The Book of Death (33 page)

‘Why did you spray it black?’ he
asked.

‘I was trying to pass it off as
The Book of Death. I was going to take it to the Casa De Ville to kill the
vampire Jessica.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘To save my friend Sanchez. He’s
gone there now with the real Book of Death. But he doesn’t know that Jessica is
a vampire.’

The Kid’s shadowed face revealed
nothing. ‘I wouldn’t worry about Sanchez,’ he said. ‘He’s probably dead
already.’

‘But he might not be there yet,’
said Flake, desperation creeping into her voice.

The Kid raised his gun again and
aimed it at the end of Flake’s nose. ‘Close your eyes,’ he growled.

‘Why?’

‘Because this is gonna sting.’

Flake did as she was told. Maybe
he was kidding around?

BANG!

Maybe not.

Thirty-Nine

Jessica stood at the front
entrance to the Casa de Ville and looked out into the courtyard. Everything was
in place. Vampires and werewolves were concealed behind every bush, tree and
statue in sight. If the Bourbon Kid came in through the front gates at the end
of the driveway (and she suspected he was pig-headed enough to try it) he
wouldn’t make it far before the entire undead army swarmed all over him.

The only two vampires out in the
open were Lionel and Nate from the Panda clan. They were standing guard on the
front gates to make it look as if the Casa was operating as normal. But behind
them was an army of over a thousand, all concealed in the dark.

She stepped back inside the
building and closed the large double doors behind her. On the reception desk in
the entrance hall was a female member of the Panda clan. Jessica didn’t much
care for her, if truth be told. She looked stupid sitting there at the desk
wearing a bright red baseball cap with her face covered by the two large black
patches around her eyes. Not many females ever joined the Panda clan simply
because of the awful eyeliner.

Jessica called over to her.
‘You, Panda Girl.’

‘Yes ma’am.’

‘I’ll be up in my father’s
office if you need me.’

‘Yes ma’am.’

Panda Girl watched on as Jessica
flew up the staircase on her right, vanishing out of sight within half a
second. She didn’t like Jessica much either. Being referred to as Panda Girl
had been annoying the first time it had happened, but Jessica had done it so
many times that everyone in the Casa de Ville now called her that.

Jessica had only been gone for a
minute when the phone on Panda Girl’s desk rang. Rather than pick up the
receiver she reached over and pressed a button to take the call on speaker.

‘Reception, who is it?’ she
asked.

‘Lionel on the gates. Got a cop
here called Sanchez Garcia. Says he’s come to see Jessica.’

‘She’s not seeing any visitors
at the moment. Tell him to come back tomorrow.’

‘Hang on.’

Panda Girl waited while Lionel
had a muffled conversation with someone else in the background. Eventually, he
came back on the line.

‘This Sanchez fella says he’s brought
her a book she’s been looking for.’

‘Is it The Book of Death?’

‘He’s not saying.’

‘What’s this guy look like?’

‘A fat version of the guy from
the TV show CHiPs, except he’s in a car, not on a bike.’

Panda Girl sighed. ‘Okay, send
him on through. Tell him to park up around the back and come to the front
doors. I’ll deal with him.’

‘Okay.’

The line went dead and Panda
Girl dialled the number for Rameses Gaius’s office. The call went through to
his answer phone, so she left a message.

‘Jessica, this is Panda Girl on
reception. Got a Sanchez Garcia on his way up the drive. Lionel on the front
gate says he’s brought a book for you. Call me when you get this.’

A couple of minutes passed
before there was a knock on the front doors. Panda Girl hauled herself up out
of her chair and made her way over to the peephole to see who was outside. She
peered through it and saw a chubby fellow in a highway patrol outfit. He had a
black satchel over his right shoulder. He fitted the description that Lionel
had just given her. She opened the door.

‘You’re Sanchez Garcia?’ she
asked.

‘Yes I am, thank you,’ he
replied.

‘You’ve got something for me?’

‘No. I’ve got something for
Jessica.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s The Book of Death,’ he
said holding up his satchel.

‘In that case, you can leave it
with me.’

Sanchez shook his head. ‘I’m a
friend of hers. She’ll be pleased to see me. Plus she said there’s a fifty
thousand dollar reward for the return of this book.’

Panda Girl sighed. ‘Fine. Come
on in.’

‘Thank you, my good man,’ said
Sanchez as he brushed past her on his way in.

She closed the door behind him.
‘My name’s Panda
Girl!’
she snapped.

‘Of course it is. Where can I
find Jessica?’

Panda Girl pointed to a crimson
coloured sofa at the back of the foyer next to a door that led into one of the
dining rooms. ‘Take a seat there,’ she said. ‘I’ve left a message for Jessica
to say you’re here. She’ll call for you when she’s ready.’

‘Fair enough.’

Sanchez wandered over to the sofa,
admiring the paintings on the walls all around the foyer. ‘Nice place you’ve
got here,’ he remarked.

Panda Girl ignored him and sat
back down at her desk with her back to him. The phone rang just as she sat
down. She reached over and pressed the speaker button again. ‘Hello,
reception.’

‘Panda Girl, it’s Jessica. I
just got your message. Did you say Sanchez is here?’

‘Yes. He’s got The Book of Death
for you.’

‘He has?’ Jessica sounded
surprised.

‘I haven’t seen it, but he says
he’s got it in his satchel.’

‘Who’d have thought it?’ said
Jessica, snorting a laugh. ‘That idiot hasn’t even worked out I’m a vampire
yet, but somehow he’s found The Book of Death. Brilliant. I bet he didn’t even
notice all the vampires and werewolves in the courtyard on his way in, did he?’

Panda Girl lowered her voice,
knowing Sanchez was within earshot behind. ‘He drove right past them all,’ she
said.

‘What a fucking loser.’

‘Want me to send him up?’

There was a slight pause as
Jessica mulled over the suggestion. Eventually she replied. ‘No. He’ll get
lost, you’d better bring him up. Once I’ve got the book, he’s all yours.’

‘Okay, see you in a minute,
Jessica,’ she said, ending the call.

She was already envisaging how
much fun it would be to drink the blood from Sanchez’s juicy neck. There was
plenty of flesh there to take a bite out of. She stood up and turned around.
The crimson sofa at the back of the foyer was now empty. Sanchez had fled. She
sniffed the air. His scent, and that of some barbecue chicken wings was still
floating in the air. It wouldn’t take long to find him.

‘Sanchez,’ she called out. ‘Oh,
Sanchez. Come out, come out, wherever you are!’

Forty

‘It’s like the fucking North
Pole here!’ Lionel yelled over the sound of the howling wind.

‘When have
you
ever been
to the North Pole?’ Nate called back.

‘Huh?’

Standing guard at the front
gates at the entrance to the Casa De Ville was a shit job at the best of times,
but in a blizzard like the one they were caught up in right now, it was as bad
as it got. Nate was no big fan of snow. He could handle the cold just fine.
Being a vampire made cold weather perfectly bearable. But the wind blowing
through his ears and the three inches of snow underfoot was irritating in the
extreme. And it was bloody difficult to hear his buddy Lionel over the noise of
the wind. It wasn’t that easy to see him through the blizzard of snow either.
The highlight of their evening so far had been opening the gates to let Sanchez
through to see Jessica. Other than that the evening had been extremely
uneventful. Their task was simply to keep an eye out for the approach of the
Bourbon Kid, if of course, he was foolish enough to show up and allow himself
to be spotted from the front gates.

‘I said, when have you ever been
to the fucking North Pole?’ Nate repeated, a little louder than before.

His fellow Panda, Lionel, was
renowned for a total lack of enthusiasm in every task he undertook. So even
though Nate was hacked off at their current assignment, it was a safe bet that
Lionel would be hating it even more.

Behind them, every other
surviving member of the local undead scene was concealed behind a tree, bush or
statue in the courtyard, ready to ambush the Bourbon Kid if he did show up.

‘Well I’ve never actually
been
to the North Pole,’ Lionel yelled back. He took his baseball cap off and shook
the snow from it, before securing it tightly back on his head. ‘I’ve seen it on
telly though. And it’s got a fuckin’ lot of snow!’

The pair of them had been
instructed like everyone else to wear dark clothes to help camouflage
themselves in the dark, but against the backdrop of snow the camouflage was
largely redundant. Nate reached into his thick dark coat and pulled a pack of
cigarettes from his inside pocket. ‘Wanna smoke?’ he called over to his buddy.

‘Nah. I’m good, thanks.’

Nate fumbled around in his
pocket for his lighter and then held it up underneath the rim of his baseball
cap to shield it from the snow. It was a shitty disposable red lighter that
he’d snagged from a victim a few days earlier. It took four flicks to ignite
the damn thing and even then the flame was pretty pathetic. After puffing hard
on the end of the cigarette four or five times it eventually lit up. The flame
on the lighter flickered and went out completely a second later.

As he took a drag on the
cigarette, he saw Lionel poking his head through the bars on the gates, peering
out into the road.

‘You seen something?’ he shouted
over to him.

Lionel looked back and shook his
head. ‘Just snow. And more snow.’

The sound of someone moving
behind him distracted Nate for a second. He looked back and heard a few of the
other vampires and werewolves fidgeting in their hiding places and talking
among themselves.

‘At least we get to stand on the
driveway,’ he called over to Lionel. ‘It sounds like everyone else is knee deep
in waterlogged shit back there!’

Lionel stepped back from the
gates and shrugged. ‘The werewolves probably like that.’

‘I bet the clowns hate it
though.’

‘Why the clowns?’

‘Those big shoes will get filled
with muddy water. Ruins their socks.’

Lionel looked surprised. ‘I
didn’t know clowns wore socks.’

‘Some of ’em must do. I’ve got
some new socks on today so I’m glad to be up here at the gates. This is
probably the safest place to be as well.’

‘How d’ya figure?’

‘Think about it. If the Kid
really is gonna show up here, then coming in through the front gates would be
pretty fuckin’ stupid wouldn’t it?’

‘Yeah, we’ll see him coming down
the road long before he gets to the gates,’ said Lionel, once more peering
through the gates and down the road.

‘Five bucks says he doesn’t even
show.’

‘I’m not taking that bet. Of
course he won’t show. I wouldn’t be out in this weather if I had a choice.’

Nate sucked hard on his
cigarette and blew a lungful of smoke out into the cold night air. It vanished
instantly within the downpour of snowflakes. Lionel had a good point. Only
thing was, where most people would stay indoors in such abysmal weather, the
Bourbon Kid wasn’t most people. He was a fucking psycho with no fear of
anything or anyone. A few drops of snow wouldn’t keep him away if he was
intending on showing up.

‘You hear that?’ Lionel shouted
over to him.

‘No. What?’

‘I think I heard something just
now.’

Nate took another drag on his
cigarette. ‘I didn’t hear anything. What did it sound like?’

‘A rustling in the bushes over
there,’ Lionel pointed at a row of bushes that ran along the inside wall of the
grounds, over to his right. He took a step towards them, his back turned on
Nate.

‘Whoa, hold on a sec!’ Nate
shouted. ‘Just stay here. This isn’t fuckin’ Camp Crystal. You don’t walk off
on your own to investigate a noise. Stay here where I can see you. And make
sure you’re in view of the CCTV cameras too. No one can help you if you do
something dumb like wander off on your own!’

Lionel kept his back to Nate and
craned his neck around to see if he could make out anything over by the bushes.