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

by Rick Gualtieri

“Guess that answers the question of whether you’re good witch or a bad witch,” Sally snapped.

  I finally found my voice. “Are you sure he’s okay? Because if he’s not...”

  “Don’t worry, my dear Freewill,” she replied. “We have no quarrel with him.”

  “There’s that we word again.”

  “Me and my coven,” she clarified.

  “You do know you guys stole that one from us, right?” I shot back.

  I heard the door click open behind us, and then a new voice answered my question. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” This one I recognized.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said as the newcomer walked in.

  Christy bowed as he entered my view. “Master, I have done as told.”

  “And you shall be rewarded, my child,” said Harry Decker, stepping in front of me. He gave Christy a loving caress on her cheek before turning to face me.

  “Son of a bitch,” I hissed.

  He in turn replied, “I bet you’re wishing right now that you hadn’t ruined my night.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “So let me get this straight, you’re a witch, too?”

  “Wizard,” he corrected. “Women are witches, men are wizards.”

  “And either way, you’re still an asshole. Although I guess that explains how you were able to hang on to that cushy job without doing dick.”

  “No. That’s just knowing how to play corporate politics. No magic necessary,” he snapped back. “You might want to consider learning a few lessons there yourself.”

  “So what is all this?” I asked, gesturing around as best I could.

  “This is what must be done,” he answered cryptically.

  “Please don’t tell me that all of this is because Bill sent you home tonight with a giant case of the blue balls,” Sally said.

  “Don’t be absurd, woman,” Decker replied. “That little trollop (oh yeah, those were fighting words) is meaningless to me. But I knew if word got out that I was courting her, Mr. Ryder here would have to respond in some way.” He turned back to me. “And in case you’re wondering, no magic was needed for that either. The whole office is more than aware of your pathetic little case of puppy love.”

  “The whole office?” I asked.

  “You might as well wear a sandwich board with it written in block letters,” he said with a sneer. “As it were, it turns out tonight was just a fortuitous coincidence that allowed me to accelerate my plans. It is as if fate itself has delivered you unto me.”

  Gan’s eyes suddenly opened. “You should have let me kill him,” she said, her tone implying she had been listening in on things. “I told you his kind would not be missed.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You knew he was a wizard?”

  “Of course,” she replied. “You did not?”

  “Gan, if we get out of this, we need to have a little talk about this thing called assuming.”

  Decker let out a laugh. “It’s safe to say that you won’t be having that conversation.”

  Gan merely bared her fangs. “In that, you are wrong, wizard.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Gan began to flex against her ... whatever it was that was holding her in place. After a few seconds, flashes began flaring up and down her arms as she encountered the same resistance I had. Decker and Christy both smiled smugly as the smell of burning flesh began to permeate the room. However, those smiles began to crumble as Gan continued her assault, heedless of the fact that she was rapidly starting to turn all crispy. I have to say, I was impressed ... and a little dismayed that I was being shown up by someone who looked like a sixth grader.

  “You cannot escape. Those are bonds of faith,” spat Decker, but there was worry behind his voice.

  “Then ... perhaps...” Gan said, continuing to struggle, “you ... need... stronger ... faith.” With that, there came a flash of light and suddenly she was standing on her feet. She looked like five miles of bad road, but an experienced vampire could take a lot of abuse before going down. Gan was apparently no exception.

  She snarled and leapt at Decker to finish the job that, in hindsight, maybe I should have allowed her to do in the first place. As she did, I made a mental note to have a conversation with Sally about her lousy timing regarding humanity speeches.

  Decker appeared to be caught completely surprised by the attack, but his pet witch, Christy, was not. She screamed, “Master!” and threw up her hands in a warding gesture. Whatever it was, it managed to snag Gan in midair just centimeters away from connecting with her target.

  Gan struggled against it, but the witch made another gesture, barked something inarticulate, and suddenly Gan was no longer there.

  “Gan!” I yelled as Christy slumped to the floor, apparently drained from the effort.

  “What the hell did you do to her?” Sally snarled.

  Decker ignored us and went to Christy’s side to help her up. She looked semi-stunned by whatever she had just done, but she managed to pant, “Forgive me, master. I only had time to send the child beast back.”

  “Back? Back where?” I snapped.

  Decker glanced toward me. “Fear not, Mr. Ryder. Your little pet isn’t harmed. My assistant merely reversed the spell that brought you all here. She’s back in your apartment. Safe but in no position to cause us further interruption.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. Psycho or not, I felt a responsibility for Gan. There was also the fact that her getting dusted on my watch would most likely put the kibosh on any chance of talking the assassins out of killing me.

  “Speaking of which,” Sally said, “why the hell are we here? What, you didn’t think Bill’s apartment was creepy enough for you guys? Trust me, I’ve seen it. It is.”

  Decker turned and answered in a slow voice, “Because this is where it all began.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Not following you,” Sally replied.

  “This is where the Freewill was born, you simpleton of a slut,” he spat at her. Before she could open her mouth to reply, he continued. “Yes, we know. We’ve been aware of your coven and your kind for a long time. We’ve been watching you.”

  “So now you’re a voyeur in addition to being an asshole?” she shot back. Go, Sally! I could see what she was trying to do. It was Superhero 101: piss off the villain until he started monologuing all about his grand scheme. Once he’s distracted by his own delusions of grandeur, then WHAM – we bust out and take him down. I just wasn’t sure how that last part was going to play itself out yet. Hopefully, it wasn’t with “and now you know my plan so...” ZAP! Fortunately for me, Sally was playing a game that I was qualified to be in the pro leagues for.

  “Yo, Decker,” I said. “I have a question for you.”

  “Yes, Freewill?” he replied with a sly grin. “How may I enlighten you?”

  “Something that’s been bugging me. What the fuck is up with wizards named Harry?” He looked confused, so I continued. “I mean, seriously, it seems like every freaking wizard I’ve heard of lately has been named Harry. There’s you, Harry Potter, Harry Dresden, Harry Houdini...”

  “I don’t think that last one was a real wizard,” Sally pointed out.

  “Actually, he was,” Christy replied.

  “See?!” I said. “Do wizard mommies have zero in the way of creativity, or is there something mystical about having a name that probably earned you multiple ass-kickings on the playground?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Decker angrily asked.

  “Listen, dude, I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons for the better part of a decade. I’ve run at least a dozen wizards ... not a single Harry amongst them.”

  “This is irrelevant.”

  “Zoltar the Arcane ... now there was a name for a wizard. And let’s not forget about my fifteenth level gnome mage, Professor Blastingus...”

  “Enough!” roared Decker. “I tire of your games, vampire.”

  “There was also Magnifico the
Merciless, although I’m not so proud of that one...”

  Harry grabbed me by the chin and moved his face to within inches of mine. “Do you want to know why you are going to die, or not?”

  “Sure, as long as you pop a breath mint first.” This was going swimmingly ... at least as long as he didn’t follow through with the killing me part.

  “Six months ago, the portents all spoke of your coming.” He backed up and began ranting. “The return of the vampire Freewills who so long ago were wiped from the Earth.”

  “Wiped?”

  “Yes. They didn’t just disappear in a puff of smoke ... or did you think that they had?”

  “Well...” Actually, I had never bothered to wonder. Now that he mentioned it, I guess immortals wouldn’t normally disappear unless something happened to them.

  “What the portents did not tell us was that the reborn Freewill would be so ... unimpressive,” he continued.

  “You apparently haven’t seen Bill in action,” Sally replied. Hard to tell if she was complimenting me or agreeing with him.

  He ignored her and went on. “All of our divinings pointed to you, but we couldn’t be sure. We couldn’t risk warfare with the vampires over a nobody. Thus we have been watching you, waiting for confirmation.”

  “So you took a job at my place just to keep tabs on me?”

  “Yes. Although the sign-on bonus wasn’t half bad either,” he replied. Asshole just had to rub it in. “However, I needn’t have bothered. If I had known how readily your friend here would spill his guts in exchange for a little female companionship, I would have sent my protégé in sooner.”

  Let that be a lesson to you, my male friends. Never underestimate the power of the pussy.

  He wasn’t finished with his insane monologue, though. “Tonight only further confirmed your status ... or did you think I hadn’t noticed your little transformation outside of the cafe?”

  “You saw that?”

  “I see many things,” he said as what looked like an electric charge passed behind his eyes. Ooh, spooky.

  “I see things, too. For example, I saw your ass get shot down tonight.” It was a pretty weak comeback on my part. The ball was back in his court.

  His grin widened. “Thus I saw no reason to hesitate any longer. Our legends tell that your coming heralds disaster for my people. Thus, if you are erased, that future cannot come to pass.”

  “So you’re saying I’m gonna kill all the wizards? You know, it’d be funny if that happened, especially considering that before tonight I had nothing against you. Hell, I didn’t even know you existed.”

  “Not you, fool,” he replied.

  “Not me what?”

  “Not you! You aren’t the one to bring disaster to us.”

  “But you just said...”

  “I said your coming heralds it. There’s a difference.”

  “Okay, I’m confused now.”

  “Just now?” Sally asked. “I haven’t understood a word of what this whackjob has been saying for at least ten minutes.”

  “ICONS!” he screamed.

  “Huh?”

  “Your coming foretells their return,” he ranted. “If the Freewills shall ever return, so, too, shall the Icons of faith. It was they who decimated the Magi so long ago. If they return, they shall do so again.”

  Okay, I had heard of Icons. They were supposedly people of such great faith that their whole bodies became living, breathing weapons against vampires. They could turn us into French fries just by their touch, but they were supposed to be as rare as vamps like me, maybe even more so.

  “I thought Icons fought vampires,” I said feeling confused.

  “Some did in the distant past. But then Christianity came. The vampires slunk off into the shadows before its wake and became nothing more than legends to the humans. My ancestors were not so fortunate.” A touch of mania was starting to enter his voice. “Once, we were like deities to the people. We protected them against your kind and the other scourges of the night and, in return, they made us their priests, their wise-men, their god kings!”

  “Let me guess,” I interrupted. “Then this little thing called the Inquisition hit.”

  “Yes!” he snarled. “That and other uprisings like it. Those who had once praised us turned upon us. They called us tools of Satan and suffered us not to live. We fought back and might have won if not for the zealots ... the Icons ... amongst them. They were able to resist our magic and drag us from our many seats of power. We were hunted almost to extinction before we, too, managed to retreat into the relative safety of legend, where we have waited ever since.”

  “So let me get this straight,” I said. “You think that my being here heralds the return of some other group and that if you kill me, it somehow cancels them out as well?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is one of the stupidest fucking things I think I have ever heard.”

  “How dare you...”

  “No, seriously. It makes no sense. You have about the biggest, stupidest case of circular logic that I’ve ever seen. It’s not much better than ‘a duck has two legs, I have two legs, therefore I must be a duck.’ Think about it. I’ll wait. You are in marketing, after all.”

  “I did not expect you to understand. You are not even a man anymore – just an animal. What did you think that woman would ever see in you? She could no more love you than she could a beast,” he said, a disdainful sneer on his face.

  Ooh, that was low. I didn’t want to do this, but now it was time to get nasty.

  I tensed up and blurted out, “Wingardium Leviosa!” What? Hasn’t everyone read those books by now?

  “What?” he spat.

  “Accio ... err, asskicking?”

  “Cut that out!”

  “Or what, you’ll make me drink polyjuice potion?” I threw in a bad English accent to top things off.

  “I’ll kill you right now.”

  “Oh no! Avada Kedavra ... ugh!” I said, rolling my head back and playing dead.

  “I do not find this amusing.”

  I lifted my head and shouted, “Stupefy! Oh wait, too late. Guess someone got you with that one already.”

  “Enough!” he screamed and threw up his hands. An electric jolt passed through the air, and suddenly I found myself flying back. I slammed into the wall and went down in a heap. I pretty much felt like I had just been put through a microwave, but a quick tense of my muscles confirmed that whatever he had just done had also broken his little containment spell.

  Free at last, I stood up and turned to face him and his little bitch of a witch, too.

  I had no idea what the hell to do against them, but that didn’t stop me from throwing them a grin of my own and saying, “Here I am, assholes. Rock you like a hurricane!”

  As far as last words went, that wouldn’t have been half bad.

  However, as luck would have it, that’s when the front door exploded off its hinges.