The Book of Death (22 page)

To his surprise the Santa stood
back up. It relieved the pressure on Rick’s chest for a moment. He took in a
deep breath, only to then feel his chest begin to tighten again. A warm
sensation came over him. It was a relatively pleasant feeling after the cold
wet weather outside and the suffocation incident of a few seconds earlier.
However, the warm sensation lasted only momentarily. It was followed by a
numbness that swept from his shoulders to his toes in a matter of seconds. He
tried to speak, only to find that his mouth and tongue didn’t move to say the
words he wanted, which would have been
“What’s happening?”

The Santa took off his red hat,
revealing a head of thick dark dirty greasy hair. Then he grinned his huge
vampire-fanged smile at the stricken coffee shop owner.

‘What you’re experiencing right
now is a form of paralysis brought on by what you just drank,’ he said. ‘I want
you to lie there and enjoy yourself while I go to work on you. I usually save
this stuff for kids, but I’m making you a special case. You’ll feel all the
pain as I drain your blood from your veins. You just won’t be able to react to
any of it. It should only take a few hours.’ He unleashed an evil smile, then
added, ‘Merry Christmas.’

Twenty-Six

Kacy awoke from a very deep
sleep. She was naked beneath the covers of a bed in a room she didn’t
recognise. She felt hung over too. As the recollection of the previous night’s
events came back to her she realised why. After leaving the Tapioca and the
Bourbon Kid, she and Dante had headed out in search of some fresh blood. They
had found it a lot harder to come by than either of them had expected. Neither
of them wanted to murder an innocent person and drink their blood, so after some
half-hearted attempts at attacking strangers they had headed back to the Swamp
empty handed. As it turned out they needn’t have worried because Vanity kept
fresh bottles of blood behind the bar in the pool hall.

They had arrived at the pool
hall to find an after hours drinking club in full swing. Vanity had invited
along the other surviving members of the Shades clan and a few other hard
drinking vampires. He was a generous host so there were free bottles of a drink
named “Bloodweiser” available all night. It was a blood based drink designed to
look like Budweiser beer. It hadn’t been anywhere near as satisfying as the
blood of Archie Somers, but it had done enough to cure the craving that both
Dante and Kacy had.

Kacy had found Vanity to be a
pretty reasonable guy and quite a charmer. The guy knew how to throw a party
and make the guests feel welcome and he didn’t come across as terrifying in the
way she had imagined a vampire to be. But then, she too was a vampire these
days and she didn’t consider herself to be a blood crazed lunatic either.

Alongside her in bed, Dante was
still sleeping. She got up and showered in the en-suite bathroom without waking
him. He’d always been a late riser, particularly after a night of drinking, so
she was able to make as much noise as she liked without worrying about him
waking.

The bedroom Vanity had given
them to share was on the top floor of the Swamp. It had no windows in it,
presumably so that any vampire waking up in there in the morning didn’t get an
unexpected taste of sunlight for breakfast.

After drying her hair and
dressing in a comfy pair of blue jeans and a red sweatshirt, she decided to go
see if the snowfall outside had gotten any worse.

She opened the door into the
living room and peered around it to see if Vanity was around. He was sitting on
a sofa with his back to her watching something on the large television screen
on the far wall. Fortunately it wasn’t porn and his pants weren’t around his
ankles. He was wearing a crimson coloured dressing gown and a pair of matching
slippers, hardly what one might expect from a fearsome vampire. The television
was playing a home video of a wedding reception. Kacy loved a good wedding, so
she stepped out into the living room and gently closed the door behind her. Vanity
obviously heard her because he twisted his neck around sharply.

‘Oh hi,’ he said looking
surprised to see her. ‘You sleep well?’

‘Yeah, great, thanks.’

‘What about Dante?’

‘He’s still asleep. Probably
will be for another hour or two yet.’

‘Had a good time though. You
both seemed to enjoy yourselves last night.’

‘Yeah, it was a blast. Where did
everyone else go?’

Vanity smirked. ‘Well we
listened to you two fucking for a while, then the others all went home for the
night.’

Kacy felt herself beginning to blush.
The lusting brought on by the blood drinking the previous night had made her
and Dante somewhat horny. They’d lost their inhibitions and had one almighty
loud and energetic fuck in Vanity’s spare bedroom. As she cast her mind back to
some of the things she’d screamed out in the throes of passion, she decided a
change of subject was required.

On the television screen on the
far wall, she spotted a face she recognised. ‘Is that you?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ Vanity reached for the remote
to turn the television off.

‘Is this your wedding day?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Oh wow! Do you mind if I watch
it with you for a minute?’

Vanity looked surprised and put
the remote back down on the coffee table. ‘Sure, if you want. It’s not exciting
or anything.’

Kacy looked closely at the
bride. She was a beautiful brunette aged about twenty-five. The groom, Vanity,
looked similar to how he did now, only he was dressed smarter in a black suit
with a white shirt and black bow tie.

‘Your wife is really pretty,’ Kacy
said, perching herself on the edge of the sofa.

‘Yeah, she is.’

‘Are you still together?’

He shook his head. ‘Nah. She
didn’t want to become a vampire.’ His voice hinted at a deep rooted sadness.

‘Why? What happened?’

Vanity paused the video just as
he and his bride were sharing a kiss for the camera. ‘I wasn’t a vampire back
then,’ he said. ‘Some fucker bit me on our honeymoon. Emma, my wife, didn’t
want to become a vampire too, so I had to get the hell outta there or I’d have
bitten her. I promised her that one day when I found a cure and became human
again, I’d go back for her.’

‘How long ago was it?’

‘Four years.’

Kacy tried to imagine what four
years apart from Dante would be like. Not very nice, she decided. She stared
hard at the happy couple on screen for a few seconds before asking Vanity
another personal question. ‘And what about Emma? What’s she doing now?’

Vanity stared at the screen in a
daze as he spoke. ‘She’s never remarried or anything, but she’s twenty-nine
now, the same age as me. In a few months time she’ll be thirty. Me, I’ll always
look twenty-nine. Our dream of growing old together died the day I was bitten.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Yeah, me too. Dante’s real
lucky to have you, but you’ve made one hell of a sacrifice by becoming one of
us.’

‘I know. It was a spur of the
moment decision. But I can’t live without Dante. We’ve been together forever.’

‘I can tell,’ said Vanity
smiling. ‘When he said he’d just picked you up the other night, I knew he was
lying right away. You’re very comfortable with each other.’

Kacy realised she’d been a
little too open and honest with Vanity. She couldn’t help herself though. She
felt a bond with him. He was the only vampire friend she’d made so far and he
understood what she and Dante were going through. Even though he had no doubt
killed many people in order to survive as a vampire, Vanity seemed full of
remorse, not necessarily for the killings, but for the fact he had no chance to
go back to his old life.

Kacy probed a little deeper. ‘If
you could go back to being human, would you do it? And go back to your wife?’
she asked intrusively.

‘In a heartbeat. I hate being a
vampire. I’d give absolutely anything to be human again.’

Kacy took a deep breath then
blurted out what was on her mind. ‘Did you know the Eye of the Moon can make
you human again?’

Vanity smiled. ‘Yeah, but
Rameses Gaius would never allow any of us to use it for that. Trust me, if I
could work out how to get the Eye of the Moon out of his head, I’d do it.
Problem is, he’d kill me before I got anywhere near it.’

‘Wouldn’t it be great if we
could get hold of the Eye though?’

‘Yeah, but seriously, forget
it.’

‘Why?’

‘It’d be suicide.’

‘But if we
could
get it,
you could become human again and go back to your wife.’

Vanity frowned and then looked back
over at the television. He stared for a second at the frozen frame picture of
him and his wife. Then he picked up the remote and switched the TV off.

‘Would you and Dante be willing
to risk it?’ he asked.

Kacy shrugged. ‘If it was
possible, I’d want to try. Wouldn’t you?’

Vanity sat staring at the blank
screen on the television for a while, deep in thought. Eventually he took a
deep breath and turned to Kacy. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I think I know a way
we can get hold of the Eye. It’s dangerous though.’

Kacy was all ears. ‘Really?
How?’

‘I heard that Gaius is going to
the museum tonight. He’s planning on having the Eye cleaned by a special
diamond polishing machine they’ve got there. If we could somehow be there when
he removes the Eye from his head, we could snatch it away. The three of us,
you, me and Dante could pull this off, I think. It’ll be the only chance we’ll
ever get because he’s not gonna take that Eye out very often.’

Kacy felt very excited. ‘Oh my
God. Do you really think we could do it?’

Vanity nodded slowly, almost as
if he was convincing himself. ‘Actually, you know what? I really think we
could. Without the Eye he’s nothing. Not a threat to us at all. The three of us
would be more than a match for him.’

Kacy jumped up from the sofa. ‘Oh
my God,’ she squealed. ‘I’ll go and wake Dante and tell him.’

‘Cool.’

She raced back into the bedroom
to tell Dante the big news. As soon as she was out of sight, Vanity pulled his
cell phone from his pocket. He dialled the number for Rameses Gaius. Gaius
answered within one ring. His voice sounded as irritated as ever.

‘What do you want?’ he snapped.

‘It’s done,’ said Vanity. ‘I’ll
have them both at the museum tonight. You wouldn’t believe how easy it was.’

Twenty-Seven

Sanchez arrived at the library
just after nine o’clock and raced up the steps at the front of the building. He
reached the large wooden double doors at the entrance just as they were being
opened. Josh, the young lad who worked as assistant to the now deceased Ulrika
Price, pulled open the door on the right and was in the process of unbolting
the second door as Sanchez barged in. Josh winced as the cold air blew in
through the open door. His librarian uniform consisted only of a pair black
trousers and a thin white shirt so the fresh air would have raced right through
to the bone on the fresh faced teenager. He looked quite surprised to see
anyone arriving so early too, particularly someone like Sanchez who was not
exactly a regular bookworm.

‘Morning, Sanchez,’ he said, his
brown hair blowing up out of his face courtesy of a gust of wind from outside.

‘Good day to you, young man,’
said Sanchez with an air of officialdom in his voice. ‘It’s Detective Garcia to
you though. I’m here on official police business.’

Josh looked surprised, but he
looked Sanchez up and down, no doubt admiring his uniform. Then he shrugged.
‘Sure thing, Detective. Is this about Ulrika Price?’

‘No. Why would it be?’

‘Well, she’s gone missing. I’m
not supposed to even be working here any more because she fired me yesterday
morning.’

‘What a bitch.’

‘Yeah. Apparently just a few
minutes after firing me she vanished off the face of the planet. I thought if
she’d been reported as a missing person I might be on your list of people to
question?’

Sanchez pondered what he’d said
for a moment before answering. ‘It’s okay. That’s not why I’m here. Although if
she
has
been murdered I would imagine you’ll be the prime suspect in any
investigation, so don’t go leaving town any time soon.’

‘Yes sir. So what can I do for
you now?’

Sanchez headed to a staircase on
the left-hand wall that led to the first floor and the Reference section. ‘I’m
fine thanks. Shouldn’t need any help,’ he said. ‘Just got to relieve you of a
book to help with an investigation.’

‘What book is it?’

‘Never you mind.’

He walked briskly up the stairs
and left Josh behind to stick the OPEN sign up in the front window by the
entrance.

The upstairs section of the
library looked as daunting as ever. There were countless aisles full of books
and plenty of tables and chairs in which students could sit and read for free.
On Sanchez’s last visit he had smuggled The Book of Death out by tucking it
into the back of his pants so Ulrika Price wouldn’t see it. There would be no
need to do that this time. He was now an officer of the law, and Ulrika Price
wasn’t on duty.