde hair rising up toward the landing... Sally.

  I stepped back to let her into the apartment and there was Ed, waiting for us, shotgun raised. I looked behind him to see Tom standing near the door to his bedroom, his faith empowered action figure held out in front like a shield. Oh, well, I guess I couldn't blame him. No matter what we may know to be true, a shotgun was always going to make someone feel a little braver than a piece of plastic.

  Sally entered. After Ed saw she was alone, he lowered the gun, a look of relief crossing over his face. “Nice little gun,” she said to him.

  Ed quickly composed himself and said as nonchalantly as he could (which wasn't very much, all things considered), “I have a bigger one in my pocket if you want to see it.”

  That actually elicited a smile from Sally, who replied, “I'll pass. Now, why don't you go take a shower and freshen up? You reek of desperation.”

  Ed turned a little red, and Tom chuckled at that. As for myself, I closed the door behind her and said, “Since I don't remember booking a bachelor party for myself, shall I assume this isn't a social call?”

  “Ooh, you're snippy in the morning,” she cooed.

  “I've had a hard week... in no small part thanks to you.”

  “And, yet, you survive to complain about it,” she countered. “Still, that's why I'm here. There's been some weird stuff going on and I wanted to check in with you.”

  I batted my eyes at her. “Worried about me?”

  “Don't flatter yourself.”

  “Yeah, don't flatter yourself,” cut in Tom, Transformer still in hand. “She was obviously worried about me.”

  She said in his direction, “I was, but now I see you have your teddy bear.” She motioned toward the doll... action figure that is, and then back to me, “I swear, Bill, I've been around for over fifty years and I've never seen an apartment so full of women repellant.”

  “Alright, enough! Can we cut the foreplay short?” I asked, not really believing that I was the one who was acting like the adult here. “You said weird stuff. What's been happening?”

  She looked me in the eye and replied, “I assume you got my message.” I gritted my teeth and nodded. “Like I said, James needed to prune a few hedges over at that other coven.”

  “The Howard Beach Coven?” I spat.

  “Yeah. How did you... never mind. You can tell me your part when I'm done. He figured he'd kill two birds with one stone and do you a favor while he was taking care of business.”

  “His favor almost got me killed,” I complained.

  “It's always about you, isn't it?” she sniffed. “Now, if you can stop whining for a moment or two, I can tell you what I know.” She stared at me for a few seconds until I mimed zipping my lip, and then she continued, “So, James dusted some of their unauthorized membership and then took out a few of their senior members, just to make it look good.”

  “Tito and Big Mike?” I inquired.

  “How should I know? This is just what I heard,” she said. “I don't know if James bothered asking for their autographs before he took them down. However, what I do know is that he went there in disguise and then purposely let a few witnesses escape to spread the word that someone was hunting down other vamps just for sport.”

  I interrupted, “Let me guess, this someone was a freewill.”

  “Exactly,” Sally confirmed.

  “How do we know he wasn't just setting Bill up to take a fall?” asked Ed.

  She must have thought that an exceptionally stupid question, because that earned Ed one of her famous eye rolls (should I be jealous?). “Because, if James wanted Bill dead, Bill would be dead. No need for subterfuge. He'd just do it,” she explained.

  I had to admit she had a point. “Agreed. Not much doubt in my mind, there.”

  “James has been working behind the scenes to pump up Bill's reputation,” she continued, “And no, I don't know too many specifics as to why. All I know is he has an interest in Bill staying alive.”

  “Okay, I pretty much got the gist of all this from your message the other night,” I replied.

  She nodded and went on, “Yeah, well things got a little crazy after that. James was supposed to take care of any heat that came down on us because of what you had supposedly done. Obviously there was no point in giving you credit if it just got you killed.”

  “That's only fair,” Ed said

  “Except,” Sally pointed out, “he didn't. The HBC's leader, Samuel, went absolutely ape shit. He called up Jeff, screaming and threatening to declare all out war between our covens. Jeff just barely managed to talk him down and agree to mediation on neutral ground.”

  “I'm surprised he didn't just sell me out,” I said.

  “You don't get it!” she spat. “He was going to. He didn't know of James’ plan, and I wasn't about to tell him. Jeff didn't really want to believe it, but, based on what was happening, even he had to admit the possibility that perhaps he'd been underestimating you and that maybe you'd gone feral and done this.”

  “Isn't that a good thing?” Tom asked before turning to me. “Bill, didn't you say you were trying to convince this guy you were more of a threat than you are?”
/>   Leave it to Tom to always help inflate my ego. Before I could chime in with a response, though, Sally answered, “There's more bad than good there. Jeff was not a happy camper that Bill brought this down on his head. You have to understand this is not something that happens often. There's usually an unwritten rule of mutual respect between nearby covens.”

  “And Bill fucked that up,” said Tom.

  “No, James fucked that up,” I corrected him.

  Tom shook his head, “Yeah, but he did it in your name. So, as far as anyone else is concerned, it's on your head.”

  “Your boyfriend is right, Bill,” replied Sally (Bitch!). “As far as anyone knows, this was all you. So, Jeff was planning on handing you over to them. Maybe not physically, but you can be sure as hell they'd have shown up at your doorstep.”

  “Guess we were right to be paranoid,” Ed said, still holding the gun. Tom nodded in agreement.

  I said to Sally, “Except, they didn't show up. So what happened?”

  Sally raised her eyebrows in response. “No idea. They just backed down.”

  “What do you mean backed down?” I asked her.

  “Exactly that. Out of nowhere, Samuel cancelled the meeting and told Jeff that they had reconsidered their position. It was abrupt as all hell. Surprised the shit out of all of us.”

  “And probably pissed off Jeff even more,” I added

  “Bingo! I thought James must have finally acted, but now I don't know. I haven't been able to get in touch with him all week. So I have no idea what transpired.”

  “I don't know what he did,” I said, “but I just wish he had done it sooner.”

  “You mentioned something happened. What went down with you?” Sally asked.

  “Well, thanks to you forgetting to mention this whole thing to me, I found myself unknowingly passing through their territory this week. I met up with two of their goons who were none too happy to see me.”

  Sally gave me a sheepish grin. “Oh. Sorry about that.”

  I filled her in on my little altercation, telling her of how they accosted me. I described how I managed to fight back and luckily somehow scared them off. I was just about to give her the details of my harrowing trip back home when I noticed she had a troubled look on her face.

  “What?” I asked.

  She looked me in the eye. “Let me get this straight, you actually bit one of the other vampires?”

  “I admit it maybe wasn't the manliest thing to do, but they kind of had me outnumbered.”

  “I don't give a shit about that,” she said. “You bit him... on the neck?”

  “Yeah, I was surprised, too,” cracked Tom. “Normally Bill goes straight for the cock.”

  “Put a muzzle on it!” Sally hissed. “This is important.”

  “Yes,” I answered. “I bit him on the neck.”

  “And he bled?”

  “Yeah. Quite a lot actually. I was freaking soaked in his blood.”

  “But did you actually drink any of it?” she asked, rather insistently.

  “That wasn't initially my plan,” I answered, “but yeah, a decent amount.”

  “And?”

  “And what?” I asked.

  “What happened when you drank it?”

  “Oh,” I answered. “It was pretty damn intense. It was like... I don’t know how to describe it. Maybe imagine how it would feel if someone shot you up with caffeine laced meth.”

  Sally sat back with a blank look on face. A few seconds went by and she muttered, “You can't do that.”

  “Like I said, I know it wasn't sporting, but it's not like I really...”

  She cut me off, “No. You don't understand. You can't do that, as in physically can't. It's impossible.”

  “Didn't really seem all that impossible,” I countered.

  “Besides which,” Ed jumped in, “I thought vampires bit each other all the time. I mean have you ever seen an episode of True Blood? They can’t go five minutes without sinking their teeth into each other.”

  “Sorry, but this is real life, not softcore porn,” she snipped back. “Things don't work like that.”

  “So, what's supposed to happen?” I asked.

  “Not all blood is the same,” she explained. “We can only feed upon the blood of the living. When a person is turned into a vampire, their blood composition also changes.”

  “I'm listening.”

  “And it becomes highly incompatible to our needs. End of story. If one of us were to drink more than a few drops of another vampire's blood, we'd start projectile vomiting and then spend the next half a day curled into the fetal position.”

  “Is it really that bad?” I asked.

  “Yes. I've seen it happen,” she explained.

  “Weird,” I said. “I mean, I had a slight hangover the next day, but nothing like that. In fact, curling up into a ball was the furthest thing from my mind right after I drank it. I felt like I could have kicked ass and taken names. It was actually pretty cool.”

  “Unbelievable,” she whispered and then added in a louder voice, “Jesus Christ. James knew!”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Remember how I told you I had started spreading those rumors about you, including the one about feeding off of other vampires?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that came from James. I thought it was all just wild bullshit, but now I'm wondering if he knew more than he was letting on.”

  “It would seem so,” agreed Ed.

  Sally then added, “That would probably explain why the other coven backed down from wanting revenge, too.” She turned to me. “James had nothing to do with it. It was all you... as incredible as that sounds. The two who attacked you must have reported back to Samuel. You probably scared the shit out of them.”

  Ed added, “The only thing a predator fears is a bigger predator.”

  “Exactly; especially when the first predator is used to being at the top of the food chain.”

  “So, then where is James in all of this?” I asked.

  “I don't know!” said Sally. She sounded exasperated. “I told you, I haven't been able to get in touch with him. That's part of the reason I'm here right now at this ungodly hour.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was coming to get you, so we could go and look for James. After hearing what you just told me, I'd say our reasons for finding him just easily doubled.”

  “I thought he wasn't normally in the city,” I said.

  “He's not. He's usually stationed up in Boston.”

  “So, if I'm hearing you correctly, that sounds to me like only one thing...”

  I looked to my roommates and after a second we all simultaneously shouted, “ROAD TRIP!”

  The Road Trip of the Damned

  “Not so fast,” said Sally. “We're not heading up to tour micro breweries. This is business, vampire business.”

  “That's a great idea!” piped in Tom. “Once you guys are done with whatever it is you need to do, we can stop at a few microbrews.”

  “You're not listening, meatsack,” Sally replied. “This is business, not pleasure. I just came over to get Bill. You two are staying here.”

  “We're already involved in vampire business,” Ed pointed out. “The cat's obviously out of the bag. Bill can't keep a secret for shit. So you might as well bring us along. Besides which, you might need someone to help keep an eye on you...” he paused as Sally began to glare at him, “... and by you, I mean you two, as in plural, as in keep an eye on you and Bill,” she kept glaring, “... but mostly Bill.”

  “He does have a point,” I cut in, trying to save Ed from the hole he had just dug.

  Sally rounded on me, “I don't need three sets of eyes glued to my ass.”

  “No! I don't mean that,” I said, quickly trying to backpedal. “They could be helpful. It'll be daylight soon. In weekend traffic, it'll take us at least half a day to get up there. They can drive, pump gas, make snack runs...”

&
nbsp; “I suppose we could bring them along as the snacks,” mused Sally as both of my roommates turned a shade paler.

  “C'mon!” I pleaded. “If you let them come along, I guarantee they won't be too annoying... well okay, I can't guarantee that, but I know they'll try. And they can definitely prove useful to us.”

  All three of us beamed hopeful smiles at her and at last she let out a sigh. “Fine!” she said. “I'm tried of arguing. You can all come, but I want to be on the road before daybreak. So get moving! If I get even a mild sunburn because you guys were busy screwing around, I swear I'll kill all three of you myself.”