That stone face was more than three feet high, and as far as we could see, it was covered with what looked like an old war helmet, rounded and nearly flat at the top. Underneath this the eyes were fixed on some point beyond that cave. They were separated by a straight nose, with a cruel mouth beneath it set in a wide jaw. The hard features were framed by what appeared to be a long, thick beard which vanished under the cloak of bones but clearly reached below the neck.
Next I heard the professor mumbling something incoherent and Cassie swearing with absolute clarity. “Son of the gran chingada…”
80
Forgetting where we were and why we had come here, we stood petrified with the vision of that great stone head, emerging from the mountain of human bones.
“It looks like a Greek statue…” the professor said, barely able to find the words.
Claudio, also moved, shook his head. “It’s older than that. It reminds me a lot of the bronze effigy of Naram Sinn, an Acadian king of 2300 B.C.”
“It’s neither of them,” Cassie put in, standing beside them with a lighted flare in her hand which bathed her in an intense red. “It’s not Mesopotamian, nor Greek, nor Roman,” she went on. There was awe in her voice. “This is much older than all these. This is… Ancient.”
I was aware of how absorbing this discovery might be for all of them, but I noticed that the flares we had placed around the perimeter were beginning to lose their brightness, slowly but inexorably.
“I hate to interrupt you,” I said, “but the flares will last another fifteen minutes at the most. We have to go.”
“But look!” Claudio protested pointing at the statue. “This is truly unbelievable!”
“See all those dead bodies under your feet?” I directed the flashlight to his feet. “I’m sure those were the last words of a lot of them.”
The Argentinian muttered in annoyance and shook his head, but made no further comment.
“It’s true,” the professor said coming out of the general stupor. “We must go after Valeria.” He strode down to the floor where Angelica and I were already waiting. “So do you think they might have brought her here?” he asked when he came up to me, shining his flashlight all around.
“It’s very likely,” I lied. I was trying to keep him hopeful, even though I felt nothing of the kind myself. “As you can see, this seems to be a special place for the Morcegos. Somewhere for worship, or for gatherings.”
“It looks more like a slaughterhouse to me,” the Brazilian doctor said. She covered her nose with her hand, trying vainly to avoid the stench of rotting flesh.
Luckily, Professor Castillo did not hear, or else did not want to acknowledge her comment. He took the gun I had given him out of his belt and looked at the gloomy passages which opened to right and left. “I suggest we divide into two groups, so we can cover more ground. We’ll take a peek into the ones on the right. The doctor, Cassandra, and Claudio can have a glimpse into the ones on the left. Do you agree?”
“No, Doc, I don’t,” I said. “It’s out of the question. We have no idea what’s beyond those tunnels, and our only chance of getting out of here is if we all stay together all the time. If we split we’ll be easier prey.” I was absolutely convinced about this. “So, whatever happens,” I added including Cassie and Claudio in my audience as they came closer, “let’s stay together and keep our wits about us the whole time. Not just keeping each other in sight, I mean in a bunch, like a bloody Roman phalanx.”I paused to look at each of them and make sure nobody was left in any doubt.
“And one last thing,” I added putting a finger to the side of my nose. “Remember that down here, all this stench means we won’t be able to smell the Morcegos when they get close, so don’t trust your noses, okay? Right then, take the safety catch off your weapons, but keep your fingers off the trigger. It wouldn’t do to trip and start killing each other.”
I took a moment to glance at each one of the members of that uninspiring rescue team: five gaunt, scared castaways, of whom only Cassie and I had any experience with firearms.
In spite of the precautions and the speech, I knew it was little short of a suicide mission. We were going to need a miracle if we were to see the light of day again. I only hoped the others were also aware of this.
“Very well,” the professor said, oblivious of my forebodings. He looked ahead. “Which way do we go? Left, right or center?”
“The tunnel in the center is the one I came from this afternoon. I didn’t see anything special, so I’d leave it for last. As for the others… I don’t know. What does your fatherly intuition tell you?”
Eduardo Castillo looked one way and then the other, trying to see beyond the dark pentagonal portals. Watching him deep in concentration, I realized he had taken my words “fatherly intuition” seriously and seemed intent on grasping something beyond the reach of our senses.
“Come on, Professor,” Cassie urged him. She was getting uneasy about standing there, in the middle of the cavern lit up by the flares. “Make a choice.”
The professor turned to me instead with an unexpected question. “Do you think the Morcegos know we’re here?”
“You can bet on it.” I was thinking of all the racket we had made with the bones, and all the lights we had with us. “That’s why we have to go now.”
“I see…” he said thoughtfully.
And then, my old friend did the last thing I would have expected in the circumstances.
In fact, although I saw that he was getting ready for it, it was such an unbelievable act that I just looked at him like an idiot, unable to react.
The one who did react was Cassie. She realized what he was going to do and tried to stop him, with a silent “NO!” that came too late to have any effect.
The professor emeritus of Medieval History of the Autonomous University of Barcelona had put his hands at the sides of his mouth and simply shouted his daughter’s name with all the force of his lungs.
The anthropologist’s name echoed through the sepulchral silence of the cave and lost itself in the tunnels, fading into the distance.
“La chingada took us,” Cassie cursed. She put her hands to her head.
“What did you do that for?” Claudio asked, incredulous. “Now all the Morcegos will come here!”
The professor shrugged his shoulders. “I had to try. Besides, if they already know we’re here…”
“Fuck, Doc, that’s true, but you didn’t need to yell that dinner’s ready!” I protested.
“Can you think of a better way of finding her? If she’s conscious, she might hear us and call back.” And again he made his hands into an amplifier and called at the top of his voice: “Valeria!”
I did not think the professor’s shouting would make much difference to our chances, but it was disturbing to stay put in silence while he went on shouting. It was rather like swimming in a shark-infested sea while someone throws steaks into the water. A bad idea whichever way you looked at it.
“Valeria!”
“That’s enough, Doc,” I said. I put my hand on his back. “She’s not answering.”
“Valeria!”
“Can’t you see she can’t hear you?” Angelica snapped, visibly nervous.
“Valeria!”
“Chale, Professor…” Cassie said looking around uneasily. “Stop shouting, please.”
“Valeria!!” he shouted even louder, ignoring them both.
“Eduardo!” I yelled at last, grabbing his shoulders. “Shut up!”
The professor looked at me from behind his dirty glasses with desolate eyes.
“If she hasn’t answered already it’s because she can’t,” I said in a gentler voice.
As if it had been waiting for the moment I uttered those words, the distant voice of a woman called back. It came as if from a fathomless well. Everyone was left momentarily stupefied.
“Here…” she said. “I’m here…”
“It’s coming from a passage on the—” Cassie said po
inting her flashlight to the left.
Before she could finish, the professor had already run into the corridor, ignoring all of my advice about staying together, not to mention any trace of common sense he might have had in that salt-and-pepper head of his.
“Wait!” I said trying to grab him.
But again I was too late.
I had no other option but to follow him without wasting a moment more. I crossed that pentagonal doorway, nearly six feet high, while I tried to keep the trembling beam of his flashlight in sight at the same time.
I trusted that the others would follow my footsteps and not lag behind.
Although it was too late to start worrying about that now.
81
Luckily I was twenty-five years younger than Professor Castillo, and so I caught up with him a few yards further on.
I grabbed his arm brusquely, the way you would a child’s about to cross the street against a red light. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I said angrily, trying to keep my voice down at the same time. “You’ll get us all killed!”
“It’s Valeria!” he said pointing ahead as if he thought I had not yet realized. “She’s alive!”
“I know, damn it!” I muttered. “But use your head, for heaven’s sake!”
At that moment the rest of the group arrived, and once again we were all together.
“You said it yourself.” I did not let go of his arm yet. “They’re using your daughter as bait to lure us all. Can’t you see you’re doing exactly what they want you to do? Those Morcegos are there somewhere, waiting.” I gestured toward the pitch black darkness that surrounded us. “That’s why we haven’t either seen or heard them so far.”
“But—”
“No buts!” I jabbed my finger at him. “If you leave the group again, they won’t only kill you, but all of us. Our only chance of getting out of here alive is if we stay together.” I turned to the others and in a tone that left no room for argument said, “No matter what happens, nobody splits from the group again. Is that clear?”
The four of them nodded without a word, and we went on again. The professor and I took the lead. Angelica went in the middle, shining her flashlight on the ceiling. Claudio and Cassie were walking backward at the rear, so that nothing could surprise us from behind.
We walked on in absolute silence, almost tiptoeing. We did not speak, but this was more out of fear than stealth. Just like little kids dreaming about monsters lurking in closets, hiding under the sheets trying not to make a sound, even to breathe.
Step by step, alert for any hint of movement apart from our own, we walked more than a hundred yards into the corridor, which slanted downward. Then, suddenly, the illuminated circle made by my headlight on the wall vanished. I stopped abruptly.
After a moment of surprise, I realized there was nothing wrong with my headlight. The tunnel wall was simply not there.
In its place there was now a vast, dark, empty space.
“What the hell…” I muttered taking a couple of steps.
In front of me a new cavern, much bigger than the one before, opened out at the end of the passage. It was apparently empty, the size of a basketball court.
Claudio walked ahead of me into the hall. “My God!” he said pointing the flashlight in all directions. “It’s… huge.”
“Guys, look at the wall at the end, halfway up,” Angelica said following the archeologist’s steps and shining her flashlight on the other side. “What are those? They look like… little caves.”
Cassandra came up to me suddenly and grasped my hand tightly. “They’re burrows,” she muttered, unable to stop her voice from trembling. She pointed at the stone steps which led up to them. “Hundreds and hundreds of burrows…”
All five of us stood paralyzed with terror as we realized she was right, and what that meant.
We were in the worst possible place.
This was the lair of the Morcegos.
But before anybody could move or say another word, we heard Valeria’s voice calling out to us again. This time, it was much closer and clearer.
“Here!” she cried. “In the hole!”
We all directed our lights toward the source of her voice. They revealed what looked like a well in the center of the cave floor, dug out of the stone.
Inevitably, the professor was the first to cross the twenty yards in between. By the time we arrived he was already stretched out on the ground with half of his body hidden, pointing his flashlight down.
Standing there, in the middle of a perfectly circular hole, about twelve feet by twelve, was the professor’s daughter. Dirty, with her clothes torn and her eyes staring crazily, but alive. “Thank God!” she sobbed. She raised her arms to her neck in disbelief. “Thank God!”
We tied several shirts together to make an improvised rope long and strong enough to reach Valeria, and with great effort managed to pull her out. Angelica kept watch to prevent any surprises.
Valeria fell to her knees as soon as she was out of the hole. “Thank you…” She panted. “Thank you all…” There were tears in her eyes. “I thought they… they…”
The professor knelt in front of her and hugged her the way you hug someone you thought was lost forever. They held each other for more than a minute, weeping and comforting one another.
“Have they done anything to you?” he asked drawing back from her a little to see her more clearly. “Are you hurt?”
She nodded, drying her tears on her sleeve as she tried to explain. “They surprised me from behind. I wanted to go to the mercenary camp to see if I could find those diaries and I… I don’t know what happened exactly. When I realized, they were already dragging me to the tunnels… and brought me here. Then they vanished, and I was left alone in the dark. I thought”—a nervous sob made her lower lip tremble—“I thought they were saving me for later.”
“It’s all right, darling,” he said although he did not sound much calmer than she did. “You’re safe now. We’re going to get you out of here.”
“But how did you find me?” She stood up, leaning on her father’s shoulder as she did so. “You couldn’t possibly have followed me.”
The professor turned to me with a look of gratitude. “You should ask him,” he said.
I shook my head, unwilling to accept any praise. “It’s a long story,” I said. “We’ll have time for it later on.”
“Wait a minute,” Claudio said coming closer to Valeria and looking at her back. “Is this…?”
She nodded to him. We looked at her questioningly, so she turned around. On her back there was the little red backpack where I had put the Nazi diaries.
“That’s why I went to the camp,” she explained with a trace of guilt in her smile. She took it off and gave it to her father. “I just had to get those diaries.”
Cassandra clicked her tongue reproachfully. “So, because of the pinche notebooks, we end up in this…” She grumbled loudly enough for Valeria to hear.
“Well, that’s irrelevant now,” I said, before they could get into an argument. “Right now we must focus on getting out of here without wasting another minute.”
“Totally agree,” said Angelica, who was already heading to the way out. “This place gives me the cree—” She stopped in midsentence.
Her flashlight made a small clink as it fell from her grasp.
I turned to her in surprise. She had walked towards the mouth of the tunnel and was a couple of yards away from the group.
When my headlight shone on her back, I was startled to see she was not alone.
Facing her was a slim black silhouette, well over six feet tall. I could only make out a row of sharp teeth and a pair of yellowish eyes as it stood still and menacing, with its elongated head, wide torso and unnaturally long arms ending in claws.
It was like a shadow against a backdrop of shadows. A sinister ebony statue that nobody had seen arrive, and whose stench we only now began to perceive.
Those waxy eyes
were fixed on Angelica, as though deciding what to do next. She meanwhile seemed hypnotized, paralyzed with terror.
I did not dare do anything, for fear of that nightmarish creature’s unpredictable reactions.
Nobody moved a muscle.
The creature raised his eyes to look at all of us, squinting as he faced our lights. He was evaluating us.
He uttered a long, deep growl.
He opened his mouth so we could see his fangs, then spat like an angry cat.
Then he turned his attention back to Angelica, less than a yard away.
She was completely still.
The Morcego looked at her from top to toe, spat once more, and made as if to turn away.
But he didn’t.
Then everything happened at once.
Suddenly, so quickly I could not even see the movement clearly, the Morcego lunged at her.
He grabbed her arms to keep her on her feet. Then with his eyes fixed on us, as if to make sure we could see every detail of what he was going to do, he opened his jaws and bit her savagely in the neck.
The unfortunate woman only had a chance to give a strangled moan. A chorus of cries broke out behind me.
I raised my submachine gun ready to fire, but the Morcego had lifted her from the ground. With his teeth still buried in her throat, he was using her as a shield.
For a couple of seconds I hesitated. That was all the time it took the creature to tear Angelica’s windpipe with a single jerk of his head. The blood began to spurt out as though in a horrible fountain.
“Noooo…!” someone howled.
That was the signal that brought me out of my trance and set me furiously pressing the trigger of the submachine gun.
82
I emptied the magazine, sweeping the space in front of me. Cassie and Claudio did the same and between the three of us we created a deafening confusion of smoke and lead.
BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2) Page 36