The Eye of the Moon (25 page)

Kacy could barely stomach any food. She was worrying herself sick thinking about what Dante might be up to. Robert Swann had been a real sweetheart, convincing his colleague, Agent Valdez, that it would be good to allow Kacy to eat in the hotel’s restaurant with him. So while Dante was out drinking in town with a horde of the undead and hoping not to be unmasked, Kacy was eating a three-course meal with Swann.

The hotel dining room was huge, an imposing space that was often used for the most exclusive weddings and other social events in Santa Mondega. There were at least fifty tables of varying sizes, and at least half of them were in use while Kacy and Swann were sharing their intimate dinner. Each table had a spotless white tablecloth draped over it, and all of those in use were lit by smart pink candles in elegant two-branched candelabra. Light classical music played discreetly from hidden speakers, and there was always a member of the waiting staff on hand to cater to diners’ every need, such as adding more ice to the bucket that held the wine on the table Kacy and Swann were sharing. If a gentleman in Santa Mondega wanted to impress a lady, this was the place to come.

The food was exquisite too, but Kacy was struggling to force it down. Beneath the elegant, if rather abbreviated, black dress she was wearing, her stomach was tying itself in knots, so that trying to swallow anything too dry, like the bread that they had been offered on sitting down, was all but impossible. She had forced down a couple of prawns from her shellfish salad, only for her palate then to reject anything that tasted of fish. The only thing that she seemed able to swallow easily
was the wine, and Swann, as if he could sense her tenseness, was regularly topping up her glass. He wasn’t just acting like a gentleman, either. For once, he actually looked like one, too. The hotel manager had provided him with a smart grey suit and a red tie for a small charge. The effect of it was that this serial rapist and all-round scumbag was able to pass himself off as a man of taste and manners. He’d even slicked his hair back with some sort of gel spray he’d borrowed from Valdez.

By the time the main course of chicken and pasta arrived, Kacy was actually feeling better than she had at any time since she and Dante had arrived back in Santa Mondega.

‘There’s nothing like a few drinks to calm your nerves and put everything in perspective, is there?’ smiled Swann, as he took up their second bottle of Chardonnay from its silver ice bucket.

‘I’m not much of a drinker, normally,’ said Kacy, forcing a smile. ‘But this is going down real easy. Thanks for getting your partner to let us eat down here. That room was starting to drive me crazy. I’m a bit of an out-and-about girl as a rule, so sitting around with nothing to do but watch crappy movies was really starting to do my head in.’

Swann smiled back at her. ‘It’s the least I could do. You’ve got a lot on your mind. It’s only fair that you get a chance to relax, instead of sitting around worrying about your boyfriend Danny all night.’

‘It’s Dante.’

‘Whatever. Try and forget about him for a few hours. He’ll be fine; he’s a tough kid. He wouldn’t want you sitting around stressing yourself about him, would he? Besides, he’s probably steaming drunk again, so there’s no harm in you having a few drinks too, is there? Why should he have all the fun, right?’

Kacy watched him top up her glass, and although she knew she was getting a little tipsy – she could hear herself babbling slightly – the alcohol really was helping to ease her concerns about Dante. Then, of course, Swann was turning out to be quite a nice guy. At least he was paying her some
attention, something Dante hadn’t been able to do much of in the last few days.

‘You’re right,’ she said picking up her wine glass and chinking it against the one Swann was holding. ‘I reckon I might get drunk, too. That way, when Dante gets back tonight, we’ll be on the same wavelength for the first time in ages.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Swann solicitously, setting his glass back down. ‘Things with you and him not going so well these days, huh?’

Kacy took a large sip of her wine and thought for a second. What the hell – there was no one else to talk to. The other agent, Valdez, seemed to have an unhealthy interest in Dante, so Swann was the closest thing Kacy had to a trustworthy friend right now. So for the rest of the meal she got more and more drunk, telling him all about the fears she had for Dante and the mission he was on, and how much he annoyed her with his foolhardiness and regular rushes of blood to the head that invariably landed him in trouble. True, she loved Dante more than she believed she could ever love any person, but he still had all these annoying habits that she had to iron out to prevent him from getting himself killed. It was his minor imperfections that made him such a challenge, and such fun to be with. And for tonight she could confide her fears about all these things to Special Agent Swann over dinner and fine wine.

For his part, Swann feigned interest and continued generously to provide glasses of wine as though it was on tap. All the while, as he became drunker, he was listening less and less to what Kacy was saying and staring more and more at the cleavage she had on show. And if he wasn’t mistaken, she was purposely letting him get an eyeful. By now he had convinced himself that she was deliberately leaning forward over the table with increasing frequency as the evening wore on.

When at last they finished their meal and the time came for them to go back to their suite, Swann had reached a stage at which he was struggling to control his sexual urges. Kacy was a fantastic flirt, and after finishing off her dessert, a rather
provocative-looking Banana Surprise, she was drunker than she’d been in years.

Feeling cheerful and ridiculously horny, Swann stared longingly at her across the table, eyeing up any and all of the flawless skin she had on show. Ever since Mr E had somehow secured his release from a life term in prison as a serial rapist, he hadn’t even had so much as the sniff of a fuck. Now here was this young beauty flirting openly with him, practically inviting him to take advantage of her. He knew that he couldn’t take her back to their shared suite because Valdez was still there, and Dante might come back at any point. But if he could get a key from reception for one of the other rooms then he was pretty sure Kacy was up for a fuck. He’d probably have to trick her into it, but he could tell that, secretly, that’s what she wanted. Once he had her alone in a bedroom, he bet she’d be more than willing to let him screw her. In fact, just thinking about it was getting him seriously aroused, so much so, that in order to get up from the table without showing off the huge bulge in his pants, he was going to have to think about Barbra Streisand for a few minutes.

He’d done this for just about long enough when, at the most inconvenient of moments, Roxanne Valdez appeared. She had on a pair of black leggings and a black sweater, and looked positively fearsome as she strode through the dining room. Valdez was no fool. She knew full well what he was up to because the boss, Mr E, had warned her to watch out for exactly that sort of behaviour from Swann. In one swift move, perfectly executed to look like an accident, she knocked over the ice bucket on the table and watched with a grin as the freezing water and chunks of ice splashed down into her colleague’s lap.

‘JEEESUSSS!’

Swann sprang to his feet and began frantically rubbing his crotch, pulling his pants away from his skin to lessen the shock of the ice-cold water. Kacy, in her drunken state on the other side of the table, pointed at him, giggling hysterically. Valdez, meanwhile, continued to control the situation, pulling
back on Kacy’s chair to get the girl to her feet.

‘Come on Kacy, it’s time you came back to your room,’ she said, throwing a hard look at Swann, who was too busy mopping his soaked and frozen groin to notice.

As Agent Valdez guided Kacy back up to the suite on the third floor, Swann seethed. Valdez was a bitch. He’d worked that out within minutes of meeting her. But Kacy, well, he had wined and dined her and been on his best behaviour, only for her to laugh like a hyena when his partner had tipped the ice bucket over him. She had revelled in his humiliation. She would suffer for that later, the dirty little cockteaser.

All he had to do was get her on her own.

Once the laughter over Obedience and his new tattoo had died down, Dante was invited by Vanity to join him in a game of pool. With his confidence returning after he had so carelessly landed himself in trouble, he was relieved to have the opportunity to play. Dante was actually pretty handy with a cue, so it was a chance to impress. He knew a few trick shots, too, that he could show the other guys if things went well.

Déjà-Vu tossed a coin. Dante called heads. The coin landed on the table, heads up.

‘I knew it. Heads again,’ Déjà-Vu remarked.

Dante elected to break. Unfortunately, correctly calling heads was where his luck at the pool table ended. As it turned out, he only had time to play his first shot. The cue ball smashed into the pack of colours at the other end of the table, and as it did so another ruckus started up. A clown named Jordan came staggering out of the men’s restroom. His white romper suit was soaked through with water, and he didn’t look at all happy.

There were still three other clowns in the pool hall who hadn’t left right away after the hilarity of Obedience’s tattoo had died down. They were at another pool table, practising trick shots, completely engrossed in what they were doing. That changed when they saw their fellow clown and the state he was in. It was immediately apparent to them that all was not well.

‘What the fuck happened to you?’ shouted the largest of the three clowns. His name was Reuben and he was hard to miss, due to the enormous green curly wig he wore at all
times. His face was painted white with a big red smile slapped across it and a solitary black tear below his right eye. The leader of the Clowns clan, he was not a vampire to be messed with. His black romper suit he had on cleverly disguised a buff, muscular torso underneath, and his apparently good-natured clown’s face concealed a vicious nature. His two companions, Ronald and Donald, who had moved to stand on either side of him, wore yellow wigs and white romper suits, a look that was almost identical to that of Jordan, the clown who had just emerged from the men’s washroom. Aside from the fact that his clothing was extremely wet, there was one other glaring difference that immediately distinguished Jordan from his friends Ronald and Donald. Where they both had the trademark oversized red smiles painted across their faces, Jordan had none. And without it he looked extremely angry.

‘Someone’s wiped the fuckin’ smile off my face!’ he ranted, waving an angry finger around at everyone in the bar area. There were now only Clowns and Shades left, apart from the bartender Hank, and he was readying himself to duck down out of the way.

All eyes turned to Silence, the last person to have come out of the men’s room. The quiet vampire shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.

‘You … you fuckin’ sonofabitch!’ Jordan raged, storming towards Silence. ‘I was only asleep for a fuckin’ minute. What the fuck? How would you fuckin’ like it if I did something to you while you were asleep?’