The Book of Death (Bourbon Kid 4)

Charlton Heston slumped to his
knees in front of the Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes. As he
mulled over the insignificance of it, he received a shock.
    Lionel’s head drooped forward.
And kept going. It slid clean off his shoulders and landed with a gentle thud,
face down in the snow. The rest of his body remained kneeling upright. A
fountain of thick red blood began gushing out in all directions as if someone
had turned on a garden sprinkler between his shoulders. The snow behind his
decapitated head was sprayed blood red and a dark patch began spreading quickly
towards Nate. The rest of Lionel’s body slumped forward landing just short of
his head. Nate watched the events unfold in stunned bewilderment before
suddenly coming to his senses and reacting.
    ‘Oh fuck!’ He grabbed his walkie-talkie
and raised it to his mouth. He pressed the button to speak, but before he could
utter a word he felt a razor sharp blade pressed against his Adam’s apple. He
tried his best not to swallow too hard. The last thing he wanted was to feel
that blade cut into his throat as a result of his own actions. A body pressed
up against his back and he felt the warm breath of a man at his right ear. A
hand appeared out of the darkness and grabbed a hold of the walkie-talkie,
removing it from his grip. Then he heard a voice. A gravelly whisper.
    ‘How many vampires in the
courtyard?’ it asked.
    Nate took a short breath before
sensibly replying. ‘Hundreds.’ The blade pressed harder against his throat.
‘Possibly thousands,’ he added.
    ‘And werewolves?’
    ‘The same.’
    The blade that had remained
pressed to his throat was loosened and pulled away. Nate breathed a gentle sigh
of relief.
    ‘So what now?’ he asked.
    The knifeman did not respond.
    Unsure if his attacker was still
behind him or not, Nate tried to reason with him. ‘I won’t say I saw y…’
    A horrific ripping sound
interrupted his speech. He felt an agonising pain in his lower back. The pain
rapidly shot through to his stomach. Gasping for breath, he succeeded only in
chasing after some oxygen like a kid trying to bite an apple in a barrel. His
chin dropped forwards suddenly as he found his neck muscles no longer able to
hold his head up. And as he looked down he saw the blade of a sharp knife
protruding through the front of his stomach.
    It was covered in blood.
    His blood.
    His legs buckled in the same way
as Lionel’s had. As he began to fall face first into the snow a hand grabbed
his head to stop its downward trajectory. Blood was rushing up through his
lungs into his mouth. Thick lumps of it began sliding over his tongue and
seeping out through his lips. He could see it dribbling onto the white snow
below.
    Then the blade in his stomach
began to move again. His attacker pulled the knife upwards, through his stomach
and up through his rib cage. The blade sliced his undead vampire heart in two,
splitting his chest open. As he exhaled his last breath he saw his guts fall
out onto the snow.

 
    Forty-One

 
    After a particularly stressful
and tiring day, Elijah Simmonds was at last able to relax. The museum was closed
for the evening so he finally had a chance to wander around the displays and
decide on what changes to make. First up, he decided, there were far too many
boring paintings. Definitely more nudes were required. At present there were
far too many paintings by the expressionists. Simmonds couldn’t stand the
expressionist paintings. The only redeeming feature they had was that they were
worth a lot of money, so there was a possibility that he could sell a few of
them off and bring in a few hundred thousand dollars revenue, maybe more.
    In fact, he decided, the entire
hall containing the expressionist paintings could probably be replaced by
something far more entertaining, like a mini theatre with a cinema screen. If
the museum showed films about the expressionists rather than stocking their
dull works it could generate some much needed extra revenue. As he strolled
around the halls he began to feel great excitement at the project that lay
before him. Transforming the museum into something much more modern would see
him hailed as a visionary. Most of the locals didn’t visit the museum any more
because it had become so damned dull under the stewardship of the now deceased
Bertram Cromwell. A redesign could bring them back.
    On his way through the main hall
on the ground floor, he came across Cromwell’s favourite