The Book of Death (32 page)

‘The vampires will kill
thousands more people than he ever could,’ Beth retorted.

‘That’s true,’ Bull agreed. ‘But
the people who die at the hands of the vampires are dying for a reason. It’s
all part of the food chain. When your precious Bourbon Kid killed my father he
did it out of spite. He’s killed thousands of innocent people without motive.
There’s no honour in that. The vampires kill to survive. There’s honour in
that.’

‘Honour? Is this what you tell
yourself to ease your conscience?’

Bull frowned. ‘You know, you
should be a little more careful about how you speak to me, miss.’

Beth looked back up at the
television screen. There was a picture of JD on a monitor behind the news
reporter. She stared hard at it for a few seconds before responding to Bull.
‘I’m not afraid of what you might do to me,’ she said.

Bull smiled. ‘Nor should you be,
sweetness. When you die, I promise you it’ll be quick,’ he said. ‘You have
nothing to be afraid of.’

‘Wish I could say the same for
you.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Bull’s
voice took on a more surly tone, suggesting he took offence to the remark.
‘Since when did you get so cocky?’

‘Since I realised my boyfriend
is the Bourbon Kid.’

‘That’s hardly a reason to be
cocky.’

‘Really? Because the smart money
says I’m going to live. My boyfriend has been killing vampires for years and
he’s still alive. He’s up there on TV. I don’t see you guys on TV. No one’s
talking about how many people you’ve killed, apart from
you
. You guys
need to wake up to one very important fact.’

Bull’s nostrils flared. She was
definitely getting under his skin. ‘What’s that then?’ he snarled.

‘You’re all gonna die.’

Bull stared hard at her for a
few moments, clearly surprised at her brash display of confidence, and no doubt
rattled by it too. He nodded at Razor. Whatever the nod meant, it triggered an
instant reaction. With a deft jab from his right fist, Razor blindsided Beth
with a sharp blow to the side of the head, knocking her out cold.

Thirty-Eight

‘Flake, you’ve done a wonderful
job,’ said Bill Clay, patting her on the shoulder.

The switchboard on the reception
desk at the police station had been overwhelmed with calls from panicked
residents and Flake had done her best to keep them calm and offer advice. There
had been all kinds of strange calls, including one from a girl called Caroline
who claimed she’d been chased into a library by a vampire who was then killed
by the Bourbon Kid. Flake couldn’t tell the crank calls from the genuine ones,
so she was grateful when Clay had come downstairs and dictated an answerphone
message to her. They had recorded it and diverted all further incoming calls to
the automated message.

‘I sure could use a coffee after
all that,’ Flake said.

‘You’ve certainly earned it. If
I was you I’d head home.’

Flake peered over to the front
doors of the station at the dark streets outside. ‘I think I might stay here,
if it’s all the same to you,’ she said.

‘Can’t say I blame you. We’ve
got a few comfy sofas on the upper floors, I’ll see if I can find some blankets
for you.’

‘What about you? Are you staying
too?’

Clay shook his head. ‘Nah. I’m
due to meet the Captain later tonight at the museum.’

‘Where’s he now?’

‘Addressing the city on the
local news. So he’s probably dead by now. Any word from Sanchez?’

‘No, he never showed up.’

‘That’s too bad. Come on
upstairs, I’ll find some blankets for you.’

Flake had a few other things she
wanted to attend to. Things she didn’t particularly want to share with Clay.
‘I’ll come on up in a bit. Just got a few things to do first,’ she said.

‘Suit yourself. I’ll see you in
a while.’

Clay headed back upstairs via
the stinky elevator. Flake grabbed a cup of coffee from a vending machine and
settled back in at her desk. It was eerily quiet and made her long for Sanchez
to show up. He had promised to drop by before heading off to the Casa de Ville
with The Book of Death. She had a horrible feeling that he was about to put
himself in danger by making the trip to the Casa De Ville on his own. He seemed
to hold Jessica in very high esteem without any good reason. Flake didn’t trust
Jessica at all. The woman acted like a total bitch most of the time, yet no
matter what she did, Sanchez seemed very forgiving.

Now that she finally had some
time to herself Flake pulled open the bottom drawer on her desk and moved a few
items aside. At the bottom of the drawer, underneath the clutter was The Book
With No Name. She pulled it out and laid it down on the desk. She soon found
the page where she had stopped reading the day before. She took a sip from her
coffee and began scanning through the pages in the hopes of finding out
anything more about vampires and cursed books.

It didn’t take too long to find
some more sketchy information about The Book of Death. It was described as a
large black hardback book, just like the one she had hit with her car earlier.
There was also a mention of the book’s owner, a powerful man known as Rameses
Gaius. The name sounded familiar to her but she couldn’t recall where she had
heard it before.

She’d been reading the
occasional passage in the book and analysing some of the fine pieces of artwork
for about half an hour when she finally stumbled on something that set her
heart racing. It was a picture of four men and a woman. It was an old picture,
but the faces of the four people in it were crystal clear. And the woman was
instantly recognisable. It was Jessica. Beneath the picture she saw some lettering.
It read:

Dark Lord Xavier and his family,
believed to reside in Santa Mondega, a city of the New World.

Dark Lord Xavier had a face she
recognised too. She had known him better as Archibald Somers, a cop obsessed with
finding the Bourbon Kid for most of his career. The page next to it indicated
that the people in the picture had dabbled in the dark arts. Hardly surprising
when one of them was the owner of the title Dark Lord. Reading on furtively,
Flake began to realise why everyone who read The Book With No Name was found
dead afterwards. The book identified a whole bunch of high ranking vampires,
one of which was Jessica. Sanchez obviously knew nothing about any of this and
he was heading to the Casa De Ville with The Book of Death. Flake had to stop
him.

She whipped her cell phone out
from her trouser pocket and dialled Sanchez’s number. It rang twice then the
call went straight to voicemail and Sanchez’s voice spoke.

“Good day to you. You have
reached the voicemail of Detective Sanchez Garcia of the SMPD. I’m probably
busy taking down bad guys, so please leave a message after the tone.”

Flake waited for the beep and
immediately started babbling a frantic message. ‘Sanchez, it’s Flake. Don’t go
to the Casa De Ville. Your friend Jessica is a vampire. It says so in The Book
With No Name. I think she’ll kill you as soon as she has The Book of Death.
Call me as soon as you get this!’

Hopeful that he would hear her
message before it was too late and not dismiss it as nonsense, she slipped her
phone back into her pocket and pondered what to do. Her stomach was in knots
and her mind was overflowing with different options. What if Sanchez didn’t
call back? Or didn’t get the message?

In an attempt to keep her mind
occupied she flicked through a few more pages of The Book With No Name. It
didn’t help much. All she could think about was how much trouble Sanchez was
in. She had to figure out a way to help him. If the shoe was on the other foot,
she was sure he would do the same for her.

She closed The Book With No
Name. As it slammed shut, she stared at its worn brown cover and cast her mind
back to the moment she had killed Ulrika Price. Of course! She had at her
disposal a weapon that could kill vampires. The Book With No Name.

All she had to do was get to the
Casa De Ville with it and somehow find a way to hit Jessica over the head with
it as she had done with Ulrika Price. At the very least it would prove to
Sanchez that Jessica was a vampire. But how would she ever get close enough to
Jessica to do it?

She muttered her thoughts out
loud. ‘Come on Flake, think! What would Sanchez do if he was here, and it was
me
at
the Casa De Ville with the vampires?’

Suddenly an idea came to her.
She reached down to the bottom drawer of her desk once more and flicked through
the clutter she had brushed aside to get to the book earlier. Sure enough,
there was something there that could prove to be useful: a can of black spray
paint. She pulled it out and shook it. The noise it made suggested that there
was enough spray left in it for what she wanted.

She closed The Book With No Name
and flicked the lid off the can. With a little trepidation she sprayed a small
amount onto the cover of the book. It settled surprisingly well and looked as
if it would dry quite quickly. She blew on it and then dabbed at it with her
finger. It was still wet, but wouldn’t smear too much. The tip of her finger
had turned a little black, but for the most part, the paint seemed to have
embedded itself into the book like a tattoo. With a little bit of care, such as
covering the edges of the pages so that the black spray didn’t hit them, she
could make the nameless book look just like The Book of Death, well, from a
distance at least. There was hope for Sanchez yet. Her plan was flawed and
reckless, some might even say it was shit, but it was the only plan she had, so
it would have to do.

For the next twenty minutes
Flake carried out an excellent piece of book camouflage. The once crusty brown
cover of the book on her desk was soon a jet-black colour, unrecognisable from
what it had been before. When she was satisfied that there was no brown showing
through on the cover, she stood the book upright on her desk in front of a
dusty old desk fan in the hope it would dry out quickly. As she watched the
desk fan blow gently onto the book’s cover she considered the risks of her plan
to confront Jessica. It would definitely be easier if she could avoid the
confrontation altogether.

She flicked through the menus on
her cell phone. She had no missed calls or text messages. She took a deep
breath and hoped for the best as she dialled Sanchez’s number again. This time
it didn’t even ring. It went straight to a recorded message. A woman’s voice
spoke this time.

The number you are calling is
either switched off or unavailable. Please try again later.

Flake ended the call before the
message repeated itself. ‘Casa De Ville here I come,’ she said aloud, slipping
the cell phone back in the front pocket on her pants.

She had been so preoccupied with
planning her rescue mission for Sanchez that she hadn’t noticed a new arrival
in the station. A man had entered quietly via the front doors. And now his
large shadow loomed over her desk. She looked up slowly and saw a figure
dressed all in black with a hood pulled up over his head, concealing most of
his face. She swallowed hard. She knew who this man was. It was the Bourbon
Kid, the man who frequently dropped by the police station and killed all the
cops, and usually also the receptionist. The memorial plaques in the staff room
for previous receptionists Amy Webster and Francis Bloem were evidence of that.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked
nervously.

The Kid responded in a gravelly
voice that came straight from the depths of hell. ‘I’m looking for a brown book
that was left in the locker room downstairs. You know anything about it?’ he
asked.

Flake felt very nervous. The
book he was referring to was on the desk right in front of his eyes. Only now
it was black instead of brown. As she considered her response, the Kid reached
inside his coat and pulled out a sawn off shotgun. He pointed it at her
forehead.

‘If you lie to me, I’ll know,’
he said. ‘Choose your words carefully.’

She knew that he would kill her
without thinking twice about it. She needed to give him a reason not
to
kill her before she gave him the answer he wanted.

She took a deep breath. ‘I used
the book to kill a vampire in the locker room yesterday morning.’

‘Where is it now?’

‘I was about to take it to…’

‘WHERE IS IT NOW?’

Flake felt her legs go weak.
This guy wasn’t going to let her talk her way into his favour before she told
him where the book was. She pointed at the black book that was standing upright
on her desk.

‘It’s there,’ she mumbled
nervously, fearing a gunshot would follow the revelation.

The Bourbon Kid lowered his gun
and looked down at the book on the desk. He picked it up with his free hand and
laid it open on the table in order to get a look at the pages. He flicked
through a few before closing it and staring at its new black cover. He ran his
index finger lightly across the newly sprayed cover and then inspected his
fingertip. Flake waited for his next move. For a few moments he looked around
at the other items on her desk. The desk fan was buzzing gently and next to it
was the black spray can. After staring at them for a short time, he looked back
at Flake, his shadowed face revealing a look of puzzlement.