The Mourning Woods - 03 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Tis better To Have Loved and Lost

  Late For My Own Funeral

  Anticipation is a Killer

  Unexpected Company

  Ringside Seats

  Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink and Dissect

  Diplomatic Immunity

  Hell’s Hair Salon

  The Dude with the Crazy Eyes

  Yes, This is One of Those Exposition Chapters

  Vacation Daze

  Driving in Style

  Damn Nazi Vampires

  Four-legged Vampire Slayer

  Are We There Yet?

  As Primitive as Can Be

  Strangers in the Night

  Continental Breakfast

  Satan’s Snack Cart

  What’s in a Name?

  When You Gotta Go

  Keeping One’s Priorities Straight

  A Dumb Plan is Better than No Plan at All

  Cage Match

  99 Bottles of Blood on the Wall

  Midnight Tryst

  Mission Improbable

  The Great White North

  Frozen Wasteland

  What Happened While I Was Out?

  The Lying, the Witch, and the...err...Zombie?

  Ninja Vampire Attack!

  A Sticky Situation

  French Fried Mountain Oysters

  Round Two

  Crossing Enemy Lines

  Guilty By Association

  I Can’t Hear You, I’m Screaming Too Loud

  A Small Piece of Peace

  The Awesomely Important Epilogue

  About the Author

  Bonus Chapter

  The Mourning Woods

  The Tome of Bill

  Part 3

  Rick Gualtieri

  Wayman Publishing

  waymanpublishing.com

  P. O. Box 160693

  Clearfield, UT

  84016

  *****The Mourning Woods*****

  Copyright© 2012 Rick Gualtieri

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author. Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.

  All characters in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental. The use of any real company and/or product names is for literary effect only. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.

  The views herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of Wayman Publishing.

  Edited by Hercules Editing

  Cover by Carl Graves at http://www.extendedimagery.com/

  Visit the author’s blog at: http://www.poptartmanifesto.com

  For Dick and Diana, you are always remembered and greatly missed.

  Special thanks to my fabulous beta readers: Alissa, Solace, Jenn, Melissa, RJ, Matt, and Bucktooth Bob. You helped add that extra layer of story polish and for that I am grateful.

  Introduction

  Hi, once again. As usual, it is my extreme pleasure to welcome you. This time out, we can ignore all the usual introductory crap and get straight to one main point: I had a ridiculous amount of fun writing this book. There, I said it! There really isn’t much more to it than that. Don’t get me wrong; Bill The Vampire and its sequel, Scary Dead Things, were awesome. Now that the origin story is done, though, and the stage has been set, it’s time to coax Bill out of his shell and into a much wider world than he’s used to (or ready for)...and that, well that’s a hoot.

  This is my third major foray into Bill’s world (ignoring short stories or his and Sally’s ongoing Facebook adventures) and it’s really coming alive for me now. It’s getting so that I wouldn’t be half surprised to be walking through SoHo one night and suddenly see a quick flash of fang from the mouth of a pretty (if sarcastic) blonde.

  Isn’t that what it’s all about, making the characters real? I, for one, think it is. Is there anything more entertaining (or frustrating) at times than reading a book and suddenly imagining yourself there alongside the characters? What would you do? Would you help them? Hinder them? Maybe smack them upside the head a few times? Ultimately you might do all the above, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that feeling that you’re reading the adventures of someone you could imagine meeting on the street, no matter how unlikely you know that actually to be.

  That right there is the awesome part, because right at that point the adventure continues in ways that I, the lowly scribe, could never even begin to imagine. If you ever happen to find yourself wandering down an imaginary path with a nerdy vampire named Bill by your side, I wish you well and hope that you have quite the adventure.

  That being said, I present to you The Mourning Woods, the Tome of Bill Part 3. If you enjoy reading it even half as much as I did writing it, then I think you’re in for one hell of a good time.

  Rick G.

  Tis better To Have Loved and Lost

  “What do you mean she quit!?” The question came out...well OK, it came out far less harshly than I had intended. I really meant to scream a massive string of obscenities into the phone. Sadly, even I had to admit that yelling, “What the fuck are you talking about you balding, little middle management douche of a shit!?” probably wouldn’t have been particularly diplomatic, especially considering that I was speaking with my boss.

  “I know it’s abrupt,” replied the voice of Jim, my manager at HopScotchGames, “and believe me, I’m as upset as any of you, but we’ll just have to handle our own paperwork for a while. Don’t worry; I’ll start interviewing for a replacement next week.”

  My roommate and coworker, Ed, hit the mute button. We were seated in his bedroom/office, as we usually were for the weekly conference call. He knew me well enough to know when a tirade was incoming, one that it was probably best to spare Jim from - particularly if we wanted to avoid the unemployment line.

  Jim’s voice continued to drone, moving on to whatever topic of “importance” was next on the agenda. I didn’t hear a single word he said. For all I know, he could have been telling us that he had just won the lottery and was, even now, getting a blowjob from a thousand-dollar hooker.

  “Calm down,” Ed said preemptively.

  “Paperwork?” I barked, ignoring him. “He thinks I’m worried about paperwork? The only woman I’ve ever loved has just walked out of my life and he’s concerned that he has to print his own fucking PowerPoints.”

  “Being just a tad melodramatic, aren’t we?”

  “No. I mean, I know we’ve only been dating for a few months, but...”

  “Dating?” Ed interrupted. “You’ve gone out for coffee maybe three...”

  “Four!”

  “Fine, four times. And didn’t you say it was Dutch each time?”

  I glowered at my friend, letting my fangs extend menacingly. He just stared right back, nonplussed. Here I am a vampire - an immortal terror of the night - and I can’t even get the humans I share an apartment with to tremble in fear. My god, life is just not fair.

  “Are you done pouting?” Ed asked.

  “This is not pouting. It’s supposed to be threatening.”

  “You might want to practice that in the mirror some more,” he continued, “Anyway, as I was saying, you’re overreacting just a bit.”

  “Like you would know?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. Growing up, my older sister used to force me to watch Disney movies with her. Trust me; four non-dates do not a fairytale romance make.”

  “There was more
to it than that and you know it. Sheila and I...”

  “Had nonstop mind-blowing sex?”

  “Well no...”

  “Played multiple games of tongue-hockey?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Spent every waking moment together?”

  “OK, I get the point!”

  “Christ, did you ever even hold her fucking hand?”

  “Well, once I brushed up against...”

  “Exactly,” he stated. “You pined for her for years and that’s it. I had a more intimate relationship with my grandmother.”

  “Thanks for the visual, dude.”

  “Do you guys have any questions?” the voice from the speakerphone asked.

  “Huh?” Ed and I both replied simultaneously. Oh, yeah, we had forgotten all about Jim. Hopefully, he hadn’t been saying anything important.

  Ed quickly un-muted the phone and said, “Nope. I think we’re good.”

  “Awesome!” Jim replied. “Then I’ll let you guys get back to work. Keep me updated on your projects.”

  “We will,” I answered, having no idea what projects he was talking about. A moment later, the call was cut off from his end. Oh, well, I could always tease the info out of him later with a carefully worded email. Besides, Jim was so far from the top of my priority list right then that he barely even existed.

  “Goddammit!” I cried and brought my fist down. The cheap folding table that served as our “conference room” immediately buckled, sending the phone clattering to the floor. Crap. Sometimes I forget that our furnishings aren’t exactly built to withstand vampire-level abuse.

  “I can see that you’re having a moment, Bill,” Ed replied nonchalantly, standing up. “Coffee?”

  “Sure. Blood and cream, if you don’t mind.”

  “No prob. Regular or Baileys?”

  “The latter. It’s going to be one of those days.”

  He nodded and walked from the room, leaving me alone with my rapidly darkening thoughts.

  I tell you, when life decides to kick you in the balls, it sometimes wears metal cleats. It seems like that’s been my existence for almost a year now, one big haymaker to the nuts after another. Oddly enough, that timeframe coincides just about perfectly with when I was turned into a vampire.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to get all weepy and angst filled. I’ll leave that shit to Anne Rice. No, the reality of being a vampire isn't about sitting around for millennia, writing shitty poetry while you pine for your lost mortal existence. It’s actually far more like being stuck in high school again, except this time it's for all eternity. This is fine if you happen to be one of the jocks. It’s not nearly as much fun if you’re in the vampire equivalent of the nerd herd. In short, the world of the undead is mostly run by assholes. The main problem is that, instead of growing up, they never mature past this stage and just wind up becoming bigger assholes as the centuries fly by.

  They’re not the only ones, either. In the past year, I’ve learned that there's an entire supernatural underworld that exists just outside of plain sight. Magic, monsters, and whatnot are all real...and almost all of them are dicks too. I know people say that absolute power corrupts, but they don’t know the half of it.

  It hasn’t been all bad, though. I have good friends and powerful allies. I’m the leader of my own coven of vampires. Heck, I’m even told that amongst the undead I’m special - and not in a short bus kind of way either. Still, it’s been a rough road. Most days, the plusses have been just barely enough to keep me from opening up the curtains and embracing the sunshine. That’s where she came in.

  Sheila is...err, was...an administrative assistant at my job. I first met her about four years ago, on the very day I first interviewed there. How I actually managed to get hired, I have no idea. I spotted her when I entered the office and it was as if everything else blanked out for me. To this day, I’m surprised that my paychecks are actually made out to William Ryder, as I’m fairly sure whatever I wrote on the job application was an incomprehensible scribble.

  Unfortunately, whatever powers dictate the concept of “love at first sight” are likewise also assholes (big surprise, huh?). It was not mutual. Therefore, I spent the next few years of my mortal life barely being able to say “hi” to her. All the while, she barely acknowledged my existence.

  Amazingly enough, my rebirth as one of the undead was actually the catalyst that helped propel our “relationship” out of the rut it was in (and probably would have stayed in). No, she doesn’t know I’m a vampire. No bullshit Twilight love story for me. Generally speaking, announcing the existence of vampires to humans is considered a no-no, at least if you don’t want to find yourself on the business end of a wooden stake. Sure, my roomies, Tom and Ed, know about it. A few of my other friends do too, but let’s not worry about them for right now. I mean hey, even Bruce Wayne has a few people who know that he’s Batman.

  Anyway, through a series of events that ended with me getting my ass thoroughly kicked (by a couple of vampire assassins and a douche bag wizard, who also happens to be a VP at my company), I momentarily forgot about my many insecurities and wound up asking Sheila out for coffee. Sure, it wasn’t much, but it was practically earth-shattering progress compared to what I had managed up until then. Imagine my surprise when she actually said “yes.” It was amazing. At my darkest hour, she was there like a beacon of hope.

  But now, she was gone, and I couldn’t help but feel that it was my fault.

  * * *

  Our fourth (and apparently last) non-date had been just a few weeks ago. On a Friday night, we had met at a café in the Village section of New York City. Normally this would be a little out of the way for me. For starters, I live in Brooklyn. Since I’m a vampire, things like working in an office during the day tend to be difficult. It’s generally pretty hard to get any work done when a stray beam of sunlight can turn you into a smoldering pile of ash. Fortunately, thanks to my doctor friend, Dave, I'm able to work from home. He wrote a bullshit medical excuse that allows me to telecommute permanently from my apartment. That being said, my coven is headquartered in SoHo and I’m usually there on the weekends anyway...

  Oh, who am I kidding? Fuck the coven! I would walk barefoot across the Sahara to spend five minutes with Sheila. If she had told me to meet her at the top of the Empire State Building at sunrise, I’d have been there in a heartbeat (if I had one).

  I had let her lead the conversation, as I usually did. Even though I had gotten past that first hurdle of actually asking her out, I didn’t trust myself to say too many sentences in a row without stammering like a retard. Still, as our coffee encounters continued, I was pleased to find myself becoming more comfortable in her presence.

  That night the conversation had turned, as they often do with twenty-something-year-olds, to our hopes and dreams for the future. I sputtered something to the effect of enjoying what I did and hoping that the world didn’t stop needing programmers anytime soon. It was a lie, but it was better than going off on some rant about being surrounded for all eternity by a bunch of immortals that looked and acted like spoiled underwear models.

  After I had finished, she stared at me for a moment. Sheila has the most stunning eyes, a soft grey color. I don’t think I could ever get tired of looking into them. After a brief pause, she replied, “I’m glad you’re happy. I don’t think there’re too many things better than earning a living off of something you enjoy (Oh, I could think of a few). For me, though...”

  “What?”

  “Well I think it’s pretty obvious I’m not exactly in a dream job.”

  “Has Jim been cracking the whip?”

  “No,” she said dismissively. “Don’t get me wrong, I like working for him. I just want...I don’t know...something more.”

  “That’s no surprise. Besides, what you do is just a stepping stone to something bigger.”

  “Maybe,” she replied. “I just don’t know if I have what it takes for whatever that something might be.�
��

  I laughed at that. She narrowed her eyes at me in response, causing me almost to choke on my latte. I quickly added, “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you. It’s just funny.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “You do all this stuff for Jim, me, and the rest of the team. You put together the presentations, you handle all the HR crap, and you update all of our project schedules...hell, that’s not even half of it. You keep the department running. Without you, we’d all fall on our faces.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Are you kidding?” I asked incredulously. “Remember when you took those sick days last year.”

  “It was a bad flu season.”