by AnonYMous
‘What do you mean?’ Kyle asked. ‘Hezekiah, what has happened to you?’
‘Milo and I have seen the dark side, Kyle. There’s no turning back for us. You, on the other hand, have a chance. Get out of Santa Mondega tonight and don’t ever come back. Tomorrow the Lord of Darkness will return and claim the city back for the undead. If you’re still here, you will become one of them. You don’t want that, believe me.’
‘But Hezekiah,’ Kyle countered, ‘with you and Milo on our side we’re more than a match for anyone. It would be a truly heroic homecoming for you to return to Hubal with us – and with the Eye.’
Hezekiah shook his head, but he also quickly retracted his hand from the other’s shoulder and used it to hold Milo back, as if he thought he was about to lunge at Kyle. He fixed his former friend once more with his piercing green eyes.
‘Listen to me, Kyle. Don’t make this any harder than it is already. We can never return to Hubal. Father Taos saw to that. He has a dark side of his own, you know, and when Milo and I found out his dirty secret, he cut us down and left us for the vultures. Don’t doubt me, Kyle. He double-crossed us and took the Eye of the Moon back to Hubal himself. Yet we were the ones that found the Eye. We were supposed to be the ones returning home covered in glory, but he had other ideas. He’ll do the same to you, Kyle … and you too, Peto. He’ll cut you loose. Once you’ve left Hubal there’s no going back.’ He paused, then asked, ‘How many monks do you know who have ever left Hubal and returned?’
In Kyle’s lifetime, only one monk had ever left the safe haven of Hubal for more than a day and returned alive.
‘Just one,’ he replied. ‘Father Taos. All of the others were unable to cope with the dangers of the outside world. That’s why they did not return.’
‘Do you think that’s why Milo and I didn’t return?’
‘Well, no … I mean … I don’t know.’
‘Face it, Kyle, you don’t know anything. Just like Milo and I knew nothing when we left Hubal. We knew nothing until we met the man they called … the Bourbon Kid.’
Hezekiah’s voice quietened to a whisper when he mentioned the Bourbon Kid. Those two words were never to be spoken aloud in the Nightjar, out of respect for the dead.
‘The Bourbon Kid?’ said Kyle out loud. ‘What does he have to do with all this?’
BANG!
For a moment, the gunshot deafened almost everyone in the bar. Then a widespread panic broke out. All of the customers who had been drinking quietly at their tables, minding their own business, suddenly burst into movement. Yet, Hezekiah was the first to react. He sprang to his feet, turning to confront the gunman who had just fired a bullet into Milo’s chest.
Now standing, Milo, like a punch-drunk boxer, was staggering backwards from his chair, shrieking. The chair toppled over on to its side, nearly bringing him down with it. He was struggling to maintain his balance, and at the same time doing his utmost to hold one hand over the gaping hole in his chest. Stunned into immobility, Kyle and Peto just sat and watched, frozen in their seats like statues.
Milo was struggling for breath. There was blood pouring from his chest and mouth, spraying out all over his long black coat and also over those unfortunate enough to be near him. Most disturbingly of all, though, his eyes had turned black and his face was beginning to change. Right before their eyes, Milo was transforming into a creature of the night … a vampire … But a dying vampire, one that was decaying, turning to dust, and fast heading for the gates of Hell.
In contrast, Hezekiah had turned into a full-on bloodsucker almost instantaneously. He now looked a far more fearsome proposition than the shuffling, tramp-like mess that had been scowling at the two monks not more than a few seconds before. He was standing up straight, shoulders back, fangs out on display, squaring up to the gunman. The man in front of him was a walking mass of rippling muscles wearing black leather pants and jacket and a sleeveless black Helloween T-shirt. Kyle and Peto had little difficulty in recognizing him as Rodeo Rex.
Rex took aim, pointing his gun directly at Hezekiah’s chest. The vampire’s response was to snarl with rage at his attacker, who was less than six feet in front of him. He would not go down without a fight. He knew exactly who Rodeo Rex was and what his intentions were. In the blink of an eye, before Rex could pull the trigger and fire a shot into his chest, Hezekiah had shot upwards to the ceiling. The sheer velocity at which he moved was faster than any living thing Kyle or Peto had ever seen. Within half a second the vampire was standing directly behind Rex with his long, bony-fingered hands outstretched, ready to break his attacker’s neck. His fingernails had sprouted and were now almost as long as his fingers, giving his hands the illusion of looking like thin, gnarly tree roots. As he lunged for his prey he opened his mouth wide, displaying a set of razor-sharp teeth that seemed to have grown to almost twice their normal size, ready to feast on the man who had gunned down his comrade without warning or mercy. Rex, however, was (as Peto could vouch) no easy victim. He did this for a living, and he obviously knew all the predictable vampire moves. Right on cue, as Hezekiah reached out with both hands to grab his neck, the big man dropped to the floor, swivelled round on his back like a break-dancer and fired, all in one swift movement. A monstrous scream erupted from the blood-hungry mouth of Hezekiah. He tilted his head back and screeched upwards at the ceiling. Blood was spurting out from the wound over his heart as it pulsed out its last few agonizing beats. The screaming pierced the eardrums of everyone within a radius of fifty feet, and after a few seconds of it just about every customer in the Nightjar was heading for the door. Not that there was any need for them to rush. This fight was as good as over. After just a few seconds of screaming, what had once been Hezekiah burst into flames and swiftly crumbled into ash, just as his friend Milo had done.
Amidst all the chaos of people charging towards the exits, Rodeo Rex picked himself up from the floor and walked over to the table where Kyle and Peto were sitting. They were still in their chairs, not talking, rigidly staring at the spot where, less than a minute earlier, Hezekiah had performed his all-screaming, all-dancing transformation from human into vampire, and finally into particles of ash.
‘Did you two shitheads not listen to a fuckin’ word I said earlier?’ he demanded.
Neither of them could respond. But like a schoolteacher confronting a couple of pupils whom he had just caught smoking behind the gym, Rex reached both hands over the table, grabbed the front of their tunics, and dragged the pair of them up from their seats.
‘Get your sorry asses out of here, and don’t let me see you again until the sun comes back up! Have I made myself clear?’ He looked severely displeased with them, and they were not about to argue.
‘Yes, Rex, you have,’ said Peto, who for once seemed to have kept his composure rather better than Kyle. ‘Come on, Kyle, let’s get out of here.’ He grabbed their bottles of beer from the table and headed for the exit, Kyle following behind, still staring at the spot where his lifelong friend Hezekiah had burst into flames and disintegrated.
‘Hey you!’ the bartender called out. ‘You can’t take those bottles out with you.’
Rex yelled back at him on the monks’ behalf.
‘They can do as they fuckin’ please! Why don’t you go out back and suck yourself off, asshole?’
The bartender duly disappeared. He didn’t need any more trouble, and he was clever enough to know that it was in his best interests to stay clear of the killing machine and all-round local legend that was Rodeo Rex.
With the place now completely empty and no one serving at the counter, Rex helped himself to a bottle of whisky and a cigar from behind the bar and sat down on a stool. It was time to reflect on yet another ordinary, run-of-the-mill sort of day.
Forty-Four
Detective Miles Jensen was in big trouble, and he knew it. As he regained consciousness he became aware of the throbbing pain at the back of his head. It was paired with an unpleasant sensation that suggested the bac
k of his neck was caked in blood. Dried blood, too, meaning he had been out cold for a while. He was unable to check if it really was blood, though, because his hands were bound tightly behind his back with tape. There was a cloth gag in his mouth that had been tied at the back of his head, worsening the throbbing feeling. He was lying on his side with his knees drawn up, and for some reason seemed to be bouncing up and down in the dark. Then it clicked. He was in the trunk of a car, and he was being driven somewhere. He couldn’t see a damn thing, and as the realization of his predicament sank in, all he could think of were the numerous gangster movies in which some poor unfortunate was thrown into the trunk of a car and driven to his death. The thought of such an untimely and unpleasant end only made him feel more sick than did the wound to the head and the constant bobbing around in the car.
He couldn’t hear any voices over the noise of the car’s exhaust and the tyres on the road, so he had no idea how many people were inside the vehicle. He could remember little beyond being confronted by the looming figure standing in the tree behind him. The figure had been that of a large man, but had looked more like a three-dimensional shadow in the darkness. Before he had had a chance to react, the man had leapt down from the tree and landed in front of him. But then … hold on a second … he had been hit on the back of the head. There must have been another man there. Yes, that made sense. At no time had he turned his back on the man who had jumped down from the tree, so there must have been another party present. All would soon be revealed, of course. In the meantime, he had to try to get hold of Somers. His only hope was his partner. He could feel the pager Somers had given him digging into his side, but could he get to the button on it to alert his colleague to his predicament? And even if he did, how would he answer his mobile phone if Somers called?
Undoubtedly his first priority was to free his hands from the tape that was holding them together behind his back. He would also have to keep pretty quiet while doing so. Alerting his captors to the fact that he had regained consciousness might well result in a potentially fatal stabbing incident. No point in encouraging that.
His hands were held together by some kind of thick adhesive tape. It had been wrapped around both his wrists up to the base of his thumbs, tightly binding his clenched fists together. This was going to be tricky to get out of, but, depending on how much time he had, it was definitely possible.
Eventually, after what seemed like about ten minutes but was probably much less, Jensen managed to free his left thumb a little. Not enough actually to break completely free, but enough to twist his arm round and get that blessed little thumb on to the button on the pager in his left pocket. Goddamn you, Somers, he thought. You’d better be awake.
After pressing the button on the pager, he spent the next ten minutes trying to free his hands some more, but without success. The car had made a couple of stops, usually followed by a sudden left or right turn that threw him off balance a little. But at the end of this next ten minutes, the car stopped again and the engine was turned off. A second or two of silence was followed by the sound of at least two car doors opening, then closing. He heard muffled voices, then the trunk lid was lifted and Jensen found himself looking up at two faceless shadows in the dark. He was right. He had been attacked by two men. Two very large men, too, but in the darkness he couldn’t make out any features on their faces.
‘Detective Miles Jensen,’ said the deathly cold voice that had addressed him from the tree earlier. ‘Welcome to the last moments of your life.’
Forty-Five
The Mystic Lady always had a tendency to paranoia. It was part of her charm, and one of the reasons why people took her even remotely seriously. It undoubtedly added to her mystique and credibility and, as a consequence, her bank balance. On the few occasions when she strayed far from her front door she was always checking around her to make sure she wasn’t being followed. The local kids all thought she was crazy, as indeed did most of the adults. Usually the only people who didn’t dismiss her as a crank were those in their late teens and early twenties, and that was generally because they had been experimenting with drugs, which left them slightly more open-minded about her belief in the supernatural.
She never went out after dark because of her fear of vampires (and the undead in general; hell, ghosts and zombies and werewolves and all the rest weren’t a whole heap of fun, either). And it was actually with the greatest trepidation that she ventured out at all during the Lunar Festival. All the evil entities the festival brought with it would normally be enough to ensure that she stocked up on groceries for an entire month, rather than leave the safety of home. Her curiosity had gotten the better of her on this occasion, though. The recent visit she had received from Dante and Kacy had set her mind racing. After they had left she had racked her brains for anything she could remember about the magical blue stone known as the Eye of the Moon. Most of the tales about the stone were probably rubbish, but they were definitely part of local legend, so during the early afternoon she had made a trip across town to the City Library. The institution had a pretty decent section on local mythology and legends, so there was a chance she might happen upon something there.
Finding a book containing information about the Eye of the Moon had been harder than she expected. Had it not been for her intuition, her sixth sense, she might not have found anything. But find something she did. A book with no name, by an anonymous author. Locating such a volume on the shelves of the vast library was not easy, and it took her some time. Consequently, by the time she had returned home with it, she was extremely tired and hungry.
She had made herself a light lunch and then taken a nap before finally opening the book in the early evening. Her day trip had been well and truly worthwhile, and now she was sitting at her table reading a three-inch thick hardback book, bound in worn brown leather. It was clearly extremely old, and she was astonished that the library would even consider allowing it out on loan. Then again, how would anyone who was not looking for it ever find it?
The book was in English – to her relief – most of it inscribed in black ink in a neat script, although there was evidence of other hands, as well as numerous emendations and marginalia. It began with a handwritten warning on the first page. The author had inserted what read a little like a disclaimer:
Dear Reader,
Only the pure of heart may look upon the pages of this book.
Every page you turn, every chapter you read, will bring you closer to the end.
Not everyone will make it. The many different plots and styles may dazzle and confuse.
And all the while as you search for the truth, it will be there right before you.
Darkness will come, and with it great evil.
And those who have read the book may never see the light again.
Unfortunately, the book had no list of contents, no chapter headings, and no index, and any information about the Eye was likely to be spread widely through its pages. To read the entire text, which was in manuscript throughout, from cover to cover would take her about three days with little or no sleep. Too long – with the Lunar Festival almost upon them, there certainly wasn’t enough time. Acutely conscious of this, she began scouring the book’s handwritten pages for any mention of the Eye. It took her an hour, until nearly ten o’clock, before she found the first mention of it.
Because she was merely scanning the book for mention of the Eye of the Moon, the Mystic Lady had not managed to learn much of the general gist of what the book was about. All she had managed to discover was that the author of the first few chapters hinted that he was one of Jesus Christ’s twelve Apostles, and had started writing the book as a journal after the crucifixion. Where others had begun documenting the life and times of Christ in the texts that would be assembled in the New Testament, this person had written only about what had occurred in the aftermath of the crucifixion. She found that her eyes and brain soon became accustomed to the handwritten script, and the pages were made of a thick, yellowish parch
ment that went some way to explaining the volume’s astonishingly good condition, given its antiquity.
At some time the journal had fallen into the hands of someone who had translated it into English, and later entries in the book were all in the same language. About a fifth of the way through the book, the handwriting changed and the story became the tale of a character named Xavier, a gentleman travelling around Egypt on a quest for the Holy Grail. It was an odd change of tack in the book, because the first section had been kept as a diary, whereas the adventures of Xavier reminded her nothing so much as a bad script for an Indiana Jones movie. But here, at last, was a reference to the subject of her own quest.
The story told how Xavier had stayed at a temple where he had come across a painting of a magnificent blue stone known as the Eye of the Moon. The stone’s whereabouts, he learned, was a closely guarded secret that the monks of the temple were unwilling to share with him. The anonymous author became very passionate about this part of the tale, spending several pages expressing Xavier’s desire to know where it might be and what secrets it might hold. Apparently, the monks were forbidden by their vows to keep possessions, certainly those of any financial worth, so it fascinated Xavier that they would retain something so obviously valuable, and more importantly, keep it so well hidden. He had stumbled across the picture of it quite by accident one day while looking for Father Gaius, the principal monk. Gaius had become quite angry with Xavier and had even gone to the lengths of destroying the painting, which he had removed and ordered to be burned.
In the end, Xavier’s search for information about the Holy Grail took him to pastures new, and there was no other mention of the Eye again in the book for quite some time. The Mystic Lady had become so engrossed in the adventures of Xavier that she was very tempted to carry on reading about his quest for the Grail, but she knew that there would be time to read more later. She had to find out all she could about the Eye. That was her top priority.