The Tome of Bill Compendium Vol. 1 (Books 1-4) (26 page)

“I didn't think so,” he said. “That would just be silly.”

“He's Ogedei Khan,” she continued. “Genghis' son.”

Tom got a blank look on his face, and then replied, “Oh, of course. That's a lot less silly.”

Sally shot back, “Be thankful. If we had turned Genghis, humanity would probably all be living in cattle pens right now. Ogedei was just as good of a leader, but a bit mellower as far as conquest was concerned.”

“Okay, so that makes sense, I guess,” I said. “James said he represents the Draculas in these parts. So, where is he?”

“According to this?” she glanced down at the paper. “The Gansu province of China.”

“
China
? Why the hell is he in China?”

“That's where the Khan is.”

“I get that. But why did he send for James? That seems like it's a little outside of his jurisdiction.”

“Because the Khan is James' sire,” she explained. “When the guy who made you is also one of the high muckety mucks, you tend to pick up when he calls.”

That piqued Ed's curiosity, and he asked, “So, what’s the deal? Did he turn James when the Mongols were busy trying to annex the rest of the world?”

“I don't know the specifics,” she admitted. “But from what I've heard, it was a bit after that. Supposedly James met the Khan in China.”

“So, what was James doing in China six-hundred years ago?” I asked. “I didn’t know it was a big vacation spot back in those days.”

“James once told me he was traveling there with Marco Polo, as a member of his expedition.” She then added, “Pretty mind-blowing, huh?”

There was a chorus of affirmation within the car. Mind blowing was kind of an understatement. About a month ago, I was battling ancient beings with either a twenty-sider, or a computer mouse. Today I was actually hobnobbing with living pieces of history. Stuff like this, one needed to sit down and contemplate. Unfortunately, now was neither the time, nor the place.

Ed finally broke my reverie. Like I said earlier, shit just doesn't faze him like it does other people. “This is all fascinating, but why did the Khan recall this James guy all the way back to Asia? Was he jonesing for some baked beans and clam chowder?”

Sally chuckled. “Maybe James was jonesing for some genuine Chinese food.” Her grin faltered, and then she continued. “Unfortunately, though, it doesn't appear either is the case. From what I can understand, the report states that some of the covens under the Khan's personal stewardship were attacked. He wanted people he could trust to investigate.”

“Who would be insane enough to attack vampires?” asked Ed.

“Kung Fu masters,” Tom answered. Then, after we all stopped to stare at him for a second, he responded with, “Why not? This is China we're talking about.” I love him like a brother but, goddamn, he can be a fucking moron.

Before he could say anything else stupid, I chimed in with, “Other vampires maybe? Those assholes in Queens had no trouble coming after me.”

“No way,” Sally said. “Coven wars happen from time to time, but none of us would be insane enough to do this with one of the Draculas in the immediate area. This was someone...
something
else.”

“Werewolves?” Ed offered, but she just waved her hand in dismissal.

“Sorry to break it to you guys, but werewolves don't exist. They're just a myth.”

There was a chorus of disappointed voices in the car. That sucked. Werewolves were kick ass.

“Hold on,” I said. “What do you mean they don't exist? Didn't you and James tell me that myths had a basis in reality?”

Sally gave me an eye-roll (
it had been a few hours since the last one; I was almost starting to miss them...almost
), and replied, “
Some
myths are real. Some are just the result of someone getting high off the local fauna and having a bad acid trip.”

Yeah, I guess that made sense. Forget myth, there was some seriously weird shit that popped up from time to time in the news. No doubt, a good chunk of it could be explained away as someone watering down their hooch with a little too much antifreeze. “Fine, no werewolves,” I said with a touch of regret. “Then what attacked those covens?”

“How am I supposed to know?” she sniffed. “We're vampires. We have enemies. Not all of them are human.”

Remembering something from the other night, I asked, trying to sound more knowledgeable than I was, “Does this have anything to do with your war against
the
feet
?”

That seemed to catch her by surprise as she narrowed her eyes and asked, “Where did you hear about that?”

“Around,” I coyly replied. “So, does it?”

“I don't know,” she said quietly, as if in contemplation. “It’s possible.”

Of course, then Tom had to go and ruin it by chiming in. “Feet? Is there some kind of demonic foot fungus at work here? I hear they sell spray for that.” That more or less killed the mood, and any chance I had at getting answers to a question that...well okay, a question I hadn't given a second thought to before now, but hey, knowledge is power. Maybe I should have listened to Sally's earlier advice and just left my roommates at home.

She shook her head and said, attitude returning, “It's not important. What matters is that James is out of the country, and what's of
utmost
importance for you, Bill, is that it's for an indeterminate amount of time.”

I felt a little tingling at the base of my brainstem as she said that, but I thought it best to ask rather than assume. “It's important to me, why?”

“Because you're under his protection. With him gone, Colin or another vampire will step in to do his duties, but protection is another matter entirely. That's not transferable. If James isn’t around, it's as good as out of sight, out of mind.”

“But you said ‘indeterminate,’” I replied, grasping at whatever straws I could. “That means he could be back a year from now, or he could be back tomorrow.”

“It doesn't really work that way for us,” she said. “If he was called in from five thousand miles away and not given any time to settle his accounts first, that means whatever is going down is pretty big, and the Khan wants someone he can trust to look into it. Whatever James is going to do for him, you can bet it'll be with a fine-toothed comb. Immortals can afford to be thorough.”

“Which means...?”

“Which means that if I was a betting girl, and I am, my money would be on not expecting to see James again for at least six months...probably more.”

“But if Jeff snuffs me now...”

She cut me off. “Then who's to say he didn't do it two months from now? You think anyone in the coven is going to officially rat him out? Not likely. Being a coven leader has its perks, not the least of which is that he's going to be given the benefit of the doubt.”

“All of this assumes he actually knows James is out of the country,” Ed pointed out.

Sally turned to me to answer, “Remember back there when I said that Jeff and I both knew Colin?” I nodded in return. “Well, we do. That means that if I knew how to grease Colin's wheels...” that caught Tom's attention, and he turned back toward us with wide eyes and rapt attention. “With money, you pervert.” He turned away, suddenly losing interest. “If I knew how to get Colin to talk, then Jeff obviously would, too.”

“Maybe he didn’t think to...”

“Oh, stop it,” she snapped. “Jeff may be stupid, but he's over a hundred and twenty years old. He knows how to play the game. Even if he didn't, though, Colin's not known for his sense of humor.”

I nodded, but Ed asked, “What do you mean by that?”

“I kinda, sorta might have joked to him, as we were leaving, that I reformatted his computer,” I admitted.

“But did you actually do it?”

“It doesn't matter,” Sally said. “Guys like him have massive egos. Most vampires, once they get a few centuries under their belt, lose the ability to laugh at their own expense.”

Ed got it. “So, even if Jeff didn't grease the wheels, so to speak, you think this Colin guy might give him a call and spill his guts just as a farewell ‘fuck you.’”

“Yeah,” she answered. “Petty revenge is pretty much his middle name.”

“I guess there's something to be said for occasionally letting the other guy get the last word.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I'm beginning to think maybe I should occasionally just keep my mouth shut.”

“Kinda like a smoker who decides to quit after he’s already found out he has lung cancer?” Tom remarked.

“Better late than never, I guess,” was the only answer I had for that.

We drove on in silence for a little while, until Tom couldn't take it anymore. “So, what are we going to do about this puddle of shit we find ourselves wading into?”

“I've been thinking about that,” replied Ed. “As far as I can tell, there's only one thing we
can
do.”

“Let me guess, settle my affairs and pick out a nice urn to hold my ashes?” I morosely asked.

“Vampirism is lost upon you,” he sighed. “No, dingleberry, we take the fight to Jeff. We hunt down and kill the fucker before he can do it to you.”

There was a moment of stunned silence before Tom once again chimed in, “And by
we,
you mean...”

“WE, dipshit. As in all of us, as in I don't want to spend the next several weeks screening for a new roommate.” Ed's eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “As in, he fucks with one of us...”

“He fucks with all of us,” I finished.

Tom just shrugged, “Oh, well. Guess I've led a good life. At least I can go out knowing I've gotten more action than either of you two fags.”

“Your left hand doesn't count,” Sally commented before her tone turned serious again. “It won't be easy. Jeff's a lot more powerful than any of us.”

I smiled at that. “Us? So does that mean you want to come to our little asshole-killing party?”

“I can try. I told you once already, I can't stand him. I wouldn't shed any tears if he wound up a pile of ash. There's only one problem.”

“What?”

“Jeff can't order you around, but I'm a different story,” she explained. “I can maybe resist his compulsions to a degree, but there's nothing to say he either won't be able to stop me in my tracks with a word, or maybe even outright turn me against you.”

“Earplugs, maybe?” Tom suggested.

“Doesn't work like that. It's a psychic thing. They don't make plugs for that.”

“When he tried to compel the others to attack me the other week, it didn't work,” I pointed out.

“Fear and doubt are powerful emotions, even for a compulsion to overcome,” she replied. “Sorry to say, Bill, but I'm not all that afraid of you.”

“What about hatred?” I asked.

“What?”

“Think about it,” I said. “You said fear is a powerful emotion. So is Hatred. If you focus on how much you hate his guts, maybe that'll work, too.”

She didn't have a reply for that one. She just sat there, thinking it over.

Tom turned and smiled at me. “Damn, Bill. I think that might be the first good idea I've ever seen you come up with.”

“What about you, Ed?” I asked. “What do you think?”

“What I think,” he answered, “is that maybe we should see if we can coax a little more speed out of this thing while we still have the element of surprise.”

* * *

Okay, so maybe that wasn't the best of ideas. Ed brought the Escalade up to around eighty as soon as traffic eased up a bit. That allowed us to burn off more miles, for about twenty minutes, until we saw flashing red and blue lights behind us. In the dark, we had easily missed spotting the speed trap.

“Just fucking great!” Ed exclaimed.

“Yeah,” Tom added. “This is definitely going to slow us down.”

“Especially the whole stolen-vehicle-with-a-dead-owner thing. That ought to eat up just a little bit of time,” Sally remarked. “But don't worry. I'm sure you'll all find boyfriends nice and quick at Rikers.”

“Shit! I forgot about that part,” Ed spat. “So, what do we do?”

“Preferably without causing a multi-state manhunt for a bunch of cop killers,” I said, eyeballing Sally.

“You take all the fun out of this,” she cooed. “I don't suppose you're all up for a high speed chase?”

“In this land-yacht?”

“No, I suppose not,” she said, still without a trace of panic. “Looks like there's an exit coming up in about a mile. Take it and then pull over, preferably someplace dark.”

“And then?” Ed asked.

“And
then
try not to act guilty, obviously.”

He did as instructed. Tom, for his part, managed to get his shit together long enough to rummage through the glove compartment for anything useful. He was in luck and found both a registration and insurance card for one Harold Lively...ironic considering his not so lively status right now, at least according to Sally.

The exit, as many in upstate New York tended to be, was dark and not well traveled. For about the ten-thousandth time in my life, I marveled how such vast rural desolation could exist so close to the insane urban sprawl of the city. Streetlights were few and far between, as was traffic, thankfully. Thus, Ed had no problem pulling over into the gloom as the boys in blue glided in behind us.

“Now, everyone just be cool,” Sally said, sounding like a character from a Quentin Tarantino movie.

The cop, a lone trooper on interstate traffic duty, got out and slowly walked up to the driver’s side window. Ed put on his best friendly smile. “Good evening, officer,” he said, perhaps a little too overly chipper.

In return he got the standard, “License and registration, sir,” response followed by, “In a rush tonight?”

Ed handed over the documents and answered, “Heh. Sorry about that. Sometimes I forget how fast this boat can actually go.”

“Uh huh. Have you been drinking tonight, Mr. Vesser?” asked the trooper, glancing at the license.

“No, sir,” he replied, in that same trying-too-hard tone. “Just borrowed my uncle's car to take some friends to the movies.”