The Tome of Bill Compendium Vol. 1 (Books 1-4) (63 page)

Before I could come up with a suitably clever response to being gutted, Bang backhanded me, and I went tumbling away, my blood spraying out in an arch as the knife pulled free. I finally came to a stop face-down on the rooftop. Considering the sizable hole in my stomach, it was not the most comfortable of positions to be in. It was made even less fun due to the butt of the desert eagle digging in dangerously close to where some of my insides were trying to make their way out. Wait a second...I still had the gun! I was a suck shot, but it was better than nothing.

Unfortunately, I shouldn’t have been worrying about my front, my back, or even the shooting lessons I needed to take. I should have been more worried about my head. I felt rough fingers grab a handful of my hair and jerk me upright to my knees. The hand forced my chin up so that I got a pretty good look at the sky. It was partly cloudy, probably low chance of rain. Sadly, there was high chance of my death. I saw the same dagger that had just been used to fillet me, enter into my view. Bang was slowly lowering it to my throat when a shrill shriek pierced the air.

* * *

I had heard a similar scream the night before. It was an almost animalistic battle cry in a high pitch that only a feral cat or a pre-teen girl could manage. Gan! About time she decided to join this party. Pity it was probably too late to do me any good. Oh well, I had been meaning to lose a few pounds one of these days anyway. This was one way to ensure I stopped procrastinating about it. Besides, throughout my life I had suffered from a poor body image, so maybe I wouldn’t miss it all that much anyway.

I didn’t feel the blade biting into me, though. The hand holding the knife was hesitating. I craned my eyes up as far as they would go, and I could just barely make out Bang’s head. It was turned toward the direction of the scream. He hadn’t been expecting Gan.

No time to waste! I fumbled with my right hand for the gun, but my grip was slippery with blood. The first time I tried to pull it out, I rammed it straight into my wound instead.
FUCK
! Talk about a wake-up call! I needed to remember in the future not to bring cold steel into contact with my intestinal tract.

On the second try, I got the weapon free. Without thinking, I lifted it up and pointed it back over my shoulder to where I thought Bang was standing. I pulled the trigger (
Bang, meet a bigger *bang*
), and for a second there thought I had blown my own head off, so loud was the explosion. Now I know why people wear ear plugs when they go shooting. The kickback from the gun tore it from my fingers (
and almost dislocated my shoulder
). It went clattering away, still smoking from the shot I had made - not that I could hear the clattering. In fact, it was probably going to be a while before I could hear
anything
.

I flopped down again face-first onto the roof, the wound in my stomach again sending fresh waves of pain through me. Wait! I was free. Bang had let me go. Guess the shot had surprised him. Hey, maybe I even managed to wing him. I rolled over onto my back to check and saw him standing there above me, knife still in hand, but minus most of his head.

Whoa.
Hope there weren’t any low flying aircraft passing overhead when I pulled the trigger,
was all I had time to think before his body burst into flame and a shower of Bang dust fell upon me. Ewww, some of him got into my mouth. I was going to be investing heavily in
Listerine
after this one.

Still, dental hygiene was a concern for later. At that moment, I needed to concentrate on not dying from my injuries. I tried to stand, doubled over in pain for a few moments, and then managed to right myself. I put my hand over my stomach to try and staunch the blood flow. It was still going pretty good, although most of my other injuries had at least slowed to a minor drip.

I looked around. Still no sign of Gan. Wait! There was a small blur on the rooftop next over. It was moving fast, but I caught a glimpse of a flower pattern. There was no mistaking one of the overpriced dresses Sally had purchased the other day. If she hadn’t been moving like the wind and screeching like a banshee, she might have looked cute in it...for an ancient little hell-beast, that is.

Gan reached the edge of the roof, maybe some five floors lower than the one we were on, and kept going. She leapt the distance between the two and then fell out of my sight. What the hell? I lurched over to the edge and looked down. Wow, she was actually scaling the side of the building, using her claws to gain purchase, and moving pretty damn fast at it, too. She’d be up at our level within the space of moments. Good, I could use a little backup...even if I had to promise to marry her to get it.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure I had a few moments. A muffled sound caught my attention, and I turned around to check it out. I saw Decker down on the ground, the hilt of one of Nergui’s daggers sticking out of his leg. He was rolling around, screaming (
I think, my hearing still wasn’t quite back to full yet
), and more or less being pretty obvious about the fact that he was out of the fight. Oh crap. Where the hell did that gun fly off to?

Nergui said something to the downed Decker, which I didn’t quite catch. He then turned and looked in my direction. A look of surprise crossed his face, as he no doubt noticed the fine dusting of Bang coating the area. He closed his eyes for a moment, appeared to mouth something, and then he opened them, meeting my gaze. He gave a respectful nod and started to walk slowly in my direction. He appeared to have taken a pretty good pounding from Decker and was noticeably limping; however, he didn’t seem to be in any great hurry either. No wonder. I didn’t really have too many places left to run.

Still, there was no point in making it easy on the guy. I held onto my still bleeding stomach and hobbled over to where Sally was. She had again somehow managed to make it to her feet. She nodded as I approached and started to say something, but I gave her a shove, which put her back down where she had been.

I leaned in and said in a low but firm voice, “Stay down and out of the way. He’s after me. The moment you have an opening, you get to the stairwell and get the hell out of here. For once, do as I say,
please
!”

She looked as if she were about to mouth off, but then she averted her gaze and gave me a single nod of her head. I was half-amazed. Personally, I had given her about a ninety-five percent chance of telling me to go fuck myself. Maybe I should play the lottery when this is all over.

That would have to wait, though. For right then, I had a game of Russian roulette to finish...or was that Mongolian roulette? Whatever the case, in this version of the game five of the chambers held bullets and only one kept me from losing my head. Oh well, in the words of Han Solo, “
Never tell me the odds.
”

Sally stayed down and scuttled out of sight. As for me, I ran - or at least tried to. If Nergui wanted me, he’d have to catch me first. Fuck that whole
stand there and take it like a man
crap. I’m more of a
he who fights and runs away
guy anyway. Unfortunately, the running part may have been a bit of a stretch. It was more like a gimp trot. Sorry, but I’d like to see anyone take a pig-sticker to the gut and then try running the Boston Marathon.

Fortunately, most rooftops of office buildings aren’t the wide open expanses you might expect. There were plenty of obstacles, my plan being to keep them between myself and Nergui for as long as it took Sally to get out of there. Nergui, no dummy, saw what I was trying to do and put a little more oomph into his limp.

“Do you really wish to die this way?” he called to me. Hey, I could hear again. Good to know my vampire healing wasn’t entirely on the fritz today.

“Actually, I’m trying to
avoid
dying this way.”

“You only delay your fate by seconds,” he said, coming around an air vent I had just moved behind.

“That’s a few more moments to figure out how to kick your ass,” I replied without much conviction. As it were, I wasn’t exactly breaking the four-minute mile, and I could already feel myself starting to slow down. Too much blood loss was starting to take its toll. Another few minutes, and I’d be done for; however, even those few extra minutes were denied me.

* * *

Something heavy thudded into my leg. In my current condition, it was more than enough to trip me up. Down I went. I looked around for what had hit me and saw Nergui’s dagger. However, it hadn’t come from Nergui. If it had, it would have buried itself six inches into the back of my neck. No, this was a sloppy throw. What had hit me was the hilt, not the blade. I looked to my right. Fuck! In my insistence to run away from Nergui, I didn’t notice my path had taken me close to Decker. He was still on the ground, one hand over where Nergui’s knife had been just a few moments ago. He gave me a smile and flipped me the bird with his free hand. What a dick! Unfortunately for him, though, I wasn’t the only one who had seen what happened.

I turned my head and saw that Gan had finally made it onto the rooftop. She screamed something in her native tongue. No idea what it was, but it sounded decisively unfriendly. She looked between myself and Decker, then launched herself in his direction. It wasn’t
quite
the assist I had been hoping for. I guess she was still a little pissed from him barbecuing her the night before. That tended to cloud a person’s judgment.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see what happened next, as rough hands grabbed me by the back of my shirt and hauled me to my feet. “For kidnapping the princess, you must die. But I give you the honor of dying like a man, Freewill,” said Nergui’s voice in my ear.

“Wait! Kidnapping? I...” I didn’t get a chance to finish as I was flung face-first into the side of one of the large, steel...yeah, definitely steel, ouch!...A/C units I had been previously using for cover.

*CRUNCH!*
Oh well,
I thought woozily, slumping to the ground,
It’s not like I was all that pretty to begin with.
Time for a good, long nap? Yeah, that sounded dandy. Sadly, I was again rudely hauled back to my feet.

“Nap time over already?” I muttered. I managed to crack my eyes open to see Nergui’s face looking back at me. Unlike Bang, there was no grin or snide Chinese comment. He didn’t look particularly happy about this at all. It was just business for him. I could almost respect that, if his business hadn’t involved bringing my head back to the Khan as a trophy.

“Your...” Before he could finish that thought, I was dropped back down again. I was starting to dislike the feeling of the rooftop against my bruised and battered body.

Hold on, what just happened? I shook my head to clear it. It helped, a little at least. When I looked up, I saw that Nergui was busy trying to dislodge something from his back...that something being Sally: stump, broken bones, and all. That bitch! Guess she decided that I could take my orders and shove it after all. On the other hand, maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on her, as she had done more to save my ass in the past ten minutes than I really deserved. If we lived through this, she could keep the black Amex. She had earned it.

She hung on with all she had, but it wasn’t enough. Nergui grabbed her arms and started to pry her off. That was when Sally crossed the line from crazy to batshit fucking insane. Before he could completely shake her off, she raised her head, extended her fangs, and bit down into the side of his neck. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. She had told me what would happen if a normal (
as in: not me
) vampire did something like that, and yet she was still doing it...to save me.

Blood immediately started spurting from his neck, and still she bit down harder. The look on Nergui’s face was a combination of shock and pain. He couldn’t believe what she was doing either. I used the moment to pull myself back to my feet. If she could take enough blood out of him, he could potentially weaken to the point where he might be beatable...emphasis on
might
.

* * *

As I got to my feet, I saw flashes of light from the corner of my eye. At first, I thought it might have just been me, seeing as I was on the verge of passing out and all. Then I realized that it must have been Decker. He was putting up a fight against Gan, but there definitely didn’t seem to be as much behind it as there had been earlier. Too bad, so sad for him. I’d be sure to send flowers to his funeral or maybe just piss on his grave, depending on which mood struck me at the time.

My immediate priority, though, was still Nergui and the Sally-shaped growth that was still digging at his neck. She was definitely taking a toll on him. That was Sally, alright. She could drain the will to live from any man, one way or the other. Nergui wasn’t quite out of it yet, but he wasn’t moving quite as spryly as he had been. Unfortunately, that was when Sally stopped.

She raised her head from his neck and looked at me. She gave me a sheepish smile and then projectile vomited a large gout of blood. If you’ve seen
The Exorcist
, you have a good idea of how this went. Gross is definitely one word for it. Unfortunately for her, it didn’t end there. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and suddenly she fell from Nergui’s back. She landed on the ground and started violently convulsing, more blood spraying from her mouth. I wished I could do something to help her, but there was nothing I could think of. No, that wasn’t right. I could make sure she hadn’t taken on this kind of suffering in vain. I could finish off Nergui and end this...for her.

Nergui was still too stunned from Sally’s attack to notice me again. He was holding his hands to his neck, trying to staunch the massive flow of blood. It gave me a chance.