The Tome of Bill Series: Books 5-8 (Goddamned Freaky Monsters, Half A Prayer, The Wicked Dead, The Last Coven) Read online

  Table of Contents

  GODDAMNED FREAKY MONSTERS

  Me, Myself, and I

  Conversation with a Madman

  A Shock to the System

  The Devil You Know

  Blood Bath

  The Accidental Tourist

  The Eyes Have It

  While You Were Sleeping...

  Escape from Alcatraz

  Head Cheese

  Sightseeing

  A Problem with Customs

  Upgraded Seating

  Pit Stop

  A Hell of a Souvenir

  Homecoming

  No Rest for the Wicked

  A Good DM is a Terrible Thing to Waste

  Showdown in Newark

  Early Morning Commute

  Back in the Saddle Again

  Chick Fight

  I’m Walking on Sunshine

  Hail to the King, Baby

  Elevator Music

  Tactical Retreat

  Calling in the Calvary

  Class Reunion

  Top Headlines for the Day

  Stake Out

  White Lies

  The Cult of Ib

  Sunset is Never Far Away

  A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in the Ambush

  Headquarters is Where the Heart is

  It Sure Beats Driving

  A Slight Detour

  Forewarned is Four Armed

  Giant Furry People Eaters

  The Long Walk Home

  The Office Park of Ultimate Doom

  The Gauntlet

  Meet the New Boss

  Title Fight

  Dead Office Drones Walking

  Applying for Dismembership

  The Aftermath of an Ass-Kicking

  The Earth-Shattering Epilogue

  HALF A PRAYER

  Part 1

  When a Stranger Comes Knocking

  Send Me an Angel

  Housewarming Gift

  Shot Down Again

  Beam me up, Scotty

  The New Digs

  All Settled In

  The Newest Member of the Team

  Training Day

  A Rock Monster and a Hard Place

  What Mother Wants, Mother Gets

  Panic at the Strip Club

  Damage Control

  Bloody Good Smoothies

  Going Down

  Journey into Darkness

  The Fellowship of the Muck

  The Well of Assholes

  Tale of the Terrors

  X Marks the Spot

  A Trip to the Zoo

  Small World, Isn’t It?

  Hairy Bedfellows

  Break Out

  The Boom Boom Room

  When the Walls Fell

  Onward and Upward

  The Enemy of My Enemy is Still a Dickhead

  Part 2

  The Long Drive

  The Men under the Mountain

  The Gathering

  Bring Out Your Dead

  Wizard Duel

  Unholy Rollers

  The Defense Rests

  Monologue with a Madman

  Two Ships Passing in the Night

  Ravenous

  The Trial of the Century

  The Peanut Gallery

  The Chinese Connection

  Demilitarized Zone

  The War of the Three Factions

  General Tso Tastes like Chicken

  Five Against the World

  That which is Dead Can Indeed Die

  Deck the Halls

  Old Boyfriends Die Hard

  Quit Yer Bitchin and Get in the Kitchen

  The Cleanup Crew

  The Magically Mystifying Epilogue

  THE WICKED DEAD

  Prologue: Destiny’s Bitch

  Part 1

  Bartender in Training

  Welcome to Crazy Town

  Busy Little Bees Buzzing Around

  The Mean Streets

  Twenty Sides of Terror

  The Douchetastic Four

  Hunkering Down

  Wrath of the Defilers

  Meet and Greet

  Should I Stay or Should I Go?

  The Bitching Hour

  The Telephone Game

  Vamanos, Muchachos

  A Rare Blood Type Indeed

  Dreamscape

  The Call of the Wild

  Deal With the Devil

  Fire and Brimstone

  Like Oil in Holy Water

  Uneasy Alliances

  The First Step of Many

  The Sisterhood of the Traveling Skull

  Head Games

  War Party

  Catching Up

  Down on the Farm

  The Long Kiss Goodbye

  Part 2

  Raising the Stakes

  Score of a Lifetime

  Shit Storm

  A Turd in the Hand...

  Prisoners of War

  The Last to be First

  The Rebel Alliance

  First to Escape

  Not You Again!

  Pound Puppies

  The Monster Squad

  War of the Gargantuas

  Midnight Tryst

  Pillow Walk

  Gee, Didn’t See That Coming

  Sight Seeing

  Doctor’s Note

  Pandemonium

  Out of the Frying Pan

  The Big Bad

  One Shall Fall

  Greasy Kid Stuff

  A Small Problem

  Infiltration

  Undead Alive

  Class Reunion

  That Sinking Feeling

  The Choice

  The Sacrifices We Make

  All Hell Breaks Loose

  To Destroy The Destroyer

  Freewill Versus Freewill

  Face Off

  Sting Like a Bee

  The Cleanup Crew

  Unexpected Company

  First Base

  The End Days

  The Spine Crushing Epilogue

  THE LAST COVEN

  Part 1

  Giving To Those in Need

  Dickheads Anonymous

  Back to the Big Apple

  Home Again, Home Again

  Did Someone Leave the Oven On?

  Down Time in the Dumps

  A Sunny Disposition

  Impish Interrogation

  Rise of the Day Spawn

  Pint-Sized Problems

  You Only Hurt the Ones...

  Twat-Waffles

  Two Mules for Sister Sheila

  Of Fists and Feet

  War and Piece

  Don’t Use All the Hot Water

  Maximum Adventure

  The Nose Knows

  Who Watches the Watchers?

  Northern Exposure

  Geneva Convention 2.0

  C is for Cookie

  The Negotiating Table

  A Piece of Peace Take Two

  The Brown Wedding

  Shotgun Honeymoon

  Hitchhiker’s Guide to Canada

  Blade of Chaos

  A Walk in the Woods

  Part 2

  Ejecting the Warp Core

  Take Your Medicine

  The Hidden Menace

  Shifting Out of Neutral

  Meet the New Cult, Same as the Old Cult

  Wizard Sorting

  Baked Beans and Brownstones

  Paranoia Will Destroy
Ya

  Thinning the Herd

  Assassins in Armani

  Dwarf Tossing

  A Compelling Argument

  Political Asylum

  Hairy Palm and His Five Sisters

  Defective Defection

  Wood Versus Wood

  Drachawk Down

  Eyeballing the Competition

  Stomping on the Feet

  Open Mouth Insert Foot

  The Gathering Storm

  Watching the World Burn

  Counterintuitive Attack

  Part 3

  Altared State

  Holy Molars

  Busting Those Bunkers

  Rabbit Up My Sleeve

  Give Me Liberty...

  Shut Your Hole

  Below

  Meeting Up With Old Friends

  In through the Backdoor

  The Belly of the Beast

  Well, That Was Easy

  The New Breed

  Seeing the Sights

  First in Line

  Decker the Halls

  Origin of a Species

  Monologuing for Fun and Profit

  The House of Pain

  Magic Circle of Life

  Crotch Fruit

  The VIP Room

  The More the Merrier

  Scary Monster All-Out Attack

  Bringing a Wand to a Fistfight

  Iconic Defeat

  The Big Boys with the Big Toys

  Playing to a Packed House

  Pit Stop

  Total Fucking Chaos

  First to Die

  Head Games

  Showdown at the Earth’s Core

  Dueling Beat Downs

  Props to the Prophecy

  The Main Event

  This is How the World Ends

  Dust in the Wind

  The Hate Mail Inducing Epilogue

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  THE TROUBLE WITH TOM

  THE ROAD TO ARMAGEDDON

  Christy

  Gan

  Ed

  James (The Wanderer)

  Colin

  Alexander

  THE TOME OF BILL

  Volume 2

  Rick Gualtieri

  Books 5-8 of The Tome of Bill series

  Goddamned Freaky Monsters

  Half A Prayer

  The Wicked Dead

  The Last Coven

  Bonus Material

  Copyright © 2017 Rick Gualtieri

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author. Your support of author’s rights is greatly appreciated.

  All characters in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The use of any real company and/or product names is for literary effect only. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.

  Visit the author’s website at:

  www.rickgualtieri.com

  Omnibus Cover by:

  www.malloryrock.com

  Published by Westmarch Publishing

  www.westmarchpub.com

  Goddamned Freaky Monsters

  Half A Prayer

  The Wicked Dead

  The Last Coven

  Edited by Megan Harris

  Covers by Mallory Rock

  GODDAMNED FREAKY MONSTERS

  The Tome of Bill

  Part 5

  Me, Myself, and I

  ARISE, FREEWILL!!

  Ugh. There are few things that can fuck up a good night’s sleep quite like the goddamned alarm clock going off.

  I stretched and sat up, feeling as if I’d slept for weeks. A yawn escaped my lips and I blinked several times as my body continued booting up. Once my head was clear, I put my glasses on - snapping things into focus.

  Before it could go off again, I smacked the button on the clock - giving it a good whack to drive the point home. Jeez, what a stupid alarm. Who the hell would program something like that into a clock, anyway? It had to have been my roommates fucking with me...again. The dickheads seemed to have a hard-on for doing so.

  Oh well, it was probably time to get my ass moving. It’s not like the work day was going to start without me.

  I hopped right into my morning routine, pausing only momentarily as I tried to think of what was on the docket for the day. Surely there was some fire to be put out - a project due that was probably giving Jim, my manager at Hopskotchgames.com, a near aneurysm. It was the same thing week after week. Sure, it could get annoying, but there was a certain comfort in the routine of it all.

  The only problem was that I had no idea which project needed tending to. Was it Farm Fury? No, we launched that already. Maybe Birds of War? Could be Doctor Dexter’s Daring Dash - that one was coming soon...I think.

  Odd. Usually, I was pretty spot on for my schedule, but for the life of me, I had no clue what I was supposed to be working on. Hell, come to think of it, I had no idea what day it even was. It could have been the freaking weekend for all I knew.

  But then, why the alarm clock? Oh well. It would probably sort itself out as the morning progressed.

  Trying to ignore the concern that nagged at me, I grabbed my clothes and headed toward the bathroom. Hopefully, it would be unoccupied and there would still be some hot water left. Surely a shower would help clear my head.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Just as I sat on the couch, a bowl of Cap’n Crunch in hand, a sense of déjà vu hit me. That was stupid. I mean, of course I’d done this before. I lived in this place, for Christ’s sake. I’d probably eaten hundreds of bowls of tooth-rotting cereal sitting right in this spot.

  I shook it off as part of the general paranoia that had become a part of my existence ever since dying and rising from the proverbial grave as a vampire. The supernatural world was a fucked-up place, and it seemed that I couldn’t take a dump without some entity deciding that I needed to be vaporized. Such things tended to mess with one’s outlook on life after a while.

  Well, fuck that shit. The worries of the underworld could wait until after I’d had my breakfast.

  I flipped on the TV, enjoying the rare moment of normalcy. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Hell, a disturbing amount of my life remained mundane. There was my job, for starters - believe me, becoming one of the undead hadn’t been an instant lottery ticket to riches. There were also my roommates...

  Speaking of which, where the hell were they?

  I guess it made sense that Tom had either left early for his job in Manhattan or maybe slept over at his girlfriend’s place, but Ed worked from home like me. There wasn’t anything requiring him to be in the office today, at least that I could remember, and last night was...

  I paused, a spoonful of cereal halfway to my mouth. Last night was what? That was a blank too. It couldn’t have been too memorable. I mean, heck, the apartment wasn’t even close to being trashed. At the very least, I should’ve had some remembrance of what show I’d watched or video game I’d played, but there was nothing.

  Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t seem to be suffering from amnesia or any bullshit like that. The important stuff was all there: who I was, my job, where I lived - that kind of shit. It was just the recent past that eluded me for some reason.

  I had to admit - it was starting to get odd.

  Maybe we had all gone...

  Come to think of it, when was the last time I had even seen my roommates?

  No, that was stupid. We were the best of friends. We hung out all the time...even when the forces of evil were trying to collectively ass-fuck us.

  Weird. Maybe I drank a few bottles of overly skunked beer last night and it was screwing with my brain. That didn’t sound so farfetched. If so, my vampire metabolism would take care of it as the day went on, hop
efully allowing the fog to lift from my head.

  Yeah, I’d let things sort themselves out. There was probably no point in worrying.

  I bit down with a satisfying crunch, then began scanning through the channels, hoping to find something worth watching.

  Not wanting to burden my soul with Good Morning America or similar insipid morning shit, I quickly skipped to the cable channels - finally stopping on what looked to be some sort of action flick.

  There was a battle taking place on a rooftop. Multi-colored lightning flashed in the background as the combatants recklessly tore into each other - gotta love low-budget sci-fi. Yeah, this had promise.

  A glowing blonde angel was trashing the bad guys in the middle of it all. Damn, she was hot. Hopefully, this flick had some nudity in it. That wouldn’t exactly be a horrible way to start the day.

  Another character, this one decked out in a SpongeBob backpack of all things, hopped onto the screen and began similarly kicking ass. She looked to be of roughly schoolgirl age. Maybe this was a Japanese fetish flick. Talk about a country that was seriously fucked in the head when it came to entertainment.

  I was about to change the channel and see what else was playing when my hand paused on the remote. The walking Nickelodeon advertisement was tackled from the side and dragged screaming off the edge. It should have been hilarious. I mean, seriously, I’ve never seen a Wilhelm scream scene that didn’t crack me up. Something about this bothered me, though.

  That déjà vu feeling hit me again like a brick to the forehead.

  No idea why, but the whole thing felt oddly familiar, and not in a good way. Sadness filled me at the poor little character’s demise. As the rest of the scene unfolded before me, I actually had to reach up and wipe a few tears from my eyes.

  I quickly glanced around, making sure neither of my roommates was present to see my sensitive side coming out to play. I’d never hear the end of that. After a few moments - satisfied that I was still alone - I turned back to see how things played out.

  The battle seemed to be over. The angel stood there, victorious. She was still wearing too much clothing for my personal gratification, but nevertheless, I was tempted to stand up and cheer for her. Then I noticed one of the bad guys was still alive and approaching from her blind side.

  I actually shouted, “No!” at the screen as he pulled out a ridiculously large gun and pointed it at the blonde Xena’s head. A bullet to her face ended the showdown.

  I stared transfixed, wondering how the director could allow such a downer of an ending. Asshole should’ve been fired. Things weren’t quite over yet, though. Apparently in need of a fucked-up finale to finish things off with, a bad CGI monster - some kind of Hulk rip-off - jumped into frame from out of nowhere and began tearing shit up.