“Yep...also known as Vehron the Render, Vehron the Hater of All Life, Vehron the Sun Strider, Vehron the...”
“Sun Strider?”
“It doesn’t elaborate.”
“Dude has a lot of aliases,” Ed remarked.
“Tell me about it. Why don’t I have any cool nicknames like that?”
“Oh, remember Johnny Collins from fifth grade?” Tom, asked looking up from the file.
“No.”
“He used to call you Rytard. I thought that was pretty cool.”
“Give me that!” Sally stomped over and yanked the pages out of his grasp. She flashed her fangs, as if daring him to object, then began reading. “It’s definitely our guy. There’s a crude drawing of him here, but the tattoos seem to match.”
“What else does it say?”
“Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“Oh, shit.”
“We’ve already established that. Is there anything in there that we can use against this asshole?”
To my surprise, her face appeared to have turned a shade paler.
“What is it?”
“This guy has a rap sheet a mile long, Bill. Born in Germania about twenty-two hundred years ago...”
“Whoa.”
“That’s not the half of it. After being turned, this guy rose in rank to become one of our best generals, and not the armchair variety, either. There are battles listed here I’ve never even heard of, against foes I can barely pronounce.”
“That’s not promising.”
“Oh no...”
“What now?”
“He’s credited with killing at least three members of whatever passed for the Draculas back then.”
“How did they...”
“It says they were all honorable duels, but who the fuck knows what that means? It gets worse, though. Before disappearing...”
“Disappearing?”
“Yeah. About fourteen hundred years ago. All records of him just ceased. It’s as if he fell off the planet.”
“Or into someone’s closet,” I mumbled.
“What was that?”
“Never mind,” I replied, waving it off - feeling a chill creep down my spine.
“Anyway,” she continued, “according to this section, even more honor and glory were draped upon his shoulders after...”
“After what?”
She looked up and held my gaze. “After he killed two Icons.”
Now it was my turn to blanch. “Oh my God.”
Silence descended once more as we digested this.
“Good job, Bill.” Tom sat down next to me and clapped me on the shoulder. “Only you.”
“Huh? What do you mean by that?”
“Think about it. Someone else might have grabbed any other head there: Burko the Lover of Puppies, Silas the Grower of Flowers, but not you. You somehow walked out of there carrying a guy called the Destroyer.”
“He does have a point,” Ed agreed.
“Jeez, you guys are all acting like this is somehow my fault.” Two sets of incredulous eyes stared back. “Okay, I will admit, perhaps I have a slight responsibility here. But come on, how the fuck was I supposed to know?”
“I don’t think you had a choice,” Sally said flatly, her nose buried in the pages again.
“How so?”
“Fate.”
“What are you blathering about?”
“The prophecy.”
“What about it?”
She looked up from the papers. “I’m not sure it applies to you.”
“What are you...”
“Vehron. He’s not just some cultist asshole with a penchant for killing everyone. There’s one last fact about him here.”
She looked at us one by one, finally meeting my eyes.
“He’s a Freewill.”
♦ ♦ ♦
To say Sally’s revelation made my head swim was an understatement.
“Bill, are you okay?”
“I’m gonna need a moment.” I leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Such an interesting pattern of swirls up there. It helped me think non-horrifying thoughts as the pieces started falling into place one by one.
That certainly explained the whole brother thing he’d been yammering about, as well as why he’d so casually put the bite on me. Chuck...err, Vehron had realized it from the start, but I didn’t have a clue, having never met another of my kind before. Albeit, now that I had, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to meet one again.
Sadly, that didn’t seem to be in the cards. This guy still needed to be stopped. “It’s going to be harder than ever now.”
“What is?” Ed asked.
“I doubt he’s talking about his dick,” Tom said, snapping me out of my funk.
“No, shit-for-brains. It’s even worse than James thought. He was worried about this cult of assholes gaining a foothold again. But think about it. How much has been heaped on my plate because of this whole Freewill crap - even when I haven’t really done anything?”
“This guy is the real deal, though,” Sally rightfully, if unhelpfully, pointed out.
“Yep.”
Ed’s eyes opened wide as he realized what we were saying. “The vamps are going to flock to him like sheep.”
“Again, yep.”
“Do you think he can do everything you can?” Tom asked.
“No idea,” I replied, remembering that I was currently one power short of a full set. “All I know is that he took everything we threw at him and laughed it off.”
“I’m not laughing,” Sally said.
“Neither am I.”
“There is one good thing,” Tom said offhandedly.
“What?”
“That thing Sally said about the prophecy not applying to you.”
“Oh yeah, great. The Freewill shall lead our troops to victory against our enemies. Well, they wanted a leader; now they’ve got one.” I stood up and began to pace, my mind reeling.
“Not that part.”
“What are you getting at, meatsack?” Sally asked him.
“Yeah, care to clue the rest of us in?” Ed asked.
“I mean the end of it,” he explained. “Doesn’t it talk about Sheila kicking Bill’s ass in their final battle?”
I raised an eyebrow at his somewhat liberal interpretation. “I don’t think it’s quite phrased that way.”
“Yeah,” Sally added. “The outcome is hazy, or some bullshit like that.”
A grin lit up my roommate’s face. “I forgot about the hazy part, but whatever the fuck. The main thing is, what if it’s not your ass she’s supposed to kick?”
For a second, my brain refused to process what he’d just said. I was used to his words often being the opposite of insightful. “You mean I might not be the one who’s supposed to fight her?”
It wasn’t just me, either. Sally’s jaw nearly dropped to the floor as comprehension dawned in her eyes. “I hate to admit it, but shithead here actually seems to be making sense.”
“It might be even better than that,” Tom continued, no doubt enjoying the spotlight. “If this prophecy is so fucking noncommittal on the outcome, I’d be willing to bet it’s also pretty goddamned vague, too, on whether she has any help in that final battle. Am I right?”
I turned to Sally. She knew the actual texts better than any of us, having done her homework while I’d been fucking off. She shrugged in the affirmative, even though I knew it killed her to agree with Tom on anything.
That was enough for me. It was a shitload better than sitting around feeling sorry for myself. “You may want to record this, because I doubt I’ll ever say it again, but Tom, you are a fucking genius.”
“This is all well and good,” Ed pointed out. “But what are we going to do with it?”
“It’s simple. This Vehron guy is tough, but he can’t defend from all directions at once. So what say we stack the odds in her favor?”
“She hits him high, we hit him low? Could work, al
though it’s still dangerous.”
“Near suicidal,” I agreed.
“Count me in. Heck, maybe I can make some water balloons out of my blood to peg this fucker with.”
“Gross, but possibly effective,” I replied. “That’s one. Tom, it’s your brainstorm.”
“Fuck yeah, I’m there. I can probably get Christy’s sisters to help, too, but...” A familiar look of worry settled upon his face as his own words began to sink in. Sheila was also foretold to destroy the Magi - of which Christy was a member.
“I know. Believe me when I say, I will do everything possible to make sure Decker’s prophecy is total bullshit. I think Sheila will, too.”
“How do you know?”
“Because...” I paused as I dredged up the memory. It was one of the few moments we’d had alone while Remington’s vamps hunted us. “She didn’t want to hurt anyone. In fact, she made me promise I would stop her if it ever came to that.”
“Stop her?”
I drew my finger across my throat to get the point across - keeping to myself that I wasn’t sure whether I could follow through with it.
Tom was quiet for a moment, probably thinking things through. “That’ll have to be good enough. Besides, I don’t think I’ll get the same assurances from Chuck.”
“Doubt it. How about you, Sally? Are you willing to throw in with a covenless loser?”
“Nope,” she replied.
“No?”
“That’s what I said. I might, however, be willing to help my second in command. That is, if you think you could handle being my silent partner for a change. Pandora could use some fresh blood.”
“Do I get free lap dances?”
“Don’t make me hurt you.”
Shit. “Well, do you think they’d be willing to at least help us, then?”
“Oh, they’ll help, or they’ll die trying.” She flashed her fangs at me, making me wonder what kind of hell she’d put her people through without me there to temper her. Oh well, that was an issue for another day.
“Deal...coven master Sally.” Ugh, no way was I going to live that one down. “Now, what else do we have in our corner?”
“Maybe James, but probably not the Draculas. They’re going to be gung ho to kill this Vehron guy, but not at the cost of working with the Icon. They might also be just a little peeved to learn we lied about all that crap from months ago.”
“Maybe not. I met a few of the other Draculas, and they weren’t too big on Alex either...” I paused as I said his name. The final piece of the puzzle teetered on the edge of falling into place.
“What is it, Bill?”
“I didn’t exactly tell James the truth about where I’d found that guy’s head.”
“You mean it wasn’t in some vampire prison?”
“Yes and no. It wasn’t an official holding cell or anything like that. I found him in Alex’s private quarters - his bedroom, to be exact.”
“His bedroom?”
I held up a hand toward Tom. “Stop, don’t even go there. He was in a locked closet...kind of a trophy case.”
“Weird.”
“That’s not the weird part. There were others, a lot of them.” I paused as I tried to digest what my subconscious was trying to tell me. “Son of a bitch!”
“What?”
Was it even possible? “I got this strange feeling looking at them all. At the time, I figured it was nothing more than being weirded out by a bunch of decapitated craniums staring back at me, but now I’m thinking...”
“Yeah?”
“What if they were all like me?”
“Doofuses?”
Sally’s comment caused my roommates to chuckle, breaking the tension a bit, but I could tell she knew what I was getting at.
“Freewills,” I said. “They all disappeared hundreds of years ago - just like that. Nobody seems to know why, and if anyone is asking, I haven’t heard about it. But I might have a sneaking suspicion where at least some of them went.”
“Alex?”
“Yep.”
“How...why would he do that?” Ed asked.
“Who the fuck knows?”
“Power, probably,” Sally said. “Remember what he told us up North, how he’d played the game, eliminated those who stood in his way? Well, who would be the biggest threat to even an ancient vampire like him?”
The answer was painfully obvious. “Someone he couldn’t control.”
“More like an army of super-powered someones.”
“And one of them is loose now.”
“Yes, and now we know where he came from. More importantly, Bill, you know.”
“Yeah,” Ed said. “And you’re kind of high profile.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, Tom or I talk and we might as well have mouthfuls of shit. We’re humans...nothing to them. Sally...” He trailed off, probably not wanting to get slapped.
“I get the picture,” she replied. “But our people know you, Bill. They’ll listen to you, whether or not they should.”
“Oh, crap,” I said, sitting down. “I’ve just become a liability.”
“Just become?” Tom was no doubt hoping for a chuckle, but he got silence instead.
All I’d wanted to do was come home and live what little of my life I could until the world tore itself apart around us. Instead, I found myself making enemies out of two of the most powerful creatures on the planet. They were going to try destroying each other, and I was smack dab in the middle.
How the hell did I find myself in these situations?
A hand on my shoulder pulled me from my funk. Sally looked down at me, smiling softly - displaying no sign of her customary snark. Her face said it all - she understood. More than that, though. We were in deep shit, but she was there for me in spite of it all.
Ed joined her, his look echoing that sentiment.
A moment later, Tom did likewise.
They didn’t say anything, but maybe they didn’t need to.
Goddamn, I could be such a freaking idiot.
I now realized that whatever happened, however big the odds stacked against me, they’d be there by my side. They weren’t alone, either. I had allies - friends, people I loved. I’d been a fool to discount them and run off in my grief. The truth was I didn’t deserve them, but they were there for me regardless of how imperfect I might be.
In the face of everything I’d seen, it was impossibly awesome to have friends like them.
I knew then, from the bottom of my unbeating heart, that I wouldn’t let them down.
We had a world to save, and by God, we were gonna do our damnedest to save it - even if the odds made winning the Powerball look like a sure thing in comparison. It was both insane and near impossible, but we were going to try.
Looking at them standing there, I couldn’t help but smile too.
“Are we gonna start singing Kumbaya now?” Tom asked after a moment.
“Fuck you, asshole,” I replied cracking up. The others soon joined in.
The world was going to Hell around us, but we dared to laugh despite that.
THE END
Bill Ryder will return in:
Half a Prayer (The Tome of Bill, part 6)
♦ ♦ ♦
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Bonus Chapter
Half a Prayer
The Tome of Bill, Part 6
The flimsy plywood gave way as my body slammed through it. It wasn’t the hardest I’d ever been hit, but it had been perfectly placed, catching me straight on the jaw. I probably could have either blocked it or stepped out of reach before it had connected, but alas, I’d been too busy enjoying the expression on Sally’s face. What can I say? Some th
ings just never stopped being funny.
Of course, humor was a relative concept when one found oneself in an uncontrolled thirty-foot freefall at the hands of a pissed off vampire. On the upside, at least I didn’t have to worry about hurting anyone other than myself. The squatters had figured out weeks ago that the main stage was best left clear of people and possessions.
There was likewise no need to fret about interrupting any dancers in the middle of a set. Tragically, it had been over a month since the last pair of tits had been flashed on stage to the beat of trashy music. That’s when the main power had gone out for good and the denizens of Vegas had been forced to stop pretending that everything was fine and dandy - that the weirdness of the outside world would just pass them by.
Three months had passed since Christy had teleported me here. At the time, one could have almost pretended that everything I’d seen in New York had just been my imagination. This city had seemed so normal at first, relatively speaking, of course. Now, those times were over and it was starting to look like a set piece from a Mad Max movie.
Those were thoughts for another time, though. The condition of the world as a whole wasn’t my main concern right at that moment.
I landed hard on the formerly mirror-polished stage - now marred by scratches, scrapes, and a body-sized crater that marked the landing place of most who dared test Sally’s wrath.
Oh well, at least the ballistic glass that once covered the window looking down upon the club hadn’t been replaced. That shit kinda hurt to be flung through. Thankfully, custom, bulletproof, one-way mirrors were in short supply these days.
“You know she doesn’t like to be called that.”
I pulled myself to a sitting position and turned to find Kara’s grinning face staring back at me. Tom’s younger sister was cute in all the ways her brother wasn’t. Unfortunately for her, he made up for that by still living in all the ways she was no longer capable of. She’d been turned into one of the undead at some point in the recent past, under circumstances that I still wasn’t entirely clear on. Regardless, I sure as shit wasn’t going to be the one to break it to my oldest friend that his sibling was now Sally’s bloodsucking sorority sister.
I stretched and felt my vertebrae snap back into place - ouch. “I think you’ll find that I have no problem calling our illustrious leader whatever the hell I please.”
Goddamned Freaky Monsters (The Tome of Bill Book 5) Page 34
