The Tome of Bill Compendium Vol. 1 (Books 1-4) (34 page)

That being said, getting thrown to crash into, and sometimes through, solid objects was becoming a disturbingly common occurrence in my life as of late. Considering the overall painfulness of such experiences, I was beginning to find myself oddly nostalgic about just having my underwear bunched up my ass by some prankster.

Just in case you’re taking notes, brick and concrete were easily the least fun barriers I had been smashed into; however, your basic wooden load-bearing wall - which oddly enough was what I found myself plowing into at that moment - wasn’t exactly a vacation in the Caribbean either. If this kept up, I might have to consider starting a blog about all the scenic walls in the Tri-State area and what it felt like to be flung through each and every one of them.

Although perhaps right then wasn’t exactly an ideal time to think about blogging. I was just starting to pull myself back to my feet when a dark angry form emerged from the shadows. It was Samuel, the leader of a coven of vampires from Queens that called themselves the HBC. This was because their home territory included the Howard Beach area. It was a stupid name, but considering my own group was known as
Village Coven
- due to being headquartered in fucking SoHo - I was probably in no position to be throwing stones.

Apparently it was tradition to name covens after their territories. Sure, you wound up with some silly names. I had even heard there was a Scotrun Coven in Pennsylvania, which was bad for them because they would forevermore be known in my mind as the
Scrotum Coven
. All things considered, though, it probably beat the alternative. If every group were given free reign for names, I have little doubt we’d wind up with dopey crap like
The Blood Brotherhood
,
The Midnight Raiders
, or maybe
The Sons of Darkness
. In short, we’d all sound like retarded local chapters of the
Legion of Doom
. Trust me, I speak from experience here. My own coven had a rule not too long ago regarding taking new personal pseudonyms upon joining. As a result, we wound up with stupid shit like people calling themselves Rage Vector, Night Razor, and, of course, Dr. Death. So, taking all that into account, I could probably live with Village Coven.

Still, worrying about minor things like coven names is probably best left to moments when I’m not in danger of getting my head torn off. This was not such a time. Samuel leapt at me, no doubt going for the kill. Well, okay, maybe that’s a bit obvious. After all, you typically don’t fling yourself through the air at people you’re having a polite conversation with. Fortunately for me, I was far from out of it. I may not be able to dish it out as well as others, but I can definitely take it. See, I’m a vampire, too (
just in case you haven’t figured that out yet
). I also have a lot of aforementioned experience getting tossed around. You build up a tolerance to it after a while. Those two things combined allowed me to recover quickly enough to snatch a busted two-by-four from the rubble of the safe house wall I had just smashed through. Before Samuel could fully cover the distance, I swung the beam and connected with a solid *KAPOW*. He went flying back into the shadows from whence he came. That gave me a breather, but I didn’t have any delusions that it would be nearly enough to finish him.

I had been told that Samuel was nearly two-hundred years old. As vampires tend to get stronger as they get older, that made him both a lot more powerful as well as much more experienced than me. Neither was a checkmark in my favor. Under different circumstances, I should have probably been counting my lucky stars that I was still standing. If this had been my first tussle with a vampire way out of my league, I’d probably be busy either begging for my life or kissing my ass goodbye; however, it wasn’t.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no Chuck Norris, and this fight was a
long
ways from being decided in my favor; however, once you’ve been in a pissing match - with a monster who outclasses you in nearly every way - and lived (
sorta
) to talk about it, you start to get a little jaded about the whole thing. It’s like when I was a little kid. I remember sitting there watching wrestling on the TV and listening to Mean Gene Okerlund talking about how any given wrestler on any given night could potentially become the new champ. It wasn’t too different from what I was doing now. No matter how old the vampires, things weren’t one-hundred percent settled until one was dust. Of course, that logic ignores the fact that wrestling is all bullshit. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have Vince McMahon off behind the scenes scripting a big upset victory. If I wanted to win this, I couldn’t count on ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin running out to save my ass with a steel chair.

Fortunately, I still had a few tricks up my sleeve; one of them being that I had my wits about me. Samuel might’ve been much older, but he had a major weakness that I could exploit. According to the info I had been given, he was old enough to have been born a slave in the deep South before the days of the Civil War. He had been owned by an exceptionally cruel master and spent the first four decades of his life enduring a mix of excruciating labor and relentless beatings. Things like that would fuck up anybody’s outlook on life, and Samuel was no exception.

From what I had been told, it was actually his owner that first had a chance encounter with a vampire. He was turned, then shortly afterwards he attacked and turned Samuel. Why? Who knows? Maybe he wanted to hold dominion over his slave forever, or maybe he was just thirsty. Either way, it’s safe to say this guy was a dick sandwich and a half. He was also a complete dumbass, too. Being a brand new vampire himself, Samuel’s master had no idea what he was doing. I’ve heard that the act of turning brings out the feral nature in some people. Samuel was the perfect poster child for this. Upon awakening as one of the undead, he completely snapped. He turned on his former master, who was too new to know how to control him. Then, when he was done, he attacked his now former owner’s family. He didn’t stop there either, slaughtering every living thing on his plantation and the next two over before his rage burned itself out.

Since by that time the Civil War was raging full force, nothing odd was thought of the carnage. After all, when you have an invading army with a scorched-earth policy rampaging about, most people aren’t going to look at a few dozen dead bodies and immediately say, “Hey! It must be vampires.” Samuel was thus able to escape without much notice. If anyone ever did try to stand in his way, the archives make no mention of it; however, if someone did, it’s a safe bet as to what happened to them.

If you’re thinking that all of this caused him to spend the next century and a half nursing a massive chip on his shoulder, then bingo! Even up to the present day, it was well known in the vampire community that Samuel only accepted minorities into his coven, and even in that he was particular. Don’t get me wrong, I might be just a little bit jaded, too, at the whole thing if it had happened to me; however, it also meant that it wouldn’t be too hard for me, your quintessential dorky looking white guy, to push his buttons. A two-hundred-year-old vampire in a blood lusted rage was actually easier to fight than a two-hundred-year-old vampire who was thinking rationally and planning his every step. Fortunately for me, pissing people off is one of my specialties.

“Damn,
you
people
have hard heads,” I said in a condescending manner. I felt like a massive dick saying it, but I’d rather be a living dick than a politically correct corpse.

“What the fuck did you say!?” Samuel growled as he rose and once more began stalking me.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Forgot you don’t understand proper English too well,” I increased the mocking in my tone. “How’s this? Yo, Nigga! You gots yourself one motherfucking hard head!” Oh yeah, I probably erased about a lifetime’s worth of good karma on that one. But it worked. Samuel came right at me with little more than an inarticulate snarl. He was majorly pissed. If I didn’t time this right, I was going to get a front row seat to watching my head shoved up my own ass.

As he charged me, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my secret weapon. I was glad I’d decided to bring it. Considering this was supposed to be a peace conference, I almost hadn’t. Thank goodness for paranoia. As Samuel closed the distance, I kept the fork hidden from his view, waiting for the right time to strike.

Yes, I said
fork
- not a cross, not a gun, and definitely not the holy hand grenade of Antioch. Trust me on this one. For starters, forget what you know. Crosses by themselves don’t do shit against vampires. If you ever find yourself cornered by vamps and you think you’re going to get out of it by holding two popsicle sticks together, you are going to be in for a
major
disappointment. Sure, maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll be laughing so hard at your idiocy that you’ll be able to slip away. I wouldn’t count on it, though - but hey, I’m a glass is half full kind of guy.

Anyway, Samuel crossed the distance between us almost faster than I could see. I just barely had enough time to brace myself before he hit me in the side of the head with a wild backhand swing, knocking my ass to the floor. I have to admit that under normal circumstances the blow would have probably put me down for the count. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and I’m not a normal vampire...if there even
was
such a thing.

You see, I was already juiced up from earlier. At the start of the fight, one of Samuel’s goons had come at me first. I had stepped into his punch and sunk my teeth into his arm - managing to suck down a few mouthfuls of blood before he could pry me off.

Now this might not seem significant to you, but you need to ignore the shit on your typical late night vampire erotica - in which everyone is usually biting and sucking on everyone else. In reality, when a vamp chomps down on another, bad things happen to the biter. The effect is kind of like what you might expect if you were to drive down to Tijuana and drink your fill from the first water fountain you came across - only amplified a couple dozen times. Forget fighting; most bloodsuckers wouldn’t be strong enough to
stand
for several hours after drinking another vampire’s blood. But not me.

I’m what the other undead call a
Freewill
. Apparently, we’re rare...as in it’s been at least half a millennium since anyone has seen another. Personally, I think a good deal of what they say about me is a load of bullshit; however, it does seem to come with some perks. For starters, I’m immune to psychic domination, or
compulsion
as they call it (
hence the name Freewill, duh!
). That’s one of the things some of the old Dracula movies got right. Older vampires can mentally dominate younger vampires, especially those they create. They can, more or less, force them to do whatever they want. Vampire society typically uses this to keep order within their ranks, but there are plenty of my kind who just do it to fuck around with the younger vamps.

Perhaps even cooler than that power, though, is what happens if I drink another vampire’s blood. Instead of puking my guts out and lying there whimpering, I get a boost similar to Pac-Man on a handful of power pellets. Basically what happens is I somehow temporarily add their strength to my own. How? Fucked if I know. I just know it works and that it’s saved my ass on more than one occasion.

I don’t know how old the vampire I bit was, but I was easily running at about two-hundred percent of my normal level. Not powerful enough to engage Samuel directly, but strong enough to allow me to take blows that would otherwise turn my head concave. Thus I was able to shake his hit off and jump back to my feet. Maybe I was a little wobblier than I would’ve preferred (
he hit me pretty damn hard, after all
) but standing was definitely better than lying down and letting him go all ape-shit on me.

As he once more came after me, still blinded by rage, I sidestepped and plunged the fork deep into the middle of his back. Samuel was a big guy with heavily muscled arms. Normally that’s a good thing, both for attracting the ladies as well as beating the tar out of flabby shits like me, but it’s a bad thing for being flexible - as in nimble enough to be able to reach around and pull my meager little weapon out.

The fork itself didn’t do much. I mean, I’m sure it stung
a little
. Getting stabbed wasn’t fun, no matter what the weapon. But using a kitchen utensil against a vampire is a lot like using a penknife against a grizzly bear - unless, that is, it happens to be a
special
kitchen utensil. Fortunately for me, it was. After a second or two, I could smell it. Another few, and I could see it. And I’m definitely sure Samuel
felt
it.

* * *

Two weeks earlier, I had been sitting at home, sipping on a pint of refrigerated blood, just minding my own business. I was relaxing on a Monday night following a long day of coding. I work as a video game developer. I did it during my life, and I still do it during my undeath. I like my job and all, but there is a small part of my mind that likes to remind me that I’m vampire. Not only that, but I’m a legendary type of vampire, a legendary type of vampire who is also the head of his own fucking coven...and yet I was still a goddamned wage slave.

I had figured that once I took over Village Coven, it was going to be one big party after another, with maybe an orgy or two in between. But noooo. Sally, my so called
partner,
kept a tight rein on the coven’s bank books. I was lucky to score cab fare from her, much less live the life of avaricious abandon I so craved. But we’ll get back to her in a moment, as she definitely had a hand in the situation going on with Samuel.