The Book of Death (46 page)

By the time they had
wrapped every inch of Gaius’s body in bandages the flames in the hall had
spread towards the stairs at the other end. The oxygen in the hall was becoming
thin, due in no small part to a considerable amount of smoke that was beginning
to blow up towards the ceiling.

They hauled Gaius’s
body over to the open sarcophagus in the tomb display. He had escaped from that
same tomb a year earlier. Now it was time so send him back. The Kid stood
Gaius’s mummified body upright and the three of them pushed his body inside the
sarcophagus.

‘He’s a perfect fit,’
Dante commented. ‘You’d think it was made for him.’

‘It was,’ said Kacy.

‘Really?’

‘I’ll explain later.’

A loud crash behind
them served as a reminder that time wasn’t on their side. The legs on
Beethoven’s piano had given way and it had crashed to the floor, engulfed in
flames. Other displays all around the hall were rapidly catching fire and
breaking apart.

‘Are we done?’ Dante
shouted above the din.

The Kid nodded. ‘Get
outta here. I’ll stick the lid on this sonofabitch.’

Kacy tugged at Dante’s
arm and started heading towards the stairs at the end of the hall. The fire was
spreading swiftly enough that their window of opportunity for escape would soon
be closed. Dante began to follow, but took one last look back to see how the
Kid was coping.

‘Hurry up, man, there’s
not much time!’ he yelled.

The Kid was securing
the lid onto the front of Gaius’s tomb, imprisoning him once again for all
eternity, or until the fire got to him, whichever came first. He looked back at
Dante and waved him away.

‘I got one more person
to kill,’ he yelled back.

‘What? Who?’

‘Elijah Simmonds. He’s around
here somewhere.’

‘Are you nuts? He’ll be
long gone by now. There’s not enough time for that. You’ll burn in here!’

The Kid took one last
look at the Mummy’s Tomb, checking it was closed. He turned back to Dante and
pulled the hood on his coat up over his head.

‘There’s always time to kill one
more.’

Fifty-Nine

It had been a pretty
great day all round for Elijah Simmonds. After killing the local Police Captain
he’d spent twenty minutes packing all the cash from Cromwell’s safe into a pair
of suitcases. As he sat contentedly at Cromwell’s old desk in his new office
drinking a large brandy he contemplated his options. He could stay on as
manager of the museum, a job he had always coveted, or simply skip town with
all the cash. Life was good.

He’d had two large glasses
of brandy already as he waited for James the security guard to call and let him
know when Rameses Gaius had finished the job of mummifying Dante and Kacy in
the hall downstairs. It was almost midnight when his desk phone rang. He
allowed it to ring three times before casually answering it.

‘Hello.’

‘Hi boss, it’s James.’

‘Is it done?’

‘No. Things have gone
all to shit down there.’

Simmonds let out a deep
sigh. ‘Oh fuck. What’s happened?’

‘Gaius and his vampire
buddies are toast. The Bourbon Kid just wasted them all. And the place is on
fire.’

Simmonds sat up sharply
in his black leather chair. ‘What?’

‘They’re dead. I saw it
all on the monitors here in front of me. I say we get the fuck out of here,
boss. That fire is spreading. And I’ve lost sight of the Bourbon Kid.’

‘Shit. Call the fire
department. And then get your ass down here!’

‘Are you kidding? I’m
getting the fuck out of here! See ya later. And good luck.’

James sounded panicky.
Hardly surprising really. He’d already had his nose broken by the Bourbon Kid
on their only previous meeting. He probably wanted to be as far away from him
as possible.

‘James, don’t hang up!’
Simmonds yelled. ‘I’ve got a hundred grand in cash up here for you. Just come down
here. Don’t leave without me. We can leave together. We’ll be safer that way.
James? Jimmy? You still there? Jim?’

The line went dead. He
hoped James had heard him. Surely a hundred grand was enough of an incentive to
come down to the office?

Simmonds glanced over
at the dead body of Captain Dan Harker on the floor to his left by a wall of
bookshelves. He’d had the guts to blow Harker’s brains out. The evidence was
still all over the wall to prove it. Could he kill again if he had to? He
opened the top drawer on his desk and reached into it. The gun he had used to
kill Harker was still there. He pulled it out of the drawer and checked the
chamber. It still contained four bullets.

He tucked the gun in
the back of his suit trousers and picked up the two suitcases full of cash from
the floor by the desk. Both cases were heavy. He placed them down on the desk
in front of him. This was quite a dilemma. If he carried both cases he wouldn’t
have a free hand to carry the gun. His mind was racing as he tried to figure
out the best thing to do. The smart thing would be to leave one suitcase behind
and walk out with the gun primed and ready to fire.

As he was contemplating
what to do, he heard a knock at the door. He pulled his gun out and pointed it
at the door, his hand trembling.

‘James?’ he called out.
‘Is that you?’

From the other side of
the door he heard James’s voice. ‘Yeah. You seriously got a hundred grand in
there for me?’

‘Yes. Shit yeah. Come
on in!’

Simmonds kept his gun
pointed at the door and watched as the handle twisted. The door clicked and
opened slowly inwards. Standing in the doorway was James. He looked nervous.

‘Here,’ said Simmonds,
gesturing to one of the cases he’d plonked onto the desk in front of him. ‘Grab
one of these.’

James looked down at
the case on the desk. He looked like he was about to cry. Nerves or a
conscience had clearly gotten the better of him. Simmonds put his gun down on
the table and grabbed a case. He tossed it over to James. It landed at the
security guard’s feet.

‘Come on, Jim. We
haven’t got much time!’

James swallowed hard
and stared down at the case at his feet. Then he slowly leaned forward. At
first it looked like he was leaning down to pick up the case. It soon became
evident that he had no intention of picking it up.

He couldn’t
.

He fell to his knees,
landing with a gentle thud on top of the case full of money. Blood trickled
from his mouth and he gazed up at Simmonds for a moment. Then his upper body
fell forwards and his face crashed into the floor. Sticking out of the middle
of his back was a large bone handled knife. Simmonds stared hard at it for a
moment, the shock of it paralysing him.

He slowly looked back
up. Standing in the doorway right behind where James had been stood was the
dark shadowy figure of the Bourbon Kid. Simmonds’s jaw dropped.

‘Hey, it was nothing
personal,’ he said, nervously.

The Kid did not respond
He stepped into the room and leaned down to retrieve his knife from James’s
back. He didn’t seem to have seen the gun on Simmonds’s desk.

The museum’s manager needed no
second invitation. While his intruder was busy pulling the knife out of James’s
back, he reached for the gun.

Sixty

Clutching the Eye of the Moon
tightly in his left hand, Sanchez charged out through the front doors of the
museum and onto the snow covered steps outside. The dark clouds above were
breaking up and shafts of blue light from the moon were beginning to shine
through. The demise of Rameses Gaius would have far reaching effects, the first
of which would be a rapid change in the weather.

Flake poked her head out of the
back of the police squad car where he’d left her. Behind her, Beth’s feet were
sticking out over the end of the back seat. Flake called out to him. ‘Sanchez,
hurry!’

He looked down at the icy steps
and decided it would be easier to throw the blue stone to Flake, rather than
risk slipping on the ice.

‘Here, catch!’ he yelled to her.

He tossed the Eye through the
air to Flake. He overthrew it slightly, but she reacted like a short stop and
reached up, plucking it out of the sky. The years she had spent catching the
tips that were thrown at her in the Ole Au Lait had clearly paid off. She
ducked back inside the car and set about working out how to use the Eye to cure
Beth’s gaping neck wound.

Sanchez hung back at the top of
the steps for a while, bent over and trying to get his breath back. He began to
realise just how tired he was from all the running.

Flake called up to him.
‘Sanchez, give me a hand here. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing!’

‘Coming.’

He trudged down the last few steps
and then over to the car. A feeling of dizziness had come over him. To stop
himself from collapsing he steadied himself by resting his hand on Flake’s butt
which was conveniently poking out of the back door of the car.

He peered over her shoulder to
see what was going on. She was leaning over the body of Beth, wiping the other
woman’s brow with one hand and pressing the glowing blue stone into her chest
with the other.

‘Come on Beth,’ she whispered.
‘Hang in there.’

From what Sanchez could see, not
a lot seemed to be happening. Beth’s eyes remained closed and it was hard to
tell if she was breathing or not.

‘Try pressing the stone into her
hand,’ he suggested.

‘Is that how it works?’

‘I think so.’

Flake grabbed Beth’s right hand
and pressed the blue stone into her palm. At first nothing much seemed to
happen, but after a few seconds the stone began to glow a light blue colour
from within. The glow intensified with each passing moment and gradually some
colour returned to her face. She opened her eyes and smiled up at Flake and
then looked over at Sanchez and smiled at him too.

‘Where am I?’ she asked.

‘Back seat of a car,’ said
Sanchez.

‘A police car,’ Flake added,
brushing Sanchez’s hand away from her ass. ‘You’re safe now.’

Beth took a short sharp breath.
A worried look washed over her face. ‘I was kidnapped,’ she said. ‘They were
going to kill me. That’s about all I can remember.’

‘It’s all okay now,’ said Flake,
stroking her face. ‘They’re all dead.’ She turned to Sanchez. ‘Aren’t they
Sanchez?’

He nodded. ‘Oh yeah. They’re
very dead.’

‘See,’ said Flake turning back
to Beth. ‘No one can hurt you now.’

Flake’s calming words seemed to
have the desired effect because the look of panic on Beth’s face softened a
little.

Sanchez considered his part in all
the events. He’d done pretty well. ‘I knew it would all be okay,’ he said,
casually. ‘I wrote the names of the bad guys in The Book of Death the other
day. It seems that if you write someone’s name in that book then pretty soon
they’re history. I should get a medal for this.’

Beth didn’t seem to hear what he
said, rather annoyingly. She gripped Flake’s hand tightly. ‘What about JD? Did
he come for me? I don’t remember.’

‘Who’s JD?’ asked Flake.

‘The Bourbon Kid.’

Flake smiled at her. ‘Oh yeah.
He came after you in a big way. There’s a lotta dead people thanks to him.’

A tear appeared in the corner of
Beth’s left eye. ‘He killed more people?’ she half stated, half inquired.

‘Shot one guy in the dick,’ said
Sanchez.

Flake stroked Beth’s head again.
‘They all deserved it,’ she added. ‘He did it for you.’

‘I know,’ said Beth, wiping away
the tear in her eye. ‘It’s just, you know…’

‘Hard to take in?’ Flake
suggested.

‘No, it’s not that. I feel kinda
goofy saying this. You’ll think I’m nuts.’

‘
Everyone
in this town is
nuts,’ said Flake.

Beth finally smiled. ‘I just
love him when he kills people,’ she said.

Flake grinned. ‘He killed a hell
of a lot of people, so he must
really
like you, too.’

The ground beneath them suddenly
shook and a deafening booming noise filled the air. It sounded like a bomb had
gone off inside the museum. The loud boom was followed by the sound of glass
shattering. A sudden rush of heat burst from the building. It caused Sanchez to
reel back. Smoke was now billowing out of the windows on the ground floor.

‘Holy shit! That fire spread
quick,’ he said, raising a hand to cover his eyes.

Flake took a step towards the
front entrance. ‘Oh God. Who’s still in there?’ she asked.

Before Sanchez could answer,
Dante and Kacy came rushing out of the front entrance and down the steps to the
street. They both looked shell-shocked. Their faces were covered in black soot.
And Kacy still wasn’t wearing any pants.