The Tome of Bill Series: Books 1-4 (Bill The Vampire, Scary Dead Things, The Mourning Woods, Holier Than Thou)

by Rick Gualtieri

  While this was going on, she ran downstairs to fill up a backpack with my week's blood rations. I was still pretty much fucked, but nevertheless, I felt like some of the weight of the previous evening had been lifted from my chest. Sure, I was still dead, but once I was back at my own place, I was pretty sure I'd be able to clear my head and think my way through this mess – maybe not the being dead part, but some of the rest of it was sure to resolve itself.

  Sally returned upstairs and told me that the sun had set enough for it to be safe to go out. One good thing about the city, the buildings provided plenty of cover from direct sunlight, especially around dusk. She gave me my wallet back and assured me that copies had been made of my IDs before I could get hopeful to the contrary. She also gave me her cell number with instructions to call if I got myself into any messes.

  Oh yeah! I got her phone number. Who’s the stud?

  In actuality, I had a ton of more questions. So far, some of the stuff I thought I knew about vampires was true, but just as much turned out to be utter crap. Ignorance of my condition could come back to bite me in the ass. I mean, what if I turned into a bat accidentally and couldn't turn back? What if I discovered I couldn't cross running water while my train was barreling under the East River? What if I got home and discovered I couldn't enter until Tom or Ed invited me in? I wouldn't put it past them to make me sleep in the hall while they laughed their asses off.

  Unfortunately, though, now wasn't the time for twenty questions. Freedom had been dangled in front of me ... well, okay, not really freedom, but a weeklong furlough at least. I wasn't about to risk screwing that up because I couldn't keep my mouth shut. Trust me, I'd fucked up enough things in my life by being unable to shut it when I should have. I was going to have to be mindful not to screw up my death in a similar fashion.

  Fortunately, Sally seemed to be sincere about letting me go. Don't get me wrong, the bitch lured me to my death. It was going to be a while before she was getting any friend requests from me. Still, whatever her motivations, she seemed to be helping me out now, even if indirectly. I'd have to remember that and maybe cut her some slack in the future.

  A small voice in the back of my head was telling me I was only doing so because of how she looked. If she had been an ugly chick, I probably would have staked her ass myself and rolled around in the ashes to celebrate. Maybe. Hey, I never said I wasn't shallow.

  She walked me to the door and held it open. “Remember, you're back here at the end of the week, no later than Saturday night. If not, there will be people looking for you, and they won't be friendly.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  She sighed and began to close the door behind me before adding a quick, “Good luck.”

  I was going to need it.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  To say that the short walk to the train station was trippy would be an understatement. Since most of my undead life – is that an oxymoron? – had been spent so far either preoccupied or unconscious, I hadn't realized how much my perceptions of the world had changed. Everything seemed more focused. I could overhear the conversations of the people around me – no small feat in the city. The smells were all sharper and more pronounced (not entirely a good thing). Best of all, everything was crystal clear. Even the deepest shadows didn't seem to daunt my eyes. I had a flash of insight and took off my glasses. They were dinged up but miraculously unbroken after the last twenty-four hours.

  Fuck! Still nearsighted. That figured. Still, I could apparently see pretty damn well in the dark now. I just still needed my glasses to do so. Oh, well, win some, lose some. I’d have to make it a point to ask if vampires could get LASIK.

  I don't know if it was the elation of being free, that I had just recently eaten, or an overall side effect of being a vampire, but I felt good, damn good for a dead guy. In fact, I was feeling pretty invincible, something that I hadn’t felt too much of during my lifetime. I couldn't help all of the fantasies that were running through my head. I could ditch the train and outright run, full speed, back to Brooklyn or stroll, untouchable, through the worst neighborhoods between here and home.

  No, fuck that. I could scale a building and stare down upon the alleys, waiting to smite evil doers like the goddamned Batman.

  In the end, though, I just got on the train. It seemed less complicated that way.

  Sadly, there weren't too many incidents requiring super heroics during my trip. Sure, I got accosted once for spare change, but that hardly seemed a smite-worthy offense.

  Jeez, in the comic books, Peter Parker can't take a shit without the Green Goblin and Venom trying to take over the city. In the real world, I imagine super heroes would get a lot of downtime to work on the New York Times Sunday crossword. So it was with me. It was late enough in the day for the trains to be uncrowded, but too early for the real weirdos to be out. Thus I sat and rode to my stop, pretending to be ever vigilant for the danger that I knew wasn't coming.

  I got to my destination and walked around the block a few times to try and psych myself out for finally going home. I probably looked like quite the nutball to my nosier neighbors like, for instance, Mrs. Caven.

  She was this creepy old lady who lived downstairs from us and liked to be in everyone's business. She just barely kept herself from being a complete nuisance by acting as a sort of self-designated, one-woman neighborhood watch. If someone was hanging around the building who wasn't supposed to be there, you could be sure Mrs. Caven knew about it and was telling everyone within earshot (those who would listen, anyway). The downside of this was that the crazy old bitch had the cops on speed dial and was happy to call them at even the slightest provocation, as my roommate, Tom, had found out a few months back.

  However, caring what some batty senior citizen thought of my wanderings was pretty low on my priority list at the moment. Now that I was close to my destination, the relief I felt at being set “free” was gone and, in its place, a new form of worry set in. Tom and Ed were two of my best friends. Assholes, sure, but what good friends aren't? We all knew each other well and could each count on the other. The problem was that none of us had ever come home as a blood-sucking monster of the night before.

  What if they freaked? What if they called the cops? Shit, what if they decided to take matters into their own hands and go all Blade the Vampire Hunter on me? I dismissed that last one almost immediately, though, as neither of my roommates would probably have an edge against a couple of angry hamsters, much less a vampire. Still, they could react negatively.

  On the other hand, I didn't really have anywhere else to go and, deadly creature of the night or not, I still paid a third of the damned rent. If they wanted to give me the Monster Squad treatment then, by God, I was at least going to get my share of the security deposit back.

  My course of action set, I readied myself as I entered the building and walked up to my floor. I unlocked the door, ready for whatever cruelties fate had in store for me, and then stopped dead. Shit! I had completely forgotten about the no-entering-without-an-invitation thing. What if I couldn't even step into my own place? I took a deep breath and prepared to slide my foot across the threshold of my apartment...

  And then I pretty much stepped in like I normally would. Either that invite thing was more vampire bullshit or it didn't apply to me since I already lived there. Okay, one great trial down. Now for the next. It was time to confront my friends. “I have something to confess. I'm a vampire, and I'm proud of it,” I would proclaim. Hmm, maybe not. That sounded too much like a coming out of the closet speech. Oh well, I'd ad-lib something.

  Or maybe I wouldn't. Now that I had a chance to look around, I noticed the apartment was quiet and I was standing there all alone. Figures! I psyched myself out, and the assholes couldn't even have the good graces to be there to rebuke me for being a monstrous hell beast. Fate, why must thou continue to spit upon me?

  I checked the rest of the apartment. Tom's room was open and the lights were out. Ed's door, on the other hand, was closed
and locked. I put my ear to the door and my newfound enhanced senses clearly heard him snoring away. So he was home, but out cold. Not too surprising. He probably put in a full weekend of work and decided to turn in early. It wouldn't be the first time.

  I could’ve woken him up. My predicament was kind of a big thing. Still, it's not like I was dying ... at least not anymore. I might be a vampire, but that doesn't mean I have to be a dick about it.

  So I let him sleep. He could always learn I was a bloodsucking denizen of the lower planes come the morning.

  Speaking of blood, I unpacked the supplies Sally had given me and stored it all in the fridge. Yeah, that might give them a few questions if they decided to grab a beer before I got a chance to do my big reveal. However, considering that Tom mixed up a big pitcher full of stage blood last Fall, maybe it wouldn't. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't anywhere close to Halloween, but I was grasping at straws. Besides, when all was said and done, a fridge full of blood was probably going to be the least of their concerns.

  Okay, one roommate was out and the other was out cold. My homecoming was turning out to be a little less epic than I had imagined. Oddly enough, I felt a bit cheated. Here I was expecting perhaps a standoff, maybe they’d slowly advance upon me, crucifixes held aloft (did either of them even own one?) while screaming, “Back, unholy demon from the pit!” Instead, I got zilch.

  Kinda reminded me of my friend from college, Adam. A few years after we graduated, he decided to come out of the closet to his parents. He psyched himself out for a tearful “Not my child!” type of confrontation, but both of his folks pretty much shrugged and told him, “Duh. It's about time you figured that out.” He was actually kind of miffed he didn't get to give the emotional “I'm still your son!” speech he’d been rehearsing in his head.

  Oh well, since I was apparently not going to be giving any “I'm still your roommate!” speeches that night, I figured I should go out and prowl the neighborhood for any unsuspecting victims who might cross my path. At least, that's probably what a cool vampire would do. But what I should do and what I actually wind up doing don't often match, so instead I went into my bedroom/office (can't beat the commute) and turned on my PC. A little online gaming was just what the doctor ordered to help me get back a sense of normalcy.

  Had it really been only about two days since this had been my life? Now here I was, grabbing onto it like a drowning man grabs for a life preserver. Hey, at least my sense of melodrama hadn't been affected by this whole ordeal.

  Anyway, I checked my email first. There was some spam, the weekly Facebook birthday reminder, an email or two from my boss (which could wait ... come the weekend he wasn't the boss of me), and a note from my dungeon master, Dave.

  Oh, shit! It was Sunday. I had missed the fucking game. Not good.

  Dave was a second-year resident at some hospital in Newark. Saint Jerome's, I think. He worked about a million hours a week and still somehow managed to run our D&D game. We all liked to joke that he had volunteered for some insane experiment while in med school which allowed him to function without sleep. Anyway, I'd known him since we met up at a gaming convention back in college. In the time since, I'd come to think of him as a close friend.

  However, friend or not, he wasn't known for being overly forgiving when anyone unexpectedly blew off his game. One of the other party members did so a few months back and subsequently returned to find that his character had fallen into a magical trap which had removed all of his possessions ... not to mention his arms and legs.

  Feeling a sense of dread that not even thoughts of Jeff could match, I clicked to read his message.

  Bill,

  We missed you at the game today. I tried calling, but Ed had no idea where you were. I hope everything is okay.

  -Dave

  P.S. I had to ad-lib in your absence. Your character was captured by a tribe of sexually frustrated ogres who then proceeded to ass rape the shit out of you before you could be rescued.

  Okay, that wasn't so bad compared to what he could have done. At least I didn't lose a level or anything. I wrote him back an apology and also let him know that I'd try my damnedest to be there next weekend, although I was personally doubtful of the fact. Hopefully, if things didn't work out, I'd at least get a chance to give him a heads up. Otherwise, I'd probably better be prepared to roll up a new character.

  That being done, I settled in for a few hours of online gaming. After bouncing around a few different games, I eventually settled into one where my teammates and I were trying to fight our way through various scenarios of a zombie invasion. Fucking zombie pieces of shit. If there was anything a decade of role-playing games had taught me it was that, as a vampire, I could pretty much look down my nose at any other types of undead.

  So, that was my night. After all was said and done, I made sure the shades were down and then decided to turn in. All things considered, I was a lot more at ease than I had been. As such, I slept pretty well ... at least, that is, until I woke up to find myself on fire.

  How Do We Sleep When Our Beds Are Burning?

  “Jesus Christ, Bill, wake the fuck up,” was the first thing I heard in an apparently long attempt to rouse me. I pulled the blankets over my head and attempted to turn away from the annoying voice.

  “Seriously, dude. Get up.” I felt my shoulder being shaken. Still more blissfully asleep than awake, I stuck one hand out from under covers and tried to wave the pestering presence away. Okay, I might have also flipped them off. I'd never been much of a morning person, even during the living phase of my existence.

  “Enough of this shit. Get your ass up!” I heard a soft whooshing noise, followed by a few seconds of silence, until the voice started shouting, “WHAT THE FUCK?!” immediately followed by an incredible pain in my uncovered hand.

  Since that sort of thing tends to jolt a person awake, I threw the covers off, sat bolt upright, and immediately noticed two things: the blinds were up, and my left hand was ablaze.

  “I'M FUCKING ON FIRE!” I screamed, grasping the obvious as I then realized the rest of my exposed body was starting to smoke under the glare of the sunshine streaming through the window.

  Thinking quickly, lest I wind up unceremoniously ending my vampire career sooner than anticipated, I dove off the far side of the bed and tried my best to crawl under it.

  “Close the goddamned blinds!”

  “But...”

  “NOW!”

  That snapped my roommate back to reality and I heard another quick whoosh as darkness once again descended on my bedroom. Removed from the sunlight, the flames on my hand died down. I stood up, still smoldering a little, and faced the lanky form of my friend, Ed. At a bit of a loss for words (hey, next time you spontaneously combust, I dare you to be chatty about it immediately afterwards), I waited for him to say something.

  “Dude ... holy shit ... are you okay?”

  Good question. I looked down at my hand. It hurt like a motherfucker and was covered in blisters, but I could even now see some of the reddened skin starting to turn back to normal. Oh, yeah, there were definitely perks to the whole vampire thing. Of course, it was the whole vampire thing that caused me to burst into flame to begin with, so maybe this one was a wash.

  “I'll live,” I answered, inwardly amused by the irony.

  “Good,” Ed replied, recomposing himself quickly. He stood there, thinking for a second, and then shook his head in an apparent attempt to clear it. “We can discuss how you became flammable later. We're already late for the conference bridge.”

  “What conference bridge?”

  “You didn't read Jim's email, did you?”

  “It was the weekend,” I lamely countered.

  “And hence why I exist: to save your dumb ass. Come on.” He turned and walked out. Gotta love Ed. Shit just doesn't faze him. I can't honestly say that if our positions were reversed I could turn from holy crap my roommate is on fire to oh, dear, we're late for a meeting on a dime. But then again, a great humanitarian he
is not.