The Eye of the Moon (20 page)

‘Er, yeah. How did ya know?’ Dante maintained his awkward ‘Please like me’ smile.

‘You’re not wearing an emblem, and you’re on your own.’

‘An emblem?’

‘Yeah. Shows you’re part of a clan. You should know that, though. You’re a vampire right?’

‘Oh yeah. Sure. ‘Course I am.’

‘Good, ’cos you know, we’ve been getting undercover cops trying to infiltrate this place just lately, and the first giveaway is that they don’t have an emblem.’

‘Oh shit.’ Dante sensed he was in trouble already. Saying
‘Oh shit’ out loud probably wasn’t helping his cause, either. ‘Can you get me an emblem?’

‘So you really don’t belong to any clan?’ the man asked.

‘Nah. I only arrived in town this mornin’. Can I join your clan? …
Please?
’

There was an awkward pause amid the bustle of the noisy crowd. Dante was well aware that he had made himself sound desperate to belong, like a geek on his first day at a new school. Eventually, after looking Dante up and down for what seemed like an age, the man whose drink he had spilled responded. ‘Sure thing,’ he said, suddenly breaking into a smile. ‘Here, have these.’ He reached inside a small pocket on the front of his jacket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses, identical to his own. He handed them to Dante, who, mumbling his thanks, quickly put them on.

To his surprise, the would-be vampire found that he could still see perfectly clearly, as if the glasses weren’t actually tinted. This was a relief, for the Nightjar wasn’t exactly blazing with light. He could now stare at other people and not feel too self-conscious about it, since they wouldn’t be able to tell for sure whether he was looking at them or not. As the guy who’d given them to him was wearing a pair too, Dante thought it was probably a safe bet that he no longer stood out in the crowd. He kept reminding himself of what Kacy had made him promise. Don’t do anything stupid, and don’t draw attention to yourself.

‘Thanks, man. ‘Preciate it.’ He held out his hand to the other. ‘I’m Dante, by the way. Who the fuck’re you?’

‘Obedience.’ He took the outstretched hand and cursorily shook it.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Obedience.’

‘Must be me. I thought you said “Obedience” just then.’

‘That’s right. I did. I’m called Obedience because I have a habit of always doing as I’m asked. I kinda like to please, y’know.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Great,’ said Dante, eager to test his obliging new acquaintance. ‘So buy me a beer and introduce me to some of your friends.’

‘Sure,’ said Obedience, smiling.

The helpful vampire duly led the way to the bar, where he ordered two beers. Everyone in the place looked a bit vampish, but no one appeared to have actually transformed into a creature of the night.
Which is a bonus,
Dante decided, as he waited for Obedience to be served.

When their drinks came, Dante’s new friend handed him a bottle of Shitting Monkey beer, then led him through a crowd of strange-looking folk. Some were dressed as clowns, some in drag, others looked like Maori tribesmen, and there was a particularly large group of what looked like ‘white Rastafarians’ wearing multicoloured tie-dyed T-shirts. Obedience ignored them all, heading towards a dark corner where three men stood watching the band.

‘Cool choice of song, by the way,’ Obedience said, as they approached the three men.

‘Thanks,’ said Dante. ‘It just kinda popped into my head.’

‘Yeah, that happens.’

They stopped before the three men, who were all dressed similarly to Obedience. All wore the same wraparound sunglasses. Obedience grabbed the arm of the nearest man. He had a neatly combed mop of blond hair with a particularly uncool side parting and a thick yellow moustache that rested on his top lip. He also affected rather slim, effeminate blond sideburns (if sideburns can actually be effeminate), and he was very pale.
Even for a fuckin’ vampire,
Dante was thinking.

‘Fritz, I’d like you to meet Dante,’ said Obedience, indicating his new friend with a wave of one hand. Fritz held out a hand and Dante shook it.

‘IS VERY NICE TO MEET YOU, DANTE. MY NAME IS FRITZ!’ the blond man shouted in a heavy German accent.

‘Yeah, nice to meet you too, er … Fritz, is it?’ Dante
replied, less vocally. Although the band was loud, there was no call for shouting at the top of one’s voice as this German dude was doing.

‘You’ll have to excuse Fritz,’ said Obedience. ‘He can’t help shouting.’

‘MY VOICEBOX VOZ DAMAGED WHEN I VOZ BITTEN BY MY MAKER!’

‘Oh yeah. Right,’ said Dante uncertainly, eagerly hoping to avoid too much conversation with the loudest man in Santa Mondega. It would be hard to go anywhere unnoticed with this freak.

‘And who’s this guy?’ Dante asked, pointing at the first of the other two identically dressed men to Fritz’s left.

‘SILENCE!’ shouted Fritz.

‘Alright alright, keep your fuckin’ hair on. I was only fuckin’ askin’.’

‘NO NO! YOU MISUNDERSTAND!’ the German barked aggressively. ‘HIS NAME IS SILENCE!’ He was patting the guy next to him on the back. This fellow had dark hair cropped short on top, but shaved to the bone on the sides. That aside, he looked much more as Dante expected a vampire to look. He was deathly pale, with gnarly teeth and deep-set dark eyes, coupled with two-day-old stubble.

‘Why’d they call you Silence?’ Dante asked. The man didn’t respond so Dante turned to Obedience. ‘Why’d they call him Silence?’

‘Because he hardly ever speaks.’

‘Oh, right. Why’s that, then?’

‘His maker damaged his voicebox. It’s painful for him to talk so he says very little.’

Dante smiled at Silence, who offered half a smile in return.
What a coupla freaks. A shouting German and his silent buddy.

‘I guess you two are, like, the Jay and Silent Bob of the undead world, huh?’ Dante joked.

No one laughed. Instead, there was an awkward silence.
Shit!,
thought Dante. ‘So who’s this guy then?’ he asked,
pointing at the third man, anxious to skate over his gaffe.

‘This is Déjà-Vu,’ said Obedience.

Déjà -Vu was smoking a cigarette. He took a single long drag on it, then blew a kind of smoke ring, only it came out like an uncoiling snake. It floated up through his greasy shoulder-length hair and disappeared toward the ceiling.

He nodded at Dante. ‘Have we met before?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ Dante replied, unsure whether this was a joke or not.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Obedience. ‘Déjà-Vu gets that a lot.’

‘So you keep saying,’ said Déjà-Vu, without a hint of irony.

For the next couple of hours Dante drank beers and exchanged stories with Obedience and his three friends. They were all friendly enough, except for Silence, who said nothing to him all night. Obedience always bought the drinks, Fritz shouted along to whatever the Psychics were singing, and Déjà-Vu – well, he looked confused for the most part, and seemed to do a double-take every time he saw someone walk by.

As new buddies went, these guys seemed to be all right. They had accepted Dante into their clan, and Obedience had even promised to get him one of the sleeveless black leather jackets they all wore. The jackets all had the group logo on the back which consisted of gold-embroidered lettering reading simply ‘The Shades’. So far, Dante’s mission as an undercover vampire was going nicely. He had made four friends and joined an exclusive clan or club or whatever the fuck it was. Any nerves he might have had about the task that lay ahead of him evaporated further with each beer he downed. He felt integrated already. Only time would tell if that was a good thing.

As it happened, what Dante had not noticed was that more than one of the other drinkers in the Nightjar had already recognized that he wasn’t a vampire.

Peto sat alone in his apartment after yet another evening at the Nightjar among the undead. He still hadn’t picked up any information about the Bourbon Kid, but curiously enough he had seen the young guy, Dante Vittori, whom he had met the previous year. On Peto’s last visit to Santa Mondega Dante had offered to help him and his fellow monk, Kyle, locate the Eye of the Moon. Technically, he had kept his part of the bargain, but crucially he had turned on Peto at the last minute, aiming a gun at his head just as the monk had been about to fire at the Bourbon Kid. Had Peto managed to kill the Kid he would have unwittingly saved the lives of all of his Hubal brothers, brutally murdered shortly afterwards.

Yet still Peto had a feeling that Dante was a good guy. Cromwell had said as much, and his opinion seemed to carry some weight around these parts. Peto remembered how, after the previous year’s eclipse, Dante had sent him from the Tapioca with the Eye of the Moon and the promise that he would deal with the Bourbon Kid. From what the monk had discovered since, Dante had actually done nothing of the kind. Instead, he had joined the Kid in pumping hundreds of rounds into the prone body of the young lady dressed as Catwoman.

His feeling about Dante had been confirmed when he spotted a picture of a woman bearing a striking resemblance to Jessica the Catwoman in the volume Bertram Cromwell had lent him. The book, entitled
Egyptian Mythology,
carried a full-page reproduction of a painting of her, giving her name as Jessica Gaius.

Now that he had finally found something in the book
worth reading about, Peto made himself a mug of coffee and settled into the single bed in the corner of his dingy, unheated apartment. Naked apart from the Eye of the Moon hanging around his neck, he lay under the single cotton sheet with his head propped up against the headboard. It made no sense to take the precious amulet off at any time. Any night-prowling intruder who sought to kill or wound him as he slept would be unsuccessful so long as he had that stone on him. Its healing powers were, quite simply, phenomenal. (It was also particularly useful for allowing its wearer to wake up hangover-free after a night on the booze.)

The gentle glow that emanated from the Eye when out in the open was bright enough to allow him to carry on reading, even after he had switched off the bedside lamp. So, as he lay in bed with his cooling coffee and the precious Eye, he read more about Jessica. What he discovered was extremely interesting. It was also extremely disturbing.

According to the dry and somewhat academic text, she was the daughter of Rameses Gaius, the Egyptian ruler whose mummified remains had allegedly escaped or been stolen from the Egyptology display in the Santa Mondega Museum of Art and History. As Cromwell had explained, Gaius had not only owned the Eye of the Moon, but had mastered the full use of its powers. Engrossed, Peto read on, learning that Gaius had been the chief monk of an Egyptian temple in the first century after the death of Christ. From that position of enormous power he had controlled everything, including the appointment of the Pharaoh. He was known to the people as ‘The Moon’ because he only ever came out at night.

As a young man, Gaius had lost an eye in a fight. Some years later he had discovered, hidden in one of the Great Pyramids, a blue stone known once to have been owned by Noah. Centuries earlier, the great Old Testament patriarch had used the stone to control, among other things, the tides during the Great Flood. Once Gaius realized the stone’s power he wore it not around his neck, as many before and since had done, but in his empty eye socket, and so was born the name ‘The Eye of the Moon’.

Through that Eye, Gaius learned to orchestrate many things. His most impressive power was an ability to control inanimate objects with his mind –
such as a mannequin of Beethoven,
Peto thought quietly to himself. Nor was that all for, using the Eye for the purposes of black magic, he had also created his own, corrupted version of the Egyptian
Book of the Dead.
Taking the basic premise of a book devoted to recording the rites necessary for safe passage into the afterlife, he created
The Book of Death,
his most powerful weapon. Whenever he suspected treachery from one of his council, he would simply write the person’s name, with a date, on one of the pages in the book. As fate would have it, the life of the person in question would end on the exact date stated. The victims all died in different ways. Some were murdered, others simply dropped dead from heart attacks or died peacefully in their sleep. The existence of
The Book of Death
ensured that Gaius remained unchallenged as the true ruler of Egypt, whoever may have reigned as Pharaoh (and whose appointment was in any case decided by Gaius). For safekeeping, he entrusted the volume to a loyal subject, who kept it locked away out of sight.