The Tome of Bill Compendium Vol. 1 (Books 1-4) (38 page)

Sure, there was always bottled blood as a substitute. That worked for some of us. Unfortunately, a good chunk of the coven considered themselves to be active predators. They were actually blood snobs and didn’t like anything that wasn’t still warm and fresh. Psycho assholes! I either had to appease that need or try to stake each and every one of them. I didn’t particularly favor my odds of doing the latter, thus I had to accept that part of being a vampire meant that there was a lot of shit I was going to have to toughen myself up about.

I shook my head to clear it. I had to deal with it because Sally wasn’t going to let me go until I did. “Fine. How’s the hotline doing?” I asked through clenched teeth.

“It’s doing great!” she replied with a chipper little voice. I could tell part of it was genuine enthusiasm. Sally had benefited greatly from Jeff’s demise. Upon his death, she had been pretty much instantly promoted from sex toy and part-time secretary to second in command of the coven. Behind the scenes, her position was even more powerful. I could tell she absolutely loved every minute of it. Unfortunately, I knew the other part of her cheerfulness came from knowing how uncomfortable the hotline made me. Sally derived way too much amusement from doing little things that she knew annoyed the ever not-living shit out of me.

“We got a mention in an editorial in the Post,” she continued. “And guess what else?”

“What?”

“We got approved as a nonprofit. That means government grants and a huge fucking tax break at the end of the year.”

“How do you sleep at night?” I sighed disgustedly.

She just kept right on beaming as she replied, “On a comfy bed, and usually next to guys much better looking than you.”

* * *

On the way back home, I had at least one bright spot about the hotline to think about: Tom. I had kept both of my roommates up to date on the goings on in the vampire world, despite the fact that I wasn’t supposed to. They were two of my best friends, and I used them as sounding boards when I needed to bitch about things. Besides which, they really loved the fact that there was an actual supernatural underworld that they were amongst the few humans to know about. With regards to the hotline, Ed had been as disgusted as I. Tom’s response was more practical. He made it a point to crank call them every opportunity he got. It was mostly stupid shit, but he had made one or two that would have been
Jerky Boys
worthy. I knew it pissed off Sally, even if she didn’t mention it; however, there was absolutely nothing she could do. I had given specific orders amongst the coven that my friends and family were on the
do not eat
list. Considering that all the vampires in a twenty-mile radius thought I now had
two
master vampire dustings under my belt, I was fairly confident of not being crossed on that one. Tom could fuck with them to his heart’s content, and he had my undying approval to do so.

Unfortunately, my blessings to crank away had to wait. I got back to my apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and found only my other roomie, Ed, at home.

“How’d it go?” he greeted me, momentarily diverting his attention from the TV.

“About like you’d expect,” I answered. “Doesn’t matter, though. I’m officially off the clock for a few weeks.”

“Cool. So what are you gonna do now that you’re not Dr. Death?” he replied, bringing up my old coven pseudonym. Despite my having abolished the ‘superhero name rule’, as I liked to think of it, my roommates still used it to refer to the persona I had to keep up around the others. The funny thing was that I did, too. In my mind, Dr. Death was the dark beast inside of me who took care of the nasty business and wasn’t one to fuck with. It was all crap, of course, but sometimes it helped me think through things.

“For starters, I think I’ll be happy to sit back and not worry about monsters trying to kill me or vice versa.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said dismissively, turning back to his show.

“Tom out?” I asked, sitting down on the opposite side of the couch.
Iron Chef
was on. I could dig that.

“Yep. He actually has himself a date.”

“Really?” I asked with some surprise in my voice. “They decide to let farm animals back into the city?”

That elicited a chuckle from Ed. He wasn’t the most emotional person on the planet, but he could always appreciate a good dig.

“No, with an actual girl,” he replied. “Yeah, I know, surprised the hell out of me, too. Some chick he met at work.”

That could be interesting. Tom was a low level gopher on Wall Street with aspirations of brown-nosing his way up the corporate ladder. According to him, most of the people who worked there fell into two categories: the work hard, play hard types that mostly had a nervous breakdown by the age of forty, and the boring-as-all-fuck crowd, AKA the types who got into finance for the sheer
thrill
of managing budgets. So if Tom was dating a girl from work, that meant he was either tied up in some S&M dungeon getting his brains fucked right out of his head or they were sitting down somewhere discussing the finer points of well-constructed spreadsheets. Knowing Tom’s luck with women, which was only marginally better than my own, I hoped his
Excel
skills were up to the task.

“Oh, yeah, your dad left a message for you,” Ed said, changing the subject.

“What’d he say?”

“Do I look like your hot ass little secretary?”

“Sally’s not my secretary. You know that.”

“Yeah, from the sound of things, it’s more like you’re
her
secretary.”

“Sometimes, I’m not so sure I’d disagree.” I got up to listen to whatever it was my parents had to say.

“She does have a hot ass, though.”

“Not arguing that point in the least,” I answered, hitting play and then going to the fridge to grab myself a pint of blood.

Truth be told, I should have probably been a little more interested when my parents called me. Several months back, I had been given the scare of a lifetime when Jeff claimed to have kidnapped my mother. It had all been a misunderstanding...mostly because he was little more than a complete idiot, but it had still scared the crap out of me at the time. For a while there, I had tried to be a lot closer to my mom and dad. Jeff’s scheme had given me a new appreciation for them; however, time tends to make us forget these things. By now, we were more or less back to our typical relationship, consisting of the occasional call and me more or less yessing them to death when they asked me questions about my life. I listened to the message and deleted it. I’d text Dad later to let him know it was cool.

“What’s up with your folks?” Ed asked as I returned to my seat.

“They’re heading to A.C. for the weekend to piss away my inheritance.” I started sipping on my blood. “Their neighbors are away, so they have nobody to watch the cats.”

Ed gave an amused sniff in return. “Cat sitting, huh? You vampires get all the cool gigs.”

“Tell me about it. Hey, you wanna head down with me? Dad bought a sixty-inch plasma TV a while back, full HD. Got a pretty sweet sound system to go with it.”

“He really
is
pissing away your inheritance.”

“Yep, so I might as well get some use out of it. I figure we can throw on a few movies, maybe smoke a few blunts...”

“A few?” Ed asked skeptically.

He had a point there. Due to my vampire physiology, things like that tended to have less of an effect on me than they did normal humans. One of my roommates’ more pleasant experiments had involved such. Based on our
extensive
testing, we estimated it took roughly three to four times the amount of alcohol (
or other substance
) to get me as shitfaced as it normally would. If I ever sat down to have a drinking contest with Marion from
Raiders of the Lost Ark
, I’d win...probably. The effects also tended not to last as long either. In short, when it came to better living through chemistry, I was no lightweight. The downside, though, was that it wasn’t exactly friendly on the old wallet, unless I consigned myself to a night of drinking caseloads of shit beer. All things considered, I’d probably rather be staked.

“Tempting, but I might have some shit to do on Saturday,” he continued. “Maybe I’ll pop by on Sunday if there’s anything left of you.”

“Your loss.”

“So what about the rest of the week?”

“Oh yeah,” I answered as realization dawned. “Maybe I should have put in for a vacation from work.”

Ed just sighed and shook his head. “Dude, we work from home and pretty much set our own hours. Every day is a vacation.”

“There is some logic to your words. Still, it’s probably too late to put in for some time off anyway. I think Jim’s out of the office this week.”

Jim was our boss over at Hopskotchgames.com. I was one of their lead game programmers, responsible for my fair share of hits, if I do say so myself. Ed worked as a graphic designer there, creating both in-game art as well as promotional materials. While it wasn’t making either of us overly rich, it was a good place to work. Normally, the game industry is a kill-or-be-killed field, full of nonstop death marches topped off by layoffs so that the bigwigs don’t have to pay out end-of-project bonuses; however, our company was pretty cool. As long as projects were finished and the money kept flowing in from users, they had a pretty laid back attitude. Give it a few years, and I’m sure they’d get big enough to adopt a corporate asshole atmosphere, but for now I enjoyed it.

Even better was that I was technically considered a permanent tele-worker.

Since a vampire and sunlight do not a wonderful pair make, after I was turned I had gotten my physician friend, Dave, to give me some bullshit excuse of a doctor’s note to give to my company. I had traded my services as a guinea pig to him to do so, but so far he hadn’t taken much advantage of that outside of some minor tissue samples. Thanks to him, I had been working from home for the past six months, and...and it suddenly hit me, as it always did...and that meant it had been six months since I had seen
her
.

As always, whenever I thought of her, my stomach clenched up and I felt a little light headed. I had hoped that perhaps a state of
out of sight, out of mind
would take over and make it easier for me; it hadn’t. Love stinks, especially when the other person isn’t aware of it. I thought about it for a few more seconds, feeling my good mood start to fade as I did; however, then I realized that perhaps now was finally the time to do something about it.

“Maybe I’ll go in for a day this week,” I said casually.

“Where?”

“Work, obviously.”

“You do realize that there’s this little thing called the sun in the sky during the day? You do remember what that does to you, right?”

“I know,
Dad
,” I answered sarcastically. “It’ll be okay. I can cover up, and Dave gave me this medical grade sunscreen to try out.”

“It’s a stupid risk,” Ed rightfully pointed out.

“I know, but this is the perfect week to do it. With Jim out, nobody’ll be around to give me any shit about my
condition
.”

“Yeah, that’s fine and all, but you don’t have any reason to...” Recognition dawned in his eyes. He sighed and said, “Dude, she doesn’t even know you’re alive.”

“Who?” I asked innocently.

“Don’t act like a bigger fucking idiot than you already are. You’re going to risk evaporating in the daylight just so you can see some chick you can barely work up the guts to say hi to.”

“Sheila is not
some chick
,” I said, more defensively than I really should have. “She’s...special.”

“Please tell me you did not just say that? You’ve said maybe ten words to the girl in the past three years.”

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t need words to know these things. You just know.”

“Much like you apparently know all about insanity?” Ed asked, an edge working its way into his voice.

“What I know is that if I have a soul mate in this world, it’s her.”

He made a gagging noise, and then replied, “Vampires don’t have souls.”

“Neither do mediocre graphic designers,” I spat back.

“Probably true,” he conceded. “But that doesn’t change the point. You’ve been acting like a high school freshman around this girl for years, making all sorts of goo-goo eyes and shit at her. She hasn’t responded. Time to move on.”

“I’m going to finally do it,” I said.

“Move on?”

“No. Ask her out.”

“I’ll believe it when I see your wedding invitations.”

“I’m serious. Besides, you actually have a point.”

“About what?”

“About it being time to move on,” I said. “You’re right. It’s time to shit or get off the pot. I’m going to ask her out. If she says yes, then it was meant to be. If she says no...”

“You’ll come home and cry yourself to sleep for the next month?”

“Probably,” I admitted. “But when I’m finished doing that, I’ll move on with my life.”

“Like I said,” he replied. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

I just shook my head and sighed. “Dude, have a little faith. I’ve faced off against the very worst the underworld can throw at me. Asking out one girl isn’t going to be an issue.”

* * *

Okay, so I lied. Three days later, I finally entered the lobby of the building where Hopskotchgames resided. I’d like to say I had things to do that kept me busy, but let’s not bullshit each other here. It took me until then to work up the guts to follow through with my plan. God, I am such a wuss. But that didn’t matter. I was finally there. It was time to be a man.

First things first, though. I ran to one of the restrooms on the first floor. After hyperventilating for a few minutes, I peeled off the hoodie, gloves, and sunglasses I was wearing. I also washed off most of the sunscreen I had applied. No point in showing up in front of the girl of my dreams looking all greasy and smelling like rotten coconuts. Afterwards, I looked myself over in the mirror. Thank god the whole vampire reflection thing was complete bullshit! If I had even the slightest doubt that I maybe had a blemish, hair out of place, or, god forbid, a booger hanging out of my nose, the whole deal would be off before it even began.