Tome of Bill (Companion): Shining Fury (8 page)

“There’s something very wrong in this town,” I said carefully.

“You don’t need to tell me that, girl. I got eyes. So, what’s that all got to do with you anyway?”

“We’re here to stop it.”

The flashlight was turned off and more laughter ensued.

It took my eyes a moment to adjust to not being dazzled, but when they did, I saw an older man with dark skin and a receding patch of white hair on his head standing in front of us, rifle in one hand, but the barrel thankfully pointed at the ground.

“You’ll excuse me for saying this,” he said at last, getting his laughter under control, “but so far you’re doing a shit job of it.”

“Can I get you anything else?”

“No, thank you,” Vincent replied, taking a sip from the mug of steaming hot chocolate. “You’ve been far too kind already.”

“I’ll say,” Kelly added from her spot in an old, but comfortable looking recliner. “This stuff is awesome.”

“That’s ’cause I use real chocolate,” Jacob, our host, replied. “None of that powdered shit. Although, it’s getting harder and harder to find. Beginning to feel like this is less Boston and more Soviet Russia.”

I had to agree, at least on that former note. The hot chocolate really was good. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a social call, and we couldn’t afford the time. “Thank you for taking us in off the street, but we really need to...”

“Yeah yeah, I heard you,” he replied, sitting in an easy chair. “Just settle down a bit. No good can come of running off half-cocked.”

We were twenty minutes into Vincent’s advised half hour of radio silence and while I was still antsy, Jacob had done a lot to make us feel at ease.

According to him, he’d once owned a small farm down in South Carolina, but as he’d gotten older, it had become too much of a chore to run. Last year, at his daughter’s insistence, he’d sold it and come up to Boston to live with her. That had been before things had started to get weird. Since then, they’d been trying to live their lives as best they could, but it was getting harder and harder.

Though it wasn’t outright said, it seemed that a martial law of sorts had been put in effect. People had gone missing. Others had seemed to change. What had once been a close knit neighborhood was now filled with suspicion and doubt. Though people sometimes still went about their business during the day, there was an undercurrent of wrongness to it all. Come night, however, shades were drawn and people hunkered down with their own.

The strange behavior of the police only got worse after dark. It seemed the setting of the sun triggered an onset of violence. Gunshots in the night became common as well as other sounds, things that couldn’t be easily explained. When that occurred, people would retreat behind locked doors and wait, hoping it passed them by until the sun rose again.

I considered this. Though we hadn’t gotten close enough to know for certain, it was quite possible those
police
had actually been vampires. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Many preferred to use their superior physical abilities, but they weren’t averse to using modern firepower if the need called for it. Remington had been all the proof of that I needed.

“Where’s your daughter now?” Kelly asked, eyeing the many photographs on the mantle of the cozy living room, visible in the light of an old oil lamp that provided the only illumination. “Is she here?”

“Not right now. She’s fetching help,” Jacob said. “She’ll be back soon.”

“Help?” I asked. A quick glance passed between me, Kelly, and Vincent. It didn’t go unnoticed.

“Relax,” Jacob replied. “There’s still good people in this town even if everything is going to Hell. My girl, Cynthia, she got sick a month back. Was real bad and I couldn’t get enough meds from the pharmacy. Bastards were charging ten times the price they should have. But as I said, there’s good people here ... friends. They helped us. Got my Cindy back on her feet. That’s how things go when you can’t rely on the government or police no more. Even though things are bad, people are still good. They help us. We help them. And I think they’ll help you. Worst case, they know this town better than you. Can get you out of this neighborhood and back to your friends without being seen.”

That sounded good to me. Aside from some assurances that a few vampire covens in the area still opposed Vehron’s reign – assurances that neither myself nor the Templar were overly inclined to rely on – we’d gotten very little in the way of inside information. According to Bill and his friends, Boston was under tight lockdown. Bernadette had come to a similar conclusion. Though the Templar didn’t have a large presence in this city, there had still been a small chapter of brothers. However, they hadn’t been heard from in months.

If what Jacob was saying was true, there was an underground of sorts made up of normal people who were forced to step up under extraordinary circumstances. That didn’t seem too far-fetched to me. Throughout history such things were common whenever a land was occupied by a hostile force.

I had no way of knowing if these people could be trusted, nor did I know the extent of their knowledge of the situation. Realizing things were somehow off wasn’t the same as accepting that your city was currently enslaved by a two-thousand year old warlord and his undead minions.

If they could help us reestablish contact with our friends as well as point out a safe route through the city, then that would be great. However, I wouldn’t ask any more than that. The Templar knew what they were getting into. That didn’t make a single one of their deaths any more acceptable, but at least their eyes were open. They knew the choice they were making.

Whether or not this underground could help us, it needed to be done quickly. Time was ticking away and soon we wouldn’t have the cover of darkness to rely on. Despite Jacob’s musings on things being more normal in the daylight, I had no way of confirming that. There was only one thing I was certain of – come the sunrise, our chances of another encounter with the undead would be greatly reduced.

I rolled back the sleeve on my sweater and glanced down at my wrist.

“That one of them new smart watches people were crowing about?” Jacob asked. “Didn’t realize folks still cared about those. Seems a needless luxury in these times.”

“Huh?” I asked and then realized what he was talking about. My watch had started glowing ever so slightly as my hand brushed against it, plainly visible in the dim light of the room. It was one of the reasons why I’d stopped wearing jewelry, aside from the fact that it got in the way during a fight. Items I was in contact with regularly, especially those of a conductive nature, seemed to pick up a bit of a residual
charge
of faith magic from me. It was kind of like how a piece of metal could become magnetized by touching another magnet, although I had no real way of knowing if it remotely worked the same way.

“It was a gift.” Then, remembering the distinctly not normal glow about it, I added, “Silly, I know, but I try to charge it when I can.” At least that first part was true. Though the watch was a simple analog model, it had been a gift from my mother a few years back. I quickly rolled my sleeve back down. I’d need to be more careful in the future. “Anyway, it’s about time for us to see if we can reach our friends.”

“My daughter will be back any minute, then you can all go look together.” Jacob got up and began to shuffle back to the kitchen. “In the meantime, I’ll see if maybe I can fix up some snacks for the road for you all.”

“You’ve done more than enough already,” I said.

“Although, we’ll be happy to accept any help we can get,” Kelly added.

I glanced at her and she mouthed, “What?” I couldn’t help but grin in return before turning to Vincent and nodding.

He stood, unclipped the radio from his belt, and raised it to his lips. That’s as far as he got before he paused, his eyes opening wide. “What are you doing?”

I turned to follow his gaze and saw Jacob standing in the doorway, once more holding his gun on us. “Sorry to say, but I can’t let you do that.”

Before any of us could do much more than gape, he squeezed the trigger.

I didn’t think. No, thinking would have been bad. With thought came memories, ones that would have frozen me in place had I been given another second to ponder our situation.

Thankfully, becoming an Icon meant becoming a creature of instinct. My powers flared to life in the moment that Jacob fired the weapon. A roar of deafening sound filled the room, but a brilliant white light rose up in defiance to meet its challenge.

Fast as my power was, though, it wasn’t the deciding factor in determining Vincent’s fate. My aura flared out and melted the slug mid-air – a sizzling flash of vapor appeared roughly halfway between Vincent and Kelly. Either Jacob was a crap shot, or he hadn’t been aiming to kill.

Nevertheless, I heard the Templar cry out, albeit seemingly more in anger than pain.

For a moment, the roar of the gun continued to echo before I was finally able to hear the breath that had caught in my throat. I quickly turned my head, but Vincent appeared unhurt. The radio, however, was lying on the hardwood floor.

“Damn me,” Vincent whispered.

Kelly was slightly less magnanimous with her words. “What the ever-flying fuck, asshole?!” she shouted at our less than gracious host.

Jacob, for his part, coolly worked the lever on his rifle, chambering another round. “I’d ask you to mind your manners in my house.” He then turned to me. “I knew it. You’re her. The second I shined my light on you and saw them freaky white eyes, I said to myself ‘you done caught yourself a prize trout tonight, old man.’”

“You know who I am?” It was a stupid question, but I needed a moment to process things ... not to mention steady myself. Now that the split second action was over, my mind again registered the weapon pointed our way, the barrel still smoking, and looking so much larger in my mind’s eye.

How fate had chosen me for this burden I would never know, but if such an abstract concept could feel disappointment, I was certain it was feeling that now.

Steeling myself, I stepped in front of Vincent and Kelly. “Pick up that radio and call the others.”

“You do and you’ll regret it,” Jacob said. “I didn’t have to miss. Don’t go thinking I’ll do it again.”

“Kelly, blast out the wall behind us. We’re leaving.” That last part was perhaps unnecessary. Jacob was alone. My powers could render his weapon useless, and I had little doubt I could disarm him once I was close enough. My aura couldn’t harm him, but combat skills could easily take over where powers failed.

Or so I tried to tell myself.

He’s not Remington. Remington is dead. That won’t happen again – ever again!

A smile crossed Jacob’s face. I got the impression he could read the indecision on mine. “Maybe not as powerful as all that, are you? I’m beginning to wonder what all the kerfuffle was about.”

“Try me.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll try your friends instead. I said don’t even think about that goddamned radio!” Jacob let go of the stock of his gun and reached a wrinkled arm behind him to extract something from the back pocket of the overalls he wore. He produced what looked like a metal tube.

“That’s it? What makes you think that’s going to scare us?”

“For all that light that came shining out of you, you’re none too bright. I assume you’ve never seen a pipe bomb up close before, have you?”

* * *

That was unexpected, but thankfully didn’t produce the same Pavlovian response in me that his gun had. “I can protect my friends from that.”

“Maybe you can, and maybe you can’t. But can you protect them from the floor being blown out from beneath you, the walls caving in?”

I gritted my teeth behind my closed lips. What the hell was Kelly doing behind me? We should have been out of here by now.

“Blessed one?” Vincent asked uncertainly.

“Do it. He’s bluffing.”

“Think so, eh? I did three tours of ‘Nam. Learned to make these beauties there. Something I picked up from the locals. Oh, and don’t go worrying about me. I’ve lived a long life. Got no regrets. Only thing I care about is my daughter.”

“What will she think of you doing this?”

“I imagine she’ll be right fine with it considering she’s been spreading the word to keep an eye out for people like you.”

There came a noise from down the hall, a door opening and footsteps heading our way.

“Ah, that sounds like her now.”

“Kelly,” I warned. She really needed to get with the program already.

Jacob stepped aside, and three more people entered the room. More stood out in the hall, but the room was too small to accommodate them. I was expecting police uniforms, maybe the welcoming committee from earlier, but they all wore civilian gear, including the lone female among them.

Their presence itself wasn’t alarming so much as what they were carrying – curved daggers made of blackened metal. I’d seen similar weapons before, had felt their sting. My fear of guns was purely in my head, trauma that my subconscious refused to let go of. These things, however, were cold, hard reality. They could somehow cut through my aura like butter.

They could kill me.

Sadly, I wasn’t the only one in danger. The newcomers had come prepared. The two on either side of the woman, the apparent ringleader here, produced handguns in addition to their blades. I didn’t need to be psychic to assume the ones still in the hall were all likewise armed.

“Cuff them,” the woman, Cynthia presumably, said.

Two of them stepped forward, and my aura instinctively flared to life. The glow, however, washed harmlessly over them. They were human.

“Cut that out before we have to start cutting you,” Cynthia said. She smiled, but her grin was far more predatory than humorous.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Because the glory of Ib commands us.”

With little room to maneuver, outnumbered, and against foes I wasn’t even certain I wanted to hurt, we had little choice.