Night Stalker: from the Tome of Bill Series Page 10
At that, Sally unzipped her purse. She reached inside and pulled out the biggest handgun I’d ever seen.
“If you hadn’t then you would have still won. I’d just have needed to do a little extra recruiting for the coven when it was all over.”
I stared hard at her, my mouth agape, trying to sense if there was any deception in what she was telling me. In the end, though, I had to accept a simple truth: I’d underestimated her once again. I’d thought I was the puppet master, when all along she’d been pulling my strings.
She walked up and slipped an arm around mine. “Come on, coven master. I could use a drink. It’s been a long night.”
That was the truth. “Okay. Maybe we’ll make it a double.”
“But first you need to lose the stupid costume.”
“This?” I replied in mock horror. “How dare you profane a hero’s uniform? Besides, doesn’t it turn you on just the slightest?”
“Nope.”
“You could be the Black Canary to my Green Arrow.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
“The Lois Lane to my Superman?”
Sally patted her purse. “Care to see if you’re bulletproof?”
“Maybe some other time.” I laughed as we walked out of the warehouse. Knowing the life I’d found myself thrust into, I had a feeling there was a pretty good chance of that happening sooner rather than later anyway. For tonight, though, it was enough to know I could hang up my cape and enjoy the rest of the evening in peace.
THE END
Bill Ryder will return in:
Scary Dead Things (The Tome of Bill, Part 2)
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BONUS CHAPTER
Scary Dead Things
The Tome of Bill, Part 2
Note to self: don’t listen to Ed’s advice. Traffic was surprisingly light for a Sunday night. I was sitting in the passenger seat of Ed’s two-seater piece-of-shit, watching the miles slide by. My roommate was behind the wheel. We were heading south on Route 287 toward the Outerbridge Crossing. He had been good enough to come down and give me a ride back home, which kind of made sense as it had been his counsel that had given me cause to want to flee back to the relative safety of Brooklyn. Nevertheless, I was glad for the ride. It had turned out to be a long weekend, and I was in no mood to deal with the idiocies of mass transit to get back home.
Since it was early Fall, there was no Jersey Shore traffic to contend with. Even so, considering it was only about six PM, traffic was pretty light heading toward Staten Island. It was that lull that tended to happen around late September or early October. People were still burnt out from the summer, and the holiday rush was a good month or so off. This was one of those rare times when people mostly stayed put. In short, the asshole ratio on the roads was low. I liked times like this. Sadly, they were too few and far between as of late.
We had been listening to some rock music on the radio, or at least what the DJ was calling rock. There were very few real rock stations left in Jersey. Most played either classic rock, which was mostly tolerable, or a combination of lousy ballads and pop rock (which had barely enough guitar riffs to be outside of the Justin Bieber demographic). We had been discussing how kick-ass rock music was such a rare commodity when my cell rang.
I’d been expecting it. I picked it up and answered with an innocuous, “Hello?”
“William, is there something you would like to tell me?” asked my Dad.
Uh oh. That wasn’t a good sign. If he was calling me William, it meant he had noticed the little mistake I had left behind from my weekend of house sitting.
I decided to do what I did best, play dumb. “Nope. It was a quiet weekend, Dad.”
“I’m sure it was,” he replied in a tone that said he didn’t even remotely believe me. “Your mother and I appreciate you coming down and keeping an eye on the place while we were at the beach.” The beach in this case being the many casinos down in Atlantic City.
“No problem, Dad! Anyway, well I gotta...”
“Hold it!” commanded the voice on the other end. “I guess I won’t beat around the bush. What the hell did you do to Angel?” At the mention of her favorite cat, I could hear my mother wailing and carrying on in the background. It pretty much sounded like she was in the middle of a major freak-out. Not too surprising, all things considered.
“Mom sounds kind of upset.”
“I noticed,” my father said, sarcasm oozing out of his voice. “Do you want to know why?” he asked, despite the fact that I had a pretty good idea and he most likely knew it.
“Why?” I asked innocently.
“Because right now she’s vacuuming up a pile of Angel dust.”
“Angel dust? You know, she should hold on to that. I hear the street value’s off the charts if it’s the good stuff.”
“I’m not laughing, William.”
“Sorry, sir,” I automatically replied, despite being an adult, having a job, living on my own, and ... oh yeah ... being a freaking vampire. “What happened?” I asked, genuinely curious. After all, I wasn’t entirely sure how things had played out ... especially since I’d made it a point to bug out before my parents got home, even going so far as donning a hoodie, sunglasses, and ski mask so as to brave the daylight without bursting into flames. It probably wasn’t the manliest way I could have handled the situation, but I’ve always thought there’s a fine line between bravery and idiocy. Sticking around would have definitely crossed that line.
“When we got home, your mother noticed the cat was acting a little strange,” my father explained. “It was hissing and carrying on.”
I again adopted an innocent tone. “They’re cats. They go loopy every now and then.”
“Don’t be stupid. You know Angel,” he chided. “You could step on the stupid cat’s ... sorry, dear ... head, and she wouldn’t bat a whisker. But not today. When we got home, she was going absolutely nuts. And there was something wrong with her eyes. They had gone all black like a shark’s. That definitely was not normal.”
“Distemper?” I unhelpfully offered.
“Not unless it was the most extreme case of distemper there’s ever been,” Dad continued. “Your mom was a mess. Made me go get the cat carrier so we could rush her to the vet.” Oh boy, I think I knew where this was going. “I had the damnedest time getting her in it, too. Little bitch kept going after me.”
“She didn’t bite you, did she?” I hadn’t considered that earlier. I wasn’t even sure she could pass it back to humans, but it was a risk I wasn’t really willing to take ... at least not with my parents.
“No, but she came damn close. I had to put on some work gloves to finally get her in. Then it got weird.”
Yeah, I bet it did. “I’m listening.”
“Your mom got in the car, but I had left my wallet in the house. I sat the cat carrier out on the walk and went back inside to grab it, and then...”
“In the sun?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“What?”
“Did you leave the carrier in the sun?” I repeated.
“I don’t know. I guess so. What does it matter?” he asked irritably. “All I know is that one minute it’s quiet, and the next I hear your mother carrying on like a mad woman. I ran back outside, and do you know what I found? The cat carrier was on fire. I’m not just talking a few sparks either. It was like someone doused it with rocket fuel.”
I was definitely starting to get a sinking feeling in my stomach.
Dad continued with his gruesome tale. “By the time I got the hose, though, the fire was already out. The damnedest thing was the cat. I was expecting her to be all burnt up, but there was nothing left. She was completely vaporized. All that was left was a pile of ashes with her collar sticking out of it.”
“Wow. That’s ... bizarre,” I said, severely understating the whole thing.
“Yes, bizarre is one word for it. So
that’s why I want to know whether or not anything odd happened this weekend while you were around.”
“No idea,” I lied. “Like I said, Dad, it was a slow weekend. Barely saw the cat. She kept to herself. Other than that, not much going on ... hello, Dad? Dad? I’m losing you. We’re heading into a tunnel. I’ll buzz you back when...” and then I disconnected the call as I had no idea what else to say.
Ed and I drove on for another mile or so, and then he said, “I know I only caught part of that conversation...”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He ignored me anyway. “But was that about what I think it was?”
I sighed and decided I might as well confess. It was going to be a long drive otherwise. “My mom’s cat, Angel...”
“Yes?”
“I kinda, might have...”
“Yes?”
“Turned her into a vampire,” I finished.
“YOU WHAT?!” he yelled, just barely managing to keep the car from swerving off the road.
“Turned it into a vampire.”
“Why?”
“It was an accident.”
“How was it an accident?”
“Well, as you had suggested, I got pretty wrecked this weekend,” I said with a guilty grin.
“And how does that lead to an immortal demon cat?”
“Well, like I said, I was pretty messed up. I guess when vampires get the munchies they don’t automatically go for the nachos like everyone else.”
“That’s fucked up, man.”
“I know.”
“It’s your mom’s cat!”
“Was my mom’s cat.”
“I mean, I don’t even like cats,” he continued, “and I still think that’s fucked.”
“Yes, I get it. I didn’t mean to vampirize the damn cat. It just kind of happened.”
“Is that even a word?”
“It is now,” I snapped. “And then when she woke up from it...”
“I’m listening.”
“I guess I kind of fooled myself into thinking that maybe I had dreamt it all.”
“I take it from your dad’s call that you were wrong on that front.”
“Definitely not a dream.”
“Fucked up,” he repeated.
We drove on again in silence for a few minutes until I heard Ed chortle. I turned to see him grinning and trying ... and failing ... to suppress laughter.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“I was just thinking...”
“Yeah?”
“There is a bright side.”
“Do tell.”
“When we get home, you at least get to tell Tom about how you got to eat some pussy this weekend,” he said, finally cracking up laughing.
“Not funny,” I said, but it was a lie. Put that way, it was actually pretty goddamned hilarious. I soon joined my roommate. We laughed for a good long while until my phone rang again.
“Oh shit,” I said, tears still pouring down my face.
“Time to get back on the clock, my man,” Ed commented.
He was right. I couldn’t put this off. I just hoped I could think of something to tell my parents that sounded more convincing than, “Sorry for vampirizing your cat, Mom and Dad.” I picked up the phone and answered it.
“Listen. Tell Mom I’m sorry about her cat.”
“Tell her your damn self,” replied Sally from the other end. “I’m not your goddamned answering service.”
“What?” I blurted out. “What are you doing on the line, Sally?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was lonely, what with you on vacation and all, and thought maybe I’d give you a buzz so you could talk dirty to me. But I’m afraid I have to draw the line at letting you call me mommy ... or daddy, for that matter,” she quipped.
“I can think of a few other words for you.”
“I’m sure you can, but think of them while you’re packing. Vacation’s over.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” she said with an impatient sniff.
“Why am I packing?”
“Because that’s what people do when they take a trip, unless they plan on traveling naked, and if that’s your plan then please let me know so I can make sure I never have the same itinerary as you.”
“Hold on. What trip?”
“The one you’re taking,” she said as if speaking to a moron.
“Why don’t we start over, and you tell me what’s going on?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” she replied in that annoyingly chipper tone she adopted whenever she knew she was pissing me off. “You’re going to China.”
“What?! Why the hell would I be going to China?”
“James’s orders. He called and requested your presence.”
“Why?”
“Beats me. You can ask him that in person in about two days.”
“I don’t even have a passport,” I protested.
“Wow, that’s kind of sad,” she said. “Not surprising, mind you, just sad. Fortunately, you don’t need one.”
“Why wouldn’t I need a passport to get into China?” I asked. “Pretty sure they check those things there.”
“Because it’s a long flight, and since commercial airlines tend to have rules against their passengers going up in smoke when sunlight hits them, I made some alternate arrangements.”
“Define alternate arrangements.”
“You, my friend,” she replied, putting even more chipperness into her voice, “have been booked into a first class coffin in the cargo hold.”
“WHAT?!” I screamed into the phone.
“You’re welcome. By the way, you might want to pack a pillow.” Click.
Bitch!
* * *
Scary Dead Things
Available in ebook, paperback, and audio
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rick Gualtieri lives alone in central New Jersey with only his wife, three kids, and countless pets to both keep him company and constantly plot against him. When he’s not busy monkey-clicking words, he can typically be found jealously guarding his collection of vintage Transformers from all who would seek to defile them.
Defilers beware!
Rick Gualtieri is the author of:
Bill the Vampire (The Tome of Bill - 1)
Night Stalker: A Tome of Bill Series Companion
Scary Dead Things (The Tome of Bill - 2)
The Mourning Woods (The Tome of Bill - 3)
Holier Than Thou (The Tome of Bill - 4)
Sunset Strip: A Tome of Bill Series Companion
Goddamned Freaky Monsters (The Tome of Bill - 5)
Half A Prayer (The Tome of Bill - 6)
The Wicked Dead (The Tome of Bill - 7)
Shining Fury: A Tome of Bill Series Companion
The Last Coven (The Tome of Bill - 8)
The Tome of Bill Series: Volume One
Bigfoot Hunters
The Poptart Manifesto