The Book With No Name (30 page)

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.

‘Is
she
a vampire?’ asked Peto, his tone mixing incredulity with curiosity.

‘Watch. I’ll show you.’

Rex stood up, pulling a large silver revolver from a holster inside his black leather jacket. The woman at the table had obviously been keeping tabs on him out of the corner of her eye, because she was the first to spot him taking aim. He held the firearm out in front of him with a straight arm and pointed it directly at her heart. Her eyes bulged wide open in terror, but before she could move Rex fired three shots in quick succession.

The noise of the discharge was deafening, the echo of each shot making it difficult for anyone to know for certain exactly how many shots had been fired. The whole place went quiet, apart from the ringing in everyone’s ears. The four men sitting at the table with the woman jumped back from their seats, startled by the sight of their companion being hit three times in the chest by Rex’s bullets. This initial shock was soon trumped by the sight of their female companion exploding into flames seconds after the impact of the third and final bullet. For the next few seconds blood poured from her wounds, spraying a wide area. When at last the flow stopped and the flames burnt themselves out, there was nothing but a pile of grey ash left where she had been sitting. The whole episode was over in less than twenty seconds. All that remained to show that it had ever happened was a little ash and an unpleasant smell of cordite and charred flesh.

Once all the spectators (including the men at the dead woman’s table) had taken on board what they had just witnessed, they all carried on about their business as if nothing had happened. This sort of occurrence was not commonplace in Santa Mondega, but the folk around these parts weren’t going to make a big fuss about it, simply because it was Rodeo Rex who had pulled the trigger.

Rex had put his gun away long before the last of the flames had gone out.

‘Well, that’s not something you see every day,’ Kyle observed.

‘It was a little unusual, wasn’t it?’ said Peto, nodding in agreement.

Rex, entirely unfazed by what he had just done or by the reaction of the others, simply sat back down at their table, took a long swig from his enormous bottle of beer, and carried on talking.

‘She was a werewolf,’ he said, burping back up all the air that had gone down his throat with the beer. ‘Not likely to have troubled us much, to be honest. Werewolves are fuckin’ pointless unless there’s a full moon. The vampires – they’re the ones to worry about. They won’t be out for another hour or so. It’s not dark enough for ’em yet. Most of the bastards can’t come out while the sun’s still hangin’ around.’

‘My goodness!’ Kyle exclaimed. ‘Do vampires explode into flames when you shoot them, too?’

Rex seemed surprised and a little irritated by the monk’s lack of knowledge about the undead, and he was struggling to hide it.

‘How come you two monks don’t seem to know about all this shit? You should know more about this shit than I do. You’re the ones that’ve come here to find the Eye of the Moon. Do you even know why these fuckers are after the Eye?’

‘Father Taos never mentioned anything about this, did he, Kyle?’ confessed Peto.

‘No, he didn’t. I think we need to tell him about it, too. Perhaps we require more than just the two of us to retrieve the Eye.’

‘There’s just
two of you?
Fucksake, don’t you guys ever learn?’ groaned an increasingly irritated Rex.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Kyle.

‘
I mean last fuckin’ time.
Last time the Eye was taken there were only three monks that came. I met two of ‘em. I only heard about the third, never laid eyes on him, but it was the third one that survived and took the Eye back to Hubal, right? You do know all this, don’t you? Tell me you know all this.’

‘Yes, we know this part,’ answered Kyle. ‘Five years ago our brothers Milo and Hezekiah were sent to retrieve the Eye. They failed in their mission, but Father Taos then came alone and retrieved it. By himself.’

‘
Bullshit!
’ bellowed Rex, in a tone of utter disgust. Several people at nearby tables looked up, and then wisely decided to look away again. ‘I bet your friend Father Taos told you all that crap, didn’t he?’

‘It’s not crap, thank you.’

‘It fuckin’ is, too. The real story is that a guy called the Bourbon Kid had the Eye but your friends Milo and Hezekiah confronted him and got it back. Then your fuckin’ Father Taos comes along, kills Milo and Hezekiah, takes the fuckin’ stone for himself and, by the sound of it, fucks off back to Hubal and takes all the credit. Fuckin’ scumbag.’

‘That can’t be true,’ said Peto. ‘Tell him, Kyle. Father Taos would never do something like that. He’s the most decent and honest man in the entire world. Isn’t he, Kyle?’

‘I would certainly like to think so,’ said Kyle carefully. ‘However, two minutes ago I didn’t believe that people burst into flames and turned to ash on being shot. I am beginning to think, Peto, that we don’t know all that we should. It is time we opened our minds and accepted that, just maybe, not all of the things we’ve been taught to believe are actually absolutely true.’

For a moment, Peto was left speechless. He was astonished that Kyle could possibly suggest that anything they had learnt in Hubal could be other than completely true. Yet he respected Kyle, and trusted him implicitly, so he took on board what his older and wiser friend had said, albeit grudgingly.

‘Does that mean that it could be all right to drink alcohol, then?’ he asked.

‘Will you
shut up
about that?’

‘Give the man a goddam break, will ya?’ Rex interjected. ‘Here. Try some of my beer. You’ll like it.’

‘No he won’t,’ Kyle said quickly, holding out an arm to stop Rex from passing the drink to Peto. ‘Look, Rex,’ he
went on earnestly, ‘we really do appreciate your assistance, but offering him strong drink isn’t going to help us. Is there anything else you know that might be of use to us?’

Rex took a deep breath through his nostrils. He didn’t much care for Kyle’s tone, but he stayed calm. Leaning back in his chair, he pulled a soft packet of cigarettes from the top pocket of his waistcoat and offered one to Peto, who had the good sense to decline.

‘You two know anything about a girl who just came out of a coma? Been in it five years, they say.’

‘No. Should we?’ asked Kyle.

‘I’d say so. Go to Sanchez’s bar, the Tapioca. He knows all about her. In fact, she might even be in there when you show up.’

‘What’s so special about her?’ Peto asked.

‘She just came out of a coma after five years, you dumb fuck. Don’t you fuckin’ listen?’

‘Well, yes. Yes, I do. But what does that have to do with anything?’

Sighing heavily, Rex ignited a small match by scraping it along the table, then used it to light a cigarette. He took a long, slow, hard drag on it, so that the end glowed brightly. Then he blasted the smoke back out through his nostrils and leaned forward, as if he had a secret to pass on that he wanted no one else to hear.

‘She was in a coma,’ he said, ‘because the Bourbon Kid couldn’t kill her, no matter how hard he tried. S’far as anyone knows, she’s the only person he ever tried to kill that didn’t die. I’d say there’s somethin’ pretty special about that, wouldn’t you?’

‘So does that mean she’s one of the undead?’ asked Kyle.

‘I don’t know what the fuck she is,’ Rex went on. ‘And from what Sanchez says, she doesn’t know what, or who, she is, either. She could be a total crazy, but she’s claimin’ she’s got amnesia.’

‘I see. That
is
interesting,’ said Kyle thoughtfully. ‘Maybe we should go and find her now, Peto.’

‘I’d get skids under my ass if I were you,’ Rex suggested. ‘It’s gettin’ dark. The vampires will be out lookin’ for you guys. I reckon Peto made quite an impression in that boxing ring ‘fore I arrived. You guys need to be a little more discreet. You know, it’s fuckin’ obvious to anyone that you’re monks. The undead will be swarming round you like flies. Best you get goin’. I’ll catch up with you sometime tomorrow.’

‘Okay. Shall we arrange to meet somewhere?’ Kyle asked.

‘Yeah. In Sanchez’s bar. Tomorrow. Just before the eclipse. Unless you’ve already got the Eye back, in which case I suggest you get the hell outta town with it before it’s too late.’

Kyle and Peto were glad to have Rodeo Rex as an ally. They thanked him once more for the information he had provided (even though they were not altogether convinced of its authenticity), then headed back into town to see if they could find the girl he had spoken of. The one who had just come out of a coma.