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

by Rick Gualtieri

  “For centuries, my father has treated me like a child, but I am no child. I am a woman, old enough to make choices. And I have chosen you, Freewill, to be mine forever.”

  “Why exactly?”

  “We are an excellent pairing. I am royalty. One day, I shall ascend to the First Coven to sit as an equal with my father. You are the Freewill that our legends speak of. Together, we will make a formidable team. Besides, you also make me smile.” She grinned up at me, flashing those big green eyes of hers.

  Oh boy. This was starting to look messy. “And your father agrees with this?”

  “No. He is too set in his ways. He told me that he forbids it. But I am a woman. I do as my heart commands.”

  A thought entered my head, and with it I could feel the threat of a migraine coming on. “Your father didn’t let you come here, did he?”

  “I need ask no permission. I am a woman. I go where I please. It pleased me to come here for you.”

  Oh shit! No wonder James had wanted me to leave. He had been listening in on their argument back at my dinner/trial. I guess he figured out of sight, out of mind. He figured wrong.

  “Gan, listen to me. This is important. Does the Khan know where you are now?”

  “I would imagine so. I left father a letter stating my intentions as a woman.”

  Fuck me! I tried to hide the fact that pinpricks of sweat were breaking out on my forehead. “Just one more little question, Gan,” I said with a forced cheerfulness that I wasn’t feeling. “What do you think your father will do once he reads your letter?”

  “Father is set in his ways,” she replied in the bored tone of someone who has seen this sort of thing happen many times before. “He will no doubt send his assassins to retrieve me and most likely kill you and your followers.” Oh, of course. “But do not worry. Together, we will defeat them and send their heads back to him as a show of strength. Then we shall be together forever.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I left Gan sitting where she was and stepped out to find Sally leaning against Starlight’s desk, still wiping tears from her eyes. “Glad you find this amusing,” I snarled.

  “Oh, you have no idea,” she chuckled back at me. “I haven’t laughed that hard in decades.”

  “Good, because I hope you can keep your sense of humor when you learn how fucked we are.”

  I filled her in on what Gan had just told me, making a point to emphasize the assassins coming to kill me and my followers.

  “How bad are we talking here?” she asked, having quickly sobered up.

  “If it’s what I think, then we’re probably talking three vamps with about a millennium of experience amongst them.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “Ya think?”

  “Don’t get all testy at me. You’re the one that the ten-year-old she-demon finds irresistible.”

  “Twelve.”

  “What?”

  “She’s twelve ... sorta,” I replied.

  “I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t matter much to a jury.”

  “It’s not the judge or the jury I’m worried about. It’s the executioners.”

  “I swear, trouble swarms to you like flies to shit.”

  “Maybe next time you’ll let me take my vacation in peace,” I offered. “As usual, the caveat being that there is a next time.”

  “That’s one of the things I admire about you, Bill – your always upbeat attitude.”

  “What can I say? The world needs more eternal optimists like me.”

  “All jokes aside,” Sally said, getting back to the subject at hand, “what are we gonna do about this?”

  “Not sure. From what I learned while I was there, apparently these people put some pretty big stock in my being a Freewill. You should have heard the shit they were spouting.”

  “Let me guess, the words chosen one were spoken?” Sally ventured.

  “Not quite, but pretty close.”

  She sighed. “The world needs some new clichés.”

  “Tell me about it. But anyway, I know at least one of the guys the Khan will be sending, a dude named Nergui...”

  “Nerd Gay?”

  “Watch it. The juvenile humor is supposed to be my thing.”

  “Sorry. You must be rubbing off on me.”

  “We can talk about you rubbing me off another time,” I said, quickly stepping out of slapping range. “For now, though, let’s focus. Nergui speaks English. Maybe we can talk him down. Hopefully he’ll be willing to listen to our side of the story.”

  She considered this for a moment. “A lot depends on the Khan here. If he gave a solid order ... or, worse yet, gave Nergui a compulsion to kill you, then all the flowery words in the world won’t save us.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I kind of figured that was the more likely scenario.”

  “I’ll put the coven on alert.”

  “Good idea. What’s the drill?” I was ostensibly in charge of the coven, but even I had to admit Sally had way more experience in vampire goings-on than me. She also kept an eye on things during the week while I was off earning my shekels as a code monkey. Thus, there was no shame in deferring to her now.

  “I have a couple of ideas.”

  “Lay them on me.”

  “Okay,” she started. “For now, I say we assign guards to the main coven nests – here, the Loft, maybe the warehouse. Encourage the rest of the coven to stay in those places and not go anywhere except in a group. That part shouldn’t be hard.”

  I nodded in agreement. Jeff had run the coven much like a frat house, and a good deal of that mentality still remained. I was half-surprised whenever I saw any of our membership get up to use the bathroom without three others in tow.

  “I’ll also tell them to make it a point to notify us immediately in case anyone goes missing.”

  “I almost hate to suggest this, but what about arming the coven?”

  “Stakes?”

  “Guns,” I corrected. Vampires were much stronger and more durable than humans, and healed in a fraction of the time. However, from personal experience, I could attest that our nerve endings worked just fine. A gun shot wouldn’t do much in the way of killing a vampire, but it would hurt like hell and give the attacker an advantage. Now that I was thinking of it, maybe something like a bayonet would be ideal. Shoot ‘em, then stake ‘em.

  “Tricky,” she said, shaking her head. “You know how we have some deals in place with the human authorities?”

  “To keep our messes under the rug?”

  “Exactly. Well, part of those agreements include that we’re not really supposed to arm ourselves with anything other than basic melee crap. I mean, haven’t you wondered why you haven’t seen any of us packing heat before?”

  Actually, I hadn’t. Now that I thought of it, the whole fracas with Samuel’s group had immediately turned into a street brawl ... not a shot fired by either side. Hell, not a single gun brandished, either. Damn, I really needed to start paying attention better. I shrugged and replied, “I guess I just thought you were all a bunch of luddites.”

  “What?”

  “Basically, I figured you guys didn’t like technology because it was some kind of vampire thing. You know, maybe you all thought you were too cool for guns.”

  She sighed and started to respond, but before she could speak, the door to her office opened.

  “I grow weary of your whore’s sitting room,” said Gan, standing there with a pouty look on her face. She might have the mind of a three-hundred-year-old vampire, but there were still some decidedly kid-like things about her.

  Before Sally could say anything that would cause the rest of us to start betting on who would win in a fight (my money was on Gan), I stepped between them and addressed the little tyke. “Can you give us just a few more minutes? We’re almost done here. Please ... for me?” I asked in my friendliest tone.

  Gan mimicked Sally’s eye roll and did as told. After she had closed the door behind her, I turned back to my partner and
said, “Awww! Isn’t that cute? She’s already learning something from her auntie Sally.”

  “Good, Bill. Because if you had called me auntie whore, I’d have killed you myself.” From the look on her face, I didn’t care to dispute that. “Although little Ms. Pain-In-The-Ass there has reminded me ... what exactly are you going to do about her?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. She obviously wuvs you,” she mocked. “Unless, that is, you’d prefer to let her, a poor helpless child, loose in the city.”

  I thought about that for a second. “Do you think the city would stand a chance?”

  “It’d be burnt to the ground inside of twelve hours.”

  “Maybe the coven could ... ya know ... watch her?” I asked hopefully.

  “Can you really think of anyone in our group who you would trust to babysit?”

  I thought for a moment, and then looked up. Sally had no doubt read my mind because we both said, “Starlight.”

  “I guess that could work,” she admitted.

  “Cool.”

  “Just one problem. I sent Starlight up to Boston. She won’t be back until tomorrow night at the earliest.”

  “Why did you send her to Boston?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Boston was the HQ for vampire activity in the Northeast.

  “I needed to file some papers up there,” confirmed Sally.

  “She’s not your secretary!”

  “But she’s so good at it.”

  “Okay, enough. Arguing won’t get her back here any sooner.”

  “Good, it’s settled then.”

  “What’s settled?” I asked.

  Sadly, I probably should have known that she was going to say, “Gan can stay at your place tonight.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Some days I really loved New York City. No matter how much of a cesspool of humanity it could be at times, I had to admit it was the only place in the world where a little Asian princess dressed in expensive silk fineries could ride the subway with a dorky companion like myself and not draw any stares. Speaking of which, though, I made a mental note to update Gan’s wardrobe to something a little less conspicuous. Dressed as she was, she was practically a signal flare to the Khan’s kill squad.

  Unfortunately, that created a whole new problem. I had no idea where twelve-year-old girls went shopping for clothes. Was The Gap still cool? Was it ever? How the hell would I know?

  Oh well, that was tomorrow night’s problem. For now, it was time to get Gan back to my place and explain to my roommates that we were now babysitters to a three-hundred-year-old spoiled little rich girl. Back when I had first told them I’d been turned into a vampire, they’d taken it exceptionally well. I had a sneaking suspicion, though, that asking them to help me watch over the Khan’s little hellion was going to go over a whole lot less smoothly.

  It’s kind of funny when you think about it. You tell some guys you’re a vampire, a werewolf, or the freaking Creature from the Black Lagoon and they’d say “Cool” and go back to whatever they were watching on the SyFy channel. However, if you were to ask them to watch your pre-teen niece, then you’d be in for a freak-out.

  But oh well, I figured they owed me for all the times they’d almost immolated me in the name of testing out my vampire powers. They could deal with it.

  We arrived at my building and walked up to the apartment on the top floor. I unlocked the door and held it open for Gan. “Welcome to my place.”

  “This is where you rule your coven from?” she asked with a bit of confusion. “It does not speak well for one of your status.” Everyone’s a critic. So sorry that my bachelor pad didn’t conform to her highness’s lofty expectations.

  “It’s ... a disguise,” I said, making it up on the spot. Yeah, that worked. “So my enemies don’t suspect my true power.” Jeez, I sounded like Dr. Doom.

  “Ah, I see,” she nodded approvingly. “My apologies, I underestimated your wisdom. You live in a den of pig offal so as to confuse your adversaries. Clever indeed.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I said, tossing my jacket onto the couch. “Make yourself at home.”

  “Where is our bed?”

  That stopped me dead in my tracks. “Our bed?”

  “Yes. As your mate, are we not expected to share such things?”

  Jesus fucking Christ! All these years I’ve been praying that one day a girl would say something like that to me. It figured that when it finally happened, it would be from a psychotic, pre-pubescent mini-vamp. If this was going to be my eternity, I might as well run into the sunshine right now with a big ol’ smile on my face.

  I was about to give Gan a long lecture on exactly why we wouldn’t be sleeping anywhere even remotely in the same room when Ed’s bedroom door opened and he strolled out.

  “Hey, Bill,” he said, and then, upon noticing Gan, added, “What’s with the munchkin?”

  Gan turned and smiled up at me. “You keep your own supply of food here? Excellent! I shall sample him.” With that, she launched herself across the room and slammed into my roommate. He went down hard with her on top of him.

  “Holy shit!” I cried, throwing myself after her. Damn, she was fast. Fortunately for me, though, I didn’t exactly live in Windsor Castle. Thus, it was only a few steps until I could grab her and drag her off Ed. Or try to drag her off. She was strong for her size, too.

  “What the fuck?!” he screamed at me once I’d pried her off.

  “Um ... Ed, meet Gan.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Dude, put the gun away,” I said to my roommate while standing in the doorway to his bedroom. He was sitting at his desk, loading shells into the twelve-gauge shotgun he usually kept not-so-hidden under his bed.

  “So Rainbow fucking Brite out there can try to take another chunk out of me? I think not.”

  “I have it under control.”

  “Oh yeah, real good control you got there,” he said, loading another shell. “A second later and she would have been using my head as a soccer ball.”

  “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” I asked in as soothing a tone as possible, which wasn’t very.

  Another shell was loaded with an audible click. “My apartment is now Satan’s daycare. No, I don’t see much overreacting here.”

  Okay, time to change tactics. “So says the guy who, just the other day, was putting the moves on a floozy with both a serious case of overbite and an overall lack of respect for human life.”

  “That’s different,” he protested.

  “How?”

  “Have you ever looked at Sally’s tits?”

  “Many times.”

  “Need I explain further?”

  “No, I guess you don’t.” Damn, I hated sound logic. “Still, chill with the gun. You’re liable to make Gan nervous.”