The Book of Death (4 page)

‘Who’s Jessica?’ Kacy asked,
cautiously.

‘You’ll see her when we get to
the Casa de Ville. Now we gotta make a few stops before we get there. See if we
can find any more of our clan alive. Safety in numbers an’ all that.’

‘Great,’ said Kacy, unable to
mask her lack of enthusiasm.

Vanity slipped his sunglasses
back on and nodded towards the exit. Kacy saw Dante slip on a pair of
sunglasses too so she followed suit and was surprised to find that she could
see just as clearly as before even though it was dark.

Vanity walked past her and
jumped over the banister at the top of the stairs. He disappeared out of sight.
Kacy rushed over and peered over the banister. Vanity was dropping gently to
the ground floor. She looked back at Dante.

‘Can
we
do
that?
’
she asked.

Dante grimaced. ‘I guess so.
Shall I go first?’

‘You’d fucking better!’

As he was about to hurl himself
over the balcony Kacy grabbed his arm. ‘Baby, are we about to go and join a
vampire army?’ she asked.

‘I think so.’

‘Are you sure we want to do
this?’

‘Well, we are vampires at the
moment. I say we go with the flow.’

‘I’m not sure I’m ready to go
around killing people just yet.’

Dante pulled her in towards him
and planted a kiss on the long dark hair on the top of her head. ‘We’re
vampires now, babe,’ he reminded her. ‘Until we find the Eye of the Moon and
transform ourselves back into humans I say we go with the flow.’

‘I suppose,’ said Kacy. ‘But
Vanity said the vampire army is going to take over the city. Do we really want
to be a part of that?’

‘I dunno, babe, but with the
Bourbon Kid out of the picture, there’s nothing to stop the undead from taking
over the city. At least we’ll be on the winning team.’

‘Yeah, but I still can’t get the
image of that little boy being dragged away at the police station out of my
head.’

‘Thanks, I’d just about managed
to forget about that.’

‘Well I can’t. It’s still
bugging me.’

‘Try to think about something
else.’

‘Like what?’

‘Baseball.’

Kacy sighed. ‘It’s not just the
image of it that’s bothering me. It’s what it represents.’

‘Huh?’

Dante wasn’t getting her point
so she spelled it out for him. ‘I could never hurt a child. What if the craving
for blood makes us kill kids?’

‘You’d never hurt a kid, Kace,
and neither would I.’

‘I know, but what if that
changes? I don’t want to hurt anybody’s kids. I think I want to go back to
being human again.’

Dante kissed her on the
forehead. ‘All right, babe. I’ll tell you what, next time we see a vampire try
to kill a kid, I’ll kick that vampire’s head in.’

‘And I’ll help you do it.’

‘Okay, but you know our first
priority has to be finding a way to get the Eye of the Moon back.’

‘Have you got a plan?’

‘No. When have I ever had a
plan? Plans are for suckers.’

It was at times like this when
Dante talked passionately yet with no sense of what danger lay in wait for him
that Kacy remembered why she fell in love with him in the first place. He might
well be a foolhardy moron, but he was as brave as any man she’d ever met.

‘I love you, you know,’ she
said.

Dante grabbed her ass and
squeezed it hard. ‘I love you too,’ he said. ‘This vampire shit will just be
temporary. Trust me.’

Four

Sanchez
hated snow. Until now he’d only ever seen it on television but that was enough
to make him hate it. And waking up on November 1
^st
after the
previous awful day’s events, the last thing he wanted to see was
snow-covered streets
. It had fallen thick and fast
overnight, settling two inches deep on the roads. The local kids were overjoyed
and were busy building snowmen in the streets. And someone (Sanchez suspected
his paperboy) had thrown a snowball at him when he was walking to his car.
Little fucker
.
The only good thing about the cold weather was that it
had given him the opportunity to wear his replica
Top Gun
jacket. He’d
bought it on the Internet, but it had always been too hot in Santa Mondega to
merit wearing it out in public. Up to now it had only ever been worn in his
bedroom when he was pretending to be Tom Cruise in front of the mirror.

His drive to the Ole Au Lait for
breakfast took a little longer than usual. Partly because the snow made the
roads a little more dangerous, but mostly because Sanchez veered off the road a
few times in order to knock down some of the snowmen that the local kids had
built on the sidewalks.

He arrived at the café at just
after nine o’clock in the morning. Experience had taught him to get there early
before all the local seniors showed up. The elderly seemed to like nothing more
than to sit themselves at the tables next to him and break wind while he tried
to eat.

He walked through the door,
carrying a black satchel over his shoulder. If he wanted a breakfast this
morning, he knew he was going to have to settle a debt he had with Rick the
owner of the Ole Au Lait. On the previous day, Rick had called him with some
useful information and in return Sanchez had agreed to give him a bottle of
liquor. He had the bottle in his satchel, although he secretly hoped Rick
wouldn’t be there to accept it. Also in his bag was a book that he had stolen
from the library, a book called The Book of Death. It had provided none of the
clues he had been hoping for in his quest to find out more about Jessica or The
Book With No Name. In fact, the only mention of Jessica in the book had been
written in there by Sanchez. Rick had informed him of her full name and also
that of an acquaintance of hers named Rameses Gaius. Sanchez had noted their
names down on a blank page of the book and carried out an Internet search to
see if he could find more about them. He had found nothing.

As he approached the counter he
became aware of an unpleasant smell of piss. Slumped over in a table by the
window was a drunken Santa Claus impersonator. He looked half asleep, but he
still managed to mutter something to Sanchez that sounded like “spare me some
change”. Sanchez ignored it and instead forced a fake smile for Rick who was
standing behind the counter, counting the notes in the till. Rick looked full
of beans. He wasn’t wearing his usual chef outfit. Instead he was dressed to go
out in a pair of jeans and, rather annoyingly, a leather Top Gun jacket exactly
like Sanchez’s. Bastard. He looked up when Sanchez arrived and forced a fake
smile back.

‘Mornin’ Sanchez. Nice jacket,’
he said.

‘Yeah, you too,’ said Sanchez,
inwardly seething.

Rick peered over at the satchel.
‘I hope you’ve got that bottle of Jack Daniel’s for me,’ he said his fake smile
expanding into a broad grin.

‘I sure have,’ Sanchez replied.
‘It’s in here.’

‘Hand it over then.’

Sanchez reached into his
satchel. The bottle of Jack Daniel’s had slipped to the bottom, beneath The
Book of Death. He pulled the big black hardback book out first and placed it on
the counter.

‘What’s this?’ Rick asked.

‘Just some book I gotta take
back to the library later.’

Rick turned the book around to
get a look at the title. ‘The Book of Death? What’s it about?’ he asked.

Sanchez pulled the bottle of
Jack Daniel’s out and placed it on top of the book. ‘Not really sure what it’s
about,’ he said. ‘Just a list of names, in some sort of diary format.’

‘Oh,’ Rick sounded disappointed.
‘Well, I’m going to the library this morning. I can drop it back for you if you
like?’

‘That’d be great,’ said Sanchez.
‘Don’t check it in though, just slip it back on the shelf in the Reference
section.’

Rick raised an eyebrow. ‘Why’s
that then? Didn’t you check the book out?’

‘Yeah, but I kind of wrote some
names on one of the blank pages.’

‘Why?’

‘I didn’t have any other paper
to hand at the time.’

‘Well that’s hardly a crime is
it?’ said Rick coolly.

‘Actually it is. Defacing a
public library book is considered a fairly serious offence.’

‘To whom?’

‘Have you seen the woman that
works in the library?’

Rick grinned as he grasped what
Sanchez was getting at. ‘Yeah. She’s pretty much a bitch, isn’t she?’

Sanchez despised Ulrika Price
and agreed wholeheartedly with Rick’s assessment of her. ‘That’s the nicest
thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about her,’ he said.

Rick picked up the bottle of
Jack Daniel’s and unscrewed the lid. He took a sniff. ‘Smells like good stuff,’
he commented.

‘What did you expect?’

‘I thought it might be some of
your homebrew.’

Sanchez did his best to look
offended. ‘I have no idea what you mean.’

‘Sure,’ said Rick. ‘That Santa
in the corner smells just like your homebrew.’ He had a point.

‘Anyways,’ said Sanchez. ‘It’s
breakfast time and I’m hungry.’

Rick took the hint and shouted
out to the back room. ‘Yo, Flake, customer!’

Rick’s head waitress Flake,
appeared, complete with a notebook and pen. Her long brown hair was neatly
scraped back into a ponytail. And as usual she was wearing the uniform that
Rick insisted all his female members of staff wore. Sanchez approved of it too.
It consisted of a short black dress and stockings, a look that suited Flake’s
petite figure nicely.

‘Good morning, Sanchez,’ she
said beaming a bright white smile at him. ‘Twelve item breakfast and a large
coffee?’

‘Yes please, Flake.’

She pointed to a table on the
opposite side of the café to the piss smelling Santa. She clearly knew Sanchez
well. He liked to eat his breakfast as far away from other customers as
possible, particularly smelly ones. ‘I’ve just cleaned that table up for you
and left a newspaper over there,’ she said with a wink.

‘Thanks.’

Rick picked up The Book of
Death, tucked it under his arm and walked around the counter. ‘Right, Flake,
I’m off to town. You can go when Sanchez is done with his breakfast.’

‘You closing up early?’ Sanchez
asked.

‘Wouldn’t have even opened at
all if it wasn’t for the fact I knew you’d be dropping by with my bottle of
JD,’ said Rick, flipping the closed sign up on the front door. He pulled the
door open and as he walked through it he looked back at Sanchez and winked.
‘Don’t let Flake get you into any trouble.’ With that he closed the door behind
him and headed out into the snow.

‘I’ll bring your coffee over in
a second,’ said Flake. ‘Make yourself comfortable.’

As he walked over to the
unusually clean table in the corner by the window, Sanchez eyed Flake
suspiciously. Was she building up to asking him for something? Beneath that
fresh faced glow on her pink cheeks and those big inviting brown eyes she could
be plotting something. Or hoping for a tip
.

‘What’s got you so cheerful
today?’ he asked her.

‘I’m just pleased to see you,
Sanchez,’ she replied. ‘After all the killing yesterday it’s nice to see that
you weren’t one of the victims.’

‘Well, I did have a run in with
the Bourbon Kid and some werewolves.’

‘Yes, I heard about that. You
survived another shootout. You’re so lucky.’

‘Not that lucky. He killed all
my customers again. The bastard.’

‘Was it because you poured piss
in his drink again?’

Sanchez sat down and picked up
the newspaper to glance over the front page headlines. ‘I didn’t get a chance
to this time. I would have, but I’d just served it all to the werewolves.’

The front page, as expected, ran
with the story of the latest massacre. The death toll looked like it might even
run into the thousands this time. Sanchez tutted to himself as he thought about
all the potential customers he must have lost.

When he looked back up he
noticed that Flake looked different. She was still stood behind the counter,
wearing the same outfit, but she had now removed the white apron from the front
of her dress and had also let her hair down. It now hung freely around her
shoulders. She had beautiful long brown hair to match her eyes. Sanchez
couldn’t help thinking that Flake letting her hair down while working in an establishment
that served food seemed somewhat unhygienic. Nevertheless, he knew she cooked a
good sausage so he kept his thoughts to himself.

He continued to read the
newspaper shaking his head occasionally as he came across details of the demise
of more potential customers. Eventually Flake wandered over with his mug of
coffee. As she set it down on the table, she spoke again.

‘You’re the only person I know
who’s brave enough to serve the Bourbon Kid a glass of piss,’ she said. After
saying it she seemed to suck in a deep intake of breath. It made her chest jut
out over the top of Sanchez’s newspaper as he lowered it to take a look at his
coffee. He couldn’t help but notice that she had a particularly fine pair of
boobs. For a few seconds he stared, gawping at them, before remembering she had
just spoken to him.