Read Online Holier Than Thou (The Tome of Bill) by Rick Gualtieri - Free Book Online

you a helmet?”
    “Fuck you.”
    “Excuse me?” James asked.
    Goddamn it! She had unmuted us. “Err, sorry. Must be static in the line. What do you mean special vampires?”
    “Exactly that. Vampires with powers outside of the norm.”
    “I thought I was the only Freewill.” I had been under the impression that I was the only one for at least half a millennia. A brief glimmer of hope flickered within me. If there were others, then perhaps the prophesies wouldn’t apply to me.
    “You are, so far as we know,” James replied, pouring ice water on my small tinder of wishful thinking. “But just because you are the sole being of legend doesn’t mean that other vampire anomalies don’t exist. I’m compiling a list of their abilities in preparation for the coming conflict. It could prove useful.”
    “Really? Like what?”
    “Well...ah, I have an example you might recognize. Surely you remember Gansetseg.” It sounded as if he had a smirk on his face.
    “Gan is special, all right,” I growled.
    “Quite so,” he ignored my snark. “Gansetseg was turned when she was still a pre-teen. Her body became forever locked in the state she was in at the time.
    “So?”
    “So, she is in a perpetual state of puberty.”
    “So her superpower is being hormonally imbalanced?” Sally asked.
    “Partially. One of the side effects is that her body chemistry is hyper-accelerated compared to other vampires her age.”
    My eyes opened wide. “Speed.”
    “I see you noticed,” James replied.
    I had seen her in action during her vacation to New York when she followed me from her home in China thanks to a case of misguided puppy love. She was capable of moving at speeds that rendered her but a blur to even vampire eyes. At the time, she was one of the older vampires I had been exposed to, at a ripe old three hundred years, so it just appeared to be her greater powers. With a little more experience under my belt, though, I now realized she moved more like a vamp twice her age - with the added benefit of having the size and flexibility of a child.
    “That’s just great,” Sally remarked. “Will probably do wonders for her humility.”
    “That, combined with her status in Asia, makes her quite indispensable to our cause.” James paused for a moment. “But I’m sure you didn’t call for this meeting just to ask me how things were going. Am I correct?”
    “Colin didn’t fill you in?” Somehow I wasn’t surprised.
    “I’m not your messenger boy, child,” he said. Damn, I had almost forgotten the prick was still on the call, but it served as a reminder to watch my words. James could probably be counted on to be discreet, but Colin could only be trusted to fuck us over as quickly as was vampirically possible.
    “Colin...” James’s threat hung in the air.
    “You’re right, James,” Sally said, swerving us back on track. “We had a bit of a night.”
    “Care to elaborate?”
    “There was an incident at the loft...”
    “An incident?” I interrupted. “The entire building was wiped the fuck out.”
    “Thanks, Bill,” she sighed. “I was getting to that.”
    * * *
    We explained the situation to James. Well, okay, Sally explained while I interrupted whenever she downplayed the situation too much. Most vamps are emotionally unaffected by mass carnage, but c’mon ! Sure, my coven were mostly douchebags, most of whom I wouldn’t miss - hell I was pretty much over it - but what happened should have warranted at least a modicum of outrage.
    Sally stuck mostly to the facts, not elaborating unless pressed. She was probably hoping we’d be taken at face value. Sadly, being a wage slave, I knew what it was like to be grilled by upper management. If I was sure of one thing, it was that the hard questions were still to come.
    I knew it would probably be unwise to flat out lie. I was considered special in the vampire community, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t come up with some appropriate punishment to make an