The Tome of Bill (Book 6): Half A Prayer (17 page)

Sally turned to me. “Bill?”

After a second, I picked up on her meaning. I took a deep sniff of the air. Ed’s odor still lingered and the smell of the Jahabich was stronger than ever, but as for Vlad, there was no...oh, wait. “Here he comes,” I said pointing off to a far corner.

I was half amazed. For a second there, I’d been sure he’d volunteered for duty as the obligatory red shirt of the team. Sure enough, though, his form resolved itself as he stepped out from behind some rocks.

And that’s when the wall followed him, malevolent orange eyes opening a split second before the attack.

There was no chance to shout so much as a warning before the creature hit him square in the back. The sound of breaking bone reverberated around the cavern as Vlad’s spine shattered like fine china.

A gargled scream escaped his throat as the creature bent him over backwards and bared its wicked teeth. The mouth of the Jahabich opened impossibly wide for a moment and then snapped shut, taking Vlad’s head and a sizeable chunk of his chest cavity with it.

“We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” I gasped.

“Got one,” Sally replied, chambering a round in her shotgun.

I expected it to charge us, but much to our surprise, the creature turned tail and ran - even as Vlad’s remains sparked up and littered the ground with dust where he’d stood only moments before.

“Let’s go, Bill. I don’t want that asshole getting away and ratting us out. Brock, you stay and guard...”

“
Unnecessary
,” a voice spoke from somewhere behind us.

I somehow managed not to entirely shit myself as we all spun to face another one of the monsters. Damn - for living rock gardens, they could sure be quiet when they wanted. Sadly, my enhanced nose was of absolutely no advantage with them, especially now that their earthy stench assaulted me from all sides.

“
We are aware of you
,” the creature said in its gravelly voice. Almost immediately, its features melted together and, within moments, it was gone, replaced by the form of Kristofer that it had used to trick me into opening the gate. “We...I know you, coven master.” Its voice now eerily resembled that of our former coven-mate. The only telling sign was the black teeth, sharp as knives, which showed as he opened his mouth. “You show compassion for your people. We knew you would eventually come. We just thought it would be for the Freewill once we took him.”

“I’m standing right here, you know.”

It ignored my protest and continued on. “Imagine the surprise that it was a human that brought you to us...unless you know what he is.”

“He’s a pet, nothing more,” Sally growled, stepping forward. “I lost him and want him back, that’s all. Thanks for finding him. Here’s your reward, by the way.”

The move would have made Sarah Connor weep for joy. In one fluid motion, Sally brought the shotgun up to hip level and fired. The shot rang true and the explosive round hit home, square in the Kristofer clone’s face, erasing his smile and most of everything else.

Before the sound of the blast had subsided, the Jahabich had resumed its true form, with the exception of a foot-wide crater where its face used to be. An orange glow flickered inside the wound for a moment before going out for good. It fell backward and landed with a dull thud.

“Subtle,” I said.

“I’m a get-to-the-point kind of girl.” She turned and flashed me a smile full of fang. Goddamn, she was hot when she was like this.

Unfortunately, now was not the time to wonder whether it was too late in the day to be sporting morning wood. Unsurprisingly, Kristofer’s funeral was going to be well attended as pairs of orange eyes appeared in the myriad tunnels around us - minus maybe the one we’d entered through.

I won’t lie and say I wasn’t tempted to bolt. I could have probably beaten them all to the cave and then raced up the wall. From there, it would just be a matter of heading up until I found a manhole cover and...

It was a nice fantasy, but it wasn’t going to happen - at least not until all of us, including Ed, could make the journey together. Still, a small part of me wished I was a wee bit more of a coward. The number of Jahabich approaching our position easily equaled the force that had struck Pandora’s Box, but down here, we didn’t have the advantage of any choke points.

“Any thoughts?”

“Yeah,” Sally said, chambering another round. “We blow holes in them until we get bored and then we celebrate the Fourth of July.” Her hand reached back and unzipped her pack, no doubt for easy access to her stash of grenades. Oh boy, this was gonna get messy.

“Works for me,” Miranda said. Her body began to glow a furious red, and I was forced to step away from her lest my eyebrows get singed. Sally did likewise, probably less for her body hair and more to keep from prematurely blowing us all into bite-sized chunks.

Oh well, when in Rome. I unshouldered my weapon and prepared to use it. The nice thing about shotguns and multiple enemies was that one didn’t need to be a Navy SEAL sniper to be effective.

“Come on, assholes!” Sally leveled her gun and appeared to be deciding between targets. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“Oh, Lucinda, you always were such a poor liar,” a smooth voice said from behind the creatures, further back in the cave.

The sea of rock monsters parted to let the speaker through. A guy of about medium height and build strode toward us. He maybe had a few extra pounds around the middle, but he wore it well, dressed as he was in an expensive-looking suit. To say that he looked out of place down here was definitely stating the obvious.

“No way,” Brock exclaimed as if he knew him.

“Is it me, or does that guy look a bit like you, minus the glasses?” Miranda asked me.

“I don’t see the resemblance.” I raised my gun. “But even if he does, he’s going to look like me minus a head in a second.”

To my surprise, though, Sally stepped in front of us, her own weapon lowered - her guard down.

“Mark?”

“Who the fuck is Mark?” I asked, breaking the momentary silence.

To say Sally’s reaction was a mind-scramble was the understatement of the century. I’d never known her to react to, well, much of anything in a way that wasn’t cool, calm, and psychotically detached. Needless to say, time stopped for a moment - at least for us - in quite possibly the worst situation in the world for a smoke break. Thankfully, the creatures surrounding us seemed to be waiting for some cue to smash our heads in. Ah, standoffs - allowing people to trade awesome last words since time immortal.

“I killed you,” she said quietly.

“Another lie,” he replied, raising a finger in a
tsk tsk
manner. “Technically, the Jahabich did the work...oh, and you
tried
to kill me. I believe that makes twice now that you’ve left me for dead. Sadly for you, all that seems to ever happen is I keep coming back better than before, lover.”

Lover
? “Who is this clown and, more importantly, why is he under the impression that you’ve banged him?” My question was purposely intended to get a rise out of her - as well as sate my morbid curiosity - but I might as well have been in an entirely different cavern full of deadly monsters for all the reaction it got.

She turned to me, but it wasn’t out of anger. Instead, she had a sort of deer-in-the-headlights look to her. That wasn’t particularly promising. It’s never a good sign when the proverbial immoveable object suddenly loses its shit. “Bill, I...”

“Bill, is it?” Mark, claimant to knowledge of Sally’s nether regions, asked. “You wouldn’t happen to be that legendary Freewill we’ve all heard so much about?”

“Well, I don’t like to brag. Legendary is such an egomaniacal word, even if it is true.”

He shifted his gaze back to Sally. “I have to say I’m a bit disappointed that you traded down to this.”

“Traded
down?
” I put a hand up to stay Miranda, who was about to start with the shooting again. “Look at you. Trust me, dude, a dork knows another dork when he sees one. The fanciest suit in the world can’t change reality. Don’t even try telling me you’ve never rolled a percentile die at the gaming table.”

“That stuff was a bit after my time, I’m afraid...although I did read a lot of Asimov back when I was younger, if that helps.”

“Really? I kinda dug the Foundation books, but his robot novels were a bit dry for me.”

“I’d agree, but I preferred the Starr series over...”

“Oh, enough of this bullshit!” Sally cried, seemingly jolted out of her funk. She reached into her pouch and produced a grenade. My god, some people just couldn’t handle a little geeking out.

Sadly, the Jahabich were more than ready for her. She’d just barely had time to remove the pin when the creatures were upon her. One closed its mouth over the hand holding the explosive, severing her fingers in the process. Before she could so much as scream, another clubbed her hard in the side, splattering the canteens of blood and sending her flying.

The creature who’d eaten the grenade clamped its mouth shut just as the explosive went off. All that was produced was a muffled boom of sound, followed by its eyes flickering out as it fell to the ground, dead. Whoa, talk about suffering for the cause.

Unfortunately, the time for talking was quite plainly finished and we held the short end of the stick. The creatures converged upon us. The last thing I saw before being swarmed was Mark’s countenance melt away, only to be replaced with the soulless orange eyes of one of those monsters.

“
Yes, we agree that it is enough. It is time for you to join us now
.”

* * *

Amazingly, I found myself still alive several minutes later. The Jahabich attack had been for the purpose of subduing us, not outright killing our asses. That was always a good thing. I, for one, would always take torture with the possibility of escape over my head stuck on a pike, but I’ve always been a glass-half-full kind of guy.

That didn’t mean we were exactly in great shape. Not killed wasn’t the same thing as ready to rumble. To put it mildly, they’d pretty much clubbed us into submission. Brock and I had gotten a generic pummeling; nothing our vampire healing couldn’t fix. Miranda clearly had a broken nose, freely bleeding, as well as a matching set of black eyes. I had little doubt she was likewise missing a few teeth. Aside from that, though, she was mostly just bruised up.

Sally, on the other hand, had taken the brunt of it. Currently, all she had left on her right hand was a semi-intact thumb. Thankfully, the nubs that had been her fingers had scabbed over. Even so, by the way she was limping and holding her side, it was clear her insides had been scrambled too. Even more telling was the hungry way she kept eyeing Miranda. I had a feeling if I didn’t keep Sally’s mind off of things, our resident witch would soon be covered in bite marks in addition to her other injuries.

We were being marched forward together in a group, the Jahabich surrounding us at least three thick on every side. Our weapons had been removed and smashed to bits and the rest of our belongings discarded like a pile of rubbish. All that we had left were the clothes upon our backs as they led us down one of the myriad caves leading out of the massive cavern.

As casually as I could, I managed to step between Sally and Miranda to try to keep any casualties inflicted by our side limited to the bad guys.

“So tell me about your rock monster boyfriend,” I asked idly.

Sally just glared at me.

“Seriously, now would be a good time to share.” I lowered my voice to a bare whisper. “If there’s anything you know that could help us here...”

She glanced around. I had the feeling she was looking for the monstrosity named Mark. What the fuck? Talk about anticlimactic. Back when we’d first encountered Vehron, we’d called him Chuck as kind of a goof so we didn’t have to keep referring to him as that badass vamp who scared the shit out of us. His real name, however, ended with “the Destroyer.” I could respect that. But this clown who’d just captured us...really? I sincerely hoped to find out later that maybe he was called something awesome like The Deathbringer or The Harvester of Souls. For some rock monster nerd named Mark to take us down so easily was just embarrassing.

“Right before they fed me my own teeth,” I said, “I saw your boy toy head out ahead of us. I’m pretty sure he’s not in this crowd.” I looked around, noticing that the Jahabich pretty much all looked alike in their rock forms. “Maybe.”

“That’s not Mark,” Sally said at last.

“He seemed pretty sure he was.”

“He can’t be. I saw him die.”

“Okay, that’s a start, but let’s back up a bit. Why did he call you
lover?
”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, it’s because we dated a long time ago.”

“Is this really necessary?” Miranda turned and asked, unaware of how close she was to becoming Sally’s next chew toy.

“Mind your Ps and Qs, sister,” I replied. “Inquiring minds want to know.”

I turned back to Sally. “So was this an ‘opposites attract’ kind of thing? Two ships, or boulders, passing in the night?”

“No, stupid,” Sally growled. “We were both human at the time...ugh!”

She stumbled, holding on to her side, which still freely dripped blood - although whether it was hers or the remains of our canteen stash, I wasn’t sure. Regardless, I caught her before she could fall and let her support herself against me. Amazingly enough, she didn’t put up a protest. I guess she was hurt worse than she let on.

“Okay, so you were both human...crazy kids in love.” I looked around as I said this. They were leading us down a long, wide tunnel, dimly lit by whatever had given light to the cavern we’d come from. “So then you vamped out and what...he got bombarded by cosmic rays and became The Thing?”

“It wasn’t like that,” she gasped. “I was turned first, and then I killed him.”

“On purpose?” For just a moment, the mask of bitchiness fell off of her face and I saw real pain; pain that had nothing to do with her injuries. I immediately felt bad about the question. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s the same story as with any other of our kind. I couldn’t control myself.”