The Tome of Bill Compendium Vol. 1 (Books 1-4) (36 page)

This was it. No more bullshit. No more one-liners (
sadly
). I needed to end this if I wanted to have any chance of living to brag about it. Besides, I could always make up some cool shit after the fact. I mean it’s not like someone was videotaping this...hopefully.

I grabbed another beam from the rubble and started toward where Samuel had fallen. Amazingly, he was getting up again. He wasn’t looking too good, what with being poisoned by silver and on fire, but he still got back to his feet. I just hoped he was out of it enough for us not to repeat ourselves. I wasn’t sure I could take another hit from him without my head popping clean off.

We stared at each other across about ten feet of space. He staggered but managed to stay upright. He balled his fists defensively, and I raised my stake in return. A heartbeat passed, or it would have if either of us still had one. We locked eyes and prepared for the final charge. I couldn’t help but think there should have been some Ennio Morricone music playing in the background, like in
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
, but sadly there’s never a soundtrack when you need one.

I made my move first. I launched myself at him, and he...
exploded in a cloud of flame and dust
? What the fuck? I hadn’t even touched him yet. The least he could have done was wait until
after
I staked him to do that.

I was just beginning to wonder what had happened when the smoke from his explosion thinned out, and it all became crystal clear to me. Standing directly behind where Samuel had been just a moment before was Sally, her own broken two-by-four still in hand.

“What the hell?” I stammered.

“Typically, this is the point where you would say
thank you
,” she replied, smug grin etched onto her pretty face.

“I had him!” I insisted.

“Oh? Like you
had him
right before he punted your ass for a field goal?”

“You saw that?”

“Oh, I did better than that.” She pulled a
Flip
camcorder from her pocket and waved it at me. Bitch!

“And you didn’t help
why
?”

“I was curious to see if you’d get back up,” she answered with an even voice. “Just for the record, I was actually impressed that you did.”

“I’m flattered, I’m sure,” I said dryly.

“Oh, don’t be such a grouch. I’ll give you full credit...
again
. Of course, we’ll both know the truth,” she said with another little shake of the camera. “By the way, is it me, or is this starting to become a habit between us?”

“I didn’t need your help this time.”

“Oh, really?” she countered. She bent and started rooting through Samuel’s ashes. “Then why was I the one who finished him off?”

“That was a cheap shot.”

“Exactly!” she replied, picking a few things out of his remains. “Thus proving my tactical brilliance compared to you both.” She finished by tossing my roommate’s purloined silverware back to me. “Nice fork, by the way.”

“All in all, that went almost exactly as planned,” Sally cheerfully explained as we walked back to the main meeting room where the altercation had begun. The sounds of battle could still be heard in the building, but it seemed like things were winding down.

“Whose plan, exactly?” I asked. “
My
plan was to come here, hash out a truce with Samuel, and then go home. Last I checked,
my
plan didn’t include spending the last hour trying to keep him from rearranging my face.”

She shook her head and replied, “Sorry to break it to you, but there’s no way your little cease fire would have worked.”

“It might have if you hadn’t decided to bring every psycho in the coven along.”

“Like I said, all according to plan,” she pointed out in a tone one might’ve used on a particularly dimwitted child. “We killed two birds with one stone here. With Samuel gone, the rest of his gang won’t want to be within ten miles of us. As for our own side of things, I’m pretty sure we managed to purge some of the less pleasant elements of our own group. That’s what we like to call a win-win.”

She had a point...maybe, at least minus the excessive mass murder part of it. Still, I was pretty pissed off.

“You could have told me,” I growled as we entered the now deserted meeting room.

“You wouldn’t have gone along with it.”

“Exactly.”

“Hence why I didn’t tell you. Duh!” She rolled her eyes at me.

Occasionally I wished I was just a little more evil. If so, I’d have been almost tempted to make sure there was one more casualty added to the day.

* * *

We straightened up the room a little bit while Sally coached me on what to say. Once we had gotten the table and chairs set up again, she said, “Okay, you can call them all back now.”

“How? This whole building is a battle zone. There’s no way they’ll hear me.”

“Send it out as a compulsion.”

“And that will do
what
, exactly? I can’t control any of these vampires. They’re all older than me, or have your forgotten?”

“God, you are dense sometimes,” she sighed. “This has nothing to do with controlling them. If you send it out as a compulsion, every vamp in the building will hear it.”

“Oh. Okay, then.” Yeah, I guess that made sense. Every compulsion I had ever heard (
for lack of a better term
) had been up close and personal. But since there was a psychic element to it that probably meant it could carry further than the sound of the voice making it.

“Alright, so do it then,” she prodded.

I went to open my mouth, then hesitated. After a couple seconds of Sally staring quizzically at me, I smiled sheepishly back at her.

As expected, her response was another eye roll. “Don’t tell me you don’t know how to compel. You were supposed to be practicing these things.”

“I know,” I stammered. “But since I haven’t met any vamps I could potentially control yet...I kind of figured...what was the point?”

“And yet somehow you’re still alive while a two-century old master vampire is now a pile of dust. You must have a small regiment of guardian angels looking out for you.”

“No shit. I need at least half of them to protect me from you.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she replied. “Oh well, if you want something done...
THIS BATTLE IS OVER. SAMUEL HAS FALLEN!!
”

It wasn’t the loudest compulsion I’d ever heard (
or felt
), but it was apparently loud enough. The faint sounds of vampires beating the snot out of each other stopped almost immediately. As planned, I positioned myself at the head of the table, with Sally standing behind me as my subordinate. I put an expression of calm determination onto my face as best I could, which was saying something since turning my back on her was about the furthest thing I could think of to give myself a state of calm.

One by one, the various combatants began to filter back into the former meeting room. I said nothing. I merely gestured to the seats as each vampire arrived, waiting for the last of the survivors. It supposedly projected an aura of smug superiority regarding my victory, not to mention it also kept me from having to repeat myself over and over again. That was a good thing, as it lessened the chances of me saying something stupid that would just start the battle up all over again.

When a few minutes had passed since the last vampire returned, I took stock of the survivors. There was no mistaking which way the tide of battle had been turning. No matter the bloodlust some of my coven members might have been feeling, there were conspicuously less survivors on my side of things than on Samuel’s. That shouldn’t have surprised anyone. Jeff, the former master of Village Coven, tended to pick new members based on their looks and overall frat boy mentality. The HBC vamps, on the other hand, looked more like they had been recruited based on how many faces they had smashed in during their mortal life. If further
negotiations
went badly, it would be in our best interest to get the fuck out of Dodge as quickly as possible.

However, that possibility was still a major
if
. If I played my part well enough, there might be no need for that. Yeah, I know...another
if
.

As the last of the survivors took their seats, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the
souvenirs
Sally had dug from Samuel’s ashes. I tossed his fangs out onto the table as one might toss a pair of dice in a craps game. They tumbled end over end before stopping near the far edge. I glanced around and noticed all eyes were locked on them. The expressions around the table were all nearly identical, regardless of coven allegiance...abject disbelief. I expected this from the HBC vamps - but jeez, it would have been nice if even a few of my own ranks had a little faith in me. Assholes, each and every last one of them.

Oh well, this speech wasn’t going to make itself. Thus, I got things started again once the silence in the room became almost oppressive. “Who is Samuel’s second?” I asked in a neutral tone.

There was no immediate answer; instead, the various HBC survivors looked back and forth at each other, confusion evident on their faces. Sally had told me to expect as much. A vampire as old, relatively speaking, as Samuel tended to run a coven with an iron fist. A succession plan or even basic hierarchy was probably the furthest thing from his mind on a day-to-day basis. If that were the case, there would be confusion enough to distract these vampires as they sorted things out amongst themselves. It was sort of like the cartoons I used to watch as a kid. If
GI Joe
shot down
Cobra Commander
, they’d still have
Destro
and the
Baroness
to worry about. On the other hand, if
He-Man
ever took out
Skeletor
, the forces of evil would be pretty well fucked, as the rest of them were a bunch of numbnuts. We were pinning our hopes that Samuel was the Skeletor of his bunch.

“I am Samuel’s second!” one of the HBC vamps cried.

“The fuck you are!” another vampire immediately spat. Almost as if on cue, the rest of Samuel’s group started arguing amongst themselves. I couldn’t have planned it better had I tried.

The survivors of my own coven looked to me as if seeking direction. It was about fucking time. If they had bothered to do that at the beginning of things, we’d have a lot less dead vampires to vacuum up.

Oh well, there would be plenty of time to chew them out later. I motioned with my hand in a stay calm gesture, or what I hoped they interpreted as such. Fortunately, they did. Being on the losing side of a real life game of
Mortal Kombat
tends to have a sobering effect, even on a bunch of vicious nocturnal predators.

I continued to let the HBC members argue amongst themselves for a few more moments. I knew they wouldn’t even come close to any conclusions in that time, but it made things seem more convincing. Finally, I raised my voice above them all. “ENOUGH!” It wasn’t a compulsion, but it got their attention. Being the dude who just tossed your boss’s remains in front of you tends to make one rate a few notches higher on the
people to pay attention to
scale.

Once the table had again quieted down, I resumed. “Your internal politics are not my concern. Figure it out on your own time. What I care to know is whether any of you wish to continue Samuel’s quarrel with my people?” Yeah, that was total bullshit. Everyone here knew that the HBC’s grudge was against me and me alone; however, as coven leader, my fight was the entire group’s fight. Even I had to admit this job had a few perks.

When nobody answered, I locked eyes with the closest of Samuel’s team. In as cold and dead of a voice as I could muster, I asked, “Do you still want to fight?” After a second or two of the stare-down, he slowly shook his head. I then went down the line, asking the same thing to each and every HBC vamp in the room. Now
this
part I wish someone taped because, damn, I bet it looked badass. I felt like Don fucking Corleone, I tell you.

When I had reached the last one - and received the exact same answer from him as the rest - I said, “Regardless of whichever of you is now in charge, it appears that this coven war is over. We shall go back to where we were before and respect each other’s members and territory. Agreed?” When there was silence around the table for a bit too long, I repeated myself with a little more (
empty
) threat in my voice. “Agreed!?”

This time, there were nods all around the table from HBC and Village Coven vamps alike. “Very well. It is done. Only one final business remains. In accordance with the laws of our people, as the victor of this battle I may set forth further terms of my choosing.”

There were a lot of ugly looks around the table at that. Sally had told me of this little clause in vampire turf wars, with perhaps a little too much eager glee in her voice. I could use this time to do something like expand our own territory, demand that the Howard Beach Coven cede some of their membership numbers to us, or any such thing so as to further weaken them. No wonder she hadn’t wanted a successful treaty. Little miss hot pants behind me had herself some ambition.

“The terms are,” every eye in the room was upon me, “this safe house is pretty trashed. Clean this place the fuck up, okay, guys?”

There was an audible gasp of relief from the HBC vamps, as well as a sharp intake of breath behind me that my sensitive vampire ears picked up on. I could feel Sally’s eyes boring holes in the back of my head. Heh! Fuck you, bitch. This’d teach her to remember that I wasn’t her little boy toy to screw with as she pleased. Well, okay, maybe that was a poor way to phrase it. Sally had looks that would make her seem right at home on the cover of
Cosmo
. If she and the phrase ‘screw with me as she pleased’ ever came up, who was I to argue?