The Tome of Bill (Book 7): The Wicked Dead (27 page)

She reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. “I can’t ask you to starve.”

“I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“I know that, Bill. I don’t want to either. But I also know that neither of us should make any promises we can’t keep. The world is too messy for that now. The best we can do is try.”

“Thanks for understanding.”

“Just don’t offer me any leftovers.”

I smiled over my cup of coffee. “Don’t worry. I save that stuff for grossing out my roommates.”

“I still don’t know if it’s smart bringing them.”

I put my cup down and leaned against the counter. “Fuck that. I
know
it’s stupid to let them tag along. Tom’s faith is kaput and Ed ... well, he seems to be everyone’s favorite dance partner these days for some reason. Unfortunately, it’s a case of damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”

“The First Coven,” she replied, pretty much answering everything. “When this is through...”

“James is a friend,” I warned. “He’s helped me more than once. Hell, he’s been helping me from the very start. Yehoshua seems like he’s a halfway decent fellow too.”

“Yeah, him. His name ... listening to him talk. I almost get the sense he’s...” She trailed off.

“He’s what?”

“Not what, but who.” She shook her head as if clearing her thoughts. “It’s probably nothing. Never mind.”

“Whatever. Anyway, as I was saying, the rest of them, well, have as much fun with those fuckers as you want. Hell, I might help you.”

“Would you?” She raised an eyebrow questioningly. “I mean, they are your leaders.”

“They aren’t shit to me. Assholes, the whole bunch of them, and Alex is their king hemorrhoid. If you manage to get that cocksucker down, I’ll hammer the fucking stake into him myself. He and I have unfinished business.”

She stared at me for a moment as if weighing what I’d just said. Then she smiled, nodded, and took another sip of her coffee before putting her mug down. She took a step toward me, and I wasn’t sure whether it was the look in her eye or maybe her Icon powers flaring up, but I could’ve sworn the temperature in the room shot up several degrees. “You know, you and he aren’t the only ones with unfinished business.”

All at once, my throat went dry and any of the thousand or so witty quips I usually had at the tip of my tongue went flying away like doves released before the Olympics. “Um ... unfinished business?”

Don’t let her fool you!

What? Dr. Death wanted to have a chat
now
?! I mentally told him to get the fuck back in his box. Goddamn, that dickhead had some poor timing.

When I looked up again, Sheila was a step closer. “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“You looked like you zoned out for a moment there.”

“It was nothing. I just...”

“Need to shut up?” she asked, leaning in. “Yeah, I’d say so.”

With that, her lips met mine. Every worry in the world, every bit of stress weighing me down, hell, every fucking thought I had in my head evaporated away. I stiffened for just a moment, expecting to be blown through a wall. Sad that had become such a commonality between us. But then nothing happened.

Well, okay, not nothing. Something was
definitely
happening ... something so freaking awesome I couldn’t begin to describe it if I tried.

So rather than offer the boring details, let’s just get right to the point. I stepped in and put my arms around her, drawing her close and feeling her body pressed against mine.

Everything was perfect. Her lips tasted so sweet, her hair smelled so clean, and her body was so warm, so full of life.

She groaned ever so slightly in response to our kiss...

...and that’s when my lips caught fire.

* * *

I’d like to say I said something romantic as I disengaged from her, such as, “Oh dearest, your soul has sparked something deep inside of me. My love for you is a roaring flame of desire.”

However, the reality was more an incoherent scream as I ran to the sink with my mouth ablaze, turned on the faucet, and stuck my face under the gush of water.

Steam exploded around me as the cold torrent hit the magical fire. For a moment, I was afraid that nothing would happen, that her power was the equivalent of supernatural napalm, but then, finally, I felt the flames being doused.

“Oh my god, Bill! Are you all right?”

After a couple more seconds of drowning my sorrows in the sink, I felt sure the fire was out. Wincing at the horrific pain, I turned around to reassure her that I was much better off than I actually was, only to see her eyes go wide and her take a step back. Duh! I probably looked like a fucking horror show. Probing with my tongue, I confirmed it. Yep, no lips. Bet that looked pretty as all hell.

“Ust ive it a second. They’ll row back.” Hmm, go figure, eloquent speech wasn’t the easiest thing in the world when half your face was exposed jaw.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, backing up another step.

Jeez, talk about killing my ego. “Ot or ault.”

Apparently, I was less coherent than I thought, because she seemed to ignore me. “I thought I had it under control...”

“Iss o-tay.”

“...I worked so hard.”

“Hese tings appen.”

“...but I couldn’t stop it.”

Oh crap. She was rambling. Worse, panic filled her eyes.

“Issen ooh ee...” I took a step toward her, and her power flared to life full force.

I wasn’t sure if it was the sight of me or the fact that she was sorta freaking the fuck out, but it really didn’t matter. One moment, I was reaching for her, and the next, I was hit by the metaphysical equivalent of a flaming Mack truck.

A wall of hot force punched me in the face and I went flying, slamming through the window above the sink and sailing out into the dark night.

* * *

Lucky me, I landed in a small garden out back – or more precisely, in the mulch pile of that garden. The smell of burning manure filled the air, but thankfully – sorta – the pile was moist enough to douse the flames covering me.

Oh yeah, a shower was definitely going to be a necessity before we poofed outta here, or at least it would be as soon as I...

That’s it! The bitch needs to die!

What the...?

I tried to sit up, but immediately my guts cramped as a shudder racked my body. I curled up into the fetal position to let it pass, and that’s when I caught sight of my hand. Charred from the flames of faith, the claws extended at the end of it were still plainly visible – but they were longer than usual and still growing.

Oh no!

All at once, my mouth felt cramped and I realized my fangs were likewise elongating past their usual length.

“What are you doing?” I asked to nobody but myself.

She attacked us. I’m coming out.

“No!”

I tried to force Dr. Death back down, but he felt like an irresistible force in my head – raging to be set free.

“Go away!”

Rather than focus on fighting Dr. Death, adding to the anger I could feel radiating from inside of me, I instead tried to think good thoughts – the Nintendo system my parents had gotten me one Christmas, the first time I’d felt a girl up in college, that time Tom and me got shitfaced on cheap tequila and the cops caught him taking a shit in my mother’s herb garden, Sheila ... not as the unstoppable warrior of faith, but as I’d first met her. Her smile, the only thing I remembered from the day I first interviewed with Hopskotchgames.com.

Yes, focus on the good things in life.

It was touch and go for a moment, but at last, I felt the change within me reaching a parity with my thoughts.

What are you doing?

“Now is not the time,” I replied to myself. “Leave me alone!”

She...

“Doesn’t deserve this.” I concentrated on the good, forcing every negative thing in my life to the back of my head.

I don’t know how long I lay there in a pile of smoldering cow shit. Could have been seconds or hours. I wasn’t sure. Sights and sounds filtered through to me – voices, movement above me, the rumbling of engines. However, nothing really registered for a while. I was too busy, locked in a contest of wills, focusing every inch of my being internally.

What I do know is that when I finally looked up and saw Sally’s face staring down upon me, I felt like me again. Probing with my tongue, I was delighted to find I had lips again. Whatever time had passed had been enough for my healing to take over.

She reached a hand down to me, then scrunched up her nose and apparently thought better of it. She was a real sweetheart, I tell ya.

“Want to talk about it?” she asked, her look not entirely unsympathetic.

I sat up and brushed myself off a bit for all the good it did. “How’s Sheila?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“She’s gone.”

“What?”

“Yeah, she told you she was leaving.”

“She did?”

“Uh, yeah.” She backed up and leaned against the house, looking at me like I had two heads. “Half the place came out here looking for you after we heard the explosion, but you were all like ‘Go away! Leave me alone!’”

“What?”

“Yeah, you looked kinda pissed ... rolling around in your shit pile there.”

“Wait,” I said, standing up. “Did she say anything?”

“Well, once everyone saw you were okay, they decided to give you guys some alone time.”

“Oh.”

“But I might have overheard a little.”

Normally, I would’ve been pissed, but right then, I was grateful that Sally was a nosy busybody.

“Spill.”

“You don’t remember?”

“Would I be asking if I did?”

“Beats the fuck out of me. You might have some weird-ass quirks I don’t know about.”

A small part of me was tempted to ask Dr. Death if he wanted to come out and play now, but I held my temper and paused for a moment to consider things. I wasn’t sure what had just happened with regard to my inner psycho. Until I was, it was probably best to keep it to myself. “The ...
incident
sort of scrambled my circuits for a little while there.”

“No shit. What did you do to piss her off?”

“I kissed her.”

“Must’ve been one heck of a bad kiss.”

It had been quite the opposite, in fact, but rather than bask in the moment, I was far more interested in hearing why Sheila had disappeared. I expressed as much to Sally.

“She seemed pretty upset about what happened.”

I looked down at myself and shrugged.

“Not about blowing you up, although maybe she felt bad about that too. She didn’t really elaborate.”

“Go on,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Well, all the while you just kept mumbling things about leaving you alone, so I’m pretty sure that didn’t help, but anyway, she kept apologizing, saying she thought she had it under control, but it got away from her...”

“Her power?”

“I guess so. But she said something about getting caught up in the moment.”

“Caught up in the moment? You mean she liked kissing me?”

“I don’t fucking know! Like I said, I was eavesdropping, not hitting her up with a survey.” After a few moments, she added, “Maybe. That could be the case. After a few minutes of you ignoring her, she kind of broke down. Was sort of pathetic to watch.”

“And?”

“And she said that maybe it was fate.”

Oh crap.

“That maybe Icons and Freewills weren’t meant to be together and that trying to go against it was maybe tempting destiny in a way that wasn’t meant to be.”

The tale Alex had told me of the doomed lovers – Edgar and Vara – briefly flashed in my memory before I was able to push it away. “So she left? Where? Is she coming back? Is she...”

“Relax, Don Juan. She left with the Templar. The plan hasn’t changed ... well, much anyway.”

“So that means...”

“You still have a shot at meeting up with her in the middle, assuming we all don’t come down with a bad case of being dead.”

For a moment, my spirits lifted, but it didn’t last. How many times were we going to go through this before I accepted it – that it just wasn’t going to work, at least not without one of us perpetually being blown to smithereens?

Christ, other couples had issues like hating each other’s friends or not liking the same TV shows. I had to pick a girl for whom seemingly any emotional upheaval – good or bad – could lead to a fiery blast of anti-Bill magic.

I shook my head, having no fucking clue what to do, and then went and leaned against the house alongside Sally.

She wrinkled her nose. “You might want to do that upwind of me.”

“Sorry.”

In response, she smiled. “It’s okay. I probably shouldn’t kick you when you’re down.”

“Never stopped you before.”

“Hah! Now that
does
sound like me. I just wish I could remember those good memories.”

“Me too,” I replied softly.

“Although I doubt there’s anything nearly as good as you kissing an Icon and blowing half your face off.”

“Oh, I don’t know. The first time
we
kissed, it kinda blew your mind.”

She stopped and stared at me. “Wait a second. We kissed?”

“Yep.”

“Us?”

“Uh huh.”

“As in you and me?”

“That’s pretty much the gist of it.”

“How ... why?”

Geez, talk about another ego boost to make my night. Oh well, there was probably no need to outright torture her. “It was right before we did it.” Okay, maybe a little torture wouldn’t hurt.

“What?!”

I couldn’t help but let the grin escape onto my face. “Gotcha!”

“I was gonna say, since when did my standards drop so...”

“But the kissing part was real.” At her dubious glare, I continued. “It was the first time you met Sheila ... or almost met her. She was out on a date with Harry Decker.”

“The skull?”

“He wasn’t a skull at that point, but he was still a walking cum stain.”

She turned toward me, interest in her eye. “Go on.”

“Anyway, we were out grabbing a coffee when I saw them. She turned toward me, I panicked, and so I planted one on you so she wouldn’t recognize me.”

Her eyes grew wide, so I held up a hand. “Relax. It was just to cover my...”