The Tome of Bill (Book 6): Half A Prayer (18 page)

“Wait,” I said, stopping. “So what you’re saying...”

That was a mistake. The Jahabich apparently had no problem with us yammering amongst ourselves, but they definitely took issue with me slowing down the parade. One moment, I was coming to a conclusion of sorts, and the next I saw stars as I was clubbed rudely in the back of the head.

“You okay?” Miranda asked.

“Nothing four or five bottles of Advil wouldn’t cure.” Fuck that shit. No way was I letting a teeny tiny, head-erupting migraine interrupt this. I shook my head until the double tunnels before us merged back into one.

“I know what you’re going to say, Bill,” Sally said, having regained her own footing. She was walking a little more solidly now, her healing taking over. Even so, I knew it would cost her if she didn’t get some fresh blood soon. “I turned him. I just didn’t know it at the time.”

“Into a vampire?”

“What the fuck
else
would I turn him into?”

I decided to bite my tongue and let her continue.

“But I didn’t realize it. I thought I’d killed him. It was only recently that I learned otherwise.”

“So what happened?”

“He tried to kill me in revenge, and then I fed him to those things.”

“Oh, of course. So how’d he become one?”

“I have no fucking idea. You’ll notice I was just as surprised as the rest of you when he appeared.”

“More so,” I commented. “I personally had no idea who the fuck he was.”

“Well, now you do.”

“And you two really dated?”

She nodded once.

“Well, look at you with a taste for the old nerd sausage after all.”

Brock guffawed, but the Jahabich seemingly found his braying as annoying as I did because they smacked him upside the head for it. Oh well, dude had a stupid laugh anyway.

I expected Sally to try to disembowel me with her good hand, or at least glare daggers back at me for my dickish remark, but instead, she simply lowered her head and let her hair droop down, covering her face. Holy crap, this was really unlike her. I always envisioned Sally as a blonde tigress, toying with men like they were mice waiting to be swallowed. Now I was forced to wonder whether she and this guy had actually meant something to each other and now...

...and now she was living out her own version of the very prophecy I feared coming to pass. Though it now seemed I wasn’t the Freewill the various prophecies spoke about, the thought that one day I’d have to face Sheila in a fight to the death had been a massive Sword of Damocles hanging over my head. I’d pretty much considered myself the unluckiest guy in the world; that I’d been born under a bad sign, and various other woe-is-me scenarios. In my self-centered conceit, I hadn’t stopped to consider the plight of others. I’d been so ingrained in how other vampires acted in the here and now that I more or less assumed they’d always been that way. Perhaps the road to darkness wasn’t a quick exit to Evil-ville. Perhaps it was a long, winding path.

Don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t about to go all sappy with most of them. Folks like Colin could go eat a fat dick long before I’d sit down and give them a shoulder to cry on, but maybe, just maybe, I could consider cutting Sally a bit of slack.

She suddenly raised her head, her eyes black and her fangs out. “This time, I’m gonna finish the fucking job if I have to kill each and every one of us,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone else.

Okay, so maybe not
that
much slack.

I wasn’t sure what would await us at the end of our forced march through the tunnels, but my imagination was happy to fill in all sorts of unpleasant scenarios. Conversation had lapsed after Sally decided to take a vacation to Crazy Town, and the Jahabich weren’t particularly loquacious conversationalists in their ugly rock forms. I tried to make some sense of that. Speech was probably not the easiest thing when your mouth was a craterous maw, but it almost seemed as if the Jahabich had two distinct personalities at play, depending on what form they inhabited.

I could understand that a bit, what with a rampaging nutcase camping out somewhere inside of my cerebral cortex. At the same time, it didn’t seem quite the same. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Thoughts of Sally and her ex kept crawling back into my head, which didn't help either. She was so far out of that dude’s league that I was having problems making sense of it all.

I thought back to the first time I’d met Sally. It was on a subway train in Manhattan. She’d approached me, we’d gotten to talking, and eventually she’d invited me to a party - a party I just so happened to get killed at. Following my rebirth as an undead horror, she and I had gotten along in a sense, but I never hesitated to remind her that she was at fault for my current condition as well as everything that followed - including the impending global apocalypse. “Oh yeah, well, it’s your fault the world is being destroyed” is a pretty hard argument to come back against.

During that first meet-cute; she’d seemed somewhat hesitant - almost as if she’d had second thoughts. I’d always assumed it had been a bullshit act, her way of looking vulnerable so as to keep me focused on the dangled carrot in front of me. Now, though, I had to wonder. Jeff, the master that Sally had served under back then, often sent out his minions under compulsion. She’d told me as much long ago. Ultimately, she didn’t have much choice in what she was doing.

But what if that small bit of hesitation had been real, her mind’s way of rebelling against the edict of her master? Miranda had said Mark looked a bit like me. I didn’t really see the resemblance, but whatever. Was it possible Sally saw it too back then, her memories causing a momentary hiccup in her resolve?

Gah! All of this was fascinating to think about, but ultimately useless in our current plight. This was a real life horror movie, not some chick flick in which we’d all realize everything had been a big mistake right before the climactic kiss at the end. Whoever this Mark guy was, I had the suspicion he wasn’t trying to impress Sally in the hopes of winning her back. It would be in my best interest to envision him more as the Freddy Krueger of this story.

No, fuck that. He was the evil lich king and once more, I, Kelvin Lightblade, battlemage of the Silent Order, had been called forth to do battle with the forces of darkness. Hell, was this really any different than that time my party got captured by those daemon-phage-infected centaurs? I’d gotten out of that one by the skin of my teeth, but I’d walked away with a plus-three cloak of warding for my troubles. Damn, if only I’d remembered to pack my dice with me on this trip.

I was still considering these things when I realized it was getting brighter. We’d been traveling in the dim twilight that those glowing cave thingies afforded us, but up ahead, a much brighter light seemed to stream forth. Fortunately, most of the Jahabich were five foot nothing or shorter, so I could crane my neck to see what waited ahead.

The tunnel opened up once more to a wider space. A brilliant orange-hued light flowed forth from it - a shade not entirely dissimilar to that which glowed from these creatures’ eyes. Whatever this was, I had a feeling answers awaited. But would those answers help us or screw us in our quest for survival?

* * *

“Holy shit.”

“I don’t think there’s anything
holy
about this place,” Miranda said.

She had a point.

I had been envisioning some throne room, a place where we’d be forced to kneel before some rock god - and not of the Ozzy Osbourne type. That, or maybe a grand cathedral where we’d be sacrificed for some stupid reason or other. Instead, this was...I don’t know. Was it a prison, a torture chamber, some sort of giant smelting pot? Fuck, maybe it was all of the above.

All I knew for sure was we were no longer alone, minus our ever-effervescent Jahabich company, of course. The place was huge, easily as large as the cavern with the pictograph. This one was far from empty, though, and filled with what I had to assume were prisoners.

The first ones I saw were a group of humans. They all sat together, looking tired, hungry, and without anything remotely resembling hope upon their faces.

A group of vampires were next. They were unmistakable as their blackened eyes and fangs shone in the dull light. They were all scraped raw and bloody, but that didn’t stop them from circling one another, hissing like animals and taking the occasional swipe at their fellows with their claws. All of them had a disturbingly gaunt look about them.

“Are they...”

“They’re starving,” Sally said bluntly.

Well, that at least answered one question I’d wondered about ever since being turned.

Some greasy monstrosity was next, looking like a two-headed condor that had been dipped in red tar. Its wings were spread, but speared to the floor with stalagmites. More groups of oddities followed, each weirder than the ones before them, but the last bunch especially caught my eye - Sasquatches. There were four of them, but they were far from the vicious brutes I’d squared off against - appearing mangy and beaten down as they sat in a circle. They looked more like they were planning to die than escape.

The assembled creatures all had one thing in common - the fences of living rock that walled them in. Dozens of Jahabich stood motionless, side by side, facing inward, their unblinking eyes staring at the prisoners within their enclosures. Amazingly enough, the first thing that popped to mind at the horrific sight was the lack of privacy. I mean, seriously, how could one be expected to drop a deuce in peace with all those creepy eyes watching you?

The holding cells weren’t the only sights to be seen, though, not by a long shot.

At the far end of the cave, there was a depression in the ground containing a vast pool of some strange liquid - glowing a brilliant orange that was almost too bright to look at directly.

At first glance, I thought it might be lava, but if that were the case, we’d all be busy burning to a crisp. Hell, all of the prisoners in the room looked like shit, but heat stroke seemed to be the least of their worries. So if it wasn’t lava, then what the hell was it?

Sadly, the lone occupant of that section of the cave didn’t appear to be forthcoming with answers anytime soon. A statue over twelve feet tall stood directly behind the glowing pool of weirdness. It gleamed white - carved from marble would have been my guess - the glow of the pool seeming to enhance its presence in the room.

The interesting part was it didn’t look like a giant Jahabich. It actually looked kinda human. Flowing robes covered its body and outstretched arms. Unfortunately, its facial features had eroded, either through time or calamity. It had a head, but beyond that, I couldn’t tell any real details from it. I strained my eyes to see if I could pick out any other telling nuances, but our tour guides picked that moment to hustle us forward again.

I thought we’d be tossed in with the other vamps, a prospect that didn’t really appeal to me. I had a feeling feral vampires would be as dangerous to sane ones as any of our other enemies. Instead, our entourage marched us up right next to the Sasquatch cage and spread out until they were side by side, essentially doubling as our holding pen.

“Not so fast,” a voice said. I turned my head to see Mark striding into the cavern, back in his human...vamp...
whatever
guise. In his hands, he held a pair of rusty manacles.

Two of the Jahabich guarding us stepped to the side to let him through. He walked up to Miranda and said, “We’ll make this nice and easy. No protests or hesitation. Just hold out your hands or I will have your arms torn out at the socket.”

I was ready to intervene if he tried it, for all the good it would do us in our current situation, but thankfully, she wasn’t in a mood to test the resolve of our captors. She lifted her hands and he slapped the restraints on her. They were old, barely holding together, but the symbols scratched into them were plain as day. My gamer senses immediately tingled.

“Anti-magic field...err, I mean cuffs?”

“Yes,” he replied evenly, as if discussing a particularly dull news item. “Do I need to warn you about trying to tamper with them?”

“Let me guess - forceful removal of appendages?”

He smiled, a row of obsidian spears glaring back at me. “At the very least.”

“Gotcha, sport,” I replied, keeping my tone upbeat as if none of this was of any concern. A little psychological warfare might not help us out against these things, but I wasn’t averse to playing the game. Also, I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Sally used to bone this guy. Fuck me, but I was half tempted to ask him what his secret was. Oh well, maybe I’d wait for our no doubt impending execution - as far as last requests went, that would at least be interesting.

He turned to leave, but not before fixing his human-looking eyes on my partner. “Don’t be afraid, Lu. It’s not the end. In fact, it’s just beginning. This world could still be ours. These bodies we inhabit, all of us, they’re more malleable than you’d ever imagine. It’s the spirit that matters. That doesn’t change. There are influences, of course, but you needn’t concern yourself with that yet. You’ll get used to it. Maybe in time, we can even set aside our differences and be like we were again.”

I had no fucking idea what he meant by that
influences
part, and it didn’t appear Mark was in the mood to enlighten us further. He turned to leave.

“Hey, boss,” Brock spoke up.

“What?” Sally asked through gritted teeth.

“Not you, bitch,” he spat. Uh oh, this didn’t sound promising. He stepped toward Mark, his hands up, indicating he wasn’t looking for a fight. “You know I was with you, right? After Marlene got iced, I was all for you dusting this whore and taking over.”

“Did you just call me a...”

“Now now, Lucinda,” Mark interrupted. “Men are talking. Mind your manners.”

Either this guy had more balls than brains or he really didn’t know Sally as well as he thought. Hell, even if I were hopped up on Alexander the Great’s blood, I’d have thought twice before saying that.

Mark grinned broadly, his smile looking like the worst case of tooth rot in history. “I always liked you, Brock. You know how to take orders and are obviously smart enough to recognize the winning side when you see it. Consider your offer accepted.”