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

by Rick Gualtieri

  Tom got up to wash out his coffee mug. As he did so, he gave a sad shake of his head. “No idea where I went wrong. One minute I'm minding my own business, and the next I'm shacking up with Dracula and the Lone Ranger.”

  Ed just ignored him. “I figured that by the time the city gave me a license, I'd be long since pushing up daisies. Besides, I'm pretty sure that they ask you your purpose for owning a gun. Writing protection against vampires on the application might raise a few eyebrows.”

  “In New York?” I scoffed.

  “I did say might.”

  “There is the little problem of actually using it as protection against vampires,” I pointed out. “I've seen stakes and sunlight work, but unless that thing shoots solar flares, I'm not sure what good it'll do.”

  “What about silver bullets?” asked Tom, preparing to leave for work.

  I thought about it for a second. “Not sure. That's usually werewolves, but I think it works against vampires in some stories, too.”

  “Do either of you have silver bullets?” Ed asked. We both shook our heads. “Well, neither do I. So, who gives a shit if they work against vampires, werewolves, or the goddamned tooth fairy? It might kill them, or it might not. What's important is that this gun will hurt vampires.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Because of you, numbnuts,” he replied. “When you burst into flames, did it hurt? When I stabbed you in the hand, did it hurt? When you jumped out of that freaking window you were telling us about, did it hurt?”

  I nodded. Yeah, it had, and in some cases, quite a bit.

  “Well, then that tells me that no matter how strong you are or how fast you heal, your nerve endings still work pretty much the same way as they did before. So, using that logic, a twelve gauge shell in the stomach or maybe the kneecap...”

  “Will hurt like a bitch,” I finished for him.

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

  “Action figure,” Tom corrected.

  “What?”

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

  “It doesn't matter,” Ed replied with a sigh. “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, my roommates, was now a target. Fortunately, Brooklyn was a pretty good place to be a recluse, as almost everyone delivered. The problem, though, with being extra careful was that it was sometimes hard to tell the difference between reasonable precautions and outright paranoia.

  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 a vengeful street gang was one thing, but a vengeful gang that I had purposely buzzed in ... well, that would just be sad.

  However, no sound of multitudes of running feet drifted to my ears. 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 and saw my other roommate a few steps behind him, his faith empowered action figure held out in front like a shield. Oh, well, I guess I couldn't blame Tom. No matter what we may know to be true, a gun was always going to make someone feel a little braver than a piece of plastic.

  Sally entered and, after Ed saw she was alone, he lowered the weapon, a look of relief crossing over his face.

  “Nice little gun,” she said to him.

  He quickly composed himself and replied 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 something resembling a smile from her. “I'll pass. Now, why don't you go take a shower and freshen up? You reek of desperation.”

  He turned a little red, and Tom chuckled. As for myself, I closed the door behind her and said, “Since I don't remember booking a bachelor party, 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,” Tom repeated, Transformer still in hand. “She was obviously worried about me.”

  “I was, but now I see you have your teddy bear.” She motioned toward the doll ... action figure, that is, and then turned 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.”

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

  “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.”

  “It's always about you, isn't it?” she asked with a haughty sniff. “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?”

  “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 vamps for sport.”

  “Let me guess, this someone was a Freewil
l.” I sat down and began massaging my temples before the migraine could start.

  “Exactly,” she 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 him one of her famous eye-rolls. “Because, if James wanted him dead, Bill would be dead. No need for subterfuge. He'd just do it.”

  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.”

  She nodded and went on. “Yeah, well, things got a little crazy after that. He 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 only got you killed.”

  “That's fair,” Ed said

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

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

  “You don't get it.” She sat down on the couch as if she owned the place. “He was going to. He didn't know of James’s 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 actually 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 him. “There's more bad than good there. Jeff wasn’t exactly 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,” he surmised.

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

  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,” Sally replied. Bitch. “As far as anyone knows, this was all you. So, yeah, 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.

  “Except they didn't show up,” I pointed out. “So what happened?”

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

  “What do you mean ‘backed down?’”

  “Exactly that. Out of nowhere, Samuel canceled 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’m not sure. I haven't been able to get in touch with him all week, so I have no idea what actually transpired.”

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

  “You mentioned something happened. What went on with you?”

  “Well, thanks to you forgetting to mention all of this, 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 and describing how I managed to fight back – then 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 stood up and 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,” she hissed. “This is important.”

  “Yes,” I answered, ignoring my roommate’s predictably dickish remark. “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, but yeah, a decent amount.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “What happened when you drank it?”

  “Oh,” I replied. “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 again, a blank look on her face. A few seconds went by and she finally muttered, “You can't do that.”

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

  “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 chimed 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 fired back. “Things don't work like that.”

  “So, what's supposed to happen?” I asked, curious as to where this was going.

  “Not all blood is the same,” she explained. “We can only feed upon 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.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Is it really that bad?”

  “Yes. I've seen it happen.”

  “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!”