The Eye of the Moon (22 page)

Sanchez didn’t follow them up. The further he could keep away from them the better. Besides, he had four customers sitting at one of the tables in a corner of the bar who might require his famed service at some point in the next hour or three.

Once they were at the top of the stairs, where they were faced with a sturdy wooden door, De La Cruz pulled the golden chalice from an inside pocket in his jacket.

‘I sure fuckin’ hope she’s still in a coma, or this could get pretty hairy,’ he said, turning the handle on the door.

‘She must be pretty hairy herself by now,’ remarked Benson. Seeing the others’ looks of disgust, he tried to explain. ‘I mean, you know, her legs must be getting real hairy. Might even have a moustache. Hell, it’s been a year, hasn’t it?’

‘Oh shut up, you deviant,’ said Hunter, pushing him in the back.

Led by De La Cruz, with Benson in the middle and Hunter bringing up the rear, still swigging from his bottle of Sanchez’s homebrew, they made their way into the room at the top of the stairs. Sure enough, in the middle of the room was a bed in which Jessica lay fast asleep, looking peaceful, if somewhat dead to the world. It was a small single bed with a thick brown mattress on it, and a single white sheet covering the young woman’s body. It was warm enough up here that there was no need for anything more than a thin sheet to cover her while she slept.

De La Cruz crept over to the bed like a parody of someone trying not to wake her. He put a finger to his lips to signal the others to be quiet, knelt down by the side of her bed, moved the sheet aside slightly and took hold of her right arm. Then, negating whatever purpose there may have been in keeping quiet, he slid his favourite six-inch silver dagger from his sleeve and sliced through a vein in Jessica’s lower arm, just above the wrist. Surprisingly, this didn’t wake her. He held the chalice beneath her arm where he had made the incision. Blood spurted out of the cut and he did his best to catch as much of it as possible in the cup.

‘You think she felt that?’ Benson asked softly.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ whispered De La Cruz, frantically moving the cup around to catch as much of the spurting blood as possible. Some sprayed on to his fingers and he licked it up immediately. His two colleagues gazed longingly at the blood feast before them. ‘She’ll heal up in next to no time. Won’t even know we were here.’

When he judged that there was sufficient blood in the cup,
De La Cruz took a mouthful and handed it back to Benson. Then he pulled a length of white bandage from his pocket and began to wrap Jessica’s wound. As he did so, and as Benson was taking his fill of blood from the cup, De La Cruz suddenly felt a huge rush of adrenalin surge through his body. Every bone, every muscle, every cell suddenly took on a life of its own. He was tingling all over. A feeling of power rushed through him.
Incredible power.
This is what it felt like to be a Vampire King, a purebreed, a daywalker and a god. Within thirty seconds Benson and Hunter, having downed their own share of the blood, were experiencing that same feeling. It was a sensation far more intense than than that they had enjoyed after drinking Stephanie Rogers’s blood the night before.

‘Oh … my … God,’ said De La Cruz, standing to his full height with his shoulders back. ‘This is awesome!’

‘Isn’t it just?’ Hunter agreed, washing Jessica’s blood down with another swig from the bottle of homebrew.

Benson seemed oblivious to the others. He was enjoying the feeling too much to waste breath sharing the experience with anyone else. After a few moments, with them all struggling to come to terms with this second, much greater rush of body and mind enhancement inside twenty-four hours, De La Cruz recovered his senses, snapping out of what was almost a euphoric trance.

‘Next stop Dr Moland’s Mental Hospital,’ he grinned. ‘Bring on that Bourbon-drinking freak. The three of us are a match for anyone, and once we’ve gotten the blood from that sonofabitch we’ll be ruling the fucking world.’

Hunter was blinking frantically, taking in this whole new, overwhelming sense of superiority. At last he snapped out of his own self-indulgent trance.

‘You know something, De La Cruz? I’m in the mood to party all day and all night. Starting right now.’

De La Cruz nodded. ‘Sure you are. We all are. But let’s go hunt first. Then tomorrow we can go get the Bourbon Kid.’

‘I sure do want some fresh young blood tonight,’ grinned Hunter. ‘I wanna nail some good-lookin’ babes right now.
Come on, let’s go. I’m not sure I can hold this in. Not for long, leastways.’

‘I’m right with you, buddy,’ said De La Cruz, running his tongue over his lips in the hopes of licking up any last traces of Jessica’s blood that might be around his mouth.

‘Let’s get out of here right now and head straight to a brothel. Last night’s feast is gonna seem tame compared to tonight’s.’

Hunter led the way, polishing off the bottle of whiskey as he went, looking to screw another out of Sanchez on the way out. De La Cruz followed hard on his heels. A newfound hunger and lust was already taking them over. It was uncontrollable. Benson could feel it too.

‘I’ll catch up with you in a while,’ he called out after them. ‘I’m just gonna rebandage the cut on her arm. I don’t think it looks tight enough.’

‘Whatever,’ De La Cruz yelled back as he disappeared down the stairs.

Benson looked around. No one in sight. This was the perfect moment. He was alone in a room with a Queen who was out cold. Opportunities like this didn’t come along every day. His heart was racing as he undid the belt on his yellow shorts. Jessica was gonna be an amazing fuck, coma or no coma. He looked down upon her sweet pale face. Those luscious lips, that perfect skin and beautiful long dark hair. Not forgetting the breasts and legs and all the rest hidden under the thin white sheet.

Panting, he pulled his yellow shorts and filthy off-white underpants down to his ankles, then reached for the sheet. Slowly he peeled it back, savouring the moment. Beneath it, Jessica was naked, and as he laid eyes on her silky white flesh Benson was unable to contain his excitement. He tentatively reached a hand towards her right breast, almost salivating as he prepared for his first squeeze.

Then she opened her eyes.

‘You wave that cock anywhere near me and you’re gonna lose it,’ she hissed. ‘Now get the fuck out!’

Benson reeled back in shock. Somehow he managed one last quick look at Jessica’s naked body before wisely taking to his heels and heading for the exit. With his shorts and pants around his ankles he resembled a penguin as he waddled in terror towards the stairs as fast as he could. Eventually, after tripping over once and frantically pulling his shorts back up, he reached the head of the stairs and took a look back. Jessica had closed her eyes again. Maybe he had imagined it? Even so, this woman was the Vampire Queen. Raping her while she was unconscious was one thing, but doing it after she’d seen his face and was fully awake was not an option.

Not just yet, anyway.

When Dante arrived at the Nightjar for his second night with the Shades he was relieved to find Obedience and Fritz standing at the bar. He had on the trademark wraparound shades they had given him the previous night, and he’d come out in just jeans and a thin black sweatshirt, hoping they would supply him with one of the cool black leather jackets that marked them out as members of their particular clan.

Tonight the place was fairly quiet, at least in comparison with the previous night, but even so he still didn’t manage to make it to the bar without knocking into someone. This time, however, it didn’t seem to be his fault. One of the white Rastafarians appeared from nowhere and banged into his shoulder.

‘Whoa! Sorry, man,’ said Dante instinctively.

The Rastafarian was a fairly short guy in a baggy black karate-style outfit. His dark dreadlocked hair hung at the same length all around his head, hiding most of his face.

‘Why’re you here?’ he asked Dante in a half whisper.

‘Havin’ a drink with the guys,’ Dante replied, throwing the fellow a confused look.
What did this guy expect? He was in a fuckin’ bar, fer Chrissakes. Why else would he be there?

Anxious not to get caught up talking to a member of another clan he turned his back on the Rastafarian and carried on making his way to the bar, where he could see Obedience and Fritz were waiting. He couldn’t help thinking that the guy’s voice sounded familiar, though. Still, it wasn’t worth dwelling on. Right now he had more important things to worry about. Like trying to find Peto the Hubal monk. And staying alive.

The Nightjar’s owner, Dino, was sitting at the far end of the bar in a smart blue suit, sipping at a glass of red wine, while two young bartenders in black trousers and pristine white T-shirts did the work. One of them was behind the bar polishing glasses and the other was cleaning a table in the far corner. There were no more than thirty customers scattered around, most talking quietly among themselves. Tonight, everyone seemed to be dressed more or less normally. No clowns. No Maori tribesmen. And as far as Dante could tell, no drag queens.

‘Hey guys, how’s it going?’ he asked as he approached Fritz and Obedience.

‘What did Chip want?’ Obedience asked. He sounded suspicious.

‘Who?’

‘That Rastafarian you were just talking to.’

‘Oh, him. He was just tryin’ to get me to join his clan.’

‘Yeah?’ asked Obedience. ‘Even though you don’t have dreadlocks like the rest of them?’

‘Yeah,’ said Dante, pulling a surprised face. ‘What a moron.’ He hurriedly changed the subject. ‘So, anyone wanna beer?’

Despite the unsettling questions about Chip, the two members of the Shades seemed pleased to see him, which was a good start. Dante dimly recalled that the previous evening had gone well enough. He seemed to have fitted in okay, so unless he had misjudged the whole thing through that night’s excessive intake of alcohol, all was well.

Responding to his offer of a beer, Obedience spoke for both vampires. ‘We were just about to head into town and pick up some young meat, actually,’ he said.

‘Young meat?’

‘Yeah, we were gonna head down to a strip joint in town and feast on a couple o’ hookers for supper. You in?’

This was not at all what Dante had in mind. Not even close. It was one thing to be able to blend in with the vampires thanks to the serum he had injected in to his bloodstream, but
if they were expecting him to sprout a pair of fangs and bite a hooker’s neck in order to drink her blood … well, they were going to be mightily disappointed. And he was going to be mightily dead.

‘Er – I dunno, guys. I’ve got a bit of gut ache. Reckon I’ll just hang out here an’ have a few beers. Thanks for askin’ me, though.’

‘NONSENZE!’ yelled Fritz. ‘YOU VILL COME VIZ US. VE HAV SOMEVON WHO VISHES TO MEET VIZ YOU!’

‘Yeah? Who?’

‘ZE BOSS! VANITY, ZE LEADER OF ZE SHADEZ, VISHES TO MEET VIZ YOU TO DISCUSS YOUR INITIATION INTO ZE CLAN!’

The whole bar fell silent, it being impossible for anyone not to have heard what Fritz had said. The thirty or so customers all waited to hear Dante’s response, and since The Psychics were on a break there wasn’t even any background noise to distract them.

‘Oh, right. Okay,’ said Dante. ‘I’ll pass on supper, though.’

‘You’re not hungry at this time of night?’ Obedience was clearly baffled.

‘Nah, I had a Chinese before I came out,’ said Dante, rubbing his stomach.

‘Aaah.’ Obedience and Fritz nodded in unison. They had both suffered from bad guts due to feasting on Chinese in the past. They were tasty, but hell on the digestive system.

‘So, where’s the other guys?’ Dante asked, tactfully changing the subject.

‘NEVER MIND ZEM!’ bellowed Fritz. ‘VE HAV CLEAVAGE UND MOOSE VIZ US ZIS EVENING!’ He pointed at two female vamps who were just making their way over from the rest rooms at one end of the barroom. One was a fairly stunning brunette with enormous breasts wedged tightly together inside a tiny white T-shirt.
At a guess,
thought Dante,
that’s gotta be Cleavage.
Her friend was a tubby unattractive blonde with a huge nose and one eye much bigger than the
other.
Moose,
Dante thought. The two of them attracted a number of admiring glances as they trotted back to the bar in their short skirts.