The Tome of Bill (Book 7): The Wicked Dead

• Prologue: Destiny’s Bitch
  
• Part 1
  
• Bartender in Training
  
• Welcome to Crazy Town
  
• Busy Little Bees Buzzing Around
  
• The Mean Streets
  
• Twenty Sides of Terror
  
• The Douchetastic Four
  
• Hunkering Down
  
• Wrath of the Defilers
  
• Meet and Greet
  
• Should I Stay or Should I Go?
  
• The Bitching Hour
  
• The Telephone Game
  
• Vamanos, Muchachos
  
• A Rare Blood Type Indeed
  
• Dreamscape
  
• The Call of the Wild
  
• Deal With the Devil
  
• Fire and Brimstone
  
• Like Oil in Holy Water
  
• Uneasy Alliances
  
• The First Step of Many
  
• The Sisterhood of the Traveling Skull
  
• Head Games
  
• War Party
  
• Catching Up
  
• Down on the Farm
  
• The Long Kiss Goodbye
  
• Part 2
  
• Raising the Stakes
  
• Score of a Lifetime
  
• Shit Storm
  
• A Turd in the Hand...
  
• Prisoners of War
  
• The Last to be First
  
• The Rebel Alliance
  
• First to Escape
  
• Not You Again!
  
• Pound Puppies
  
• The Monster Squad
  
• War of the Gargantuas
  
• Midnight Tryst
  
• Pillow Walk
  
• Gee, Didn’t See That Coming
  
• Sight Seeing
  
• Doctor’s Note
  
• Pandemonium
  
• Out of the Frying Pan
  
• The Big Bad
  
• One Shall Fall
  
• Greasy Kid Stuff
  
• A Small Problem
  
• Infiltration
  
• Undead Alive
  
• Class Reunion
  
• That Sinking Feeling
  
• The Choice
  
• The Sacrifices We Make
  
• All Hell Breaks Loose
  
• To Destroy The Destroyer
  
• Freewill Versus Freewill
  
• Face Off
  
• Sting Like a Bee
  
• The Cleanup Crew
  
• Unexpected Company
  
• First Base
  
• The End Days
  
• The Spine Crushing Epilogue
  
• Author’s Note
  
• About the Author
  
• Bonus Chapter
  

THE WICKED DEAD

The Tome of Bill

Part 7

Rick Gualtieri

Copyright © 2015 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 greatly appreciated.

All characters in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, 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.

Edited by Megan Harris:

www.mharriseditor.com

Cover by Mallory Rock:

www.malloryrock.com

Proofread by BZ Hercules:

www.bzhercules.com

Published by Westmarch Publishing

www.westmarchpub.com

The Wicked Dead (The Tome of Bill, Part 7)

There are reasons we fear the night. Now he must become one of them.

Bill Ryder has a powerful destiny. He just never expected it to involve an amnesiac bloodsucker, a bunch of D&D dorks, and a hormonal witch. It's time for the gamer, geek, and legendary vampire to embrace his fate. Ordered to storm the vampire stronghold in Boston, Bill must approach the doorstep of the invincible undead warlord he's destined to face. It's his only chance of stopping Armageddon.

As his enemies stand in his way and his allies falter, the vicious beast inside of him wants out. If he stands tall and faces his fate, the world might just have a chance of surviving. If he fails, an unquenchable evil will destroy everything Bill knows and loves.

Why can't the end of the world ever be easy?

For that circle of close friends I keep. You may be small in number, but you mean the world to me. You inspire me, listen to me vent when I have to, and smack me upside the head when I need it.

Special thanks to my awesome alpha and beta crews – Alissa, Ruby, Solace, Chris, Evgenia, Matt, Adam, Scott, Angela, Don, and Jim. I couldn’t have done this without your help. You pimp-slapped this story into line, kept me grounded, and also helped remind me that Wolverine’s claws go SNIKT, not SNICKT.

How the hell did I end up here?

Not in this actual place, mind you. That one is pretty damn easy. I mean, I live here – not actually in the bathroom, of course. I’m talking
here
in a metaphysical sense anyway.

See, not too long ago, I died and was resurrected as one of the fiendish ... err ... fiends of the night – the nosferatu, which I’m pretty sure is a movie name and not a scientific classification. In laymen’s terms, I got bitten and woke up as a vampire.

That was fucking weird enough, but it was only the tip of the iceberg. Things snowballed from there, all the way to a problem that sorta concerns the end of the world. Pretty heady stuff for a guy whose typical weekend used to involve little more than getting shitfaced.

Sadly, there’s a supernatural war raging, one fated to lead to an end state not entirely dissimilar to the Biblical Armageddon.

It gets even better. Through actions not entirely my fault, I am afforded the
privilege
of receiving credit for starting this war. Go me!

But that’s not all. According to a bunch of dusty old scrolls – ones that I’m not even allowed to read – I’m supposed to be a major player in its outcome.

All in all, it’s a nightmare I can’t seem to wake up from.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I’m no hero. I’m just a...

Wait a second. Was I actually about to go off into a whining bitch-fest about never asking for any of this? Ugh. That’s it; I’ve become a fucking movie cliché. I might as well change my last name to Potter and resign myself to the fact that, no matter what I do, the dumbasses in charge will be too fucking stupid to stop anything without my stepping in and winning the Tri-wizard Tournament or some shit like that.

Any of a dozen movie plotlines run through my head, and they’re all more or less the same: reluctant hero must believe in himself because destiny cannot be denied ... blah blah blah. Goddamn, are there no original stories left to tell? Oh well, at least most of them aren’t musicals. According to my sixth-grade band teacher, if I was forced to play for my supper, I’d die a slow death by starvation.

Any way you look at it, I’ve been shoehorned into a role I don’t want – especially right now. If anything, I have plenty of other shit to keep my mind occupied, some pretty good stuff at that.

Hell, two blonde goddesses live just one floor below me – either one of which I would be more than happy to call my girlfriend, lover, or chick who occasionally fucks my brains out but otherwise treats me like shit. One of them is a plucky, mind-scrambled vampire who, if attitude were ice cubes, could sink the fucking Titanic. The other is my former co-worker turned ancient enemy that I am destined to one day battle to the death. Shit, entire romance series have been written about crap like that.

Yet, with all that potential, I’m distracted from what should come naturally. I mean, I’m locked in a bathroom. Under normal circumstances, I’d be more than happy to indulge my imagination so as to take care of
business
– if you catch my drift.

Instead, I’m standing here looking at myself in the mirror – glancing fleetingly into my own eyes, knowing there might be something else inside of me staring back ... hell, almost daring it to.

Almost
, anyway.

I’m still not sure I want to kick that particular nest too hard. It’s one thing to be stung by a honeybee. Sure it hurts, but unless you’re allergic, it’s not the end of the world.

What lurks inside the deep reaches of my mind, though, is more the equivalent of those giant nightmare hornets they have in Japan. Hell, I wouldn’t doubt those things are less insect and more a faction in this war. If I ever found myself standing between an angry Sasquatch and a swarm of those fuckers, I’d...

I shake my head to clear it. Distractions aren’t particularly helpful when it comes to getting anything done, and I’ve always been more susceptible to them than most. Almost makes me wonder if my parents should’ve put my ass on Ritalin back when I was in grade school. Hell, it’s not like I’ve never subscribed to the better living through chemistry trope. Why, I remember this one time Tom and I got so stoned, we...

I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Seems to be the story of my life. Anyway, my point had nothing to do with any of that crap.

The truth for me is that it’s all about fear. It always has been.

There have been so many things I’ve wanted in my life – some of those being more people than things – yet I’ve never wanted them badly enough to actually do anything substantial about it. It’s always some excuse: I’m too busy, too shy, too dead ...
too afraid
.

That last one’s the real kicker. I might as well throw all the other excuses out the window. No matter how many ass-kickings I got in school, bosses who have bitched me out at work, or horrors I’ve faced down since becoming one of the undead, there’s always been one underlying factor. I’ve always been too afraid to do anything that could really move the needle.

A part of me wants to argue that’s bullshit. Hell, in the past year alone, I’ve faced down nightmares that would make normal people shit themselves copiously. We’re talking master vampires, assassins, rock monsters, Bigfoot, and even Gan. You’d think that would make me pretty darn brave, but I know better. That stuff was little more than a willingness to do whatever was necessary to keep breathing, all so I could eventually return here again and resume a life comfortably stuck in neutral.

I mean, have I taken the time to study vampire history and learn what I can? Aside from the prodding of others, have I taken it upon myself to train so as to best use my supernatural abilities? Hell, despite working with her for three years, dragging her into this war, and now living less than twenty feet above her, did I ever once sit Sheila down and do what should be the easiest thing in the world for a yappy fucker like me – talk?

Deep down, I know the answer to all of that.

I also know it won’t get the job done this time.

* * *

Again, I stare at my reflection in the mirror, but this time I don’t look away. My brain is too busy working overtime to process this little intervention I’m giving myself in my own bathroom – a bathroom that, quite frankly, could use a good bleaching.

Many of the movie plots running through my head share exactly what I’m thinking – heroes who were afraid to face their destinies, yet somehow got sucked into them anyway.

The more they fought against their fate, the stronger fate pulled them in. It’s not much different with me, except that most fiction is a pleasant lie meant to make us feel good. In real life, reluctant heroes probably find little more than an early grave waiting for them at the end of their story.

And that’s when a revelation hits me.

It’s so simple, I’m tempted to slap the shit out of myself for not thinking of it sooner.

I look at myself and say, “Reverse psychology, you stupid motherfucker.”

If I keep fighting against what needs to be done, I’ll eventually find myself in a final showdown – one I very much doubt I’ll win. I mean, destiny seems to love its fucking irony.

But what if I manned up? If that happened, maybe the universe wouldn’t find my eventual fate so amusing. Maybe it would decide the Draculas and Sasquatches could clean up their own fucking mess without using me as their personal jizz mopper.