The Tome of Bill Compendium Vol. 1 (Books 1-4) (65 page)

I arrived at the loft just as the sun was setting and found a few coven vamps hanging around, but no Sally. They told me she had returned to the office. I was just thinking it was a good sign for her health when my cell phone rang. Speaking of the devil, it was her.

“Where the hell have you been?” she barked. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the past hour.” There was still a wheezy quality to her voice, but she sounded a lot stronger than she had the previous night.

“Good to hear you’re feeling better,” I replied.

“I’m just dandy,” she growled. “Get your ass over here as soon as you can,” she said and then hung up.

“Love you, too,” I said cheerfully into the now dead line.
Yep, good to be back to normal
, I thought as I headed to the door.

The office wasn’t far. It took me no more than fifteen minutes to get there. The place was still a disaster. Vampires were scurrying back and forth, straightening things up. At least I saw that the desks that usually controlled the hotline were unmanned. I had no doubt that Sally would have it up and running again in no time, but it was nice to know that the vulnerable of the city could have at least a minor reprieve from being served up as the daily special.

The only area of the floor that appeared to be back to normal was...you guessed it...Sally’s office. What a surprise. Even less of a surprise, I saw that Starlight was back to manning the desk outside of it. I sighed as I approached. “Hey, Star. I see Sally got you again.”

“Hi, Bill,” she replied. I noticed that she was showing distinctly less skittishness toward me than she normally did. After the last few days, I was probably the least of the evils she had been dealing with. That was good. I didn’t mind it at all.

“Do I need to send you on another
coffee break
?” I asked with an even voice.

She actually met my gaze to answer, “No. I volunteered this time. Lets me keep an eye on her.” She hooked a thumb toward Sally’s door. I smiled at that. Having a mother hen looking out for her was probably driving Sally nuts.

I excused myself and let myself into Sally’s office unannounced. Leadership has its perks, after all. Her normal super comfy executive chair was pushed off to the side. Sally sat behind her desk in a wheelchair, an IV of blood attached and flowing into her arm. She did not look amused.

“Starlight?” I asked, indicating the setup.

“Who else? She wouldn’t stop badgering me until I let her strap me in to this contraption.”

“Looks good on you. Matches your eyes,” I quipped.

She held up the stump of her right arm toward me. It looked much better than it previously had. I could have sworn I already saw tiny little finger nubs starting to grow from it. “You probably can’t tell,” she said, “but I’m giving you the ghost finger.”

“Good to see your stunning personality wasn’t amputated.”

“Quite true, but enough of my sunny disposition,” she said, putting on a serious tone. “We have a problem...more specifically,
you
have a problem.”

“What a surprise,” I commented. “What now?”

“Got a call from Boston about an hour ago. It was about Gan and Nergui.”

“Oh, don’t tell me she escaped again.”

“Worse. They made it back.”

“Why is that worse?”

She shook her head. “They made it back to
nothing
. The Khan’s camp was completely destroyed.”

“Are they okay?”

“Yeah. There are plenty of nomadic covens in that region. They hooked up with a few of them.”

“So what the hell happened?” I demanded

“No idea. It was all over by the time they got back. Sounds like whatever was fighting them won.” Shit! I had completely forgotten about the alma or whatever they were. I pulled out my cell phone and started typing a message. She saw me and asked, “What are you doing?”

“I’m texting Ed. You just reminded me of something we were supposed to look into.”

“Tell him I said ‘Hi’.”

“Tell him yourself,” I said, putting my phone away again. “So Gan’s fine?”

“Yep.”

“That’s good.”

“For
them
, yes. For you...” she trailed off in a low voice.

“Me what?”

“The word from Boston is that they’re blaming you for this.”

“WHAT!?”

“The Khan sent three of his warriors to retrieve Gan from you.”

“I’m pretty well aware of that.”

“So...” she continued in a slow voice, “since they were here and not there, the Khan’s forces were depleted.”

“Oh,” I replied, comprehension sinking in. “But it was just three guys.”

“Three of the Khan’s
best
warriors,” she corrected. “While they were in China doing their duty, everything was hunky-dory. Once they left, not so much. You can do the math.”

“So what’s the bottom line?” I asked, feeling my good mood instantly evaporate.

“Just rumblings and rumors so far, from what I can hear.”

“Let me guess...more assassins are coming. A lot more.”

“No. It’s
worse
.”

I put my hand up to rub my temples and sighed, “Define ‘worse’.”

“They’re expecting you to
fix
things.”

* * *

I got off the subway and walked toward home, the beginnings of a migraine starting to form. Fix things? How the fuck was I supposed to fix things? I didn’t even know what things there were to fix. Sally said she’d keep me posted as more news became available, but I was sorely tempted to toss my cell phone down a sewer and change my home number. I doubted any further news would be very much in my favor.

I didn’t know the half of it.

I arrived at my apartment and let myself in. I immediately froze in the doorway at the scene that greeted me. Tom was sitting on the couch. That in and of itself wasn’t too shocking. The fact that he had his face glued to a witch, who had just days before kidnapped us all, was the thing that had me just a wee bit disconcerted.

I stood in the doorway for a moment while they continued to play tongue-hockey, oblivious of me. Finally, I cleared my throat. They both stopped what they were doing and looked in my direction. Christy’s face held a fairly shocked expression. Tom’s looked like a mouse that had gotten caught with the cheese.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt you,” I said in a frigid voice.

“It’s cool, dude,” replied Tom easily. “We talked things out.”

“Talked things out,” I repeated to myself. I closed the door and walked over to our kitchen nook. I had a feeling I was going to need to drink something a lot stronger than blood before the night was out. “And what exactly did you two
love birds
talk out?”

“Christy’s sorry about what happened. Right, hon?” he said. She nodded vigorously in reply. “We decided to try to work things out, but first rule going forward is the apartment is off limits.”

“Off limits?” I queried, waving my hands in their general direction.

“Well, not for
this,
” he explained.

“Oh. So what you’re saying is that she’ll only try to kill me again when I’m not here. Is that right, Christy?”

She gave me a sheepish smile in return and opened her mouth to speak, but I held my hand up. “Give me a second. I have a feeling I’m gonna need a drink for this.” I opened the fridge and grabbed a pint of chilled blood.

While I was contemplating adding a shot or three of Jack Daniels to it, Tom tried to change the subject, “Oh yeah, almost forgot. You got a call while you were out.”

“From who?”

“Caller ID said it was your job.”

“Great,” I replied. What now?

For a while there, I had been afraid that the whole battle at my workplace would be traced back and dumped squarely onto my lap; however, a few quick phone calls to some of my programming buddies the day before had confirmed that the damage was being blamed on nameless vandals, possibly corporate sabotage. Hell, they hadn’t even closed the place for any longer than it took to replace the broken windows. I never thought I would be so glad that the vampire nation kept the cops in their back pocket.

Still, what would they be calling for now? I put down my drink and pressed play on the machine. Whatever it was, I was almost hoping that it would put me in an even worse mood for the reaming I was about to give Tom and his little succubus.

Bill, it’s Jim. Call me when you get this. Just got word from HR. The VP of Marketing filed a harassment complaint against you. What the hell is that about? Call me.
*beep*

I couldn’t even process that for a second. I just stood there, stunned. The motherfucker complained about me to HR!?

I heard Christy say, “I should probably go.”

For once, even Tom had a clue. “Yeah, that might be best,” he said, getting up to walk her to the door. She beat a hasty retreat. Probably for the best, but apparently not for the last, considering the state I had caught her and my roommate in.

Once he had shown her out, he walked up to me, but I again held up my hand. “If you even imply the words
sexual
harassment...” I let the threat hang in the air.

I was interrupted from the tirade I felt building up by Ed walking out of his bedroom. “I heard you come in,” he mentioned. If he heard that, he no doubt heard what else had gone on. He wisely mentioned none of it. “Here,” he said, handing me a piece of paper.

“What’s this?” I asked without looking down at it.

“I looked up alma for you.”

I looked down at the paper. It was a printout of a webpage. “Is this Wikipedia?”

“Yep, came right up in Google. Not exactly the heavy research I was expecting.”

I scanned the entry. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Nope.”

“What is it?” Tom asked.

“Alma,” said Ed. “is the Mongolian name for
Bigfoot
.”

“No fucking way!”

Ed shrugged. “That’s pretty much what I thought.”

“You’re telling me that the vampires are in a war against Sasquatch?” I replied in a stunned voice. I then took a few minutes to fill them in on what Sally had just told me.

“Sounds like the vampires are in a
losing
war against Sasquatch,” Ed commented when I was done.

I nodded. “Yeah, and apparently they’re expecting me to be their General Custer.”

“That is fucking cool!” Tom exclaimed, but then quickly added, “I don’t mean the thing with you, Bill. But seriously, vampires versus bigfoot? I’d pay to see that shit.”

“Don’t forget the wizards,” I pointed out with a sigh. Jesus Christ, how did I find myself in this position? I put my head down on the counter.

“Maybe we should give you a few moments,” said Ed, leading Tom toward the living room.

“Why bother?” I said, standing up straight. I picked up the phone and started dialing.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling work. It’s still early. Jim might still be around. Who knows, maybe he’ll have something else to say to
brighten
my day.” That last part came out as a growl as my temper began to fray. I had gone through far too much in the past couple days for life to suddenly decide that it needed to take a mega-dump on me. I barely even noticed when a familiar female voice answered the phone.

“Hopskotchgames. Jim Floskie’s office.”

“Is Jim in?” I asked, rubbing my temple with my free hand.

“Bill?” replied Sheila’s voice. “Sorry, he already left for the night.”

“Figures,” I commented without much gusto. “I’ll call back tomorrow.”

“He’s out. Taking a personal day.”

“That’s just great,” I sighed.

“Sorry,” she said in an understanding voice. “Hey, I heard what happened.”

“You did? Let me guess, the whole office knows,” I replied, starting to feel a dull throb of anger in the back of my head.

“Don’t worry about it. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

“Really?”

“I doubt it,” she replied and then lightened her tone a bit. “So what did you do, hit on him in the men’s room?”

“Of course not!”

“I’m just kidding. I know that,” she said with a laugh. “Besides, I’m sure most people here will stick up for you. Harry doesn’t exactly have too many fans.”

“No?”

“You haven’t been around here much lately; I have. Trust me on this. He’s not exactly Mr. Popularity.”

“You seemed to be getting along with him,” I ventured.

“Oh, please,” she said dismissively. “I was just letting him buy me a drink after work. Truth be told,” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “I kind of think he’s a bit of an asshole, actually. In fact, I might even tell HR that he’s probably just doing this because he’s pissed off at you about the other night. You should have heard the stuff he was ranting about after you left. It was weird.”

“I bet,” I muttered. “I meant...what about you? Were you mad at me, too?”

“For what?”

“For...ruining...I mean, for the other night?”

“Not at all. I’ll admit that it was a little odd (
a little?
), but I know how it is. I have a nephew. We’ve done some weird things together. I thought it was kind of sweet that you were spending time with your family. As for the rest of it, I might even owe you a bit of thanks.”

“Thanks?”

“If you hadn’t shown up, I’m pretty sure Harry would have tried weaseling his way up to my apartment.” She gave another chuckle. “So in a way, I guess you were my knight in shining armor.”

“Really?”

“You keep asking that. Yes, really.”

“Thank you,” I replied, a bit dumbfounded, but nevertheless feeling the first traces of brightness shining into my otherwise not-so-hot day. “I really appreciate that.”

“No problem, Bill. Anytime,” she said, the warmth never leaving her voice.

“Sheila...” I had meant to say ‘goodbye’. Maybe it was her tone, or maybe the past few days had just left me too tired to psyche myself out. Whatever the reason, my mouth decided it had a mind of its own, and what came out instead was, “what do you think about maybe grabbing a cup of coffee with me sometime?”