The Book of Death (Bourbon Kid 4)

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