The Tome of Bill Compendium Vol. 1 (Books 1-4) (12 page)

“So you're saying you'e gone insane,” Tom said.

“No, I'm saying I'm a vampire.”

“Uh huh. Prove it.”

“Prove it? Did you not just see...” Okay. Deep breath, I reminded myself. Do this calmly. Tom was having one of his clueless asshole moments. “Fine, I'll prove it. How about this?” I opened my mouth wide to show him my fangs.

He looked nonplussed. “Five bucks will get you a reasonable set of glue-on fangs.”

“They're real.”

“They look fake.”

“They're not. Touch them.”

“I'd prefer to keep my fingers out of your mouth, thanks.”

“I might have something that'll prove it,” Ed chimed in. He stood up and went into his bedroom. The sounds of rummaging could be heard a few moments later.

“What else you got?” asked Tom.

“Well...”

“How about mirrors? Amaze me with your lack of a reflection.”

“That one only works in the movies.”

“How convenient. What about garlic? Does that drive you away, screaming into the night?”

“Actually...I'm not sure.”

Tom got up and went to one of the cabinets, pulling out a jar of garlic hot sauce. “Here, Dracula.”

“Um, okay,” I nervously replied. This was really not how I envisioned testing out my vulnerabilities. I dabbed a little on my finger, hesitated for a second, and then licked it off. I waited a second or two to see if I was going to start convulsing, and then, when nothing happened, said, “Nope. That myth is busted, too, I guess.”

“You're not really helping your case here. I know! Should I try staking you through the heart? Oh, wait, that would kill
anyone
.”

“Don't be a complete ass,” I shot back. “Hmm, oh yeah. The fridge is full of blood. Explain that.”

He opened the refrigerator and took a quick look. “So? It looked like that last Halloween.”

“Yeah, but this time it's real.”

“If you say so.”

“Found it!” Ed called from his room. I heard his footsteps approaching. As he was just about to pass me, I heard him say, “Sorry Bill, this might sting a bit.” Before I could question what he meant by that, his arm wrapped around my neck and I felt him press something cool against my forehead. “BEHOLD! See how the beast burns before the might of our savior!” he cried in a bad southern accent.

“What the fuck, man!” I shoved him off me.

“That's weird. It didn't work,” he said, showing what he’d just assaulted me with - a small iron cross on a necklace.

“A little warning next time,” I growled.

“Sorry. Didn't think you'd go for it if you saw it coming.”

“You're probably right. Where did you get that thing from, anyway?”

“Oh. It was a gift from that emo chick I was telling you about.” He appeared to consider something, then said, “You know, I should find her phone number for you. If she found out you were a real vampire, she'd have your dick in her mouth faster than you can say 'spit shine.'“

I thought about it for a second. “Has potential. But let's table that one for the moment.”

“Eh hem,” Tom cleared his throat. “Are we done with this idiocy?”

“Oh yeah, sorry. Not yet. I have one more idea,” Ed said, turning toward the dish drain. He quickly spun back around, a steak knife in his hand.

Before I could ask what he was planning to do, he plunged it into the table - the same table my uninjured hand just so happened to be resting on, if you catch my drift. The pain was so swift and instantaneous that I couldn't even scream.

“Holy shit, Ed!” Tom exclaimed. “Time to switch to decaf, dude.”

“Wait!” Ed pulled the knife free. “Bill, before you completely shit a brick, hold up your hand.”

I was about to hold it up in the form of a fist to his face when I noticed that he was right. I lifted my hand and we all watched as the small (
but fucking painful
) wound almost immediately closed itself.

“I thought that might work,” he said. “Especially after I saw how quickly your hand healed earlier. Speaking of which, take off the towel.”

I pulled off the dishrag as I growled at him, “
Thought
it might work?” Sure enough, though, he was right about that, too. My twice-burnt hand was once again good as new.

“Okay,” said Tom in a very slow voice. “I'll admit that's maybe a
little
bit off-kilter from normal.”

“It's about time. Another test or two and one of us,” I glared at Ed, “probably wouldn't survive.”

“Very well, I accept that maybe you're a vampire.”

“Maybe?”

“Yeah,
maybe
,” he said. “One thing about it still doesn't add up. Since when can vampires touch crosses safely, but old Transformer toys cause them to ignite like rocket fuel? Can you riddle me that, Riddler?”

Unfortunately, on that one, I had absolutely no clue.

Wednesday night found us at a small gym over on Fourth Avenue. It was a dingy place, but they stayed open late and offered a couple of free trial workouts before charging any membership fees. That was really all we needed to test out a few things.

After the initial weirdness of Monday night had been given a chance to settle, I brought my roommates up to speed on Sally (
they really didn't believe that part
), the party, being turned, and my ninety-day countdown to a more permanent death. After hearing my tale, Tom was initially a little wary about me being around.

“So how do we know the bottled stuff is going to keep you sane?” he’d asked. “Every vampire movie I've ever seen says you'll eventually be overcome by your need for human flesh and become a rampaging animal until your thirst is quenched.”

I patiently explained to him that, so far, the movies weren't exactly sporting an overly impressive record compared to what wound up being total bullshit. However, he wasn't quite satisfied with that explanation. So, I told him the story of how I was unable to kill the fat, sweaty dude. Ed, being the ever-helpful fellow, chimed in on my side of things, sorta, with, “A vampire who's too much of a pussy to kill someone? I guess I can live with that.”

“It isn't like that,” I sighed as yet another person just didn't get it. Maybe it's a guy thing, but it annoyed the hell out of me for people to think I was some sort of defanged little girly monster. I'm not a fucking Elmo doll, for Christ’s sake.

“So, how is it then?” he asked in a humoring tone.

“Okay, how do I explain this?” I asked out loud, rhetorically. “I’ve got it. You both like hot dogs, right?” They muttered in the affirmative to this. “Even though you know what they are?” More nods. “Okay, so what if I handed you a plate of lips and assholes and told you to dive right in because it tasted just like a hotdog?”

“I might refrain from partaking,” Ed murmured after a moment or two. Tom agreed.

“Well, that's how it was for me. No matter how good it tasted, I couldn't get it out of my head that I was giving some naked guy a mega-hickey.” At last, I could see the beginnings of understanding in their eyes.

“That which is seen...” Ed said.

“Cannot be unseen,” I finished.

“So, by that logic,” Tom asked, “wouldn't chowing down on a hot swimsuit model be okay?”

I thought about it for a few seconds. “Yeah, I guess so. Hot chicks would definitely be on the menu.”

Ed shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. That would be a waste of some perfectly good ass. They're too rare (
at least in our apartment
) to kill. You don't hunt endangered species. Killing a hot chick would be like clubbing a baby seal. Not cool.” Damn, he had me there. Score one for logic.

“What if Bill was drunk and it was a fat chick?” Tom asked.

“Your wisdom is sound, my friend. Nobody loses points for an ugly girl if they're hammered at the time,” Ed agreed.

I concurred. “That's cool. A few shots of tequila and I could see myself getting all up in that shit.”

That
important
issue being settled, we bullshitted some more until Ed suggested (
considering that, so far, we had more questions than answers
), that taking some time to chart my new powers would probably be a good idea. Damn, why didn't I think of that? Knowing what I was capable of could potentially help me down the line (
like, say, a little less than three months down the line
). At the very least, it might keep me from doing something stupid, like jumping out another third story window.

Hence where we were now. Tuesday night was spent testing out some stuff we could do without actually leaving the apartment, including trying to figure out my sudden aversion to Optimus Prime. Unfortunately, despite several retries at grasping the toy (
much to my protests against doing so
), we were no closer to solving any mystery more complex than whether or not Febreze will cover up the scent of burning vampire (
pretty well actually
).

Tom had suggested the gym. It would give us some hard numbers to gauge my strength against. Even if it didn’t work, it would still be better than spending another evening charbroiling my hands.

Fortunately, the place was fairly empty. Aside from the counter girl (
who couldn't quite suppress a smirk when we came in and told her we were evaluating workout options
), there were only a few middle-aged types moving between the treadmills and stationary bikes. That was good. No use calling extra attention to ourselves.

We gravitated toward an old universal machine off in the corner. It'd be more discrete than loading plates much heavier than a person of my stature should be able to lift onto some weight bench. I wasn't too worried about being outed as a vampire, but if we started doing weird ass shit that got noticed, we might find someone calling the cops, thinking we were on PCP. I was pretty sure meth-heads didn't use their manic drug-induced strength for the purposes of working out, but better safe than sorry.

The machine maxed out at three-hundred and fifty pounds, so that's what Tom set it to as I sat down at the bench press. “Shouldn't we start low and work our way up?” I protested.

“Warm-ups are for pussies.”

Okay, I can do this...maybe.
I prepared to lift a
lot
more than I would have ever even considered trying.

“If something happens...” I started.

“You'll heal fast. We already know that,” Ed finished. I was feeling the love, I tell you.

I needn't have worried, though. I started to push and actually felt the bar begin to rise with the effort. Holy crap! I mean, I knew I was stronger after awakening as a vampire, but it was another thing entirely to know how much I was lifting.

“Goddamn, you're doing it,” Ed whispered.

“Yeah,” Tom said in awe. “How does it feel?”

“Badass!”

“No, stupid. How does the weight feel?”

“Heavy, but I could handle some more.”

Ed took a quick look around, saw that nobody was looking, and hopped up onto the weight stack. He wasn't a big guy, but he pushed the total easily past the five-hundred pound mark. I gave a loud grunt and almost lost it, but managed to keep it up...barely.

“Thanks,” I sarcastically wheezed once I had lowered the bar.

“Don't mention it.”

We moved on to other exercises and spent about an hour obtaining similar results. I wasn't going to be casually throwing cars around anytime soon, but the results were definitely impressive. At last, I’d had enough, and we found ourselves alone in the locker room, cleaning up and getting ready to head home.

“That was fucking wild,” said Tom excitedly. “You're like a freaking super soldier. We're talking
Captain America
here.”

“At the very least, Bruce Willis from
Unbreakable
,” countered Ed.

“I guess that's cool,” I sighed.

“What?” sniffed Tom. “You were hoping for the
Hulk
?”

“It's not that. It's just that I can lift all that weight; I can take all sorts of physical abuse. Hell, I could probably kick ass in a dozen Olympic events.”

“Developing a high opinion of ourselves, are we?” Ed quipped.

“You know what I mean,” I stood up and started flexing in front of a mirror. It didn’t look any more convincing than it had before I became undead.

“I can do all this shit I couldn't do before, and I
still
look like
this
. I mean, when the hell is it going to happen?”

“When is
what
going to happen?”

“You know. When am I going to get all...
sexy
?” I asked in a small voice.

My roommates took a second to give each other a glance, and then Tom responded, “Bill, I ask this with all due sincerity...what the
fuck
are you talking about?”

“The entire coven,” I said, feeling a rant coming on. “They look like they stepped out of a fashion shoot, each and every one of them. So, I figured eventually it might happen to me. You know, like in
Interview with the Vampire.
Brad Pitt got bitten and suddenly his hair got all done up and he was a lot better looking.”

“Well, for starters,” Ed calmly explained, “it was just a stupid fucking movie, idiot. Secondly, he looked like that to begin with. Being bitten didn't turn him into Brad Pitt.”

“Yeah, but he at least got Fabio hair,” I pointed out.

“You'd look stupid with Fabio hair.”

“Fine, no Brad Pitt,” I whined. “But what about Antonio Banderas?”

Fully engaged now, Ed took the bait, while Tom sat back to see how this would all play out. “Antonio Banderas? Why the hell would you want to look like him?”