by AnonYMous
‘Don’t think so. She don’t look the kind. She’s a real pretty little thing.’
Rex shook his head. ‘Don’t be fooled by appearances, Sanchez,’ he warned. ‘I reckon there weren’t too many people betting on that little bald monk guy when he first stepped into the ring today, but he was pretty handy, wasn’t he? At least, he was ’til I whupped his ass.’
‘Yeah, but I just don’t think she’s the one. There’s somethin’ special about her. I saw her take ’bout a hundred bullets once. That’s why she was in a coma.’
Rex’s eyes opened wide, and he began to look around him to see if anyone in the crowd was close enough to be listening to their conversation.
‘She the one who stood up to the Bourbon Kid?’ he asked softly.
‘Yeah, how’d you know about that?’ Sanchez had also lowered his voice.
‘Everyone knows about that. You say she’s back in town now? And your brother was hiding her all this time? Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?’
‘Didn’t think you’d be interested. Besides, before she slipped into a coma, she begged me to hide her away and keep her secret because people would want to kill her. ’Course, she doesn’t fuckin’ remember any of that shit now, but I kept my word. I never told no one where I’d hidden her.’
Rex took in a very, very deep breath and shook his head.
‘Fuck, Sanchez, that girl could be the key to everythin’. She’s the only person the Bourbon Kid couldn’t kill. I need to speak with her. She’ll be able to identify whoever it is that killed Elvis and your brother. And I’ve a sneaky suspicion it’ll be our friend the Bourbon Kid. That sonofabitch.’
‘But he’s dead, ain’t he?’
‘Don’t you believe that shit for one minute. I’ll bet my last dollar that bastard is still alive somewhere, and he’s probably about to show his face again real soon.’
Sanchez was growing increasingly concerned at how passionate Rex was becoming about the whole issue. There suddenly seemed to be a lot more to the big man’s plans than just avenging the deaths of Elvis, Thomas and Audrey.
‘Listen, Rex, is there somethin’ I should know?’ the bartender asked nervously. ‘Is something big about to go down? ’Cos if that fuckin’ bourbon-drinkin’ piece of shit is comin’ back, I’m closing my fuckin’ bar, Lunar Festival or no Lunar Festival.’
‘Sanchez, my friend, believe me, you don’t wanna know what I’m doin’ in town … You don’t wanna know. Now I’d better go find those two monks. Me an’ them have got … Muthafucker, I don’t believe it!’
Rex’s gaze suddenly fixed on something over Sanchez’s right shoulder, by the entrance to the tent.
‘What is it?’ Sanchez could see that something had distracted Rex, and whatever it was it had made his gaze harden and his top lip curl. He looked angry, as though he was about to rip someone’s head off.
‘He’s here. That sonofabitch,’ he hissed.
‘Who?’ Rex was still staring over the other’s shoulder.
Sanchez turned to see what Rex was staring at. Over in the far corner of the tent there was a small makeshift coffee bar. It was only about four or five feet long with just the one bartender behind the simple counter. It wasn’t busy simply because it was a coffee bar and no one was drinking coffee, at least no one had been drinking coffee. Right now, however, there was one man drinking the stuff.
Sanchez’s heart nearly stopped. He hadn’t seen the Bourbon Kid in five years, and had slept comfortably in that time only because he had believed him to be dead. Now there he was, sitting on a stool, drinking coffee. He had his hood up over his face, so by rights Sanchez shouldn’t have been able to tell whether it was him or not. But when you’ve seen a man kill a bar full of people in cold blood, you’ll recognize him even if he’s hiding behind a tree a mile away in the dark.
‘Oh my God,’ Sanchez thought out loud. ‘The Bourbon Kid.’
‘What?’ said Rex, turning back to Sanchez. ‘Where?’
‘Well … there!’ he said pointing. ‘That guy you’re staring at. That’s him. That’s the Kid.’
Rex swung the white towel around the back of Sanchez’s neck with one hand and caught the free end with the other. Then he used the loop he’d made to pull Sanchez in closer to him. The easy manner had gone. In its place was naked aggression.
‘Are you fuckin’ pullin’ my pisser, Sanchez? ’Cos if you are, I’ll fuckin’ kill you.’ Gravel, Sanchez thought, almost light-headedly. Lotta gravel in ol’ Rex’s voice.
‘No man, I swear. That’s him. That’s the Kid.’ Sanchez didn’t know which frightened him more, Rex or the hooded man near the entrance.
The pair of them looked back to the coffee bar. They had both been looking at the same man, but his seat was no longer in use. They had only taken their eyes off him for a few seconds, but now he was nowhere to be seen. He had simply vanished into the crowd.
‘You think that guy was the Bourbon Kid?’ Rex asked.
‘I know it was.’
Rex had to take Sanchez’s word for it. He had never knowingly met the Bourbon Kid, had only ever heard the stories about him. But now, amidst all the other things that he had to digest, like the violent death of his friend Elvis, he had to take on board the fact that he had actually met the Bourbon Kid before, only at the time had not known it was him. God dammit, this just couldn’t be possible. Could it?
‘That sonofabitch. Sanchez, you sure it’s definitely him?’
‘’Course I’m sure, fuck it. I saw him wipe out my entire client base five years ago. I’d know that bastard anywhere.’ Sanchez paused for a second, then said, ‘Wait a minute. Who did you think it was?’
Rex turned away and walked slowly to the centre of the ring with his head bowed. The crowd had fallen silent, as if sensing that something was wrong and that Rex would not be fighting again. Many of them even began to back away from ringside, fearing that he was about to go nuts. He wasn’t, of course, but he was about to reveal something to Sanchez that very few people knew. He turned back and faced his trembling cornerman.
‘That guy,’ he said slowly, ‘that man you say is the Bourbon Kid, he’s the guy who gave me this.’ Rex held up his right hand. It was the hand with the black glove on it.
‘Wow,’ said Sanchez, inappropriately. ‘Is that real leather?’
‘Not the glove, you idiot … this.’ With the fingers of his left hand he loosened the glove one finger at a time, before finally whipping it off in one quick movement. Underneath was a hand like no other Sanchez had ever seen. It was not made of flesh and bone like any other man’s hand. Rodeo Rex quite literally had a fist of steel. A fully functional metal hand. One so intricately designed that all the joints worked just as they do in a normal hand.
‘My God,’ Sanchez gawped. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that. Didn’t even know they made things like that yet.’
‘They don’t,’ said Rex. ‘I made it myself after that sonofabitch crushed every bone in my hand. And I’ve been counting down the days until I saw him again, just waiting for the chance to hit him with this.’ He held the metal hand up, now clenched into a fist.
Sanchez was stunned. ‘He beat you in a fight?’ he blurted out. Even the idea was unthinkable.
‘I wouldn’t call it a fight. More a test of strength, but he was lucky. It won’t happen again. You can be sure of that.’
It was an extraordinary revelation. Sanchez had never heard of anyone beating Rex at anything before, or even coming close, for that matter. He recognized, however, that it wouldn’t do to dwell on the subject of the great man’s defeat, so a change of subject was required.
‘So you’re the only person in the world with a hand like that?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, just me and Luke Skywalker.’
Thirty-Six
In all his time with the police force Lieutenant Scraggs had never been summoned to a secret meeting with Captain Rockwell before. He had never even heard of anyone else achieving such an honour, but that
was hardly surprising: secret meetings with the Captain should be just that, secret. The note on his desk from Rockwell had simply read: ‘MEET ME IN THE LOCKER ROOM AT 4 P.M. TELL NO ONE.’
And now here he was, sitting in the disused locker room in the basement underneath the headquarters building. There had been a gymnasium down here years earlier, but it had been closed down for reasons that had never been fully explained. Something bad had happened down there once, but it had been hushed up. The Captain almost certainly knew what it was, but there were probably no more than a handful of others who were privy to that kind of information. There were as many secrets within the Santa Mondega police force as there were in the criminal underworld.
Scraggs had waited little more than a minute before he heard the sound of Captain Rockwell coming down the stairs to the locker room. It was 4.01 p.m. The Captain was a minute late, not that Scraggs felt the need to comment on it. He admired Jessie Rockwell, but he was in awe of him, too. And he was most definitely terrified of the man.
Rockwell opened the door quietly and peered round it.
‘You alone?’ he whispered, his glance darting back and forth around the locker room to check for himself.
‘Yes, sir,’ Scraggs whispered back.
‘Nobody knows you’re here?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Good.’ The Captain sidled on in and shut the door very quietly behind him like someone trying not to wake a sleeping child. ‘Take a seat, Scrubbs,’ he ordered.
‘It’s Scraggs, sir’
‘Whatever. Sit down.’
Lieutenant Scraggs sat down on the long wooden bench that ran along the wall. Behind him was a row of empty lockers. Opposite him were more lockers and another bench running along the wall. The whole place had a neglected air, and smelled strongly of sweat. The Captain sat himself down directly opposite and leaned forward so his face was only a matter of inches from Scraggs’s.
‘I need you to do something for me,’ he half growled, half whispered.
‘Sure thing, Captain. Just name it.’
‘It’s Detective Jensen. I’ve had his cellphone tapped, and from listening in on his calls, I’ve a feeling he’s up to something much bigger than he’s letting on to us.’
‘Have you asked Somers what he thinks Jensen is up to? I hear they’re getting along quite well.’
‘Horseshit!’ Rockwell raised his voice. ‘Somers doesn’t get along with anyone. You know that.’
‘So you haven’t asked him, then?’
‘No. And I don’t want you to, either.’
‘So what do you want me to do, Captain?’
‘I want you to find Dectective Jensen and follow him wherever he goes,’ said Rockwell, lowering his voice almost to a whisper once more. ‘Don’t let him know you’re following him, though.’
Rockwell reached out and placed a hand on Scraggs’s shoulder, looking him dead in the eye to show how serious he was about this. Scraggs nodded to acknowledge his understanding of Rockwell’s order.
‘You got any leads, Captain? I mean, where do I start?’
‘Start at the Olé Au Lait coffee shop.’
‘Why? What’s there?’
‘Well, if you get there at about eight o’clock tonight, both Jensen and Somers will be there. They’ve arranged a little meeting where Jensen is going to tell Somers what he found out during a visit to the library.’
Scraggs wasn’t sure he was following correctly. ‘I’ll never get close enough to them to listen in without them spotting me,’ he pointed out.
‘I don’t want you to. I just want you to follow Jensen when he leaves. And keep me up to date with where he’s headed.’
‘Okay, Captain. Will that be all?’
‘No. If you get no joy following Jensen, or if he loses you somehow, I want you to find Somers and follow him. I think these two clowns have uncovered something they probably shouldn’t have.’
‘What sort of thing? Or shouldn’t I ask?’
The Captain looked as though he was pondering whether or not Scraggs actually needed to know any more, but he was certainly smart enough to understand that it was his Lieutenant’s job to ask.
‘Jensen paid a visit to the City Library this morning. After he left the library he called Somers on his mobile and said that he’d found an important lead. Whatever it was that he found, it sounds like it might just hold the key to all the recent murders, and the identity of the killer. I need to know what Jensen found out, before anyone gets to him. He may have put his life and Somers’s life in danger.’
‘Are we talking about the Bourbon Kid here, Captain?’
‘We just might be,’ Rockwell said, nodding. ‘You see, that’s the other thing, Scraggs. We get crank calls all the time about the Bourbon Kid.’
‘Yeah, I know. I heard he gets spotted in the city at least once a day.’
The Captain stood up to leave.
‘It’s actually more like one sighting a week, Scrubbs,’ he said. ‘But today … Well, so far today we’ve had about a hundred sightings of that sonofabitch.’
Thirty-Seven
Kyle and Peto were sitting at a round wooden table in the giant beer tent, discussing just how badly Peto had been beaten by Rodeo Rex. Both monks had been raised to honour the concept of humility, but a dispassionate observer might have noticed that the novice seemed unwilling to discuss his last bout, while his mentor appeared to want to talk about nothing else. The tent had been very busy when they arrived, but in the last half hour it had been steadily quietening down. Where there had been drinkers five deep at the bar, they were now only two deep.
Almost an hour had passed before Rodeo Rex eventually walked in. He was now wearing a sleeveless black leather jacket over his T-shirt. (Sleeves of the appropriate size to cover this man’s biceps had yet to be tailored.) The dwindling crowd in the bar area parted for him, and he made his way straight up to one of the bartenders and ordered a very large bottle of beer. His drink was handed to him free of charge within a matter of seconds, much to the unvoiced frustration of everyone else who had been waiting to be served.
Rex spotted Kyle and Peto almost at once, and manoeuvred his giant frame through a crowd of drunken well-wishers and fans to take up a seat at their table.
‘How you feeling, young fella? Hope I didn’t hurt you too bad,’ he said to Peto, patting the small monk on the shoulder as he sat down on the chair opposite him.
‘No, I’m okay now, thank you. I was a bit groggy for a while, but it seems to have passed.’
‘Good.’ Rex seemed genuinely pleased. His next comment, however, shattered the genial atmosphere. ‘Now, enough of the idle chit-chat. The Eye of the Moon has been stolen again, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Kyle admitted. It seemed pointless to deny it, especially to this man. ‘Just a few days ago. We have to get it back before tomorrow’s eclipse. If it falls into the wrong hands before then, the repercussions for this town will be devastating.’
‘No shit, Sherlock? The whole place could be plunged into eternal darkness, right?’
‘Yes, that is correct. But how do you know all this?’
‘’Cos like you two, I’m here on a mission from the Almighty.’
‘Really?’ asked Kyle, astonished. It was difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend how a violent giant like Rodeo Rex could be on a mission from God. No matter that he seemed a relatively pleasant man, quite apart from anything else he just didn’t seem humble enough to be a servant of the Lord.
‘Yeah, really,’ Rex continued. ‘You see, this town – Santa Mondega – well, I come here once or twice a year. I always arrive unannounced, and I never stay long. D’you know why I do this?’
‘No,’ said Kyle. ‘Why should we?’ He was becoming irritated.
‘I guess not. I don’t normally divulge this sort of information to just anybody, but here’s the thing: I have a special purpose in life. The Lord assigned me a job that few men are capable of. But me, well, I was made specially
for it. I’m God’s very own bounty hunter.’
‘Excuse me?’ interrupted Peto. He had listened intently as Rex talked to Kyle, but he could hold his tongue no longer at such a blasphemous revelation. ‘You’re saying God pays you to kill people. I say that is utter nonsense. And it is blasphemy, as well.’
‘Listen, fuckwit, you want me to slap you around again in front of all these people?’
‘No.’
‘Then shut the fuck up and let me finish.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Damn fuckin’ right, you’re sorry. Now listen, and listen good. God employs me much like He employs priests or exorcists. But I’m one of a kind. I’m unique.’ He leaned a little closer to make sure that both monks were paying him their full attention. ‘The Good Lord employs me to rid the world of the undead. And Santa Mondega, my monkish friends, is the undead capital of the world.’
Rex sat back, took a pull at his beer and waited for the two monks to react to what he had said. There was an uncomfortable pause as they waited for him to say he was kidding. Eventually Kyle spoke up.
‘Are you serious?’ he asked, trying to keep a mocking tone from his voice. Rex put his bottle of beer down on the table and leaned forward again.
‘Damn right I’m serious. Think about it. If the town of Santa Mondega was plunged into eternal darkness, who would benefit the most, huh? Vampires, that’s who. This place is fuckin’ crawling with ‘em, and somewhere around here is the Lord of the Undead. That’s Head Vampire to you, and if he ever gets his hands on your precious Eye, then we’re all fucked. Every last fuckin’ one of us.’
‘How do you know there are vampires here?’ Peto inquired.
‘It’s a gift. Weren’t you paying any goddam attention to what I just said?’ Rex tutted. ‘It’s a gift from God. I can sniff out the undead better than you can pray.’ He paused and glanced round the tent. ‘Take that girl over there, fr’instance.’ He pointed at a very attractive dark-haired woman in her late twenties who was sitting at a table about ten yards away. She seemed to be a typical biker babe, dressed in black leather pants, heavy black motorcycle boots and a sleeveless Iron Maiden T-shirt, also black, which showed off a few tattoos on her upper arms. Sitting at the table with her were four men, all in their mid-thirties. They were probably all bikers too. She fitted in with them, all right. In fact, she blended in well with the crowd in general.
