The Mourning Woods (The Tome of Bill Book 3)

by Rick Gualtieri

  That obviously meant nothing to most of the participants there, but the Sasquatches around us immediately became a whole lot more interested.

  “Freewill is...” Turd started, but he was interrupted by another voice.

  “Freewill speaks true! Grulg smell it.”

  Taking his cue, the other Bigfeet in the arena began to sniff the air. Each of them had a nose far more sensitive than even mine. Turd still smelled like shit, but I had little doubt that to them he now smelled like sweet shit.

  That caught him off guard, but he quickly recovered. He growled at Grulg, then turned back to me. “Freewill throw Turd into sacred tree.” Oh, crap. What if they bought that excuse?

  “Fuck that!” Sally cried out. “He’d have to throw you through a dozen trees to get that sticky.”

  Guess her knowledge of syrup production trumped mine. Way to go, Sally.

  More murmurs from the crowd. I still wasn’t home free, but at least there was some doubt. Sure, being covered in syrup wasn’t exactly a crime. That fact didn’t exonerate me in the least. Still, hearing a little doubt from the crowd was music to my ears.

  The world seemed to pause for a nanosecond as this thought sunk in. Jesus Christ, how could I have forgotten? Music! Turd was wearing his skulls, the same ones I had seen that iPod stuffed into. It was a slim chance, but better than none at all. I had to hope he was anal about keeping his tunes nearby.

  Without any further hesitation, I dashed toward Turd. Screams of outrage flew through the crowd as I stepped up to him.

  Before I could do anything about it, though, powerful arms grabbed me from behind – François’s.

  “No! No more bloodshed, Freewill,” he implored, starting to drag me back. He leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “Thank you, fool. You couldn’t have done that better had I planned it.”

  “Yeah, well plan this, asshole!” I reached back and slammed my fist into his injured leg. He gasped in pain and his hold on me loosened just enough for me to surge forward again.

  Unfortunately, I ran straight into the waiting arms of Turd. He grabbed me with his claws, and I could feel my rib bones start to bend. Goddamn, he was strong. It didn’t matter, though. I was close enough. As he lifted me, I grabbed the string of skulls from his chest and tore them off.

  I threw them to the ground, right as I became airborne myself. As I flew through the air, a sound not unlike shattering pottery told me I had finished the job. Now I just had to hope ... OOF! Okay, first I had to land.

  “ENOUGH,” the glowing orb declared. “SUMMARY JUDGEMENT HAS BEEN PASSED. FOR HIS ACTIONS, THE FREEWILL SHALL BE...”

  “Look!” I heard Grulg (I think) shout.

  I lifted my head from the ground and saw that I had been right. Lying there in the remains of a shattered skull was a now broken MP3 player.

  “Get up,” Sally said from next to me. She hooked an arm around mine and hauled me to my feet. “I sure as shit hope you have something else,” she whispered. “Syrup and shitty rock music are pretty goddamn weak against their accusations.”

  Once back to my feet, I shrugged. “I’m open for suggestions.”

  Still, maybe it was enough. The crowd as a whole was somewhat nonplussed by my revelations. The meeting place floor, however, was a different matter entirely.

  I Can’t Hear You, I’m Screaming Too Loud

  The Sasquatches at the perimeter had begun to close ranks around us. This time, though, their attention was focused entirely on Turd and what lay before him. Snorts of disbelief rose from them (I think. Hard to tell with snorts), but they gradually gave way to snarls of anger. Grulg’s voice was chief amongst the agitators.

  “You betray the spirits! You betray our honor!” he growled. Soon, similar accusations began to fly from the others as well.

  “THIS IS HIGHLY UNUSUAL,” the glowing thing commented. Since he had yet to proceed with my disintegration, I had to assume he was likewise intrigued. Hopefully this would be enough to make him rethink his summary judgment – which I assumed wasn’t exactly in my favor.

  I turned toward François. A look of disbelief was on his face, no doubt at Turd’s idiocy. I mean, jeez, who brings the murder weapon, so to speak, to the scene of the crime? He began to back up.

  “Hold on there, Frenchy!” I called out to him. “You might want to stick around. I have a feeling this is about to get goo ... URK!”

  Faster than I could even blink, he was upon me. His hands wrapped around my throat and I could feel his claws extend as they began to dig in.

  My air cut off (could vampires suffocate? Good question. Never bothered to ask about that) as he quickly increased the pressure to the point where I felt my head might pop off.

  My roommates appeared by my side. They each grabbed one of François’s arms, but they might as well have not even been there for all the good they were doing.

  They weren’t about to give up that easily, though, thank goodness. Tom grabbed that dopey Optimus amulet still around his neck. He yanked it off and pressed it into François’s arm. Way to go, dude!

  There was a flash and one of the hands choking me out began to sizzle. Sadly, the pressure didn’t let up. Who was I kidding? This vamp had already shrugged off much worse damage than that today. Oh, well, it was a nice sentiment on Tom’s part.

  “Die Freewill!” François snarled at me, but his voice suddenly sounded far away.

  A fist crashed into the side of his head – Sally’s. Unfortunately, she barely moved him. I saw blood begin to spurt out from my direction, covering François’s arms. Hmm, wonder if it was mine. For some reason it didn’t seem all that important.

  I felt all ... floaty inside. It was kind of nice. I began to wonder why everyone seemed to be fighting against the friendly man in front of me. He was just doing me a favor ... letting me rest comfortably while he...

  And then, he wasn’t there. Another fist had entered my field of vision from the other side. It was where François had been just a moment earlier. Before I could see who it belonged to, though, I found myself flopping to the ground, gasping, and holding my now-gushing throat.

  My attacker was gone, but the damage had been done. I had already lost far too much blood today. I didn’t have any left to spare. The world continued graying out. It was time for a nice long nap...

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Or maybe not. An angel appeared in my field of vision, a pretty blonde angel. Gee, if Heaven was populated with babes like this, I couldn’t wait to get there. Rather than fly me to my final resting place, though, the angel then did something a bit weird. She held up her arm and tore into her wrist with her teeth ... her very long and sharp teeth. Did Angels have fangs? Maybe I wasn’t going to Heaven after all. Still, if she was indicative of the demons waiting for me below, that might not be so bad either.

  “Don’t fucking argue with me, just take this!” the demonic angel commanded before jamming her arm against my mouth.

  Ooh yummy! I thought, slurping the blood from her wrist – although I could think of other parts I would rather suck on a lot more. This babe was definitely a tasty dish. I couldn’t believe Sally was...

  Wait, that was her name – Sally!

  The fog slowly began to clear from my head. I was lying on the ground and Sally was force feeding me her own blood. That was a little out of the ordinary. My vision became clearer and I saw not only her, but the worried faces of my roommates looking down upon me, too.

  How the fuck did...?

  Oh, yeah. François had tried ripping my head off ... had done a pretty good job of it too, if I remembered correctly. And Sally was ... hot damn, Sally was saving my ass. She wasn’t nearly as powerful as some other vamps I had mixed it up with. Still, she was more than twice my age. That meant I would get at least a minor healing boost above and beyond my own abilities.

  Sure enough, it seemed to be working. I didn’t feel particularly wonderful, but I could sense the worst of the damage beginning to knit itself shut.

  I to
ok one last sip, then gently pushed her arm away. She and my friends looked down expectantly at me.

  “I’d have rather been breast fed,” I croaked.

  “He’ll live,” she replied with mock disgust, not even bothering to disguise the smile on her face.

  “Help me up,” I said, my voice still ragged and barely recognizable, but alive ... at least in the vampiric sense of the word.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Chaos had apparently broken out while I had been down. I could no longer see Turd – just a sea of angry, smelly fur as the Sasquatches converged in a group, angry growls coming from them.

  My friends were standing around me, probably making sure I didn’t keel over again. I turned and took in the rest of the surroundings. Our moderator hung in the air, glowing an angry green color, but otherwise not doing much of anything ... which was probably a good thing. I saw James’s men off to one side in an apparent standoff against François’s.

  Speaking of the devils, James had the asshole restrained in a chokehold. A silver dagger was in one of his hands tightly pressed against François’s back. François, for his part, wasn’t struggling. Smart. More powerful or not, he wouldn’t have been able to do much before James dusted him. Regardless, a part of me kind of hoped that he would try.

  The only one not doing anything was Nergui. Apparently still stuck under François’s compulsion, he stood there glassy-eyed and unmoving. Even with the attack against me, the compulsion was still too strong for his base beliefs to overcome. Oh, well, at least François hadn’t been able to compel him to attack me. Glass half full and all of that.

  “What happened to not getting involved?” I called out to James once my throat had mended enough to do so.

  He smiled and threw me a wink. “Your bad habits must be rubbing off on me.”

  “It matters not,” François spat. “I’ve still won.”

  The sad thing was, he was right. Peace was still our primary mission. Saving my own ass or not, that didn’t change. Even if his little syrup scheme got disrupted, peace would still mean a significant feather in his cap. He would probably wind up with a seat on the Draculas’ coven and, at that point, I’d have made an uber-influential enemy.

  “ENOUGH!” thundered through all of our minds. It wasn’t quite a compulsion, but it got my attention the same way an air horn to the ear would. If that had been vocal, I’m sure there would be ruptured eardrums all around.

  “THESE DISRUPTIONS HAVE BEEN TOLERATED, BUT NO MORE,” our moderator beamed out, again at triple volume. “ORDER WILL BE RESTORED NOW!”

  I gave James a nod and he released François. It was pretty clear from the warning that if he tried anything against me, he’d wind up a pile of ashes.

  “ALL WILL LEAVE THE FLOOR SAVE FOR THE LEADERS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE PARTIES.” It did not sound like a request.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  It took several minutes, even with the orb’s prodding, for order to be restored. Even then, the crowd continued whispering amongst itself. The Sasquatches seemed more interested in tearing Turd a new asshole than listening, but at last they backed off. They resumed their former places at the perimeter, but all kept their angry eyes locked onto their leader. Turd’s negotiators, meanwhile, had been replaced. Maybe they had been a part of the whole thing. Who knew? All I could tell was a new group now sat at the other end of the table, Grulg amongst them.

  For his part, Turd looked worried. A picture was beginning to form in my mind of what his share in all of this was. In exchange for letting François’s men tap their sacred trees, his gadget fetish would be well fed. Before you knew it, he and his buddies would probably be all pimped out with Cadillacs, PCs, and big screen TVs. It would be only a matter of time before more and more members of his tribe were seduced by technology. If that happened, within a few years they wouldn’t be all that different from us – in a manner of speaking, of course.

  “YOU ARE STILL ACCUSED, FREEWILL,” the moderator said. “WHAT SAY THE ACCUSER?”

  Oh boy. Turd could still drag me down with him if he wanted. Peace would be maintained, but they could still demand my head on a platter.

  Before Turd could speak, though, Grulg growled something at him in a language I couldn’t understand. The others at the table snarled similar vocalizations.

  Turd finally spoke, his eyes downcast. “Misunderstanding between us ... me ... and T’lunta Freewill. Accusation dropped.”

  My friends and I let out a collective sigh of relief.

  I turned toward the crowd and caught sight of François. He noticed me and our eyes locked long enough for me to mouth “Fuck you” to him. I then turned back to the negotiating table with a smile on my face.

  “THE CHARGES ARE DROPPED AND STRICKEN FROM THE RECORD,” Glow-ball said, thus making it official. Oh, yeah, case dismissed with prejudice, baby! “AN ANNOUNCEMENT WAS TO HAVE BEEN MADE. SHALL THAT TOO BE STRICKEN FROM THE RECORD? IF SO, NEGOTIATIONS WILL CONTINUE.”

  Oh, yeah. We were back to that. Damn, didn’t Alex say that peace had taken a year to hash out last time? I was really hoping, now that the drama was over and done with, we weren’t going to be settling in for the long haul. I was starting to jones for a hot shower.

  Grulg stood and spoke, giving Turd one last growl before doing so. “New treaty invalid,” he said. Yep, I’d better change my name to Tarzan and get used to living in the wilderness. “We instead offer T’lunta the Humbaba Accord. We reinstate old treaty as was done by our ancestors.”

  Whoa! That was a surprise ... a pleasant one, too. I once more sought out François in the crowd. The look on his face was priceless. I quickly flipped him the finger. No syrup for you, douchebag. Sure, he’d still likely get a seat on the First Coven, but at least he wouldn’t profit obscenely in the process. A small victory, but I’d take it.

  “AN OFFER FOR PEACE HAS BEEN MADE. FREEWILL, DO YOUR PEOPLE ACCEPT?”

  I didn’t bother to wait for François’s asshole buddies to open their mouths. Alex had told me I was running the show, so it was finally time to take charge.

  “We accept,” I said.

  With that, the crowd went wild, except this time, it was finally in my favor.

  A Small Piece of Peace

  “PEACE HAS BEEN BROKERED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE TERMS SET FORTH IN THE HUMBABA ACCORD...”

  Awesome!

  “THE EXCHANGE OF VOWS WILL TAKE PLACE IMMEDIATELY TO SEAL THE PACT.”

  Vows? Okay, I guess we needed to pledge ourselves to maintaining the peace. Not a big deal.

  “AS WAS DONE BEFORE, SO AGAIN SHALL THE LEADERS OF BOTH PARTIES TAKE A MATE FROM THE OPPOSING SIDE AS A SHOW OF FELLOWSHIP.”

  Hold on ... What? “Did he just...”

  “I’m pretty sure he did,” Ed said, a smirk starting to work its way onto his face.

  “Does that mean...”

  “THE MATES SHALL BE SELECTED AND MARRIAGE BONDS MADE IN ACCORDANCE WITH EACH SPECIES’ RESPECTIVE BELIEFS.”

  Tom started snickering. “Congrats, Bill. Guess you’re a family man now.”

  “Fuck you, dude.”

  “Yeah, Bill,” Sally added, not bothering to conceal her mirth. “Have fun staying with the in-laws over the holidays.”

  “TURD, YOUR CHOICE?”

  Both defeat and disgust were evident on Turd’s face. He morosely huffed, “Turd’s daughter.”