The Book of Death (Bourbon Kid 4)

bright blue colour. A source of electrical energy seemed
to be generating in the centre of his hand, and from behind his sunglasses a
similar blue glow appeared around his right eye. Harker decided to take his
chance and squeezed the trigger of his gun.
    BANG!
    The gunshot was deafening in the
confined space of Simmonds’s office. The bullet ripped through the chest of
Rameses Gaius. But the man didn’t fall. He stood there and smiled, his hand
still glowing.
    BANG!
    Harker fired another shot into
his chest. Again it seemed to have no effect on Gaius, other than to broaden
his smile.
    ‘My turn,’ Gaius snarled.
    Harker’s eyes bulged with fear
as he saw the blue light in Gaius’s hand generate into a sphere the size of a
bowling ball. With one flick of his wrist Gaius then unleashed a blue laser
bolt from his hand. It struck Harker in the chest, lifting him off his feet and
sending him crashing back into the wall behind him, The wall was made up of
shelves of books and the impact of him crashing into them caused a bundle of
them to topple from the higher shelves down on to his head.
    Feeling dazed and severely
stunned by the blow, Harker fought to regain his breath. His lungs felt like
they had collapsed and his eyesight had temporarily failed him. He tried
blinking furiously in the hope of clearing his vision and seeing what might be
coming his way next. His gun had slipped from his grip and he scrambled around
on the floor with his right hand hoping to relocate it.
    As his eyesight slowly returned,
the face of Elijah Simmonds appeared above him. The museum’s new manager had a smirk
on his face. He had picked up Harker’s gun and was now waving it in his face,
taunting him with it. Where Simmonds had looked terrified only moments earlier,
now he looked smug and dangerous. ‘Looking for this?’ he asked, grinning.
    Harker opened his mouth to
answer, his lungs sucking in a huge gulp of air as he did so. Simmonds seized
his opportunity and was upon him in an instant. He grabbed Harker around the
throat and thrust the barrel of the gun into his mouth.
    ‘Not so tough now, are you,
Captain?’ he jeered.
    Harker stared back up at him
with pleading eyes, hoping and praying that Simmonds wouldn’t have the guts to
pull the trigger. In spite of the gun in his mouth he managed to splutter out a
barely audible “please don’t” . The plea fell on deaf ears. Simmonds
squeezed the trigger on the gun and blew his brains out.

 
    Forty-Eight

 
    Since Dante and Vanity
had departed for the museum, Kacy had found it tough going sitting with the
girl scouts. Her biggest problem was that her vampire instincts were hard to
control. Each of the girls was beginning to look like an ideal snack, and Kacy
was feeling hungrier with every passing moment.
    One of the girls, a
tiny little thing with long dark pigtails protruding from underneath her blue
pom pom hat, had gone to find a toilet. Kacy remained with the others and tried
to keep them entertained with a game of charades. Lucy, the head Sunflower Girl
with the blond pigtails, was acting out the name of a film. Kacy sat in amongst
the rest of the girls on the front pews, encouraging them to guess the answer.
For the past five minutes they had been stuck on a film title and only had the
words Butch something and the Sundance Kid. The girls couldn’t
get the missing word from the actions Lucy was performing. Kacy wanted to just
shout out “It’s Cassidy for fuck’s sake!” but the girls’ determination
to work out the answer for themselves was keeping them occupied and therefore
taking their minds off all the horrible things they had seen earlier.
    Then came another
problem. Veronica, the girl who had gone to the bathroom, returned with a
concerned look on her face. She was hopping around from foot to foot too,
suggesting she hadn’t actually managed to use the bathroom yet.
    ‘What’s up, honey?’
Kacy asked her.
    ‘There’s a man in the
toilet,’ Veronica replied. ‘He’s locked himself in and won’t come out.’
    ‘What?’ Kacy stood up
and walked over to her. She placed her hands on the girl’s shoulders and looked
her in the eye. ‘Did he say who he was?’
    Veronica shook her
head. ‘No.’
    ‘Okay, wait here. I’ll
be back in a minute.’
    Kacy headed off in the
direction Veronica had come from. It was the area Vanity had dashed off to
earlier when he was supposedly securing any doors and windows to prevent anyone
from getting into the