The Book of Death (Bourbon Kid 4)

in a
bored tone as she looked out of the window.  
    From his seat in the back Dante
smirked. Kacy wasn’t the sort to be impressed by a car that wasn’t stolen. As
it happened, he was pleased they were in the Ranger. The roads were more
dangerous than usual. Dark
clouds were forming over the city too. Big ones.
    What looked like a huge medieval
castle rose up in the distance.  
    “What the hell is that?” Kacy
asked.
    “That’s the Casa de Ville,” Vanity
replied.  
    “It’s a bit fucking big, isn’t
it?’ said Dante.
    “It’s gonna need to be,’ said
Vanity. ‘There’s gonna be a helluva lot of vampires in there in a minute.’
    Dante shook his head. The sight of
Case de Ville getting larger and larger as they drew closer rendered him
speechless for once.    
    Vanity parked the Ranger in a
large car park around the back of the main building. Dante and Kacy followed
him back around to the front of the building where a vampire wearing some curious
black eye makeup let them in through the front door and directed them to the
main hall.
    The main hall was magnificent in
size. Its ceiling stood fifty metres high and had a balcony running around the
walls halfway down. At the far end of the hall stood a large set of very wide
marble stairs that led up to the landing and the balcony. It really did feel
like a castle. The only major difference Dante had spotted were the obvious
CCTV cameras recording every move. The fucking things were everywhere you looked.
The hall was already buzzing with noise. Literally hundreds of vampires were
standing around chatting amongst themselves.
    ‘Wow, something big is definitely
going down,’ said Vanity. ‘Let’s hang at the back. After that whole thing with
Déjà Vu being the Bourbon Kid I think a low profile is the way to go.’
    ‘I’m down with that,’ said Dante.
    The crowd of vampires in the hall
resembled the audience at a rock concert. There were all kinds of strangely
dressed freaks from every vampire clan in the city, all congregated in this one
huge room staring up at the marble staircase at the end of the hall. Dante
recognised some of the clans, such as the Clowns, of which there were quite a
few. There weren’t too many of the Filthy Pigs and Rastafarians from the Dreads
clan around this time; of course, there weren’t many of the Shades around
either. Apart from Dante, Kacy and Vanity, only Cleavage and Moose had survived
the recent massacre. The two female members of the Shades were present in the
hall, but they had naively ventured to the front of the crowd to get a good
look at what was going on.
    The majority of the audience now
seemed to be made up of what Vanity informed them was the Panda clan, a group
of vampires like the one who had let them into the building. They all had black
face paint across their eyes giving them a look much like a bunch of human
pandas, albeit carnivorous fanged bloodsucking pandas. One of the other
dominant clans was the Black Plague, a group that usually stayed on the
outskirts of the city. They all wore ninja style black outfits complete with
black masks that revealed just their eyes and a small amount of dark skin
around them. No doubt lethal predators at night, Dante thought.
    After a twenty-minute wait, the
huge imposing figure of Rameses Gaius appeared at the top of the staircase. The
chatter in the hall beneath him hushed to a silence. Dante recognised Gaius
immediately. He shuddered at the memory of Gaius kidnapping him and Kacy a week
earlier. He had travelled under the name Mr E at the time and had claimed to be
a member of the Secret Service. He had given Dante the mission that involved
infiltrating the Shades clan to discover the whereabouts of Peto the monk.
    Dante peered over his sunglasses
at Kacy. She peered back over hers. It was obvious that she too recognised
Gaius as Mr E.
    Dante nudged Vanity in the arm.
‘Is that really Rameses Gaius?’ he asked.
    Vanity nodded. ‘Yeah. Don’t mess
with him. He’ll snap you in half.’
    Gaius wore a shiny silver suit (as
he had when Dante had met him before) and a pair of dark sunglasses. His head
was bald and his olive skin as smooth as a billiard ball. Both Dante and Kacy
lowered their heads in the hope that he wouldn’t spot them at the back of the
crowd.
    ‘Hey,’ Vanity nudged Dante back.
‘That’s his daughter Jessica behind him. Total babe. Queen of the vampires.’
    Dante glanced back up and saw that
standing behind Gaius on the steps