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

by Rick Gualtieri

  I chuckled slightly. “Maybe you’re right, oh wise one. At any rate, I probably couldn’t have fucked it up any worse than I did.”

  “Fortunately for you, it’s not too late.”

  “I’m pretty sure I screwed up asking her out.”

  “Oh, it’s too late for that. I meant it’s not too late for some liquid fortification. You, my friend, need a drink. Several of them, in fact. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even buy one or two for you,” he said, walking over to get his jacket. “And when you’re finished, you’re going to go to your parents’ house this weekend and do it again until you are so shitfaced you don’t even remember your own name. You kill off enough brain cells, and you won’t be able to help feeling better about things.”

  Sage advice, if ever there was any.

  Here, Kitty Kitty

  Note to self: don’t listen to Ed’s advice. Traffic was surprisingly light for a Sunday night. I was sitting in the passenger seat of Ed’s two-seater piece-of-shit, watching the miles slide by. We were heading south on Route 287 toward the Outerbridge Crossing. He had been good enough to come down and give me a ride back home, which kind of made sense, as it had been his counsel that had given me cause to want to flee back to the relative safety of Brooklyn. Nevertheless, I was glad for the ride. It had turned out to be a long weekend, and I was in no mood to deal with the idiocies of mass transit to get back home.

  Since it was early fall, there was no Jersey Shore traffic to contend with. It was that lull that tended to happen around late September or early October. People were still burnt out from the summer, and the holiday rush was a good month or so off. In short, the asshole ratio on the roads was low. I liked times like this. Sadly, they were too few and far between as of late.

  We had been listening to some rock music on the radio, or at least what the DJ was calling rock. There were very few real rock stations left in Jersey. Most played either classic rock, which was mostly tolerable, or a combination of lousy ballads and pop rock (which had barely enough guitar riffs to be outside of the Justin Bieber demographic). We had been discussing how kick-ass rock music was such a rare commodity when my cell rang.

  I’d been expecting it. I picked it up and answered with an innocuous, “Hello?”

  “William, is there something you would like to tell me?” asked my Dad.

  Uh oh. That wasn’t a good sign. If he was calling me William, it meant he had noticed the little mistake I had left behind from my weekend of house sitting.

  I decided to do what I did best, play dumb. “Nope. It was a quiet weekend, Dad.”

  “I’m sure it was,” he replied in a tone that said he didn’t even remotely believe me. “Your mother and I appreciate you coming down and keeping an eye on the place while we were at the beach.” The beach in this case being the many casinos down in Atlantic City.

  “No problem, Dad! Anyway, well I gotta...”

  “Hold it!” commanded the voice on the other end. “I guess I won’t beat around the bush. What the hell did you do to Angel?” At the mention of her favorite cat, I could hear my mother wailing and carrying on in the background. It pretty much sounded like she was in the middle of a major freak-out. Not too surprising, all things considered.

  “Mom sounds kind of upset.”

  “I noticed,” my father said, sarcasm oozing out of his voice. “Do you want to know why?” he asked, despite the fact that I had a pretty good idea and he most likely knew it.

  “Why?” I asked innocently.

  “Because right now she’s vacuuming up a pile of Angel dust.”

  “Angel dust? You know, she should hold on to that. I hear the street value’s off the charts if it’s the good stuff.”

  “I’m not laughing, William.”

  “Sorry, sir,” I automatically replied, despite being an adult, having a job, living on my own, and ... oh yeah ... being a freaking vampire. “What happened?” I asked, genuinely curious. After all, I wasn’t entirely sure how things had played out ... especially since I’d made it a point to bug out before my parents got home, even going so far as donning a hoodie, sunglasses, and ski mask so as to brave the daylight without bursting into flames. It probably wasn’t the manliest way I could have handled the situation, but I’ve always thought there’s a fine line between bravery and idiocy. Sticking around would have definitely crossed that line.

  “When we got home, your mother noticed the cat was acting a little strange,” my father explained. “It was hissing and carrying on.”

  I again adopted an innocent tone. “They’re cats. They go loopy every now and then.”

  “Don’t be stupid. You know Angel,” he chided. “You could step on the stupid cat’s ... sorry, dear ... head, and she wouldn’t bat a whisker. But not today. When we got home, she was going absolutely nuts. And there was something wrong with her eyes. They had gone all black like a shark’s. That definitely was not normal.”

  “Distemper?” I unhelpfully offered.

  “Not unless it was the most extreme case of distemper there’s ever been,” Dad continued. “Your mom was a mess. Made me go get the cat carrier so we could rush her to the vet.”

  Oh boy, I think I knew where this was going.

  “I had the damnedest time getting her in it, too. Little bitch kept going after me.”

  “She didn’t bite you, did she?” I hadn’t considered that earlier. I wasn’t even sure she could pass it back to humans, but it was a risk I wasn’t really willing to take ... at least not with my parents.

  “No, but she came damn close. I had to put on some work gloves to finally get her in. Then it got weird.”

  Yeah, I bet it did. “I’m listening.”

  “Your mom got in the car, but I had left my wallet in the house. I sat the cat carrier out on the walk and went back inside to grab it, and then...”

  “In the sun?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “What?”

  “Did you leave the carrier in the sun?” I repeated.

  “I don’t know. I guess so. What does it matter? All I know is that one minute it’s quiet, and the next I hear your mother carrying on like a mad woman. I ran back outside, and do you know what I found? The cat carrier was on fire. I’m not just talking a few sparks, either. It was like someone doused it with rocket fuel.”

  I was definitely starting to get a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  “By the time I got the hose, though, the fire was already out. The damnedest thing was the cat. I was expecting her to be all burnt up, but there was nothing left. She was completely vaporized. All that was left was a pile of ashes with her collar sticking out of it.”

  “Wow. That’s ... bizarre,” I said, severely understating the whole thing.

  “Yes, bizarre is one word for it. So that’s why I want to know whether or not anything odd happened this weekend while you were around.”

  “No idea,” I lied. “Like I said, Dad, it was a slow weekend. Barely saw the cat. She kept to herself. Other than that, not much going on ... hello, Dad? Dad? I’m losing you. We’re heading into a tunnel. I’ll buzz you back when...” and then I disconnected the call as I had no idea what else to say.

  Ed and I drove on for another mile or so, and then he said, “I know I only caught part of that conversation...”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But was that about what I think it was?”

  I sighed and decided I might as well confess. It was going to be a long drive otherwise. “My mom’s cat, Angel...”

  “Yes?”

  “I kinda, might have...”

  “Yes?”

  “Turned her into a vampire,” I finished.

  “YOU WHAT?!” he yelled, just barely managing to keep the car from swerving off the road.

  “Turned it into a vampire.”

  “Why?”

  “It was an accident.”

  “How was it an accident?”

  “Well, as you had suggested, I got pretty wrecked this wee
kend,” I said with a guilty grin.

  “And how does that lead to an immortal demon cat?”

  “Well, like I said, I was pretty messed up. I guess when vampires get the munchies they don’t automatically go for the nachos like everyone else.”

  “That’s fucked up, man.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s your mom’s cat!”

  “Was my mom’s cat.”

  “I mean, I don’t even like cats,” he continued, “and I still think that’s fucked.”

  “Yes, I get it. I didn’t mean to vampirize the damn cat. It just kind of happened.”

  “Is that even a word?”

  “It is now,” I snapped. “And then when she woke up from it...”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I guess I kind of fooled myself into thinking that maybe I had dreamt it all.”

  “I take it from your dad’s call that you were wrong on that front.”

  “Definitely not a dream.”

  “Fucked up,” he repeated.

  We drove on again in silence for a few minutes until I heard Ed chortle. I turned to see him grinning and trying ... and failing ... to suppress laughter.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “I was just thinking...”

  “Yeah?”

  “There is a bright side.”

  “Do tell.”

  “When we get home, you at least get to tell Tom about how you got to eat some pussy this weekend,” he said, finally cracking up laughing.

  “Not funny,” I said, but it was a lie. Put that way, it was actually pretty goddamned hilarious. I soon joined my roommate. We laughed for a good long while until my phone rang again.

  “Oh shit,” I said, tears still pouring down my face.

  “Time to get back on the clock, my man,” Ed commented.

  He was right. I couldn’t put this off. I just hoped I could think of something to tell my parents that sounded more convincing than, “Sorry for vampirizing your cat, Mom and Dad.” I picked up the phone and answered it.

  “Listen. Tell Mom I’m sorry about her cat.”

  “Tell her your damn self,” replied Sally from the other end. “I’m not your goddamned answering service.”

  “What?” I blurted out. “What are you doing on the line, Sally?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I was lonely, what with you on vacation and all, and thought maybe I’d give you a buzz so you could talk dirty to me. But I’m afraid I have to draw the line at letting you call me mommy ... or daddy, for that matter,” she quipped.

  “I can think of a few other words for you.”

  “I’m sure you can, but think of them while you’re packing. Vacation’s over.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” she said with an impatient sniff.

  “Why am I packing?”

  “Because that’s what people do when they take a trip, unless they plan on traveling naked, and if that’s your plan, then please let me know so I can make sure I never have the same itinerary as you.”

  “Hold on. What trip?”

  “The one you’re taking,” she said as if speaking to a moron.

  “Why don’t we start over, and you tell me what’s going on?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she replied in that annoyingly chipper tone she adopted whenever she knew she was pissing me off. “You’re going to China.”

  “What?! Why the hell would I go to China?”

  “James’s orders. He called and requested your presence.”

  “Why?”

  “Beats me. You can ask him that in person in about two days.”

  “I don’t even have a passport,” I protested.

  “Wow, that’s kind of sad,” she said. “Not surprising, mind you, just sad. Fortunately, you don’t need one.”

  “Why wouldn’t I need a passport to get into China? Pretty sure they check those things there.”

  “Because it’s a long flight, and since commercial airlines tend to have rules against their passengers going up in smoke when sunlight hits them, I made some alternate arrangements.”

  “Define alternate arrangements.”

  “You, my friend,” she replied, putting even more chipperness into her voice, “have been booked into a first class coffin in the cargo hold.”

  “WHAT?!” I screamed into the phone.

  “You’re welcome. By the way, you might want to pack a pillow.” Click.

  Bitch!

  A Sandwich with a Side of Chips

  I’m sure there were some powers-that-be somewhere who had a good laugh at the irony. There I was looking for a vacation away from the coven, and I wound up getting a vacation, all right ... all the way to fucking China. Why? No idea. If Sally knew, she wasn’t very forthcoming, and it’s not like I had James’s cell phone number.

  Speaking of which, travel aside, the thought of running into James again produced some mixed feelings in me. While I wasn’t exactly sure of his true age, I was led to believe that he was in the neighborhood of six-hundred plus years old. Supposedly, he had been a contemporary of Marco Polo himself. That wasn’t one-hundred percent relevant. What was, though, was that James was in charge of all vampire related business in the Northeast United States. All of the covens in that area, mine included, were answerable to him. He, in turn, answered directly to the Draculas, the coven of the thirteen most powerful vampires from whom all of our rules supposedly descended. I say supposedly because, aside from James, I had never met another vampire who’d ever met directly with these Draculas. Still, it was probably wise not to make too many waves with regards to them.

  Why? I had seen James in action.

  I was told that as vampires aged, their powers increased as well. James was living proof of that. When he wanted to, he could move almost faster than the eye could follow. Strength-wise, I had once seen him literally tear apart a small group of gang-bangers in less time than it takes most of us to order a burrito at Taco Bell. I wasn’t too proud to admit that he scared the bejeesus out of me. All of the Draculas, though, were older than him, some supposedly quite a bit. Therefore, it stood to reason that if a run-in with James could ruin one’s day, crossing the Draculas could seriously fuck your shit up.

  All that taken into consideration, I still owed the guy. If it weren’t for him, my tenure as a vampire would have lasted all of five minutes. He was the one responsible for giving me a chance. He was also the one responsible for jumpstarting my reputation amongst my fellow vamps, which went a long way toward getting me to where I was now. Sure, he had also been the one to put the HBC vamps on my ass, but I was willing to believe that had all just been a case of bad timing. Before he could cool down any heat between our covens, he had been called away by the Draculas. They had sent him all the way to China, where I was now destined to follow for whatever reason.