The Eye of the Moon (10 page)

This was not a situation the sixteen-year-old was familiar with. He’d never held a knife aggressively before. He’d never stabbed anyone before. He’d never plucked anyone’s eyeball out and stamped it into the floor before. But then, nor had he ever been confronted in his own home by a vampire that had just raped his mother and bitten large chunks of flesh out of her.

Kione turned towards him, preparing to make another attack, although he now had a good deal less stomach for
the fight. This fuckin’ kid had bested him twice now, and his confidence was waning fast. In response, JD threw the knife at him in the manner of a knife thrower in a circus. Holding the blade by its tip, he raised the knife above his shoulder and threw it handle first. It spun over once in the air before embedding itself in the vampire’s remaining eye. Once again blood spurted out and Kione let out a high-pitched scream of fury, terror and despair, as his world turned to total darkness in an instant. The next thing he felt was his head hitting the kitchen floor as he fell backwards. This was followed by JD’s knee pushing down into his chest to prevent him from climbing to his feet. Last of all, he suffered the unpleasant agitation that came with the vile popping sound, indicating that his right eye, too, had been pulled from its socket.

The next fleeting sensation he experienced was a savage blow to the head that rendered him unconscious. A feeling he would get used to.

From her position of subjugation on the red carpet in the entrance hall, Beth threw her hands up to defend herself, turning her head away and closing her eyes as she did so. The bell on the church clock was still chiming in the city below, the sound climbing above the roar of the wind and rain. The young girl who had already endured such a rollercoaster of an evening was now on the downward track again. She screamed aloud as she felt the blade of the golden dagger slice through the soft skin of her right cheek, cutting right through until she felt the tip of it scrape against the teeth inside. The blade ripped through three inches of her face before it was withdrawn, just before it reached the corner of her mouth. She opened her eyes, but they were now filling up with tears of pain, so that it was almost impossible to make out where the dagger was. With her hands flailing desperately, she hoped she might grab hold of her stepmother’s arm before she was stabbed again.

She saw the flash of bright gold as the dagger swung at her face a second time and instinctively used her right arm to try to bat it away. At the same time, and quite by chance, she managed to seize a handful of the red robe her stepmother was wearing. She pulled on it as hard as she could, and felt the older woman lose her footing as a result. Olivia Jane fell forward on to her terrified stepdaughter, and the struggle between them came to an end.

The chiming of the church bell stopped, and for a moment all that could be heard was the pattering of the rain outside. Then the leader of the cult, the tall man in the ram’s-head mask, spoke on behalf of his clan members who had gathered
in the hall behind him to watch the sacrifice.

‘Olivia Jane?’ he intoned solemnly into the sudden silence. ‘You okay?’

Slowly, Olivia Jane Lansbury rolled soggily off the body of her stepdaughter, to lie on her back on the red carpet. She did not move again. The golden dagger was lodged in the side of her neck, blood seeping out over her shoulder into her hair. From beside her, Beth’s panic-stricken, blood-soaked face stared up at the masked devil worshippers in her home. One further glance sideways at her stepmother’s bloodied, dying form was enough for her. With a speed born of sheer terror, she leapt to her feet and rushed out through the front door, which had remained partly open throughout the ordeal. Back out in to the rain she went, covered in her stepmother’s blood and also her own, from the horrific face wound inflicted upon her. Her only thought was to head for the pier, hoping to find comfort in the arms of JD, the only person in the world she felt she could trust.

The man in the white robe who had handed the golden dagger to Olivia Jane stepped forward and peered around the door, watching the distraught young girl run down the hill and back towards the sea front. He took off his mask and crushed it in his hands. His craggy, middle-aged features were awash with frustration as he turned back to the twelve other members of the clan.

‘Right, you people had better clean up this mess,’ he said in a commanding voice. ‘I’m gonna have to go and arrest the girl.’

In the bloody, vomit-splattered kitchen, JD leant down to check on his mother, lying crumpled and broken on the floor. The copious amount of blood covering her was extremely unsettling, but he put it to the back of his mind. Crouching beside her, he propped her up into a seated position with her back against one of the lower cupboards. Then he brushed some of her long, dark, bloodstained hair out of her eyes, gently pulling away some strands that the drying blood had stuck to her face. She looked back at him, her eyes betraying the shock and pain she was feeling. He knew it was bad – the blood and the gaping hole in her neck made that plain enough – but confirmation was there in her dilated pupils and shallow, panting breaths. His mother would never normally show her pain, either physical or emotional, but this was a pain she couldn’t hide. The woman was dying and she knew it, and JD was slowly realizing it, and attempting to come to terms with it. Finding something meaningful or even comforting to say was all but impossibe. There wasn’t enough time to think of the right thing to say – this was a time for the stunned brain to disengage and the autopilot to take over.

‘Don’t die, Mom. Please don’t die. What should I do? What will Casper do?’ JD’s voice was cracking. This was the last time he would ever speak with his mother, the one and only consistent person in his life. Yet he knew he had to try not to think of himself. She was dying and needed comfort in these last moments.

She looked up at him, still gasping for breath. It was clear that she could barely see or recognize him. It was his voice
that was providing her with comfort in her final minutes.

‘Son,’ she panted. ‘
Kill me.
’

‘You’re in shock,’ JD mumbled, stroking her hair. ‘I’ll call an ambulance.’

‘It’s too late.
Kill me.
’

‘Mom, I’m not going to …’

‘
KILL ME!
’ Her voice suddenly took on a different tone. This wasn’t a request, this was an order. And it was the voice of a vampire. One of the undead. For that was what she was becoming. Her pupils shrank and she lurched forward at her trembling son, revealing a new set of bright white fangs protruding beyond her lips.

Startled, JD jumped back and fell on to his ass. ‘
What the fuck?
’

‘
KILL ME!
’ his mother hissed again. Her body and soul now belonged to the undead, but her heart still belonged to her son, for a short time at least.

‘I can’t kill you. Don’t be stupid.’

‘If – you – don’t – kill – me – now,’ she gasped, ‘I’ll become one of
them.
’ She pointed at the unconscious figure of Kione slumped at the other end of the kitchen. Her voice grew stronger. ‘A creature of evil. I’ll kill you – and your brother. Don’t make me do that. I can feel the bloodlust coming over me already. Please kill me. Quickly, before it’s too late.’

JD climbed back to his feet and shook his head. ‘I can’t. It’s crazy. I can’t kill you. You’re my mother, for Chrissa–’

With shocking speed, Maria suddenly sprang up from the floor and leapt on him, fangs searching for the soft flesh of his neck. His sharp reactions enabled him to fend her off without even realizing what he was doing. Then, using all his strength, he threw her against the cupboards above the sink behind him. Her head hit one of the doors and she slumped to the floor in a heap at his feet.

‘Oh God, Mom, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.’ He crouched down and lifted her head from the floor. ‘Are you … ? Oh fuck. No. NO!’

The realization that his mother was now dead hit him
like a sledgehammer in the back. Her face was almost unrecognizable. Her skin was pale and clammy, blue veins had crept to the surface, her eyes blackened, her teeth pointed and razor sharp. He released his hold on her head as a cold chill ran through him. The feeling of sickness rushed over him again and he covered his mouth to stop himself vomiting again – not that his stomach seemed to have anything left in it to bring up anyway.

After a few moments of staring down at the body of what had once been his mother, he allowed the autopilot side of him to take the controls again.
Close your mind,
he told himself.
Don’t think about what you’re about to do. Just do it. You have to, and you know it.

Moving as though in a trance, he left the kitchen and headed up the stairs to his mother’s bedroom. She kept a gun in a drawer of the cabinet beside her bed in case any of her clients ever decided to overstep the, admittedly rather liberal, boundaries of decency she insisted upon during their visits. There had been occasions when some of her less regular clients had been overly violent during sex or had demanded their money back after an unsatisfying session (invariably their own fault). She had pulled the gun on a few occasions, but it had never been fired.

JD walked into the bedroom to be engulfed by a foul stench, and sickened by the sight of the bloodied covers on the bed in the centre of the room. Visions of his mother in agony in this room at the hands of Kione flashed through his mind, and he quickly looked away from the bed and walked over to the small wooden bedside cabinet. Pulling open the top drawer he pushed aside a few undergarments to reveal the shiny silver revolver that his mother owned. Since she had never had to fire it, it still looked bright and new. After a deep breath he picked it up and looked over it, breaking out the cylinder to check the loads. There were six, all unfired.
This is the gun I’m going to use to kill my mother.

The thought was a vile one. It made him retch, but once again no vomit came up. His stomach was empty, his guts
shrinking.
I can’t do this.
Then for the first time he noticed what was standing on top of the cabinet.

A bottle of bourbon.