The Tome of Bill Compendium Vol. 1 (Books 1-4) (49 page)

“Stakes?”

“Guns,” I corrected. Vampires are much stronger and more durable than humans, and we heal in a fraction of the time; however, from personal experience, I can attest that our nerve endings work just fine. A gun shot wouldn’t do much in the way of killing a vampire, but it would hurt like hell and give the attacker an advantage. Now that I was thinking of it, maybe something like a bayonet would be ideal. Shoot ‘em, then stake ‘em.

“Tricky,” she said, shaking her head. “You know how we have some deals in place with the human authorities?”

“To keep our messes under the rug?”

“Exactly. Well, part of those agreements include that we’re not really supposed to arm ourselves with anything other than basic melee crap. I mean, haven’t you wondered why you haven’t seen any of us packing heat before?”

Actually, I hadn’t. Now that I thought of it, the whole fracas with Samuel’s group had immediately turned into a street brawl...not a single shot fired by either side. Hell, not a single gun brandished either. Damn, I really needed to start paying attention better. I shrugged and replied, “I guess I just thought you were all a bunch of luddites.”

“What?”

“Basically, I figured you guys just didn’t like technology because it was some kind of vampire thing. You know, maybe you all thought you were too cool for guns.”

She sighed and started to open her mouth, but before she could speak the door to her office opened.

“I grow weary of your whore’s sitting room,” said Gan, standing there with a pouty look on her face. She might have the mind of a three-hundred-year-old vampire, but there were still some decidedly kid-like things about her.

Before Sally could say anything that would cause the rest of us to start betting on who would win in a fight (
my money was on Gan
), I stepped between them and addressed the little tyke. “Can you give us just a few more minutes? We’re almost done here. Please...for me?” I asked in my friendliest tone.

Gan mimicked Sally’s eye roll and did as told. After she had closed the door behind her, I turned back to my partner and said, “Awww! Isn’t that cute? She’s already learning something from her auntie Sally.”

“Good, Bill. Because if you had called me
auntie whore
, I’d have killed you myself.” From the look on her face, I didn’t care to dispute that. “Although little Ms. Pain-In-The-Ass there has reminded me...what exactly are you going to do about her?”

“Me?”

“Yes,
you
. She obviously
wuvs
you,” she mocked. “Unless, that is, you’d prefer to just let her, a poor helpless child, loose in the city.”

I thought about that for a second before replying, “Do you think the city would stand a chance?”

“It’d be burnt to the ground inside of twelve hours,” she replied.

“Maybe the coven could...ya know...watch her?” I asked hopefully.

“Can you really think of anyone in our group who you would trust to babysit?”

I thought for a moment, and then looked up. Sally had no doubt read my mind because we both said, “Starlight.”

“I guess that could work,” she admitted.

“Cool.”

“Just one problem. I sent Starlight up to Boston. She won’t be back until tomorrow night at the earliest.”

“Why did you send her to Boston?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Boston was the HQ for vampire activity in the Northeast.

“I needed to file some papers up there,” confirmed Sally.

“She’s not your secretary!”

“But she’s so good at it.”

“Okay, enough. Arguing won’t get her back here any sooner.”

“Good, it’s settled then.”

“What’s settled?” I asked

Sadly, I probably should have known that she was going to say, “Gan can stay at your place tonight.”

* * *

Sometimes I love New York City. No matter how much of a cesspool of humanity it could be at times, I had to admit it was the only place in the world where a little Asian princess dressed in expensive silk fineries could ride the subway with a dorky companion like myself and not draw any stares. Speaking of which, though, I made a mental note to update Gan’s wardrobe to something a little less conspicuous. Dressed as she was, she was practically a signal flare to the Khan’s kill squad. Unfortunately, that created a whole new problem. I had no idea where twelve-year-old girls went shopping for clothes. Was
The Gap
still cool? Was it ever? How the hell would I know?

Oh well, that was tomorrow night’s problem. For now, it was time to get Gan back to my place and explain to my roommates that we were now babysitters to a three-hundred-year-old spoiled little rich girl. Back when I had first told them that I’d been turned into a vampire, they’d taken it exceptionally well. I had a sneaking suspicion that asking them to help me watch over the Khan’s little hellion was going to go over a whole lot less smoothly. It’s kind of funny if you think about it. You tell some guys you’re a vampire, a werewolf, or the freaking
Creature from the Black Lagoon
, and they’ll just say “Cool” and go back to whatever they were watching on the SyFy channel; however, if you were to ask them to watch your pre-teen niece,
then
you’d be in for a freak-out.

But oh well, I figured they owed me for all the times they’d almost immolated me in the name of testing out my vampire powers. They could deal with it.

We arrived at my building and walked up to the apartment on the top floor. I unlocked the door and held it open for Gan. “Welcome to my place.”

“This is where you rule your coven from?” she asked with a bit of confusion. “It does not speak well for one of your status.” *sigh* Everyone’s a critic. So sorry that my bachelor pad didn’t conform to her highness’s lofty expectations.

“It’s...a disguise,” I said, making it up on the spot. Yeah, that works. “So my enemies don’t suspect my
true
power.” (
Jeez, I sounded like Dr. Doom
)

“Ah, I see,” she nodded approvingly. “My apologies, I underestimated your wisdom. You live in a den of pig offal so as to confuse your adversaries. Clever indeed.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I said, tossing my jacket onto the couch. “Make yourself at home.”

“Where is our bed?”

That stopped me dead in my tracks. “
Our
bed?”

“Yes. As your mate, are we not expected to share such things?”

Jesus fucking Christ! All these years I’ve been praying that one day a girl would say something like that to me. It figures that when it finally happened, it would be from a psychotic, pre-pubescent mini-vamp. If this was going to be my eternity, I might as well just run into the sunshine right now with a big ol’ smile on my face.

I was about to give Gan a long lecture on exactly why we wouldn’t be sleeping anywhere even remotely in the same room when Ed’s bedroom door opened and he strolled out.

“Hey, Bill,” he said, and then, upon noticing Gan, added, “What’s with the munchkin?”

Gan turned and smiled up at me. “You keep your own supply of food here? Excellent! I shall sample him.” With that, she launched herself across the room and slammed into my roommate. He went down hard with her on top of him.

“Holy shit!” I cried, throwing myself after her. Damn, she was fast. Fortunately for me, though, I didn’t exactly live in Windsor Castle. Thus, it was only a few steps until I could grab her and drag her off Ed. Or try to drag her off. She was strong for her size, too.

“What the fuck!?” he screamed at me once I’d pried her off.

“Um...Ed, meet Gan.”

* * *

“Dude, put the gun away,” I said to my roommate standing in the doorway to his bedroom. He was sitting at his desk, loading shells into the twelve-gauge shotgun he usually kept not-so-hidden under his bed.

“So Rainbow fucking Brite out there can try to take another chunk out of me? I think not.”

“I have it under control.”

“Oh yeah, real good control you got there,” he said, loading another shell. “A second later, and she would have been using my head as a soccer ball.”

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” I asked in as soothing a tone a possible, which wasn’t very.

*click* another shell got loaded. “My apartment is now Satan’s daycare. No, I don’t see much overreacting here.”

Okay, time to change tactics. “So says the guy who, just the other day, was putting the moves on a floozy with both a serious case of overbite and an overall lack of respect for human life.”

“That’s different,” he protested.

“How?”

“Have you ever looked at Sally’s tits?”

“Many times.”

“Need I explain further?”

“No, I guess you don’t.” Damn, I hate sound logic. “Still, chill with the gun. You’re liable to make Gan nervous.”

“Bill,” he replied in that tone he often used when he wished to make me feel as stupid as humanly possible, “she’s the bride of Frankenstein wrapped in a pre-teen body. Her first act upon meeting me was to try to turn me into a
Slurpee
. Believe me when I say I’m not too worried about making
her
nervous.”

“Point taken,” I said. “But you have to...”

“Oh thank you, Freewill!” came Gan’s voice from elsewhere in the apartment.

“Huh?” Before I could say more, though, her voice carried to us again.

“Such marvelous toys. I shall enjoy them thoroughly.”

Ed and I both stopped what we were doing. “What the hell is Strawberry Nutcake rambling about?” he asked.

“No idea. I don’t have any toys...”

Ed’s and my eyes suddenly locked. A look of mutual terror crossed between us. Tom’s room. Oh fuck! We both bolted in that direction.

* * *

My other roommate, Tom, was a life-long obsessive collector of old toys, baseball cards, and the like. He was convinced that one day he’d be able to retire on their collective worth. He had a ton of worthless crap, so my assumption had always been that he’d be more likely to wind up on some docudrama about insane hoarders. Then again, he also had some legitimate collector’s items. Back around when I was first turned into a vampire, he’d scored a first generation
Optimus Prime
figure for next to nothing at a flea market. He’d been so enamored of it that he’d inadvertently charged it with a small portion of his life energy, thus turning it into a deadly weapon against vampires.

You see, people normally assume that crosses work on vampires because we live in fear of God’s power. That’s mostly bullshit. In order for a cross to work, a person has to truly believe in it. But as far as I’m aware, it has nothing to do with God. Faith, as it turns out, is actually a form a magic. Yeah, I know; I thought the same thing when I heard that magic is real. But it is, trust me on this. The same principle that applies to a cross can apply to anything a person truly believes in. Thus, Tom wound up in possession of a junky piece of plastic from
Hasbro
that, in his hands, also happened to be the equivalent of the Ark of the Covenant against my kind.

Anyway, this magical vampire-killing toy had been broken in the final battle against my old coven master, Jeff. Tom had never let me forget it. Fortunately for me (
but much to his own chagrin
), he hadn’t been able to empower any of his other collectables in quite the same way. However, just because he didn’t love them all with the same fervor that he had loved Optimus didn’t mean he wouldn’t go completely apeshit when he so much as caught me or Ed looking at them.

Tom normally kept his room locked when he wasn’t around. He tended to do that ever since our early days of living together, when he’d return home to find all of his action figures waiting for him in a variety of lewd poses. For a guy who’s almost never serious, he has a surprising lack of humor when it comes to his collections.

Within moments of hearing Gan’s voice, Ed and I arrived to find Tom’s door wide open. A flimsy key lock isn’t much protection against even the weakest of vampires. We found Gan standing in the middle of a clutter of toys. She had a big smile on her face and was busy feeding Man-at-Arms to some six-legged plastic monster.

Oh, we were so fucked.

It turns out that Tom was the one who was fucked. Or at least that was my assumption, since he didn’t return home that night. I was actually glad to see someone getting some action from a woman not associated with the supernatural world. Good for him. And also good for us once we finally managed to get Gan out of his room. Thank whatever dark gods watch over the toys of madmen that nothing was broken. We put everything back the best we could (
but knowing that a nutcase like Tom would be able to tell if his things were even a millimeter out of place
) and wedged the door shut.

You really have no idea how stressful it was. Watching Tom have a hissy fit over his toys was one of the more off-putting things I had
ever
experienced...and this from a guy whose range of non-normal experiences had gone up significantly in the past year. It just wasn’t natural. Experiencing Tom rant about his toys was uncomfortable in a way that was akin to staring at non-Euclidian angles for too long. His tantrums also tended to last for a
long
time. Thus, for a variety of reasons, Ed and I wished to avoid one at all costs.

Once we’d finally finished, Ed decided to turn in. Considering the ruckus that I heard coming from his room, I assumed that not only had he locked himself in, but that there was probably a pretty good makeshift barrier constructed on his side of the door. I also had little doubt that he’d be sleeping with a twelve-gauge teddy-bear named Remington tonight. I guess I couldn’t really blame him.

Unfortunately, that left me alone with Gan. I had to think quickly, lest I wind up with her wanting to get all jiggy with me. Trust me when I say that’s a thought I would gladly bleach out of my brain. Maybe I’m just a product of my culture. After all, even a hundred years ago a girl of Gan’s (
physical
) age would have probably already been married off. Regardless, the creepiness factor of it all made my skin crawl. This was the big joke of my existence...I was a vampire with ethics.