The Eye of the Moon (30 page)

Cromwell picked his narrow-rimmed half-moon spectacles back up from the desk and put them on. He rubbed his forehead for a moment, frowning as he did so. Then he closed the accounting book in front of him. ‘Very well,’ he said, pushing the ledger back across the desk to Simmonds. ‘Send Beth down here when you get back upstairs. I will speak to her myself.’

Igor was still feeling the exhilaration of the previous night, when he had gorged on the blood of Patient Number 43, otherwise known as Casper. Now, while his companion in the blood feast, Pedro, had chosen to spend the afternoon with a hooker, Igor had decided to go for a drink downtown. An opportunity to flex his new immortal muscles was required. His first port of call was the Fawcett Inn right in the centre of town, the most popular drinking haunt for werewolves. Where the local vampires had taken control of the Nightjar, the wolf men had claimed the Fawcett Inn for themselves.

From the outside, the place looked reasonably quiet when he arrived. The front door was open, no doubt due to the humidity in the air. It was not an especially big bar; in fact, lightly modelled as it was on an English pub, it had the appearance of an old thatched cottage of the kind that one might find in northern England.

Once inside, Igor was disappointed to find that the Fawcett Inn was not particularly busy. He was looking to show off a bit, and so would have appreciated a larger audience. No more than fifteen paying customers were sitting around at tables to the left of the bar. As was often the case there was just the one bartender, a grey-bearded black guy named Royle. Royle doubled as the doorman in this place. He was big enough and tough enough to handle any of the customers that came in looking for trouble. In the past that had just about included Igor, but now the newly self-appointed head werewolf was ready to put that to the test.

‘Royle, get me a bottle of moonshine. And I’ll have this
one on the house,’ he snarled in a confrontational manner. He was hoping Royle would be offended by his arrogance and challenge him to a test of physical strength. Sadly, he was disappointed. Royle did not oblige. He’d obviously heard about Igor’s new, improved and higher level of undead-ness.

The bartender picked up an unopened bottle of his best moonshine from under the bar and placed it, together with an empty shot glass, on the bartop in front of Igor.

‘Congratulations,’ he said, deadpan. ‘I hear you and Pedro killed a handicapped guy and drank his blood from the Holy Grail.’

Igor was not in the mood for any attitude from anyone. He had come dressed to kill in a bright white silk shirt unbuttoned to halfway, showing off an abundance of coarse black chest hair. Around his neck he wore a gold chain with a crocodile tooth hanging from it. And he’d been out that day and bought some pretty sharp black leather pants in which he was now only too happy to strut around, somewhat like Tom Jones. (Or so he hoped …)

‘Take caution in your tone,’ he snarled archaically at Royle, picking up the bottle of moonshine and uncorking it. ‘That sounded for a second like you might be mockin’ me, and if there’s one thing I don’t gotta take no more, it’s patronizing, shitty remarks from you or anyone else in this goddamn place.’ His voice rose as he spoke, to be certain that everyone heard. With no music playing, everyone
did
hear; indeed, they had all stopped having conversations of their own in order to show the necessary level of respect.

Igor looked around for a customer to eyeball as he poured himself a full glass of the moonshine and then downed it in one. No one seemed to be eyeballing him, so he poured himself another. ‘There’s a new sheriff in town,’ he called out, again loud enough to make sure everyone heard. He knew they were all hanging on his every word, but right at the moment no one wanted to look him in the eye. Instead, all of them were gazing in fascination at their drinks, or their shoes.

Eventually, irritated by the lack of confrontation, Igor
shifted his giant frame around to face everyone full on and finish shouting out his announcement about the new sheriff. ‘And his name is Igor the Fang. No longer are us werewolves gonna be seen as second-class citizens. We’re not gonna take no shit from no vampires no more, neither. We’re gonna be equals.’ He paused for a pull at his drink, then went on. ‘The first three men in here to pledge their allegiance to me, right here and now, will be my lieutenants. Sign up now, guys, this is a once-in-a-lifetime offer to become a part of the number-one wolf crew in Santa Mondega. Women and riches will follow. Come and be a part of a clan that’s movin’ up in the world. A clan of wolves to match all the vampire clans put together. The baddest clan in the land.’ He took a step towards the occupied tables and shook a fist in the air. ‘Now, who’s with me?’

There was a pause as the lowlife wolfmen in the barroom absorbed what he was saying. The fifteen or so young males sitting at the various tables were all exchanging uneasy glances, each waiting for one of the others to say something. Eventually one brave young guy in a sleeveless blue denim shirt stood up from one of the nearby tables and walked over to Igor. He was the bravest of the bunch, all right, a scruffy young werewolf with thick, unkempt auburn hair, who went by the name of Ronnie. He was looking to move up in the world quickly, and if it meant taking a risk and showing he was braver than the others, then fuck it, that’s what he was going to do.

‘I’ll pledge my allegiance to you, Igor,’ he stated solemnly. ‘What would you have me do?’ Archaic language seemed to be catching on.

Igor looked him up and down, and nodded approvingly. This guy had balls.

‘What would I have you do? Simple. I want a drinkin’ partner, for a start. Royle, gimme another bottle of moonshine. On the house.’

Royle threw a dirty look at Igor behind his back, then rolled his eyes as he watched two more scruffy young men get up from the table at which Ronnie had been sitting. They hurried over to stand by their friend. Neither of them was quite
as brave as Ronnie, so to be on the safe side they both hung back a foot or so behind him. All three of them stood facing Igor, who was now leaning back against the bar, looking full of himself.

‘Better make that another two more!’ the big wolfman bellowed without bothering to turn and look at Royle.

‘Fine,’ the bartender growled, smiling a sarcastic smile. ‘Reckon I’ll just head out back get a couple more bottles for you.’ He shuffled out through the open door at the back of the bar.

Igor took a long look at his three new lieutenants, running the rule over them. They weren’t exactly well built, any of them, but they were all undoubtedly proud of their heritage as werewolves because each of them sported a good degree of facial hair, a sign of pride in a wolf.

‘So, what are your names?’ he asked them.

The first guy to have gotten up, Ronnie, who was still standing slightly in front of the other two, took a step back and trod on the feet of one of the guys behind him.

‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I changed my mind.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ said the other two in unison. They too each took a step back. All three of them had turned pale and were staring wide-eyed at the bar behind Igor. The newly self-proclaimed head wolf’s first instinct was that they were a little nervous, maybe even intimidated by him, fearing that he might be about to make an example of one of them. Then his sixth sense kicked in.
Something’s not right.

‘What’s goin’ on?’ Igor asked, wiping his nose and then inspecting his fingers. ‘Have I got a booger hangin’ or somethin’?’

All three young wolfmen shook their heads in unison. They had seen something behind Igor that warranted a retreat of sorts. The rumours that Igor had killed the retarded kid brother of the Bourbon Kid were being verified for them. For behind Igor was a sight they had hoped not to see. It was that of a hooded man rising up from behind the bar, his face shielded from them by the shadow of his cowl.

The dark figure held its gloved hands in front of it and almost two feet apart, fists clenched. Wrapped around these black-gloved hands and stretched tightly between them was a silvery length of cheesewire.

By the time Igor’s instincts kicked in and told him he was in trouble, the cheesewire had been whipped over his head and wrapped tightly around his throat. Within a second the hooded man had dragged him over the bar and out of sight, kicking and choking as he went.

The Fawcett Inn emptied of customers in less than five seconds. No one was going to hang around to see the outcome of this. They had already seen more than they wanted to.

The Kid was back. And he hadn’t even had a drink yet.

Captain De La Cruz was sitting at the desk in his office, tapping away at the keyboard on his computer. He had stretched the buttoned-up collar on his red shirt quite significantly by tugging at it consistently for the last hour. Pulling at his collar was something he did when things were bothering him. And right now something was bothering him.

The blinds on the window behind him were closed, keeping out the last of the day’s sunlight. The thin shafts of pale blue light that did filter in through the slats lit up the dust motes all around his face, which were almost as much of an irritation to him as the computer screen he was frowning at. His frustrated look hinted that he wasn’t making much progress with whatever he was doing. With that in mind, Hunter knocked tentatively on the glass-panelled door of the office and waited for his captain to gesture for him to enter. De La Cruz duly did, and after kicking at the base of the sticky door, which had never opened easily, Hunter made his way in, pushed it almost shut behind him and then stood behind the chair on the near side of the desk, resting his hands on the chairback.

De La Cruz looked up at him. ‘Why does everyone have to kick my door, huh?’ he asked. ‘Why can’t people just push a little harder? I mean, how fuckin’ difficult is that?’

Hunter offered an apologetic, yet also sympathetic, smile. ‘You sound kinda agitated. An’ I gotta tell ya, I’m feelin’ it too.’ He took off his brown tweed jacket and hung it on the back of the chair, then sat down and tugged at the neck of his brown sweater. In doing so, he was inadvertently mimicking
his superior officer.