The Book of Death (45 page)

Sanchez saw the girl pick
something up from the floor by a pair of jeans. It was a small dark object and
she was preparing herself to throw it. Throwing stuff at Gaius was a relatively
lame idea, but it was probably the only option open to any of them right now.
Flake had told Sanchez to go be a hero; the only problem was, she wasn’t there
to tell him the best way to go about it. So with no decent ideas of his own
Sanchez decided to join in with the throwing idea. He reached inside his breast
pocket and pulled out his hipflask. With its lid slightly loosened it could at
least cover Gaius in piss. That might distract him a bit, or cause him to
electrocute himself, perhaps?

As the girl took aim, Sanchez
finally got a look at her face. He recognised her as Kacy, Dante’s girlfriend
and a former chambermaid at one of the local hotels. He decided it would be
best to let her throw first. That way he could see how Gaius reacted. And he
really hoped her throwing was as impressive as her ass. As she lined up her
throw Sanchez inwardly wished her luck. She drew her arm back, then with all
her might threw the small dark object in her hand.

Sanchez had seen girls throw
before and had never been particularly impressed. And Kacy’s throwing skills
were abysmal. She missed Gaius completely. In fact she ended up throwing the
small object at the Bourbon Kid’s head.
“Useless,”
Sanchez thought.

The Bourbon Kid was climbing to
his knees as the object flew at him. He reacted quickly and reached up,
catching it in his right hand. It was just a small rectangular shape the size of
a playing card. Maybe the Kid could throw it at Gaius with more accuracy and
power than Kacy had done—if he had time.

Gaius stopped a few yards away
from the Kid and raised his right arm again. His palm glowed bright blue. This
was the moment of truth. In one almighty show of force he thrust his arm at the
Kid, unleashing a bright blue laser bolt at his fallen enemy.

What followed happened quickly.
As the laser bolt shot out from Gaius’s hand and surged towards the Bourbon
Kid’s head, the Kid held up the small object Kacy had thrown at him.

And he flipped it over in his
hand. Where one side of it had been black, the other was shiny.

It was a small hand mirror.

The blue laser bolt blasted into
the mirror and its bright light reflected sharply back on itself. A flash of
blinding blue light filled the room and the laser bolt shot back into the face
of Rameses Gaius.

The impact caught him completely
off guard and the sheer power of his own furious bolts of lightning lifted him
off his feet. The Eye of the Moon flew out of his hand and bounced onto the
floor as he flew backwards through the air. Sanchez watched on wide-eyed as
Gaius’s ass came flying towards him. Fortunately the Dark Lord landed on his
back just short of him. The smooth polished floor caused him to slide along on
his back until he came to a stop with his head in Sanchez’s lap.

Gaius was clearly dazed. Sanchez
could see him blinking furiously with his one good eye. He was seriously
disorientated, although that probably wouldn’t last for long. After a few
seconds he stopped blinking and seemed to focus his stare up at Sanchez.

“Uh oh,”
thought Sanchez.
“He’s about
to get back up.”

There was nothing else for it.
Sanchez’s only weapon was his hipflask. He pulled the lid off and held it up
over Gaius’s face. He poured the contents out and tried to direct some into
Gaius’s empty eye socket.

However, as the piss came out of
his flask Sanchez was surprised to see that it was a green colour. That was
unusual. His piss was normally a dark yellow colour, occasionally a bit brown,
sometimes even quite clear, but not usually green.

He suddenly remembered he had
picked up the Santa’s hipflask after their altercation earlier in the day. This
was the green liquid that paralysed folks. He poured it over as much of Gaius’s
face as he could, some of it into the eye socket and some of it into his mouth.
It trickled onto his tongue and down his throat. It was evident from the look
in his good eye that the liquid was having a negative effect on him.

Sanchez watched Gaius’s face
slowly numb up, in the same way that the Santa’s had done. He recognised the
look of fear in his victim’s eye. Gaius managed to cough just once as the
liquid trickled down his throat. But that was the last function his body
performed. Very quickly his movement stopped altogether. And without the Eye of
the Moon in his eye socket, or his hand, he wasn’t going to be healing up any
time soon either. Realising that Gaius was now powerless, Sanchez took great
pleasure in holding the Dark Lord’s head down with one hand while he waited for
some assistance.

Over by the wrecked tomb display
the Bourbon Kid climbed to his feet and staggered over to Sanchez and Gaius. He
looked in fairly bad shape. That laser blast from Gaius had clearly taken
something out of him. He stooped down to pick the Eye of the Moon up from the
floor, then turned and tossed it through a few small flickering flames on the
floor over to Kacy. She caught it and shouted a quick thanks back at him. Then
she crawled over to Dante with it.

The Kid dragged himself over to
Sanchez and Gaius. He practically fell down onto Gaius’s chest. Sanchez edged
back to allow him room to do whatever horrible things he had planned. The Kid
reached down and grabbed the Dark Lord by the face and squeezed his cheeks
hard.

‘I saw what you did to the young
boy in the library,’ he growled.

‘What did he do?’ Sanchez asked.

‘Bashed a boy’s head in. Had
himself some real fun at that kid’s expense.’

Sanchez shook his head in
disgust. ‘Well, you know what they say?’ he said.

‘No. What do they say?’

‘It’s all fun and games until
someone loses an eye.’

The Kid nodded. ‘That’s true.’
He stopped squeezing Gaius’s face and looked up at Sanchez. He had blood
dribbling from his mouth. ‘What was in that flask?’ he asked.

‘Eggnog, I think.’

‘Evil stuff.’

Turning his attentions back to
the stricken and now terrified figure of Rameses Gaius, the Kid clenched his
right fist and raised it up above his head. He looked Gaius in the eye, making
sure he had his full attention. He took a deep breath.

‘This is for the boy in the
library.’

Fifty-Eight

Dante felt the touch of
Kacy’s hand against his cheek. He opened his eyes. There weren’t many things
better in life than waking up and seeing Kacy’s face looking down at him.

‘You okay?’ she asked.

He tried to move his
arms only to discover that they were wedged tightly against his sides. In fact
he couldn’t move at all from his shoulders down. He was lying on his back on a
hard floor. He craned his neck and looked down at the rest of his body. He was
wrapped in bandages from his feet right up to his shoulders.

‘What the fuck have you
done to me now?’ he asked, frowning.

‘It wasn’t me, silly.’

‘So why the fuck am I
dressed as a giant worm?’

Kacy looked confused.
‘When have you ever seen a worm dressed like this?’

‘Cartoon porn.’

‘We’ll talk about that
later.’

As his senses came back
to him, he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. ‘The fucking
floor is on fire too! Have you seen that? The fucking floor is on fire!’

‘I know.’

‘What the fuck?’

Kacy seemed remarkably
calm considering there were a bunch of three-foot high flames just a stone’s
throw away.

‘Here, let me help you
up,’ she said, lifting his shoulders up from the floor and getting him into a
sitting position.

He looked around.
Behind Kacy and to the right of the fire he saw the Bourbon Kid and Sanchez.
They were leaning over the body of Rameses Gaius. The Kid was busy slicing
Gaius up with a bone handled knife. There were other bodies lying around too.

‘Okay, I can’t remember
fuck all. Seriously, what’s happened this time?’ He looked closer at Kacy. ‘And
why aren’t you wearing any pants?’

‘They got ripped off.
And before you say anything, you should know your clothes are on the floor
behind you.’

‘All of my clothes?’

‘Yeah.’

Dante lowered his
voice. ‘Were we
fucking
in here?’

‘No. You got stripped
naked by some vampires. They tried to make you a mummy.’

‘They were trying to
fuck me?’

‘No,
mummify
you. You know? That’s what the bandages are for. Hold still while I unwrap
you.’

She grabbed some of the
white bandages around his shoulders and began unravelling them. He’d been bound
up pretty tight. While she got to work, he tried desperately to cast his mind
back to how he’d ended up in this current ludicrous predicament. It wasn’t
coming back to him no matter how hard he tried to concentrate.

‘Hurry the fuck up!’ he
snapped as he caught sight of the fire spreading towards them.

‘Stay still then.’

‘I am still.’

‘Okay, just shut up
then.’

As soon as Kacy freed
his arms he began ripping off the rest of the bandages himself. He’d unwrapped
them down to the knee when Sanchez came rushing over to them. The
bartender-cum-cop grabbed at Kacy’s arm.

‘You still got the Eye
of the Moon on you?’

‘Umm yeah.’ She reached
down to the floor by Dante’s side and picked it up. She held it up to show
Sanchez. ‘Here it is. Do you need it?’

Sanchez nodded. ‘Got a
dying girl in the car outside.’

Kacy tossed the stone
to him. ‘Don’t sniff it,’ she warned. ‘Dante sat on it just now.’

Sanchez took a look at
Dante’s naked body and grimaced. ‘Why would I sniff it anyway?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. You look
the sort.’

‘Yeah well, your pants
are on fire.’

‘Shit!’

He was right. Over by
Beethoven’s piano, Kacy’s jeans had just caught fire. The flames were spreading
towards her sneakers too. And it was starting to get pretty fucking hot. She
left Dante and dashed over to her grab her sneakers before they went the same
way as her jeans.

Sanchez rushed off with
the Eye of the Moon, heading for the stairs at the far end of the hall, ducking
out of the way of a few flames that seemed to deliberately lunge at him as he
ran.

Dante freed his feet
from the last of the bandages and grabbed his clothes. He managed to pull on
his jeans and shoes and was reaching for his black T-shirt when he spotted the
Bourbon Kid. The serial killer had dragged the body of Rameses Gaius across the
floor towards the tomb. He dropped the once proud mummy on the floor by Dante’s
feet. The self-proclaimed Lord of the Undead now had
two
empty eye
sockets and a huge hole in his face where his nose had once been. The Kid had
removed his clothes too. The naked body wasn’t a pretty sight. It was covered
in blood and some pretty deep cuts, courtesy of the knife he’d been taken apart
with. As Dante was slipping his T-shirt over his head he greeted the Kid with a
thumbs up.

‘Hey man, thanks for
coming back for us.’

‘Thank your girlfriend.
She really came through for us.’

‘Yeah she’s cool like
that.’ Dante reached over to Kacy and grabbed her by the back of her head,
pulling her towards him. He didn’t need to pull hard. She reached forward and
their lips locked for several seconds before Dante pulled away. ‘Love you,
Kace,’ he said.

‘Love you too. Now
let’s get the fuck outta here.’

The Bourbon Kid grabbed
Dante’s arm. ‘Hey, I need help wrapping this muthafucker up in these bandages.’

‘What for?’

‘We need to get him in
that fucking tomb.’

‘Isn’t he dead
already?’ Dante asked.

‘The guy’s been dead for
hundreds of years. He needs to go back in the tomb to be sure he won’t come
back.’

‘Even with the fire?’

‘Would you just do as
you’re fuckin’ told?’

‘Have we got time for
this?’ Kacy asked.

Dante gave her a peck
on the cheek. ‘Why don’t you get outta here?’ he said ‘I’ll meet you outside in
a minute.’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘No. Go on, I’ll be
fine.’

Kacy shook her head.
‘No you won’t. The last two times I’ve left you on your own you’ve gotten
yourself turned into a vampire and a mummy. If I leave you again I’m worried
you’ll turn into a zombie or a werewolf!’

The Bourbon Kid grabbed
some of the bandages by Dante’s feet. ‘If you two don’t get a move on, we’ll
all be turned into ash. Quit bitchin’ and help me wrap this fucker up.’

Kacy grabbed Gaius’s
feet and lifted them off the floor so that Dante and the Kid could start
wrapping the bandages around his legs.