by AnonYMous
In a corner of the bar he could make out two of the familiar Shades jackets. The vampires wearing them were Fritz and Obedience, which was a relief because they were the two he found easiest to get on with, simply because they were the most talkative, even if one of them was a bit shouty. As he headed over to join them he picked up the tune being played by The Psychics on stage to his left. They were banging out a pretty decent cover of Loser by Beck.
Making his way through the crowds towards the undead buddies whose respect he had earned over the last two nights, he couldn’t help but notice that he was attracting some strange looks. As he sang along to the chorus of The Psychics’ song – ‘I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me?’ – he put all the funny looks down to the fact that these vampires were in awe of how cool he looked in his new jacket. It felt good to be accepted.
After struggling through the crowd he eventually reached Fritz and Obedience, who had their backs to him. He tugged at Fritz’s jacket. ‘Hey fellas, anyone wanna ’nother drink?’ he asked.
Fritz turned and smiled at him. Obedience did likewise, but very quickly both their smiles turned to frowns. Their sunglasses hid the look of confusion in their eyes.
‘VOT ZE FUCK?’ shouted Fritz reflectively, staring hard at Dante.
‘What?’ asked Dante, confused. ‘Have I got ‘cunt’ written across my head, or somethin’?’ He laughed at his own joke and shoved Fritz playfully, nodding at Obedience, who was standing just behind the German. Neither vampire laughed. Instead, Obedience stepped forward, reached out a hand and grabbed Dante’s face, squeezing his cheeks. Checking his temperature.
‘Fritz, are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ he asked his buddy. His voice was cold.
‘FUCKING RIGHT I AM! I AM FUCKING SINKING ZIS SING ALSO!’
Dante sensed a touch of hostility from Obedience and put it down to his bad joke. ‘Hey, sorry, man. I was just kiddin’, y’know?’
Obedience released his grip on Dante’s face, but then immediately grabbed his left arm and pulled it towards him. Roughly, he rolled the black shirtsleeve back and scanned up and down the arm. He twisted the limb a little, making Dante flinch, and gestured for Fritz to take a look.
‘Fritz, our man here’s been injecting something into his arm. Look at these needle marks in his veins.’
Fritz studied Dante’s arm closely and saw a few marks where Swann had injected the serum each night. Dante sensed that he was in a spot of shit, and that some quick thinking was required. ‘Shit, man. Ain’t nothin’ bad,’ he mumbled. ‘Just H.’
Obedience sneered. ‘Quite a regular intake of something, I’d say. These marks are all pretty fresh. Myself, I don’t reckon you’ve injected yourself with this much H in the last few days. Must be something else.’
‘Nah, it’s heroin,’ Dante protested. ‘The stuff’s very moreish, y’know.’
‘So’s the serum that they pump into undercover folks who try and walk among vampires,’ Obedience snarled. His fangs were coming out on display. Both he and Fritz knew they’d been duped. Dante had been an impostor all along. Obedience, in particular, was seething at the betrayal. He had a ridiculous tattoo emblazoned in green across his forehead because of Dante. To discover that his new comrade wasn’t really one of them had obviously upset him.
Fritz finally stated the obvious, letting Dante (and the rest of the crowd in the Nightjar) know that the game was up.
‘HE’S NOT A FUCKING VAMPIRE. HE’S UNDERCOVER! SCHWEINHUND!’ the German barked, his voice sounding more furious than ever.
Obedience gripped Dante’s arm a little harder. He wasn’t about to let his grip loosen and risk letting the undercover mole escape.
‘He may not be one of us,’ Obedience growled. ‘But he’ll make for a fine supper.’
Forty-Three
Hunter arrived at the Nightjar to find the large wooden door at the front bolted shut from the inside. A glance through one of the tall, narrow, dark-tinted windows showed that, inside, the place was heaving with drinkers. That’s odd, he thought.
He leaned into one of the inset window frames and tapped on the glass to try to get the attention of the nearest reveller on the other side of the glass. The first person he laid eyes on was Santa Mondega’s most fearsome clown, Reuben. The green-wigged, pale-faced, broad-smiling bloodsucker was standing on the edge of a group of clowns. Unbeknown to Hunter, they were plotting a way of exacting revenge on the Shades for the misunderstanding that had taken place at the Swamp the previous night. In the barroom beyond the clowns, all of the Nightjar’s other customers seemed to be watching The Psychics perform a hip song-and-dance routine on the stage.
Reuben heard Hunter’s tap on the glass over the noise of the band and immediately turned to see what it was. His painted white face looked over at the Filthy Pig at the window, acknowledging him with a nod and a big painted red smile that conveniently hid the look of contempt beneath it. Hunter gestured with his hand and a nod towards the entrance, indicating that Reuben should open the door and let him in. In response the clown simply stared back at him, and then gave him the finger.
‘Once I get in there, you won’t think it’s so fucking funny, you circus freak!’ Hunter yelled through the window. To his further annoyance, the clown turned his back on him. ‘Fuckin’ bastard.’
At that moment another of the Nightjar’s regulars arrived at the front entrance. He had sneaked out of the shadows and sidled up alongside Hunter without making a sound. It was Silence. He was wearing the obligatory trademark black sleeveless jacket of the Shades, but with no shirt underneath and a pair of ripped blue denim jeans above a pair of shiny black boots with pointed toes. He stared at the Filthy Pig from behind his sunglasses.
‘Whassup, man?’ Silence inquired in a husky voice. ‘What’s with the shut door?’
Hunter couldn’t recall ever hearing Silence speak before, and was mildly impressed that the normally wordless vampire should choose to unleash several of his precious words upon him. It wasn’t foremost in his thoughts for long, though. Getting into the Nightjar was top priority.
‘Dunno. But I’m gonna get it sorted,’ Hunter finally responded, sliding one hand inside his brown tweed jacket. He pulled a cell phone from his inside pocket. It was the one De La Cruz had given him earlier. The one that had once belonged to Casper. ‘I’ll call Dino. He’ll let us in.’
Silence took a look at the phone in Hunter’s hand as the Filthy Pig started tapping in the number for the Nightjar.
‘Nice phone. Where’dja get it?’ he asked.
‘Since when did you get so fuckin’ chatty?’ Hunter snapped as he finished keying in the number, pressed the ‘call’ button and put the phone to his ear. It rang a couple of times before it was answered. Dino’s voice spoke.
‘Nightjar.’
‘Hey Dino. It’s Hunter. Let us in, for fuck’s sake.’
‘How many of you are there?’
‘Just me an’ Silence.’
‘Hold on.’
Dino hung up at the other end, so Hunter put the cell phone back in his pocket and stood waiting impatiently outside the entrance with Silence. The quiet vampire took off his sunglasses and the two men eyeballed each other while they waited. Hunter didn’t like Silence, and didn’t want to waste any effort in talking to a man who was renowned for having poor social skills. Unfortunately, Dino was taking a long time getting to the door, and the uncomfortable quiet began to irritate the detective.
‘So what exactly is wrong with your voice anyway, huh? That’s why you don’t say much, ain’t it? ’Cos it hurts to talk, or somethin’ like that?’
Silence nodded. ‘Yeah, hurts to talk.’
‘Yeah,’ said Hunter, nodding. ‘Sounds like you swallowed a bucket of grit.’
Silence reached inside his jacket.
‘Hey! Whatcha doin’?’ Hunter asked aggressively. He sounded rattled. The long wait outside was making him paranoid. A feeling, he thought, that he shouldn’t have, now that he was
more powerful than any of the other vampires.
But Silence simply pulled a soft pack of cigarettes from his inside pocket and held them out towards Hunter. ‘Smoke?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. Yeah, thanks.’ Hunter reached out and took one. He placed it between his lips. ‘You gotta light?’
Silence nodded and with his free hand reached inside his jacket again. This time he produced a Zippo lighter. He held it out, flipped the top open, and flicked the wheel to ignite the flame. Hunter leaned in to the flame and sucked on the cigarette. It duly lit, and Silence replaced the lighter in his pocket.
‘You ain’t havin’ one yourself?’ Hunter asked.
Silence put the pack of cigarettes to his mouth and pulled one out with his teeth. He then slipped the pack back inside his jacket and took a drag on the cigarette, which lit itself.
‘Wow,’ remarked Hunter, impressed. ‘How d’ya do that?’
‘Friend showed me.’
There was a loud grating sound as the bolts on the other side of the door were slid to one side and the door slowly opened. Jericho, the bouncer with the leg brace, peered round it and eyed the waiting vampires warily.
‘Just you two?’
‘Yeah,’ said Hunter, pushing the door further open and barging in past the doorman. Silence followed him in with a bow of the head by way of thanks to Jericho.
By the time the bouncer had bolted the door shut again, Hunter had forged a path to the bar. The other vampires seemed to be picking up on his new aura and they parted to let him find space. Silence followed on behind him.
‘Dino, gimme a beer,’ Hunter shouted over to the bar owner, who was helping out his staff.
‘What?’ Dino was having trouble hearing over the noise of the band. The Psychics were performing the Kaiser Chiefs hit ‘I Predict a Riot’ and were currently belting out the chorus.
‘GLASS O’ BEER!’ Hunter shouted. Dino shook his head and put his hand to his ear. He was still engaged in filling the glass of one of the Dreads a few feet further down the bar. The Rastafarian was watching the bartender like a hawk to make sure he wasn’t given a short measure. Dino (unlike Sanchez) wasn’t one to upset his customers, but there were just too many distractions for him to pick up clearly what Hunter was yelling.
‘GLASS O’ FUCKIN’ BEER!’ Hunter shouted again. It was no good. Dino couldn’t hear him. A new approach was required, and by good fortune Hunter spotted Fritz standing behind him. The German was with his buddy Obedience and their new clan member Dante, who Hunter could see was quite clearly not even a vampire. Obedience had a firm grip on Dante’s arm and seemed to be holding on to him. Silence joined them. Hunter thought they all looked agitated about something. He wasn’t interested in what they were doing, however. He was just hoping to get Fritz’s attention.
‘Hey, Fritz! Help me out, will ya? Order me a beer,’ he yelled at the German.
‘SURE!’ Fritz bellowed back. ‘DINO, GET ZE MAN A FUCKING BEER, VILL YOU!’
Surprisingly, given how loud the German shouted, it was still not working. Dino was oblivious to the request. A new approach was required. Hunter pulled his pistol from its holster under his jacket, pointed it at the ceiling and squeezed the trigger.
BANG!
The sound was deafening, and was followed by a few small chunks of white plaster and a lot of white dust falling from the ceiling. Skeins of blue smoke swirled above Hunter. The place fell into a deathly quiet. The Psychics stopped playing ‘I Predict a Riot’. All that could be heard was the echo of the gunshot ringing in everyone’s ears.
‘Why don’t you fuckers take a break?’ Hunter yelled aggressively at the band, who looked as startled as everyone else.
They were a six-piece on this particular evening. Mandina, the lead singer, was wearing a short purple dress and the rest of the ‘almost all-girl group’, two guitarists, a drummer, the tubby male horn player and a dancer were all laced up in nothing more than matching sets of skimpy black underwear. They made a fine sight (with the possible exception of the tuba player), so most of the audience were still able to enjoy them without hearing the music. Now that they were no longer blaring out a tune and the bar was totally hushed Hunter was able to order his drink. He turned his attentions back to the bar. ‘And I’ll have a beer, Dino.’
Dino picked a glass from behind the bar and began to pour Hunter a beer. He had a chunk of white plaster on the shoulder of his suit jacket. He could see that Hunter was clearly rattled, and as the Filthy Pig had already pulled his pistol out and used it once it was in the bar owner’s best interests to keep him happy. Hunter was a ‘made’ man, after all, despite the fact that his geeky appearance might suggest otherwise. His hair was as neatly combed as ever and looked as though it had recently been blow-dried. With the thick brown sweater he wore beneath his tweed jacket, he looked like a reject from The Cosby Show. But he was undeniably dangerous.
Since a hush had now fallen on the bar, and everyone’s conversation had stopped, Hunter realized he had the perfect opportunity to call the ‘Big Bro’ number. He picked the cell phone out of his pocket again and flicked through the menus to find the number. Once he’d found it he barked out a last reminder to the rest of the customers in the bar.
‘Now listen up! Everybody just sit tight for one more minute, will ya? I’ve got an important call to make. So can you all keep your fuckin’ mouths shut for just a little longer while I call someone that you may all have heard of, huh?’ He looked around at his audience, who were at best feigning interest in what he had to say. ‘Yes, folks, I have the phone number for the Bourbon Kid. An’ I’m gonna call him right now, so keep it buttoned.’ He put his left index finger to his lips for emphasis, then used his right thumb to press ‘Call’ on the cell phone.
Amused to see that everyone in the bar was now paying him full attention, he put the phone to his ear and waited for it to ring. The dialling tone kicked in after about three seconds. Half a second after that, the silence in the bar was broken by the sound of someone’s cell phone ringing.
Someone standing no more than three feet from Hunter.
Forty-Four
Josh had only been working at the Santa Mondega City Library for a month, and it had been hell. The head librarian, Ulrika Price, was a severe taskmaster, and she made him nervous. And when Josh was nervous he had a tendency to lose control of his bodily functions. This could happen in many different ways, such as a sudden burst of snot shooting out of his nose, a mouthful of spit flying over the person he was talking to or, in extreme cases, pissing his pants just a little.
From day one Ulrika had taken great pleasure in making him feel uncomfortable and in wielding such power as she had over him. Intimidating a fifteen-year-old boy like Josh gave her a real buzz, of a kind that was all too absent from her otherwise sad and lonely existence.
Today had been one of those days when she was more uptight than ever, and it had pushed Josh to the brink of quitting. He had a second job anyway, so he could just about afford to lose his job as a trainee librarian. The only responsibility with which he was entrusted was placing the returned books back on the shelves where they belonged, and by Miss Price’s reckoning he was shit at doing even that. Already that day she had berated him for placing a Dan Brown novel in the Non-Fiction section and, even worse, a Barbra Streisand biography in with the Humour titles. It seemed he could do little right, certainly in Ulrika’s eyes. Of course, it was her own fault for putting him under intense pressure to replace books the minute she logged them back in. One thing she wouldn’t stand for was a pile of returned books mounting up on her reception desk.
The black school trousers Josh was rapidly growing out of were starting to creep up his ass due to all the sweat he was working up on his jaunts back and forth to the shelves, and his plain white shirt was close to becoming transparent. After placing a book entitled Dieting for Midgets on the top shelf of the Cookery section he returned to the reception desk to find out what Ol’ Misery Guts had for him next.
<
br /> When he got there she was on the phone, and knowing how she valued her privacy he stood and waited patiently for her to finish her conversation. She was sitting in the padded plastic seat right behind the reception desk, facing the entrance so she could see everyone who came in and went out. She was always checking to make sure no one tried to creep away with a book without signing it out first.
Josh knew better than to get caught listening in to her phone call. Ulrika Price took some highly dubious calls from some very unsavoury characters sometimes. Josh knew this because, on one occasion when she had been away from reception, he had impersonated her when answering the phone. A man with a deeply unpleasant voice had spoken on the other end and given him a list of four names and a date, then slammed the phone down. The junior librarian had thought nothing of it, but when, a few days later, Ulrika had found out what he had done she had gone ballistic and pinned him up against a wall with a hand at his throat. After that, he had made a point of never impersonating her again.
And now, this late in the day, she was busy peering over her spectacles and scribbling something down in a book on a shelf beneath the counter as she ‘umm-ed’ and ‘aah-ed’ on the phone. Josh, unsure whether she’d seen him waiting on the customer side of the desk, cleared his throat to let her know he was within earshot. The sound elicited an evil stare from Ms Price and she pulled her grey cardigan tighter over her shoulders, turning away from him just enough to be sure that he couldn’t see what she was writing. Eventually, after another ten seconds of nodding and ‘uh-huh-ing’, she replaced the handset on the chunky, old-fashioned white phone and turned to her junior.
‘Are you all done now?’ she grumbled at him, frowning so much that the front of her fair hair, which was tightly scraped back into a severe bun, clawed its way forward down to her eyebrows. For a woman in her thirties, she was not ageing well.
