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

by Rick Gualtieri

  I mentally bumped these guys up a notch in my threat book. I had almost forgotten that faith could work for normal people. The cross by itself wouldn’t do dick against a vampire. It was just a piece of wood or metal under normal circumstances, but this guy believed in it – apparently enough to empower it with his faith. Suddenly all those old vampire movies made a lot more sense.

  This wasn’t good. Their implements would be like branding irons to Sally and me. Ed was human, so a faith empowered trinket wouldn’t hurt him, but that didn’t mean anything – especially against three guys, one of whom brandished a longsword.

  Sadly, I couldn’t help him. I had my own cross to bear – pardon the pun – in the form of the guy up front. He made good use of the distraction his friend provided. Before I could react, he looped the rosary around my neck and pressed the crucifix against my forehead. Oh crap...

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Bow before the might of our Creator,” the Templar in charge hissed into my ear. He was trying to strangle me with the rosary, but my more pressing concern was the cross. Any second now it would...

  Except it didn’t. The only thing I felt was the cold metal pressed against my skin. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but then again, my head wasn’t bursting into flames either.

  I grinned despite the situation. Guess this guy wasn’t as true of a believer as he claimed. Maybe that was why he had been reciting the rosary as he spoke to me. It wasn’t too hard to imagine that, despite his words, deep down there was just enough doubt to keep him from getting his faith on.

  Grabbing the thin chain around my neck, I snapped it then turned to my opponent.

  A look of panic washed over his face. “No! I don’t believe...”

  “That is why you fail,” I said in my best Yoda impersonation before decking the asshole square on the jaw. The Templar flew back and went down like a sack of bricks, blood pouring from his smashed nose. Ladies and gentleman, your winner by knockout.

  I spun, ready to give my friends a hand, but was a second too late.

  SHRIPPP! There’s a noise I was gonna hear in my nightmares. Note to self, do not piss off Sally ... at least not the way this guy had. While I had been dealing with Mr. Lack of Faith, the receptionist had apparently tried to finish her off. It hadn’t gone well for him.

  His right arm, its hand still clutching the crucifix, flew across the room sans the rest of his body. Before I could open my mouth, she was on him. One slash of her now fully extended claws and the guy was nearly decapitated. Eww. It’s so much less ... nasty when that happens in the movies.

  She wasn’t done, though. She leapt upon the man and continued ripping him to shreds. Guess she took some offense to that strumpet of Satan comment.

  “Okay, Sally. I think you got him.”

  “Err Bill,” came Ed’s voice from the other side of the room. “Thanks for leaving the guy with the sword for me.” I glanced over and found the knight holding my roommate from behind, his blade at his throat. Oh yeah, I kept forgetting that Ed’s not much of a fighter. He usually brought his shotgun to situations like these. Unfortunately, the NYPD tended to take a dim view toward people walking around fully armed.

  “Easy there, Robert,” I said to the man wielding the sword. “This doesn’t have to end badly.” Out of the corner of my eye, Sally rose from her kill. She was covered head to toe with the guy’s blood, a burn mark in the shape of a cross still evident on her cheek. Hmm, so much for that. “It doesn’t have to end any worse,” I quickly amended.

  “Speak not my name, beast,” the man spat. “You may end my life, but I shall take your thrall with me.”

  “I’m not his fucking thrall.”

  “Silence, thrall!”

  This wasn’t going well. Jeez, how the hell were we going to talk this guy down without Ed being given a really close shave? Negotiations weren’t exactly my strong suit. Calling this guy a fucking twat over and over again wouldn’t do much in the way of...

  BANG!

  Something exploded next to my head. Damn, that hurt. Sensitive vampire ears aren’t always a good thing. My headache was small beans compared to what happened to Robert, though. A neat little bullet hole appeared in his forehead. With no further fanfare, his sword dropped to the floor and the rest of him followed.

  I turned to see that Sally had her purse in one hand and a small pistol in the other.

  “Um, nice shot,” I meekly commented.

  “I think I just shit my pants,” Ed said, a small splash of Robert’s blood on his shoulder.

  “New piece?” I asked conversationally, despite the fact that I was pretty close to following Ed’s lead.

  “Yep,” she replied brightly. “I figure this one is a little more subtle to carry around.”

  I glanced at Robert’s body. “Yeah, real subtle. When did you decide to show up packing?”

  “Are you serious? Shit’s getting real. I’m not stepping my dainty ass outside without a little protection.”

  I gave her one more sideways glance and then stepped toward Ed. “Are you all right?”

  “I’ll live.” He still sounded shaken but had regained his composure. He gave me a quick thumbs-up.

  “So I guess it’s back to the drawing board,” Sally said, putting her gun away.

  “No thanks to you,” I replied. “Fortunately, I was able to show a little more restraint.” I pointed to the still unconscious, but obviously breathing, Templar I had decked.

  “Not bad, Bill,” she said, high praise from her. “How’d you keep from getting burned?”

  “Turns out his faith wasn’t as great as he thought.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “I hate to interrupt the vampire love fest,” Ed pointed out, “but that gunshot was pretty goddamned loud and there are other businesses in this building. We should get the fuck out of here.”

  I glanced over at Sally, who looked like she had practically bathed in the receptionist’s blood. “Yeah, this might look a little suspicious.”

  “We should be right above the subway lines,” she said, licking some gore off her fingers. You could always count on Sally to be classy. “If we’re lucky, this place has a drainage vent in the basement we can squeeze through.”

  “In the mood to tour the sewers?” I asked Ed, a smirk on my face.

  “Do I have much choice?”

  “Yep, you can stay and get arrested,” Sally said blithely. She walked over to the still unconscious form on the floor and gave him a good solid kick to the midsection. Never let it be said that she wasn’t one to forgive and forget. “Let’s bring this piece of shit.”

  “Snack for the trip?”

  “You want to find your girlfriend, right? Well, dickhead here probably knows where she is.”

  “Think he’ll talk?”

  “I know he will.”

  Preying for Forgiveness

  We got lucky, managing to make it underground unseen and, more importantly, unarrested. Using the tunnels, we made our way back to the Office.

  “Such wonderful places you take me to, Bill,” Ed said as we sloshed our way toward our destination.

  “You really haven’t seen the city until you trek around underneath it.”

  “Uhhhh.” A groan came from over my shoulder followed by a sharp crack as Sally put her fist into his face.

  “Thanks,” I told her.

  “My pleasure.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I unceremoniously dumped the Templar onto the floor once we entered the Office. It was my second forced march through filthy sewer tunnels this week and, needless to say, it didn’t leave me in the best of moods.

  I stopped and looked around. The Office was unusually silent, even considering our recent downsizing.

  “Where’s Starlight and the others?”

  “I sent all of them to the new safe house earlier,” Sally said, which explained why we were here and not there. Whatever this guy had to say wasn’t for their ears any
way.

  “Is that an iota of caring I hear in your tone?”

  “Hardly. Good help is hard to find.”

  “As well as a good stylist?”

  “Hell yeah, and I couldn’t exactly send her and Alfonzo there without the others.”

  “Alfonzo?” Ed asked.

  “You don’t want to know,” I assured him before turning back to Sally. “Why don’t you go get cleaned up while we figure out what to do?”

  “I will after we do what needs to be done.”

  “You have a plan?” Ed asked.

  “Obviously.”

  “Torture?”

  “Tempting,” she said. She meant it too. “But it would probably take too long. No guarantee he’ll talk either. He’d probably just die screaming for Jesus and I don’t have enough aspirin to deal with that kind of headache.”

  “What then?” I asked.

  “Compulsion,” she replied simply enough.

  That definitely had potential, but it wasn’t a certainty. Humans were difficult for vampires to control. Faith or not, if this guy was as devoted to his order as he claimed, he could potentially resist being Vulcan mind-melded.

  “Think you’ve got enough juice to make him talk?”

  “Nope.” She reached down, grabbed the unconscious Templar by his shirt and dragged him to his feet.

  “Then what...”

  She turned her head and looked both of us straight in the eye. This time there was no hint of sarcasm or attitude. When she spoke, it was simple and direct. “Do you want to find this girl, Bill?”

  “You know I do.”

  “And you’re willing to do whatever it takes to save her?”

  “Sure...”

  “Don’t just give me a bullshit answer here,” she snapped. “I’m serious. You’ve been lucky up until now. You’ve been able to get through a lot of crap without dirtying your hands ... well, too much anyway, at least by vampire standards. It’s different now, though. There’s some serious business coming down the pipe. This is just the beginning. Whatever lines you’ve drawn in the sand are going to get blurry at best. I need to know that you’re going to be able to handle it.”

  Her words didn’t surprise me. Some part of me had been expecting it, probably for quite some time now – at the very least, ever since I had gotten back from the Woods of Mourning. It didn’t mean I had to like it, though. Neither choice was particularly appealing. I could keep on the path I was, playing the loveable doofus (semi-loveable at the very least), but would that really end well for anyone? The other option meant possibly giving up the one thing that truly separated me from most other vamps: my humanity, or at least a good chunk of it. Could I go down that path and not turn into a monster? I honestly didn’t know.

  Sally and Ed stayed silent while I thought it over. Ultimately, it was my choice to make. Oh, who was I kidding? Like there really was a choice.

  It was time to man up.

  “Do what needs to be done,” I said.

  Sally gave me a single nod. Her eyes blackened, and I realized what she meant to do. I couldn’t help but feel a slight sense of irony. I’d been bitching for the past year about how I was suckered in and turned into a vampire against my will, and now I was giving the order to do the same thing. Sure, the circumstances were different, but the end result wouldn’t be. If I had to guess, I’d bet that Night Razor was laughing his ass off in Hell right about then.

  Sally lowered her mouth, fangs fully extended, to the Templar’s throat. There was a crunch as she bit in, followed by a lot of blood.

  “Ewww,” I muttered. Well alright, maybe I wasn’t manning up that much. Remembering that not everyone in the room was an undead monster, I turned to Ed. “How are you holding up?”

  “Me? I’m fine. I see you pouring blood on shit every fucking day. If I’m not desensitized by now...”

  “Yeah, but this is...”

  “Necessary. I agree with Sally, shit’s gonna get real soon enough. We’re either in this game to win it or we might as well just cash in our chips now.”

  “We?” I asked for what felt like the millionth time since becoming a vampire.

  “Don’t ruin the moment by turning back into a dumbass, Bill. You’d still last all of five minutes without your friends.”

  “Speaking of which, any idea yet how to break this to Tom?”

  “Not a fucking clue, dude.”

  A thud brought our attention back to Sally. She had dropped the Templar on the floor like ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag. She turned to us, a smile on her blood-stained lips. “Tangy. I think our altar boy here has a taste for the sacramental wine.”

  “Is it done?”

  “Yep, unless you’d care for a sip.”

  “Pass,” I replied.

  “Well then, this dipshit should be waking up in a couple of hours. Make yourselves comfortable, boys. As for me, I’m gonna hit the showers.” She started walking to the back. Just before disappearing, she added, “I might be a while. Being covered in so much blood makes me feel all tingly inside.” With that, she left the room.

  Ed stood there slack-jawed for a moment, then asked, “Is it wrong of me to be turned on by that?”

  “Highly,” I said. “But if that’s wrong, I don’t want to be right.”

  If Sally had thrown that out to purposely distract us from the man who lay bleeding out a few feet from where we stood, she had done a hell of a job.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Unfortunately, the distraction didn’t last. I sat and stared at the crumpled form on the floor, remembering how it had all started for me. It had come dangerously close to ending for me that night as well. Had it not been for the fact that my antics had amused James, Night Razor would have staked me into dust and been done with it.

  Despite what he stood for, his feelings toward us, and the fact that he and his buddies had spirited Sheila away to god-knows where, I found myself feeling sorry for the Templar. It was doubtful a guardian angel would come to his rescue like one had for me.

  “Knock it off,” Ed said from behind me as he pulled up a chair.

  “What’s Sally up to?”

  “She’s in her office trying to dig up some intel.”

  “Having any luck?”

  “Didn’t seem like it,” he said. “When I walked out, it looked like she was pulling up an online poker site. Now stop trying to change the subject.”

  “What subject?”

  “I’m not a fucking moron, Bill.”

  “Well...”

  “Kiss my ass,” he said amicably enough. “Do you know what your problem is?”

  “Which one? I have lots of them.”

  “The problem that separates you from Tom and me.”

  “Hmm, let me think. Could it be that you both have heartbeats?”

  “Nope. It’s that we have heartbeats, but you have a heart.”

  “You’re losing me here.”

  “What a surprise. Me? I’m not exactly a people person.”

  I feigned shock. “No! Say it isn’t so.”

  “I know – my stellar personality often shines through like a beacon in the night. But let’s face facts. If I were in your shoes, I’d have left a trail of bodies in my wake by now that might even impress Sally.”

  “Not likely!” she shouted from within her office.

  “The walls have ears,” he said in a hushed tone.

  “So do the annoying ex-strippers.”

  “Anyway, you get my point,” he continued. “Tom, he’s a good guy, but I’m pretty sure the only things he’s ever clued in about are his toys and whoever happens to be sucking his dick at the time.”

  I nodded. Tom was my oldest friend and I loved him like a brother, but Ed had pretty much summed him up in a nutshell.

  “The bottom line is that he’d probably cause a bloodbath just by being Tom.”

  “An accurate assessment, I’d say.”

  “But not you. You worry about these things. I mean sure, you talk big an
d all that shit, but deep down...”

  “I’m a pussy?”

  “Well yeah, but you also care. Look at all the shit you’ve managed to get yourself into trying to keep your coven under control. Hell, if that Nergui dude hadn’t iced the Sasquatch princess, I don’t know what you’d have done.”

  “I would have found a way out of it ... probably.”

  “Yeah, but your first, second, or even third choice wouldn’t have been to drive a knife hilt-deep into her chest.”

  “I guess...”

  “I know.”

  “So what are you trying to say?”

  “Stop beating the shit out of yourself about it. You’re in a bad situation. Hell, we all are. You’re gonna need to occasionally do bad things to deal with it. The thing is, I know that in every case you’ll always try to think of a better way. Unfortunately, life won’t always give you that chance. That’s just how things roll, but it does not make you a monster.”

  “Thanks, man. I guess I’m just worried I’ll start to like it if I do it enough.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “It could happen. What if I turn into another Sally?”

  “Not on your best day!” she shouted out again.

  “Will you stop fucking eavesdropping!” I yelled back.

  “Heh,” Ed whispered. “You turn into Sally and I’ll just fuck you myself.”

  I paused to raise an eyebrow. “Okay, maybe she’s a bad example. What if I start acting like Night Razor or François or maybe...”

  “You won’t. And if you do, I promise I will pull out my shotgun, load it up with silver slugs and blow your fucking head right off.”

  I considered that for a moment. “Or you could just try talking to me.”

  “I could, but what fun would that be?”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Hold him down,” Sally commanded.

  “He’s already tied up,” I pointed out. Our former Templar was secured to the sturdiest office chair we could find. Well okay, second sturdiest. Sally wouldn’t let us touch hers.

  “Uh, hello ... he’s gonna wake up a vampire. Not everyone is like you. Some don’t take it too well. The last thing I want is to have him messing up this place while we chase him around.”