The Tome of Bill Compendium Vol. 1 (Books 1-4) (37 page)

* * *

The
peace
conference adjourned, and the HBC members left to return to their territory. I likewise ordered my contingent back to Manhattan. There had been enough misadventure for one night, and dawn was only a few hours away anyway. While most of what people think they know about vampires is total bullshit, the whole
catch on fire under the rays of the sun
thing was pretty much spot on. A few minutes of sunshine was enough to turn even the strongest of bloodsuckers into something you could pick up with a dustpan.

Once the others finally left, I relaxed in my seat and let out a huge sigh of relief. Now that the action was over and the prying eyes were off me, all of my bravado evaporated. I was once again just Bill Ryder, an online game programmer who still had no idea how he wound up neck deep in a pool of vampire shit.

“So are you really that dumb, or did you just let them off the hook as a big
fuck you
to me?” said a voice from over my shoulder, jarring me out of my reverie. It was Sally. Somehow I knew she hadn’t left with the others. She was one of the few vampires who knew the real me, not the pseudo-scary ‘
Dr. Death
’ persona I tried to make everyone else believe in. On the one hand, it was nice to have her around. I didn’t have to pretend to be anyone else with her...and she wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes either, as I believe I’ve already mentioned. Any comfortable feeling, however, was tempered by the fact that Sally was a sarcastic bitch with an attitude problem that could have spanned the Verrazano Bridge and beyond.

“Maybe a little of both,” I quipped without bothering to turn around.

“Fair enough. I probably deserved it. Although you threw away a perfectly good opportunity to increase our leverage in the vampire community.”

“
Our
leverage?”

“Well, you are our fearless leader,” she purred, putting a little playfulness into her voice. Heh, times like that were when I trusted her least. At least you knew where you stood when she was in full-blown bitch mode. “I just keep the books in line.”

“That you do.”

“You’re pissed, aren’t you?”

“Oddly enough, no,” I answered truthfully. “Don’t get me wrong, I should be. Your little game almost got me killed, and you definitely got a lot of other people dusted tonight.”

“Nobody who’ll really be missed.”

“That’s beside the point. We’re supposed to be partners in crime here, but it usually turns out I’m the partner while you’re the one committing all the crimes.”

I could hear the grin in her voice as she replied, “You’ve probably got me there. I suppose it wouldn’t kill me to keep you in the loop a little more.”

“That would be nice.”

“But still, you’re really not pissed?”

“No,” I replied. “That’s the crazy part. No matter what bullshit exploded in my face in the past few hours, I don’t feel anything but relief. I’m here in the middle of a murder scene that would give the NYPD a conniption, but the only thing I can think is that this is the first time in months that I don’t feel like someone is standing behind me holding a stake.”

“Eh hem,” Sally cleared her throat.

Sure enough, I turned around in my chair, and she was standing there holding a splintered off two-by-four.

“Et tu, Brute’?” I asked.

“Sorry,” she tossed it aside. “I was holding onto it in case the premises weren’t entirely clear.”

“Allow me to rephrase myself,” I continued. “This is the first time in months I don’t feel like someone is going to try to kill me every five minutes - or are you going to pull out a shotgun and ruin that one, too?”

“Left it in my other dress.”

“I thought the strip club wasn’t letting you leave your laundry there anymore.”

She ignored the quip and asked, “So how are you going to celebrate your newfound lease on life?”

“I’m thinking maybe a few weeks off from the vampire lifestyle. That is, if you think you can hold the fort down.”

“No problem,” she replied in an innocent tone. “What kind of trouble could I possibly get into?”

I probably shouldn’t have, but I was tired and my defenses were down. Thus, I couldn’t help but laugh.

Before I was allowed to go on my infernal vacation of the damned, Sally wanted me to pop by
the office
the next night to take care of some paperwork. The office was a few blocks from the loft in SoHo where I had been turned and had originally associated with our coven’s goings on. What can I say, you die horribly in a place, and you get a little nostalgic for it; however, the loft was ultimately little more than a hangout. The coven had space in lots of buildings in the surrounding area, not to mention the nooks and crannies below street level. One such space was an entire floor of an office building close to NYU. During Jeff’s reign as coven head, the space mostly went unused. A few vamps might have squatted in it during the day, and some used it as a larder for the occasional wayward college student they caught, but that was it.

Under my leadership, that had all changed. Yeah yeah, it was mostly Sally, but I had to nod and agree to most of it...emphasis on
most
. Whatever kudos I had given her for the organizational improvements put into place were completely wiped out by one of the slimier operations she had started for the coven. It creeped the utter shit out of me. Unfortunately, considering the alternatives, it was the lesser of evils...although it was still pretty fucking evil. I didn’t even like to think about it.

I passed by that section as quickly as I could, trying really hard to make ‘la la la I can’t hear you’ noises as I did. Sally had, of course, set herself up in a comfy corner office from which to supposedly oversee the coven’s paperwork. Yeah, okay, whatever she liked to call it; however, even a blind man could see she enjoyed playing queen bee. I normally wouldn’t have cared, but despite my status as coven master, I didn’t seem to have an executive suite here with my nameplate on it. Still, considering the business going on just a few yards away, maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. I lost enough sleep over it as it was.

I approached Sally’s office and saw a familiar face seated outside of it. “Hey, Starlight, what’s up?” I asked as I approached. “How the hell did Sally sucker you into playing secretary for her?”

She looked up, flashed me a nervous smile, then quickly averted her eyes. “It’s no problem, Bill. I don’t mind helping,” she answered with a little quiver to her voice.

Starlight’s real name was Alice. She had been given her nickname by Jeff as part of the ridiculous pseudonym campaign that he enforced for all vampires in the coven. That rule was the first thing I’d tossed out the window, but a lot of the coven had decided to keep their ‘code names’ regardless. Starlight was one of them.

She was a stacked...well, Nubian goddess is probably the best term for it. She had been working on a career as a model before being turned. Despite the fact that she appeared younger than my twenty-five years, I knew she was almost twice my age. She also wasn’t the sharpest tool in our shed; however, despite an outer veneer of vampire attitude, she seemed to be one of the few amongst us who genuinely cared about her coven-mates. As a result, she was also one of the few that I genuinely liked. Unfortunately, due to the outer guise I had to keep up, she was also completely scared shitless of me. I kind of felt bad about it, but not nearly bad enough to let it slip that a lot of my bravado was bullshit. The rest of the coven could smell weakness like a school of sharks. I had little doubt they’d turn on me if they suspected that I wasn’t nearly the badass I tried to pretend to be.

I also had little doubt that Sally had used Starlight’s fear of me to manipulate her into her current situation, but there wasn’t much I could do to fix things right at that moment. Or maybe there was...

“I have business with Sally,” I said with a sneer. “Go take a coffee break...a
long
one.” I gave her a glare with my fangs bared, and that was all she needed to vacate the premises. As I watched Starlight run off, I heard Sally’s door creak open behind me, followed by her annoyed exhale. Thanks to her vampire hearing, she no doubt knew what had happened. Heh!

“You know, I should report you for harassing my employees,” she said in a dry voice from behind me.

“Take it up with the labor board.” I turned toward her. “You can always hire a temp.”

“True enough,” she answered, showing me a smile full of fangs. “Besides, if they don’t work out...well, the severance plan is a killer.”

* * *

We spent the next hour or so going over various coven related business. Sally had the final tally of casualties from the fight with the HBC. Eight of our vampires were dusted. All of them were assholes, so I’d be shedding minimal tears on their behalf. She wanted to start recruiting new members immediately, but I put the kibosh on that until I got back. Since there were rituals involved with indoctrinating new members that I, as coven head, had to oversee (
stupid college-like rituals...but rituals the same
), this was one area I was confident that she wouldn’t immediately set about doing the opposite of what I said.

We were finally starting to wrap up (
Ye gods, even the dead can’t escape from bureaucratic red tape!
). When we were just about finished, I asked, “So what should we tell the others?”

“About what?”

“About me,” I clarified.

“That you’re a dumpy, four-eyed, piss-poor excuse for a vampire,” she said with that sickeningly sweet smile of hers.

“About my vacation.”

“Oh, that? I don’t think there’ll be much problem there. Word of your victory over Samuel is already starting to spread throughout the membership.”

“Let me guess: you’re helping that along, right?”

She smiled in response. “Well, I
was
the only witness, after all. Needless to say, I doubt too many of the coven are going to be bugging you about your personal business. Just in case they do, though, we can fall back onto some of the typical Freewill bullshit we’ve used before. I was thinking, if it comes down to it maybe your animalistic urges got the better of you. I could always say I was busy trying to track your feral ass down for a couple of weeks.”

I thought about it for a second. “That’ll work.”

“Just be sure to muddy yourself up a bit before you come back.”

“No prob,” I replied. “We done here?”

“Almost,” Sally cooed. Uh oh. “I was going to give you an update on the hotline.”

I stood up, almost knocking the chair over. “I told you! I don’t want to know about the hotline.”

“You
need
to know about the hotline. Without the hotline, we’d be back to where we were. You were the one who forbade us from trolling the raves or luring in the uglies.”

I had (
tried to
) put an end to both practices in the coven. Both groups were easy prey. The first were mostly underage, which definitely didn’t sit well with me. As for the second group, that was a particular pet peeve of mine as that was how I had wound up a vampire in the first place. In years past, every few weeks the males and females of the coven would take turns on a particularly reprehensible practice. The coven members mostly consisted of people who looked like they just stepped out of an
Old Navy
commercial. They would use their sexuality to easily sway the less...err...
physically confident
into following them back to the coven lair, where they would be turned into late night snacks.

As I knew she would, Sally next reminded me of the consequences of my attempts at de-psychoing our merry little band. “Even with the assholes the HBC took care of, there’s still a lot of pent up bloodlust in the coven. It’s either the hotline, or you’re going to have a major body count on your hands.” It was a common argument from her, and one that she knew I couldn’t refute.

The hotline had been all Sally’s idea, but as coven head I had to pretend I’d given it my blessing. The funny thing was, since the whole idea was so insanely evil at its core, it had actually enhanced my reputation in the coven. It’s a good thing I didn’t need nearly as much sleep as I used to because I sure as hell wound up losing a lot of it over this.

Sally had used coven funds to purchase several 1-800 and 900 numbers. Between sundown and sunrise, coven volunteers manned the phones of what was becoming a fairly well-trafficked suicide prevention hotline. The ground rules were disturbingly simple. It was pretty much Vegas casino odds, basically a 70/30 payout. Most of the people who called would actually be given help either through talking them through their troubles or outright giving them a minor compulsion over the phone (
vampires can compel humans...just not as easily as they can other vamps
). The rest...well, as Sally put it, they were the sad statistics of the world.

I had enough sway to insist that kids were off limits. Fortunately, there were no real arguments there from anyone. Adult bodies held more blood anyway. As for the rest...generally speaking, the coven went after two types via the hotline: The first were those who were genuinely going to do it anyway, regardless of intervention. The others were your basic attention whores, those types you read about standing on the edge of a bridge, snarling up traffic for three hours with constant cries of “I’m gonna do it!” until such time as they didn’t. Truth be told, this latter group didn’t bother me quite as much. There were enough assholes in the city as it were. Still, this was creepy ass business, and some days I would wrack my brain trying to come up with something better. I mean, think about it: there you are depressed and thinking dark thoughts. You call up a place to discuss your problems, only for it to turn out that the voice at the other end was just sizing you up as a hors d’oeuvre. Not cool.