In spite of the terror they aroused in me, I could not help but think of them as the descendants of unfortunate men and women who, long ago and against their will, had been turned into Morcegos.
87
Iak soon left his guard post and came to sit around the fire with us, cross-legged. He kept his eyes on the fire, from which sparks leapt occasionally.
We were all doing just that: staring at the fire. Each of us deep in our own thoughts, so as not to think about our immediate future.
Possibly, that tense quiet was what allowed me to hear a slight movement over our heads.
“What was that?” Cassie asked with a start.
I swept the flashlight across the ceiling several feet above us, but could see nothing. “No idea,” I lied as best I could. “Maybe an animal.”
She looked at me with the kind of questioning look that meant: do you think I’m stupid?
“It’s them,” the professor said, and drew closer to his daughter, protectively.
“No need to worry.” I lied again, trying to keep them calm. “They told us already they don’t dare come in here. And besides,”—I nodded toward the entrance—“the fire on the stairs will keep them away.”
“Suppose there are other ways to come in?” he asked, suddenly worried.
“Claudio told me last night…” Cassie began to explain. She swallowed hard after saying the Argentinian’s name, realizing she was talking about someone she had seen die. “He told me last night…” she repeated, closing her eyes, “that they’d checked this place out and hadn’t found any other access.”
Tears ran down her cheeks, and all the emotions she brought about in me swirled inside me. Everything I felt for her had receded to the background during those days of madness and chaos. But just then, seeing her in front of me with the clumsy bandage on her shoulder all bloody, her clothes torn and dirty, her face streaked with mud and dust, I thought she was the most beautiful woman on earth. Suddenly I felt a surge of affection for her. Without a word I got up and went around the fire to sit down beside her.
She opened her eyes wide, those great green eyes like emeralds, and looked at me.
“Hello, beautiful,” I said, feigning a casual air. “Come here often?”
There was a fleeting smile on her trembling lips. “We’re going to die, aren’t we?” she said instead.
“There’s less than three hours left till dawn,” I replied, taking her hands in mine. “And I give you my word that this will be our last night in this city.”
“Yeah, sure. Because tomorrow we’ll all be dead.”
“No… because we’ll have left.”
She clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Don’t, Ulysses. I’m not a little girl you need to comfort by lying.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Of course not.”
“Cassie… please.”
“What do you want me to say?” she asked with a mixture of sarcasm and desperation. “That I know that angels from heaven with flaming swords are going to come to our rescue on the back of unicorns?”
“No. Just say you trust me.”
“And where will that get us?”
“Just say it.”
“Órale, man, I trust you. Happy?”
“Say it like you mean it.”
Cassandra grimaced in annoyance and drew her hand across her forehead impatiently. “All right…” she said at last. “I trust you, Ulysses Vidal.”
“Thank you. Now I need you to make a small cut on the palm of your hand to make a blood pact.”
The girl from Acapulco opened her eyes wider and held her hand to her chest. “What are you saying?” She was horrified.
“Relax.” I smiled from ear to ear. “We can do it with saliva instead.”
She still needed a moment to realize I was teasing her. “You and your pinche jokes…” she said with the ghost of a smile.
“You used to laugh at them.”
“I used to?”
“Yes, when we were a couple.”
“Is that what we were?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, until I fucked up.”
Cassie could not hide her surprise at hearing me admit that. “I was under the impression we were just two people who had sex and lived together,” she said. It seemed she had wanted to say this for a long time. “Every time someone asked if we were a couple, you laughed and said for now.”
“I did that?”
“All the time.”
“What a fool I was! How did you put up with me for so long?”
She waited for a long time before answering. Her blond, wavy hair, always so shiny, now looked dull and knotted like dreadlocks. Still, she was beautiful, and all I wanted to do was take her face in my hands and kiss her passionately. “I guess… because I was so madly in love with you,” she said at last.
“I am still in love with you,” I said at once. “And I want to apologize for all the things I did wrong.”
Cassandra took that declaration with mute surprise. With her mouth open she seemed to be looking for some combination of words in her ample vocabulary that could express a coherent reply.
But before she managed, we heard a racket over our heads once again.
This time it was much louder than before.
It sounded like hurried footsteps, together with heavy objects being dragged above the ceiling.
We looked up again, uneasy about the intensity and agitation of whatever it was they were doing.
“Can I start worrying now?” the professor asked as he swept his flashlight over the ceiling.
The noise seemed to be moving along the ceiling in a single direction. Then, it stopped abruptly.
We realized that whatever they were doing, they had stopped immediately above the entrance.
The four of us looked down toward the illuminated threshold, where we could see the bonfire on the stairs burning brightly. We waited with bated breath, expecting something terrible to happen any minute.
88
Seconds went by without anything happening, and we breathed more easily. Trying to keep calm, I convinced myself that there inside the temple, protected by the fire at the entrance, there was nothing to worry about.
A sudden commotion interrupted my thoughts.
Just where I was looking, exactly over the fire at the entrance, a shapeless mass fell from above. It stopped abruptly as the liana that joined it to the roof stretched taut.
Someone screamed behind me, and I leapt about a foot in the air.
“Oh dear God…” the professor said, his voice no more than a thread.
“Oh no, please. Not that…” Cassie begged.
I could barely control my retching when I realized that the form that hung there inert, licked by the flames, was none other than Claudio.
What was left of Claudio.
Those beasts had torn off his limbs and left only his head with his body hanging from it, gently swinging like a hanged man.
In an act of inexplicable cruelty, they had cut his body open from neck to groin so that the bloody mass of his intestines tumbled out all over the stairs of the temple.
When they were sure we had seen it, they cut the liana that held it so that it fell on the flames. This was even worse, as at once we were hit by the horrible smell of burning flesh. A dreadful stench I shall never be able to forget.
Killing Claudio had not been enough. They wanted us to know what was in store for us. In their demented way, the Morcegos were sending us a message.
They were showing us our future.
“Motherfuckers…” I muttered, hoarse with fury. My teeth were clenched so hard I nearly broke them.
“Shaman say,” Iak reminded us, his eyes fixed on the entrance, “They demons, and we come to their hell.”
“Iak,” Cassie said coming out of her shock. “How did you survive in the rainforest these couple of days, safe from the Morcegos?”
“They not look for me,” he said, putting his hand on his chest.
“I see… but how did you manage?”
The Indian shrugged his shoulders. “Not easy. Morcegos demons, but not smart like Iak.”
“So… you think you could leave this city without them catching you?”
“Yes can,” he said with absolute conviction.
“And if you took us with you?”
This time the Indian took longer to answer. He looked at each one of us. I noticed how he focused first on Cassie, then on the grey-haired professor, then on the nearly dead Valeria on her stretcher, and finally on me, gaunt and baggy-eyed as never before in my life. Before he opened his mouth I knew what he was going to say. “No. If Iak take, we all die. You and I.”
For a moment nobody said anything. We knew he was right.
“Well, I don’t know about you” Cassie said at last, “but I’d much rather risk it out in the open than stay here trapped. We have weapons”—she pointed at the MP5s we had leaned against the wall—“and that gives us a chance.”
“I’m thinking of another possibility,” the professor said scratching his beard. “We could hold out here while Iak goes in search of help and comes to our rescue.”
“Hmm… that’s not a bad idea either,” Cassandra said.
“In theory, no, it’s not a bad idea,” I said shaking my head, “but in practice, who would Iak tell? How long would it take him to contact someone in a position to come and save us? The water would be up to our ears before that happened. And, worse still, who’d believe him? Apart from the same people who sent the mercenaries to kill us?”
“Okay, Ulysses, the plan’s not perfect,” the professor protested, “but it could work. I don’t think we have any other option.”
I did not reply just yet. Instead I looked toward the bottom of the great hall to make sure we had everything we needed. “I think we do,” I said at last.
“We do what?”
“We do have another option to get out of here.”
“Are you serious?” Cassie sounded surprised. “I thought you had only said it to cheer me up.”
“Well, I didn’t,” I said, and saw doubt appear on her face. “I have a plan.”
“Another one? As brilliant as the last one?”
In response, I just clicked my tongue.
Just then, when I was getting ready to tell them what I had in mind, a new series of steps and bumps sounded over our heads.
“What now?” the professor asked raising his eyes to the ceiling. “What the hell are these damned things doing now?”
“Nothing good, for sure,” I said.
“I’d suggest… just in case,” Cassie said in a low voice, “that we have our weapons at hand this time.”
I looked back at the great portico, into the night where those creatures whose sole aim was to kill us in the worst possible way were hiding. I knew she was right.
Once again the noises moved toward the entrance, then as before, stopped for a few seconds. I could imagine them organizing themselves before carrying out their new act of evil, whatever it might be.
For a moment I was afraid they were going to throw down Angelica’s corpse this time as they had with Claudio’s, like some macabre entertainment that would last the whole night.
But they did not.
It was worse.
It was much worse.
In fact, it was so bad that the thought of it had not even crossed our minds.
We watched impotently as we saw a mass of dirt and mud thrown from the roof of the temple, falling like a dirty stage curtain over the bonfire that protected the threshold.
In a matter of seconds the great burning pyre went out with a hiss, like a candle in the rain. The burning fire was now nothing more than a pile of smoking logs.
A frozen chill ran down my back as I guessed what that meant.
The Morcegos were about to come in.
89
“Everybody down!” I shouted. “Quick! Grab the guns!”
“Ulysses! Take Valeria in your arms!” Cassie yelled in the midst of the confusion. “The stretcher won’t fit down the stairs!”
“Doc, you grab the box with the bullets!” I said at the top of my voice as I hung a submachine gun across my shoulders and put the Glock in my pants.
“What for?”
“Just do it!”
Quickly, and with all the care I could manage in the circumstances, I picked up Valeria, who was fortunate to be still completely drugged, and made for the spiral staircase that led down to the cellar.
Hiding underground in a situation like this might not be the best idea, but we had no other option.
There was only a single narrow entrance to that underground dome, and it would be much easier to protect than the huge temple full of nooks and wide spaces I was leaving behind as I went down the stairs.
That dark fort was to be our Alamo, and defending it from the attacks of the Morcegos would decide whether we would see another dawn.
Trying not to stumble in the shadows—I only had the beam from my headlight—I reached the hall, followed by the professor carrying the heavy box and the backpack. Cassie was carrying weapons and ammunition as if she were about to start a war all by herself. Last came Iak, walking down the stairs with a bunch of wood under one arm without losing his poise.
When he came into the cellar, the Menkragnoti announced gravely: “They here.”
The first thing we did to organize our defense was to put some branches by the entrance and light them straight away. We were hoping the smoke would go up the stairwell as though it were a chimney and make them think twice before coming down.
If that failed, all we had was Iak’s bow and arrows and the firearms, although seeing how little help they had been to the mercenaries and the Nazis before them, we were not sure they would make that much of a difference if we had to use them. For that reason, as soon as the fire was lit and I had stationed myself in front of the door with the submachine gun ready, I asked the others to get all the old German bullets out of their cases and extract the gunpowder from inside.
“What for?” Cassandra asked. “What do you want to do with it?”
“Remember the book I took away from the dead Nazi’s desk?”
“The one by Hitler?”
“It’s in the red backpack, along with the notebooks. I’ve just thought of a better use for it than toilet paper.”
Cassie looked at the professor, then back at me. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.
“I think I do,” the professor said looking at the bullets and then at me. “You want us to wrap the gunpowder in the pages of Mein Kampf?”
“Exactly,” I replied turning for a moment to wink at him.
“What…?” Cassie insisted, still not understanding.
“Firecrackers,” the professor clarified before she even had time to ask. “We’re going to make a few firecrackers.”
We built another smaller fire at the back of the hall with the remaining torches and laid Valeria beside it.
Despite the meager flame, it cheered us up to have something more than the cold flashlights.
“I don’t understand,” the professor grumbled as he emptied bullet cases, “why the Morcegos have decided to come into the temple tonight, of all times. They didn’t do it all these past weeks, even though they knew there were people here.”
“I’d say we’ve pissed them off,” Cassandra said sarcastically. “I don’t think they liked it one bit when we profaned their sancta sanctorum, then shot at them, and finally Iak threw a Molotov cocktail at them. I think we’ve gone from being fast food to being a serious threat.”
The professor made a face. “Well, it doesn’t look as if the change has done us much good.”
“What I’m not so sure of,” I said without taking my eyes off the stone threshold, “is whether that’s the only reason they’re so upset.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well… seeing the behavior of our friends out there, I have the
feeling that the name “bats” isn’t only because of their color or their nocturnal habits. Am I right, Iak?
For a minute, the Menkragnoti seemed unsure whether to reply or not. “Legends say Morcegos like drink blood of men.”
“What are you talking about?” Cassie asked incredulously. “You mean they’re vampires?”
The blue-eyed Indian shook his head. “Vampires drink blood while you sleep, and you not know,” he reminded her. “But if Morcego drink your blood… you know.”
“I can imagine that, Iak,” she grumbled. “But thanks for the picture.”
“Besides,” the Menkragnoti continued, “legend say Morcegos can smell blood. Like piranhas in river.”
“You mean they can smell blood and feel drawn to it?” the professor asked, turning that macabre idea over in his mind. “But even so, what blood are they—?”
Eduardo Castillo became suddenly quiet when he realized the answer was asleep on the stretcher beside him.
Just then, as if those demons too had been listening to our conversation, we heard an evil snarling, coming from inside the temple.
Only a second later, in a burst of rage, hatred, and feverish thirst for blood, the Morcegos poured down the stairs.
90
Some very human-sounding coughs were approaching, echoing on the stone walls of the cellar. But, at the last minute, the smoke seemed to have achieved its desired effect. They stopped abruptly, thwarted by this unexpected obstacle which stopped them breathing and left them helpless. Finally they retreated doubtfully, leaving behind a cacophony of snarls and grunts that sounded like reproaches.
So, for the moment, we did not see any Morcego’s face at the entrance. All the same, I felt absolutely sure that this had only been a first trial assault. As I heard them retreat upstairs, I remained with one knee on the floor and the rectangular doorway in the sights of my submachine gun.
The remaining hours of the night ahead of us were going to be long.
We decided to take turns to watch the door, so that whoever was on watch duty would not be too tired to concentrate. Even the professor, reluctant to leave his daughter’s side, did his half-hour watch. Meanwhile the rest of us went on with the weary task of separating bullets from cases and extracting the gunpowder, then wrapping it in several layers of yellow pages written in German.
BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2) Page 40