The Book of Death (Bourbon Kid 4)

again. ‘Hello,
reception.’
    ‘Panda Girl, it’s Jessica. I
just got your message. Did you say Sanchez is here?’
    ‘Yes. He’s got The Book of Death
for you.’
    ‘He has?’ Jessica sounded
surprised.
    ‘I haven’t seen it, but he says
he’s got it in his satchel.’
    ‘Who’d have thought it?’ said
Jessica, snorting a laugh. ‘That idiot hasn’t even worked out I’m a vampire
yet, but somehow he’s found The Book of Death. Brilliant. I bet he didn’t even
notice all the vampires and werewolves in the courtyard on his way in, did he?’
    Panda Girl lowered her voice,
knowing Sanchez was within earshot behind. ‘He drove right past them all,’ she
said.
    ‘What a fucking loser.’
    ‘Want me to send him up?’
    There was a slight pause as
Jessica mulled over the suggestion. Eventually she replied. ‘No. He’ll get
lost, you’d better bring him up. Once I’ve got the book, he’s all yours.’
    ‘Okay, see you in a minute,
Jessica,’ she said, ending the call.
    She was already envisaging how
much fun it would be to drink the blood from Sanchez’s juicy neck. There was
plenty of flesh there to take a bite out of. She stood up and turned around.
The crimson sofa at the back of the foyer was now empty. Sanchez had fled. She
sniffed the air. His scent, and that of some barbecue chicken wings was still
floating in the air. It wouldn’t take long to find him.
    ‘Sanchez,’ she called out. ‘Oh,
Sanchez. Come out, come out, wherever you are!’

 
    Forty

 
    ‘It’s like the fucking North
Pole here!’ Lionel yelled over the sound of the howling wind.
    ‘When have you ever been
to the North Pole?’ Nate called back.
    ‘Huh?’
    Standing guard at the front
gates at the entrance to the Casa De Ville was a shit job at the best of times,
but in a blizzard like the one they were caught up in right now, it was as bad
as it got. Nate was no big fan of snow. He could handle the cold just fine.
Being a vampire made cold weather perfectly bearable. But the wind blowing
through his ears and the three inches of snow underfoot was irritating in the
extreme. And it was bloody difficult to hear his buddy Lionel over the noise of
the wind. It wasn’t that easy to see him through the blizzard of snow either.
The highlight of their evening so far had been opening the gates to let Sanchez
through to see Jessica. Other than that the evening had been extremely
uneventful. Their task was simply to keep an eye out for the approach of the
Bourbon Kid, if of course, he was foolish enough to show up and allow himself
to be spotted from the front gates.
    ‘I said, when have you ever been
to the fucking North Pole?’ Nate repeated, a little louder than before.
    His fellow Panda, Lionel, was
renowned for a total lack of enthusiasm in every task he undertook. So even
though Nate was hacked off at their current assignment, it was a safe bet that
Lionel would be hating it even more.
    Behind them, every other
surviving member of the local undead scene was concealed behind a tree, bush or
statue in the courtyard, ready to ambush the Bourbon Kid if he did show up.
    ‘Well I’ve never actually been to the North Pole,’ Lionel yelled back. He took his baseball cap off and shook
the snow from it, before securing it tightly back on his head. ‘I’ve seen it on
telly though. And it’s got a fuckin’ lot of snow!’
    The pair of them had been
instructed like everyone else to wear dark clothes to help camouflage
themselves in the dark, but against the backdrop of snow the camouflage was
largely redundant. Nate reached into his thick dark coat and pulled a pack of
cigarettes from his inside pocket. ‘Wanna smoke?’ he called over to his buddy.
    ‘Nah. I’m good, thanks.’
    Nate fumbled around in his
pocket for his lighter and then held it up underneath the rim of his baseball
cap to shield it from the snow. It was a shitty disposable red lighter that
he’d snagged from a victim a few days earlier. It took four flicks to ignite
the damn thing and even then the flame was pretty pathetic. After puffing hard
on the end of the cigarette four or five times it eventually lit up. The flame
on the lighter flickered and went out completely a second later.
    As he took a drag on the
cigarette, he saw Lionel poking his head through the bars on the gates, peering
out into the road.
    ‘You seen something?’ he shouted
over to him.
    Lionel looked back and shook his
head. ‘Just snow. And more snow.’
    The sound of