The Tome of Bill Compendium Vol. 1 (Books 1-4) (109 page)

“But the office isn’t a secret to anyone,” I protested, facing her in the pungent tunnels. I’ll admit part of my annoyance stemmed from not being overly joyed at spending the rest of the night wading through knee-deep shit water.

“That’s the point. If any of the coven survived, that’s where they’ll go. We can get a headcount there. The building will also be packed with humans by then.”

“You’re assuming they won’t blow up a group of people to get to us.”

“A big assumption, I know. That sure wouldn’t stop me.”

Big surprise there. Still, if our attackers were the mages, that might be a different story. During our past encounters, they had gone out of their way to avoid hurting normal humans including...

“Oh shit!”

“Well it is a sewer.” She crouched, entering a section of the tunnel where the ceiling was lower.

“Not that.”

“Then what are you blathering about?”

“Tom and Ed.”

“What about them?” She lifted a hand and casually flicked at something nasty that had fallen on her bare shoulder. I doubted she held Tom in much higher regard.

“Christy’s coven...they know where we live.”

“Not much we can do at the moment,” she shrugged. “Cell service down here sucks, go figure. You’d better just hope that witch isn’t tired of fucking your idiot friend.”

She had a point. I could try to get home, but that might just be painting a big target on my apartment (my renter’s insurance was high enough as it was). My roommates had been a part of my adventures since I had first been turned. If things started to get weird...well, okay,
weirder
...they’d hopefully spot it and get the fuck out of Dodge.

Sally was probably right. The office might very well be our best bet. Decker’s witches might be able to take down an entire building, shielding the effects from those around it, but selectively disintegrating the couple of floors we rented might be a tad harder to disguise. If they wanted a showdown there, they’d need to do it personally. The odds would be more evenly balanced, especially since Sally kept a loaded gun in her corner suite - a Desert Eagle, a fifty-caliber welcome mat for uninvited guests.

“All right, the office it is.”

“Once we get there, I’ll tell Starlight to get on the horn with Boston - see what James makes of all this.”

“Sounds like a...wait a second. How do you know she survived?”

Sally shrugged, pretending she found a section of the tunnel wall particularly interesting.

“Don’t tell me you made her work late.”

“What? It’s not like the coven paperwork is going to file itself. Besides I probably saved her life. She should thank me.”

Starlight was a former model turned vampire. She was both strikingly beautiful and a true sweetheart - a mother hen amongst the wolf pack. Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t the sharpest tool in our shed, something Sally gleefully took advantage of. Since assuming her place as my silent partner, she had continually conscripted Starlight to act as her personal secretary. It would have been fine except, in typical Sally fashion, it was a flagrant abuse of her station. She often acted as if she was the goddamned empress of New York. Leona Helmsley had nothing on her.

Still I couldn’t be too mad at her. Starlight was one of the few members of the coven, outside of present company, that I didn’t want to see meet a bad end.

I considered for a moment whether Sally’s flaunting of her position might actually be on purpose in case of contingencies like this - after all she had proven herself to be surprisingly insightful with regards to the perils of our lifestyle. However, I quickly kicked that thought to the curb. If Sally had some foresight that an attack was coming, why hadn’t she shared that information? No, more than likely she had been enjoying her role as queen bitch and got lucky.

“What should we do once we get there? Assuming, of course, there isn’t a firing squad full of pissed-off sorcerers waiting for us.”

She turned around, catching my eyes wandering. I couldn’t help it. Her thong had been peeking through one of the many tears in her no-longer pristine evening wear. “Well, getting changed into something less drafty is pretty high on my list.”

“Aside from that.” I backed up a step, not wanting to get slugged.

Sally shrugged then continued walking in the oppressive darkness of the sewer tunnel. “Your guess is as good as mine. It’s my first time being directly part of a coven massacre.”

“Directly?”

“Well, I do get around, you know.”

“Okay.” It was better not to ask, but I did anyway. “So what happened in those indirect cases?”

“Let’s just say that things are so much easier when there aren’t any survivors.”

“That’s really not helpful.”

“Sorry. Attacks by outside forces are rare in recent times...although I’m thinking they’re going to get more common. Most vampire
prunings
are internal matters, usually First Coven-related. When they send a message, it tends to be a permanent one.”

“What about when the Khan’s coven got wiped out a few months back? Weren’t there some stragglers?” It pained me to even think of it. The Khan was Ogedai Khan, one of the Draculas and also Gan’s adopted father. He and his forces had been destroyed by the Alma. At the time, his top assassins had been out of country - trying to execute yours truly. As a result, through some twisted logic, the whole thing had been blamed on me.

Sally nodded. “The survivors got absorbed into the surrounding covens, but it was a little different since they were all underneath his rule. I’m hoping that’s not the case here because the nearest coven is our friends over in the HBC.”

Ugh, not a happy thought. HBC stood for Howard Beach Coven, based out of Queens. Whereas Village Coven was - or had been - primarily a vampire frat house, the HBC was a little more hardcore. That wasn’t really the issue. Heck, neither group was really my crowd. What mattered was that they sort of had a grudge against me. Though they were under new leadership these days (thanks to me...well okay, thanks to Sally), they weren’t exactly itching to kiss and make up yet.

“Fuck that shit,” I said.

“We’re in agreement there. I guess we could always go on a massive recruitment drive.”

I gave her a sideways glance.

“You’re going to have to get over that shit, Bill.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” I replied, stepping over a nasty pile of something.

She ignored my attempt at levity, continuing as if I hadn’t spoken. “We can’t have a coven with only three vampires and you know it, especially with a bunch of magical morons hunting us down.”

“So not only do you want to kill people and bring them back as vampires, you want to immediately line them up as cannon fodder, too?”

“Well, if anything happens, at least we wouldn’t have time to get overly attached to them.”

“That’s fucking evil.”

“No, that’s realistic.”

“What about calling Boston and asking their advice?”

“I don’t think we have much choice there,” she said. “The only question is what we’re going to tell them.”

That
was
a good question. I just wished I had a good answer.

* * *

We waited until the start of rush hour to ascend from the sewers, figuring there’d be enough humans present to keep us from being blasted into oblivion. Unfortunately, it also meant we ran into a few people on the way up. We got a few odd glances from our somewhat singed look and slight sewer-scented odor. So much for keeping a low profile.

“Is Starlight even going to be in?” I asked as we reached our floor. “This is typically bedtime.”

“Well there
was
a lot of paperwork,” she replied with a smirk.

“Slave driver.”

“Flatterer.”

I needn’t have worried, though. We had no more than stepped through the door when Starlight came running out to meet us. She wore a conservative business suit and had her long black hair tied back in a bun. Holy shit, Sally even had her dressing the part.

“Bill, Sally, thank goodness! Did you hear what happened?”

“Don’t know, probably don’t care,” Sally pushed past her and headed for the back.

I locked the door behind us. “We have some bad news.”

“I know,” Starlight replied. “The loft is gone.”

Sally stopped in her tracks and turned. “How’d you know?”

“It was on the radio.”

Sally and I exchanged confused glances.

“What did they say?”

“It was weird. When the sun came up, the place was just burned out. None of the neighbors saw or heard anything.”

“I guess they dropped their illusion once the fire was out,” I said to Sally.

“Apparently so.”

“Who dropped what?” Starlight asked. “I thought you were throwing a party last night.”

“We definitely had a blast,” I said.

“I’m not following you.”

“What a surprise,” Sally sniffed. “Our wizard friends decided to crash the party last night...explosively so.”

“Why?” Starlight wasn’t exactly the master strategist of the group, but even she knew better. She turned to me. “They were after you again, weren’t they?”

I wasn’t sure what Sally had told her about recent events, but it probably wasn’t too extensive. Starlight was trustworthy, but that wouldn’t stop an older vampire from getting anything he wanted out of her.

“Yep. They still think I’m gonna bring about the birth of the Icon.”

“Don’t they realize how stupid that is?”

“Heh, yeah, stupid...” I trailed off, hoping to change the subject. “What else did the news say?”

“They said the building must have been empty. They didn’t find any bodies.”

That wasn’t good. When a vampire dies, it typically turns into a pile of ash. In a burnt out building, you’d never notice what could be a veritable vamp graveyard. Deep fried or not, if there were bodies then chances were the vamps attached to them would still be kicking and screaming.

“Don’t jump to conclusions, Bill,” Sally said. “If anyone survived, I doubt they would have stuck around to talk to the press.”

She had a point. The second the sun came up, they would have been toast.

“I have a job for you, Star,” she continued.

“I’m on it, boss.”

“Get on the horn. Try every one of our lairs and also any cell phones we have on file. I want to know if anyone else made it out.”

“You got it.”

“Bill, you wait here. I have something to take care of.”

“What?” I demanded. “Whatever it is, there’s no way I’m letting you do it alone.”

“I’m going to take a shower, and believe me, I’d better be alone...unless, that is, you’d like one more casualty to add to the day.”

* * *

As much as I have to admit such a death would be totally worth it, I somehow refrained from peeking. I managed to cobble together a pair of pants and a shirt that fit, if didn’t altogether match, from the hodgepodge of extras in the office - courtesy of past victims. Considering how often I tended to end up on fire, you’d think I’d have left a change of clothes at the office by now. Unfortunately, that and grabbing a few pints of blood from the fridge were the extent of what I could do during daylight hours. It was pointless to try calling Boston before late afternoon.

That just left checking in on my roommates. Sally asked that I be coy about that first one, as we didn’t know the situation back in Brooklyn. She didn’t try to stop me, though. I knew she was at least somewhat fond of Ed - much in the same way a child might be fond of a pet gerbil - and she didn’t entirely hate Tom.

I called home and was pleasantly surprised when Ed answered and not some gruff voice telling me, “We have your human cattle, Freewill.” (Hey, it could happen.) Sensing nothing more than general annoyance in Ed’s voice (he was behind in a project at our mutual place of employment), I made up a plausible excuse involving coven-related business - asking him to pass on the message to Dave, my dungeon master, in case he called wondering why I wasn’t there. It was actually as much truth as lie. Sunday was game day after all.

Dave’s a doctor with lofty ambitions and a shitty bedside manner. He knows I’m a vampire, but unlike Tom or Ed, I keep his knowledge of my undead nature on the down low. Dave’s been experimenting on me, his price for offering me some help a while back. Unfortunately, such things are considered a major no-no in the vampire community. If it were ever found out, we’d be in shit deep enough to fill the Mariana Trench twice over.

Once I made sure my friends were fine, the waiting game began. Sally locked herself in her office, but not before putting Starlight back to work on some bullshit assignment. Rather than sit and wonder whether survivors or assassins would come bursting through the doors, I commandeered a computer and followed Ed’s lead - getting a little coding done in advance of the work week. I had a feeling I’d be busy over the next few days.

Sadly, vampire life doesn’t come with a steady paycheck, at least not when Sally is controlling the purse strings, the cheap bitch. Unlike my movie counterparts like Dracula, Edward, or whatever the fuck character Brad Pitt played in that one movie, I have to hold down a day job to keep a roof over my head. My only solace: in another century or two, the interest on my meager bank savings should start to add up. Yep, it was only a matter of time before that two percent put me on easy street. And no, I don’t believe that bullshit for a second, either.

* * *

Four o’clock rolled around, and we had confirmed three additional survivors by that time. That put the infernal forces under my command at a grand total of four, five if you count Sally.

Alfonso, the aforementioned undead hair stylist, hadn’t been at the party. He called to let us know that one of his clients had been in need of an emergency manicure, requiring his immediate attention. Sally’s squeal of delight at his survival didn’t help my mood. We might be thoroughly fucked, but at least she’d be well-coifed while it happened.

The other two were Dread Stalker and Firebird, two holdovers from the days when Jeff ruled the coven. Dread Stalker was a fucking psycho, no two ways about it. He had been one of Jeff’s favorites - innocent looking on the outside, but one of the coven’s top hunters. In fact, that was the very reason he had survived the previous night. He had arrived late to the party after scouting for some additional
refreshments
.