The Tome of Bill Compendium Vol. 1 (Books 1-4) (60 page)

“Talk!?” Sally snapped. “Are you that desperate for a piece of ass that you’re actually considering having a little sit-down over lunch to discuss things with the same psycho witch who tried to kill your best friend last night?”

“Do you really want to know the answer to that?” Ed asked before turning to me. “And this Decker dude, he was actually dating your wannabe lady friend just to mess with you?”

“Yep.”

“That’s cold, man. Bet you wish you had let Gan gut the sucker.”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe. But the whole thing is like a slippery slope. What if he had just been some normal guy out on a date?”

“If pigs had wings, they’d be eagles,” Ed answered.

“All’s fair in love and war,” was Tom’s response. Damn, my roommates just weren’t being helpful at all. If I listened to their advice, I’d be Jack the Ripper within a week. Who’d have thought Sally’s would have been the voice of sanity amongst us all? Oh well, best not to dwell on it too much now. That way leads to madness.

“Okay,” I said, trying to get us back on track. “You know what happened to us...sorta. I’m still not sure what went down after Sally got turned into a southpaw. But that’s not important right now. What I’m curious about is what the hell happened to you two?”

Ed replied, “Like we said. No idea. We woke up with no memory of any of that. Gotta be honest, I’m still not one-hundred percent convinced that you and Sally aren’t screwing with our heads just for the hell of it.” She glared at him, showing him a little fang in the process. “Don’t get me wrong, I believe you. It’s just weird.”

“Yeah,” Tom agreed. “We woke up, and there was nobody else here. No vampire toddler, no wizards, nothing. Stuff was out of place, but it’s not like back when Jeff trashed the place. Didn’t look like there was a fight or anything. Although, there was one weird thing...”

“What?”

“Someone left us a new Playstation.”

* * *

Tom’s revelation did give us something to check. The games I had bought were all there, but the bags of clothing for Gan were missing. She had been here after all, although
when
she left and in
what
condition were still up for debate. I assumed she hadn’t waited in ambush for Decker and Christy...there would have been blood splattered about, a lot of it probably, if that had happened. I hoped that the reverse didn’t occur - that they had somehow managed to take her out of the equation. My fondness for Gan was limited, but seeing her become a casualty in a war she had nothing to do with wasn’t what I wanted either.

“So what’s the plan?” Tom finally asked.

“Gan is priority number one. We need to find her.”

“Nice to see you care for the little hellion,” quipped Ed.

“I care more about the damage she can do if she’s not contained. As far as she’s concerned, there are over eighteen million walking snacks in this city.”

“Let’s not forget that she’s probably pissed to all hell,” Sally added. “Those wizards did a job on her and then casually dismissed her. If that’s not a mindset to put someone with the emotional stability of a preteen into rampage mode, I don’t know what is.”

“Almost forgot about that. If it were me, I’d probably be hunting those fuckers down right now.”

“And she could do it, too,” Sally continued. “Don’t forget how easily she found you, Bill.”

“Gives us a place to start, at least,” I concluded. “Tom, give me Christy’s address. We’ll check there first.”

“You’re not going to hurt her are you?” he asked after some hesitation.

“We’ll try not to.” I looked at Sally. “
Won’t
we
? Seriously, Tom, she’s not my favorite person on the planet right now but, when push came to shove, she got you and Ed out of danger. I promise I’ll try to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

“Maybe I should come, too?” he added.

“No!” blurted Sally. That wasn’t too surprising. I knew that Tom drove her bugshit with his incessant comments, but this time she was in the right.

“Sally’s got a point. We’re gonna need to move fast. This isn’t like last time, when we knew where shit was going down,” I said.

“How about this?” Ed offered. “If you find out in advance where the action will be, you call us in.”

I wanted to say no, but Sally spoke up first. “You still have that popgun?” she asked, no doubt referring to Ed’s twelve-gauge.

“You bet.”

“Then if we have enough warning, you’re in.” I gave her a disbelieving glare, but before I could say anything, she answered my unspoken question. “Don’t give me that look. I’m not an idiot. Backup is backup, and as much as I hate to admit it, they helped just as much against Jeff as I did.” Tom opened his mouth to speak, but Sally help up her hand to his face. “Doesn’t mean I like it, though.”

I jumped in before this turned into either a hug-fest or a homicide scene. “Ed, while we’re doing that, can you find out Harry Decker’s address?”

“What if he’s not listed?”

“Call HR. They’ll have him on file. Besides, Barbara there likes you. Lay on the sweet talk, and I’m sure she’ll give you whatever you want.”

“Barb the beast?” he replied with a look of horror. Barbara was the HR admin for our office. She was a sweetheart, but not exactly the easiest thing on the eyes.

“We must all make our sacrifices,” I said with a solemn voice, which earned me a chuckle from Sally and a stare of death from Ed. I just hoped that his look was the deadliest thing I would be facing tonight. None of us had spoken about it, but we still knew the assassins were out there waiting for us.

Two Mongolian killers, a revenge-bent vampire princess dressed in expensive schoolgirl clothing, and a couple of whacked out magic users trying to fulfill an insane prophecy...

Damn, it was gonna be a long night.

Christy’s apartment was our first stop. That was easy enough. As it turned out, she lived only a mile or so away from my place, a convenient location for Tom’s girlfriend. Too bad she had to go and spoil it by being a backstabbing harpy. Oh well; nobody’s perfect, I guess.

We easily made it past the front door security for her building. This was one of Sally’s specialties. When you looked like she did, doors were opened for you...literally. We went up to Christy’s floor and walked to her door. I then did the only obvious thing I could think of: I knocked.

“Step aside, idiot,” Sally said. She gripped the doorknob with her left hand and started turning it. As the tumblers hit their limits, she kept putting on the pressure until the whole apparatus started groaning under the strain.

“Hold on a second,” I said. “What if she has, I don’t know, wards or stuff?”

“Wards?”

“Yeah. You know: circles of protection, explosive runes, that type of shit. I used that crap all the time in my game to keep thieves and the rest of the party away from my gold.”

“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. I don’t speak dork.”

“Fine. Be my guest.” I made an
after-you
gesture to her and then backed several steps down the hall. If this thing opened up a fiery gateway to Hell, then at least I’d live long enough to shout, “I told you so!”

The lock cracked and...*
KABOOM
!!!* Well, in my mind it did anyway, and let’s face facts: if this were a game being run by my usual Dungeon Master, Dave, Sally would now probably be thoroughly ventilated. Instead, there was nothing.
Real world mages are rapidly starting to disappoint me
, I thought as the door just swung in.

Sally pushed it open all the way and then stepped through the doorway. She had no more than put her foot down when suddenly the door flew back at her face as if
Conan the Barbarian
had just decided to slam it shut. It crashed into her, and she went flying back into the opposite wall as the door clicked itself back shut again. I watched it happen, a smirk of amusement on my face - noting that my opinion of real world witches had risen back up a notch again.

Sally was dazed, but didn’t seem to be otherwise worse for the wear. Thus, I didn’t see any reason to fight the compulsion to stroll back up to her and say, “Told ya so.”

* * *

Turns out that Christy wasn’t home anyway. This didn’t surprise me too much. I had considered it a long shot. If anything was going down tonight, chances are it would be in Manhattan. That was where my coven was headquartered. It was also where the assassins were hunting and all of last night’s shit had gone down. Thus, I wasn’t all too surprised to find us on a train heading back there. During most of the trip, I couldn’t help but notice that Sally kept reaching inside her purse to stroke the enormous handgun within, all the while chanting, “Fucking witches!” It was an effort, but I somehow kept myself from grinning the entire time.

It turned out our timing was good. We had just gotten out of the subway, close to coven territory, when my cell phone rang. It was Ed.

“I’ve got Decker’s home address for you.”

“Good job,” I replied. Ed gave it to me. Decker had an apartment in a building on the Upper West Side. I knew the area: monthly rents higher than most mortgage payments, twenty-four hour door service, and mostly home to executives, high paid professionals, and other assorted yuppie scum. It didn’t surprise me in the least. I don’t care what kind of dark wizard he thought he was, at the end of the day he was just another asshole corporate suit that more or less contributed nothing to society other than making the lives of people like me more difficult.

“You owe me,” Ed groused.

“What happened?”

“I have to take Barbara out to lunch sometime this week.”

“Aw, but you make such a cute couple.”

Ed grumbled something back that would have made me blush had I been a good, God-fearing family man.

Sally, overhearing most of the conversation thanks to her vampire ears, said, “Tell him I’ll make it up to him.”

“What was that?” Ed asked.

“Sally said she’ll send flowers to your wedding,” I replied and hung up.

“That was mean,” she commented. “As I said before, you’re obviously jealous.”

“Nonsense,” I replied. “I just believe my roommates should stick to dating their own species.”

“Oh. Then what about you and that girl you’re still pining for?”

“That’s different.”

“How so?”

“What was that you were saying earlier...something about double standards?”

* * *

It turns out we didn’t need to go all the way uptown. That was good. Too much smarm there for my personal tastes anyway.

We were walking toward another subway stop, passing through a section of midtown that was very familiar to me, when Sally suddenly sniffed the air and then stopped. “Gan’s close,” she said and pointed toward the various rooftops. “Up there somewhere.”

I didn’t really need to look. I knew where we were. Despite my doctor’s note proclaiming my medical
condition
, I once more found myself back at work. Just great! Of all the places to have a potential showdown, it just had to be at the one where I could get reamed out for it by HR.

“Any idea where she is specifically?” I asked, mostly knowing what the answer would be.

“It’s not like using a GPS,” Sally complained. “I can sense that’s she’s close, which probably means she can sense us if she decides to try. If I had to guess, from what she did yesterday I’d say on top of one of these buildings.” Of course, saying something like that in the middle of Manhattan was the equivalent of tracking an animal through the forest when the only clue you had was that it was ‘near a tree’.

“Okay, then let’s not worry about finding her. She’ll come to us.”

“Why?”

“Because I know where Decker is.”

“How?” she asked.

“Because we both work right over there,” I said, pointing across the street toward one of the buildings. “Welcome to my job, Sally. Please don’t do anything to get me fired.”

She just laughed. “Are you kidding? You walk in with me on your arm, and they’ll probably give you a promotion.” Yep, that’s Sally. Humble as ever.

“I guess we should go up. If Gan is here, that means Decker’s probably in his office. I know where that is.”

“And what exactly are we going to do once we get there?”

“No idea. Maybe steal some office supplies?” I caught a glare for that. “Sorry. The good thing is that at this time of night, the place is going to be nearly deserted. Come five-thirty, if you’re standing by the front doors you’re liable to get trampled. The only people who are gonna be there at this hour are workaholics...”

“And wizards?”

“Apparently.”

“So again I ask, what’s the plan?”

“Make it up as we go along and hope for the best?” I offered.

“You must have been Napoleon in a former life to come up with that kind of strategy. Oh well, who wants to live forever?”

“Actually, I wouldn’t mind it,” I replied.

“
You
? Every minute that goes by without you getting dusted is utterly amazing to me.”

* * *

We took the stairs. Yeah it was a pretty hefty walk up, but we decided the elevators were too risky. On the off chance that Decker somehow knew we were coming, I didn’t want our bold plan to immediately end with “
and they went plunging downward, screaming toward their deaths
” before we even saw the guy. Fortunately, the stairs weren’t really an issue. Vampire stamina is pretty damn good, after all (
despite whatever lies Gan might have said
).

“Once we get in, I’ll go to his office. I want you to walk around and see if you can get rid of any stragglers.”

“Snapping their necks would be fastest.”

“Not funny,” I replied. “Unless you come across Carl from the project management office...then it might be a
little
funny. Just use your feminine wiles. Chances are, most of the people still here are guys. Trust me when I say a little T&A would probably motivate them to fly down the stairs.”