The Tome of Bill Compendium Vol. 1 (Books 1-4) (64 page)

I didn’t have a lot left, but I summoned what I could. I rushed forward, and just as his eyes were again turning toward me, I nailed him with a double-fisted upper cut. It was a clean, solid hit, and Nergui went flying. If luck was with me, the fucker would have a nice dislocated jaw to show for it.

It wasn’t.

He flew a good fifteen feet through the air and landed in a heap...right next to the knife that Decker had thrown at me just moments earlier. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!

Nergui’s hand closed on the hilt. He slowly rolled to his feet as I looked for cover against what I knew was coming. Unfortunately, I was spent. Whatever I had summoned for that hit had truly been all that I had left to give. My body felt like it was encased in Jell-O...and not in a good ‘wrestling with topless chicks’ kind of way either.

The next few seconds were like a slow motion scene from a movie. Several things happened at once, and it was like time slowed down for a heartbeat or two to let it all unfold. I heard Gan’s voice scream out, “BILL!” as Nergui steadied himself. I turned my head and saw her toss Decker to the side like a piece of garbage. I glanced back to find that Nergui had flipped the knife so that the blade was in his hand. He started to pull his arm back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tiny flower patterned blur moving almost faster than I would have thought possible. Nergui’s arm snapped forward, and I saw the blade leave his hand. His aim was true. I saw where it was headed, but for some reason my body refused to respond with much more than a few twitches in the direction I was trying to will it toward. Stupid body!

Then, just like that, time suddenly snapped back to its normal speed. The blade closed in on my heart just as that flowery blur leapt in front of me. There was a dull thud, and then Gan’s tiny body slammed into me with more than enough force to take me off my feet. I went down, and she landed on top of me.

“
Princess
! No!” I heard Nergui’s voice scream right before he trailed back off into his native language. Whatever he was saying sounded frantic, but I could no more understand it than if he had been trying to communicate in clicks and whistles.

“Thanks for the save, Gan. Now get off me,” I said in a weak voice. She didn’t move. That’s when I finally understood what had happened.

I gently rolled her off me and managed to get to a sitting position. What I saw confirmed my fears: the silver blade was stuck up to its hilt in Gan’s chest. She wasn’t moving.

“
Why
!?” yelled Nergui. He ran to her other side and dropped to his knees. “Why would she do that?”

“Oh, Gan,” I exhaled, gently stroking her cheek. “What have you done?”

Nergui slapped my hand away. “Do not touch her, kidnapper!”

“Are you fucking for real!?” I snapped back with more strength than I thought I had left. “Does it
look
like I kidnapped her? Would she take a knife for me if I had kidnapped her!?”

“But my master said...”

“Your master was wrong! Think about it. Gan came here after me. I didn’t ask her to.”

“But why? She had everything...” he said, anguish in his voice.

“Apparently not,” I replied, and then decided it was best to sugar coat the next part and leave my opinions out of it. “Gan got it in her mind that she wanted me as her mate.” He gave me a dubious look in return. “Yeah, I thought it was weird, too...err, I mean she came all this way, and I’m obviously not worthy of her.”

He was silent for a moment as this sank in. Finally, he appeared to come to a decision as he looked me in the eye. “I...I am...” he seemed to struggle with the word, “sorry, Freewill. Had I known, I would have acted...different.”

“Even though the Khan ordered otherwise?” I asked, not bothering to cover the doubt in my voice.

“The Khan is wise, but he does not know all.”

I was tempted to point out that, from what Gan had told me, the Khan knew all about this part. It was beginning to become obvious that he put out the hit on me in a fit of asshole anger. But then again, I also didn’t see the point in mentioning such to Nergui, as it was doubtful it would help the situation any.

“I had pledged to bring back your head to him,” he continued with downcast eyes. “However, because of my foolishness, I shall only be returning with the body of his daughter and my worthless life as penance.”

There was a moment of silence that passed between us as this started to sink in. But then my subconscious decided to speak up again, as it often did. For once, it actually had something useful to say.

“
Body
?” I suddenly spoke up as the thought hit me. He raised his eyebrows at that. “Nergui, why do we still even have a body? Shouldn’t she be ash by now?”

His eyes widened in surprise. We both looked at Gan, and then back at each other. Then we smelled it...the silver! Smoke had started wafting from the wound in her chest. Jesus Christ, we were a pack of idiots!

“Pull it out!” I yelled, but Nergui was way ahead of me. He grabbed the blade of the knife and yanked it from Gan’s body. There was a spurt of sparks, followed by a spray of blood, and then, just barely audible, the barest of gasps from her mouth. She was still with us.

It should have been obvious, had we not been morons. If you kill a vampire, you get dust, end of story; anything less meant the deed wasn’t done. Nergui’s aim hadn’t been quite as good as I had thought. He had somehow just barely missed her heart. Sally’s attack had done its job after all.

“How do we help her?” I asked, not really knowing much outside of maybe hoping she healed from the wound. Sadly, the silvered blade meant that her recovery would be slowed down considerably.

Again, though, Nergui was more prepared than I. He reached to his side and unclipped what appeared to be a water-skin. He uncorked it and tilted it over Gan’s lips. A familiar red liquid poured forth from it into her mouth. Even unconscious, she instinctively started swallowing gulps of it.

“This will help,” he said, administering the blood. After a few good swallows from Gan, he pulled the skin away. He reached into a pocket and produced a small glass vial. It looked vaguely familiar. He poured the viscous contents into the water-skin, gave it a shake to mix, and then proceeded to feed more of it to Gan.

“Isn’t that...?”

Nergui nodded in response. “It will allow her to sleep and heal.”

“It will also keep her from running off if she starts feeling better,” I pointed out. Nergui gave me a knowing smile and nodded again. He wasn’t stupid. “What now?” I asked, just in case we were getting back to that ‘trying to kill me’ part again. One can never be too paranoid with these things.

“I will return with the princess, and we will let the Khan know the truth,” he replied. I was tempted to point out that the fat fuck already knew the truth and that this whole thing was just one gigantic hissy fit from him, but I refrained. That would probably be kicking the hornets’ nest. “I am certain that once the truth is made known to
all
, the great Khan will show mercy and rescind his order,” he finished. As I said, Nergui wasn’t stupid. I saw what he was getting at. If the findings of the investigation were made fairly public knowledge, then the Khan would have no choice but to call off the dogs. Nobody would give a damn about him killing a vampire of my age, but they might take some exception to killing the legendary Freewill just for shits and giggles.

“Will Gan be okay?”

“She is his daughter,” was his answer, and probably the only one he needed to give. Gan was the Khan’s family, and hundreds of years old or not, people tended to tolerate a lot of crap from family.

“I guess the only thing left to do is clean up here and make sure we both don’t drop dead in the process.”

He nodded and then winced as he put his hand to his still oozing neck. “Your friend surprised me. She must care a great deal about you to have done this.”

Oh shit! I almost forgot about Sally in the aftermath of what happened to Gan. I pulled myself weakly to my feet and limped over to check on her. She was still in the same spot. She was curled into a fetal ball and shaking, a few retching noises still escaping from her lips. In short, she didn’t look particularly well. I needed to get her out of here and back to where she could be properly cared for.

I picked her up in my arms and looked back. Nergui had done the same for Gan. As I started slowly walking toward the stairwell, I heard a low murmur coming from Sally. I was amazed that she was still conscious, if just barely. I bent my head to hers and asked her to repeat herself.

“Remember,” she wheezed, “when I said that being near you was the safest place to be?”

“Yes.”

“Need to rethink that,” she whispered with a slight smile, and then was quiet again.

I started to chuckle when I suddenly remembered how she had gotten her original injuries...for this evening, at least. I looked around, scanning the rooftop...nothing.

“Where’s Decker?” I asked Nergui.

“Decker?”

“The wizard,” I clarified.

“Did the princess not dispatch him?”

“I thought so...” I trailed off. Then where the hell was he? Did wizards turn to dust like vampires? No, probably not. No convenient buckets of water around either. What a world!

That’s when I noticed it. There was a thin trail of blood leading into the stairwell entrance. It appeared to go downward. Son of a bitch! “I don’t believe it. After all that...” but Nergui held up a hand to silence me from saying more.

“Hush.” He appeared to be listening to something. “We must go now,” he said, walking past me and starting down the stairs.

His hearing was much more sensitive than mine. For a moment, I didn’t notice anything, and then...sirens. The cops. How could they have...Decker! I would have bet anything on it. Not only had the fucker betrayed me, attacked us, and then done his best to trip me up when I was running from Nergui, but now he had run downstairs and called the police on us, too. Goddamn, what a prick!

The battle had ended on a sour note. Fortunately, the vampire community’s
contributions
to the NYPD would help ensure that things weren’t traced back to us. Decker probably knew that, too, not to mention I’m fairly sure he wanted the wizarding world exposed to the general public about as much as we wanted vampires to show up on the six o’clock news. Still, it had been one last kick in the balls from him before the asshole got away.

On the upside, at least the battle was over. Sally and Gan had survived the ordeal, albeit barely. As for myself, I was happy to report I’d live to get back into trouble for another day. What I didn’t know then was that
another day
wasn’t as far off on the horizon as I assumed.

After we escaped from...well, my job I guess, we quickly made our way underground. I’m sure we looked quite the sight to any onlookers. But between the weirdness of our appearance and the fact that we were all mostly covered in blood and grime, I wasn’t too worried about any positive IDs anytime soon. After traveling a few blocks through the sewer tunnels, we split up. Nergui told me that he wanted to waste no time getting back. He was going to immediately work on making arrangements for himself and Gan to head home to Asia. Can’t say I was all too sorry to see him and his still unconscious bundle of ‘joy’ depart from my life.

That done, my main concern turned to Sally. Vampire strength or not, I was at the end of my endurance. She was starting to feel pretty heavy by the time I made it back to coven territory. I more or less just barely managed to stumble back to the loft, but make it back I did, and I only dropped Sally once...maybe twice, along the way.

There was plenty of refrigerated blood in the larder underneath the loft, and I managed to get two pints of it down Sally’s throat. It was touch and go for a few minutes there, but somehow she managed to keep it down without yakking all over me. I mean, yeah I had gotten plenty of gore on me during the previous few hours, but that would have just been nasty.

At last, I put her in one of the loft’s two bedrooms and gave a call to the safe house in Brooklyn. The ‘All Clear’ was given, and the remaining members of the coven were soon on their way back. Thank God for that, because I was done.

I must have finally passed out because when I opened my eyes again, I saw that several members of the coven were milling about the room. I checked on Sally and found Starlight in the room with her. She had taken charge with regards to Sally’s care. Seeing that she was in good hands, I gave my roommates a quick call to let them know I was still amongst the living, or undead, or however you want to put it. I then grabbed the spare bedroom and let blissful unconsciousness take me away again.

I was out for a good twelve hours. Sally was down for eighteen before she started to stir. Her attitude took another four or so to wake up, but when it did, I knew she was going to be fine. As her wounds, outside of her missing hand, hadn’t been caused by silver weapons, her cuts were already closed and her bones were starting to mend. It was still going to be a while before she was doing much more than attempting to sit upright. Regardless, before the night was through she was already barking out orders again and taking charge.

Right before dawn, my roommate, Ed, showed up. He claimed it was to give me a ride back home, and I wasn’t about to argue with that. Unlike Sally’s, my wounds were taking their sweet time to heal, and I was still pretty banged up. I had no qualms about bypassing an hour-long subway ride. Still, I’m not a complete idiot. He was partially there for me, but he was also checking in on Sally. Oh well, if he insisted on living dangerously, who was I to argue?

* * *

The next day passed well enough. At the very least, no assassins, wizards, or love-struck preteen psychos showed up to darken our doorstep. By the late afternoon, I felt more or less myself again. I was probably going to hold off on any duels to the death for a couple days; however, I felt good enough to bundle myself up in layers of day clothes and head back to Manhattan to check on things. I was still coven leader, at least on paper. Considering the events of the past several days, it was probably a good idea to not be a stranger. The coven would need to be rebuilt, and that was a duty I couldn’t shirk, no matter how much I wanted to.