The Book of Death (Bourbon Kid 4)

from where they
were gathered.
    Dante grabbed Kacy by the arm
and pulled her out into the road, away from the falling debris. ‘Look,’ he said
pointing to the sky. ‘There’s a blue moon coming out through the clouds.’
    Kacy looked up. ‘Does that mean
we can go back to being human?’ she asked.
    Dante nodded. ‘Yeah. We should
do it now. Where’s the Eye?’
    Flake pointed over to the car.
‘Beth should have it back there.’
    ‘Is this it?’ said Beth, holding
the blue stone up.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Dante. ‘Mind tossing
it over here?’
    Beth tossed the stone over to
him. He caught it in his free hand and planted a kiss on Kacy’s forehead. ‘You
ready to do this babe?’
    ‘Sure. What we gotta do?’
    ‘Stand under the moonlight and
hold it up. It kinda lights you up real bright so everyone can see you for
miles around. After a while you just go back to being human, I think.’
    Kacy gave him a gentle dig in
the ribs. ‘Can we do it somewhere a little more private then? I already look
kinda naked here. Not sure I need to be lit up for everyone to see.’
    The sound of a distant fire
engine approaching with its siren blaring made the decision an easy one.
    ‘We’re getting the hell out of
here,’ Dante announced. ‘Shall we all meet up somewhere later?’
    Flake looked to Sanchez. ‘How
about we all go for a drink at the Tapioca? We can work out what story we’re
gonna tell the Captain.’
    Sanchez shrugged. ‘Fair enough.
Although, I usually just make the story up as I go along when the cops question
me about anything.’
    ‘How do you get away with that?’
Flake asked.
    ‘I’m renowned as a bullshitter.
They expect it.’
    ‘So it’s settled,’ said Dante,
interrupting their trivial aside. ‘We’ll head there once we’ve fixed ourselves
up?’
    ‘Sure,’ said Sanchez. ‘See you
there in about an hour.’
    Dante and Kacy hurried off
across the street and down a back alley, disappearing out of sight just before
the fire engine pulled up at the scene. As the firemen started preparing to
fight the fire Sanchez made a suggestion to Flake.
    ‘We should really get out of
here,’ he said. ‘We should probably get Beth to a hospital after all she’s been
through.’
    Beth called out from the back of
the car. ‘Can’t we wait to see if JD is all right? I’m feeling okay now.’
    Flake walked over to Beth and
leaned down to take a closer look at her. ‘Have you seen yourself in the
mirror?’ she asked.
    ‘No,’ Beth replied tentatively.
‘Do I look bad?’
    Flake smiled. ‘That scar you had
on your face, it’s gone.’
    Beth swallowed hard. ‘What?’
    ‘Take a look in the rear view
mirror. You look beautiful.’
    Sanchez peered over Flake’s
shoulder to see if she was telling the truth. Beth’s scar had indeed vanished
courtesy of the healing powers of the Eye of the Moon. ‘She’s right,’ he said,
agreeing with Flake. ‘You look gorgeous. It’s a shame about all that blood on your
top though. Spoils the look a bit.’
    Beth took a look at her
reflection in the car’s rear view mirror. She ran her fingers across her cheek
where her scar had once been.
    ‘I don’t believe it,’ she
whispered. ‘After all this time, it’s gone.’
    She was so overjoyed at the
sight of her new reflection that she barely heard the sound of a gunshot from
within the museum.  

 
 
    Sixty-One

 
    Special Agent Richard Williams
had seen some bullshit during his twenty years in the FBI, but the report he’d just
read about the events in Santa Mondega bordered on farcical. A former colleague
of his, Detective Miles Jensen, had been assigned to this same shithole town a
year earlier and had vanished without trace amidst rumours of supernatural
activity. Williams had kept an open mind about the whole thing, but now as he
sat in the Captain’s glass walled office with two halfwit cops who had filed a
report on the latest of the city’s many massacres, he was convinced someone was
having a joke at his expense.
    ‘Is this a joke?’ he asked.
    The two cops sitting opposite
him looked like halfwits. The first one, Sanchez Garcia, was proudly wearing a
highway patrolman’s outfit, with the sunglasses and Stetson hat still on. The
other, Officer Flake Munroe, clearly took herself seriously as a cop, but
looked too inoffensive for it. She answered Williams’s question soberly.
‘That’s the events exactly as they happened,’ she said.
    Williams forced a fake