The Mummies of Blogspace9 (20 page)

“A Toledo sword,” he said, hoisting one from the rack. “Now there’s a weapon you can trust.”

“If you take the time to train,” Cuellar told him. “You were never an effective swordsman, not even at Cajamarca.”

“No,” Duran agreed, tying the scabbard to his belt. “No I was not. And for all I know, this was my very sword, the one General Rumiñavi used to cut off my feet. How I miss those feet.”

“You’ll want to see this,” Cuellar called to him as we tried to move our party forward.

“Oh, my yes. Now there’s a weapon I can manage.” Duran hefted the harquebus from its pegs. “A tortuous weapon on a good day – two minutes to load, half again if your hands are shaking.”

“And louder than an Andalusian whore on All Souls Day,” I said before he did. “We’ve heard this all before. We can come back another day, but we need to move.”

“There may be no other day,” he said, inspecting the weapon. “Vasco, fetch me the powder. I’ve spotted a fine ball to load.”

So we waited until Cuellar returned with a powder horn and Duran loaded the harquebus. Suddenly, a stranger jumped in front of me, aimed a gun at my face and fired. I froze, imagining myself to be both dead and deaf, but the stranger quickly threw me aside and fired two more times. It was a full moment, how ever that can be measured, before I realized he was shooting past me, saving my life.

Three men lay on the ground, each shot in the forehead.

“Sopay watches us all,” Cuellar spat. “He will have our souls for a poor snack between his breakfast and his lunch if we do not come to him now.”

I turned back to my protector. “Who are you?”

“Bolivar,” he said, reloading a pair of antique pistols. “You were careless.”

“Bolivar,” I repeated. “I’ve heard a lot about you. That was fine work you did, liberating South America. Fine work.”

He nodded and clicked his heels together.

“He’s with me,” Leon said. “I brought him from Peru. We’re really good buddies, like best friends, like two swords in one scabbard. Wait, that sounded gay.”

I felt a stab to my heart when I saw the look that passed between my lovely Naya and Bolivar. They had been lovers too, I realized, almost two hundred years ago. And yet Bolivar was still human, not a mummy. By now I could easily distinguish the living from the…the not quite living.

Radu pointed to a low doorway which I remembered racing through when we escaped from the harem. “It is time we split up,” he said, and we bade farewell to him, to Leon, and to Bolivar - Kim’s rescue team.

And so I led my own squad through the hall of ancient weapons: Negromonte and the three mummies - Duran, Cuellar, and Naya. I can’t use the term fearless to describe my sense of mind, but my fear was manageable. I had only some idea of what was waiting for me behind that broad door in front of me, but I was certain it would be something unimaginably terrible.

Even so, I walked first, Naya behind me for her protection, which was probably not necessary given the nature of her existence. Then came Negromonte, and the two long-dead conquistador knights I now called friends.

A month and a half ago, I knew not one of these individuals, and yet each was now precious to me. I felt certain that they would be the great friends of my life. But when that door opened and I saw what stood behind it, I didn’t have much faith that life would go on much longer.

July 24, 2011
Seville, Spain
Leon Samples

I’ll admit to some degree of terror once we split up. I thought it unfair that Bruce got all three immortals. All I got were two normal, every day, garden variety humans: Radu and my buddy Bolivar. But life goes on. And on and on, as I would soon learn.

If I told you that the hallways smelled like death, I’d be sugar coating things. Decay was everywhere; in the woodwork, in the wilting mushrooms that sprang from the woodwork, and in the rot, which was itself somehow decaying.

What might have once been a carpet softened our steps as we crept forward and came to a room lined by louvered screens.

“We must take great care,” Radu whispered. “Harem is guarded by eunuchs. They are very good with their weapons.”

Bolivar let out a gasp as he peered through the louvers. I joined him and suppressed my own shudder. “Early risers, aren’t they?”

Sunrise was not far off, but already the curtains were being drawn on the apartments the Caliph built for his harem a thousand years ago. And as the servants unrolled the carpets, and lit the morning fires, the concubines began to rise.

Horror is a word too kind for what I saw in front of me. I’ve made no secret of the fact that Kim got five times hotter after her transformation, but these things were hideous. I’m not certain what they were, but a different kind of thing.

Where once were faces, only leather on bone remained. As the nearest concubine turned, a ray of light illuminated the rouge that had been applied directly to her exposed cheekbone. Coyly, she peered into a mirror and brushed away the six wispy hairs that remained on her head. Even Radu gasped.

“What are they?” I whispered. “I thought we would find a harem full of mummy honeys.”

Bolivar shook his head. “No, only the imps in the pyramid can transform someone. These are still women, kept alive by Sopay’s energy.”

“So these women are what? Zombies?”

“No,” he said. “They are living women, centuries old perhaps, but living women. They see themselves as they once looked.” He pointed to a lingerie-laden crone who applied lipstick to her jaw. “She makes herself beautiful for her husband.”

Radu turned away. “I understand why he would want new wife.”

“He’s not going to get that chance,” I told him.

Bolivar put his hand against my mouth as a harem guard passed on the other side of the louvered screen, his scimitar dragging on the tile floor. Something creaked as I drew back, and the guard stopped. He turned and looked straight at me. I would have screamed if Bolivar didn’t have me by the mouth.

Something of a face remained, the face of a very old man. He peered through the louver, his toothless mouth hanging open. I wanted to pity him as much as fear him, but the fear was winning out. I don’t know how much sight he had left in his clouded eyes, but fortunately he didn’t see us. A remnant of lip drew up in a sneer as he turned back to his route, his scimitar scraping behind him.

“That was one scary old eunuch,” I noted.

“Quiet,” Radu warned. “There are many more.”

We waited until the fires had all been lit. That’s when they brought her out. She was wrapped from head to toe in a woven tapestry, but there was no mistaking her. I would recognize Kim Castillo anywhere.

Bolivar checked his guns. “Radu must create a distraction. I will cut a path through the guards. Leon, be ready to grab her. If she resists, call out to me.”

I nodded, but before we could even get that underway, the attendants began unwinding the tapestry from her body.

“Madre de Dios,” Radu whispered when she was naked. He must have whispered it too loudly, because another ancient eunuch appeared at the screen. Before we could react, he shoved his hand through the louvers and grabbed Radu by the throat.

Bolivar got off a volley of shots. I held my fire for the next guard and then I kept shooting until he was down. But there were too many. They mobbed us, and soon had us flat on the ground. My face pressed into the tile and I shut my eyes.

When I dared open them, I saw an impossibly lovely foot in front of me. I looked up and saw the rest of her. “Hi, Kim.” The scar at her throat had healed.

She knelt down. “Leon, don’t tell me you came all this way for me.”

I nodded as best I could. “I came to rescue you.”

“Rescue me? From what? Do you know how hard it was for me to get here?”

What the hell? “Kim, that old demon Quiroga intends to marry you. You’d be his slave for eternity.”

She laughed. “You never did understand women, Leon. That old demon, as you refer to him...goddamn, I could smell him in the air even from Peru. I want him. I came for him, Leon. I’m going to make him mine. Quiroga is about to become my bitch for eternity.”

“But...”

“But yourself. And you,” she turned to Bolivar. “You came too? You had your chance. How many times did I strip down for you, and each time you turned me away?”

“Eleven times,” he said. “But I am a gentleman. My love has been promised to another.”

“That’s too bad.” Kim looked down at Radu. “This one I don’t know. But that’s not a problem, I could use some guys like you on my staff. There’s just one thing left to take care of, you know. Two things really.”

Radu began to sob. I think I did too when Kim summoned her remaining eunuchs and ordered them to castrate us.

July 24, 2011
Seville, Spain
Rafael Duran

The boy acquitted himself well. I shall admit at this point that I was quite touched by his concern for me. None of us knew whether our plan would work, but the risk to myself was not inconsequential. The words that Bruce would speak would be dangerous to me.

“I don’t know if these will do the trick,” he told me, handing me the earplugs. “I can’t promise anything.”

I smiled at the boy. “The risk is well met,” I told him. After the cones came the wax, stuffed into my ears. Naya was outfitted in the same fashion, as was Cuellar, though it was quickly revealed that he already maintained enough wax in his ears, obviating the necessity for more.

Although I haven’t known the sensation of fear for centuries, I can admit to some trepidation as we approached the door. No matter what happened next, behind that door waited my maker. And I was not entirely eager to meet him.

July 24, 2011
Seville, Spain
Bruce Wheeler

I didn’t know what to expect. Not this: a fireplace-lit moldering study that might have been fashionable some decades ago; two metro Seville policemen done up in riot gear carrying automatic weapons; and one old man.

If he had passed me on the street, I’m not sure he would have stood out in any physical sense. He was neither thin nor fat, tall nor short. He wore a gray suit and a tie, and wire-rimmed glasses. All things considered, except for the petrifying odor and aura of desolation, he could have been mistaken for an elderly businessman. But he wasn’t. He was
Gaspar Quiroga
, the five-hundred-year-old demonically-possessed Grand Inquisitor of Spain.

“I haven’t much time,” he said as he tossed a pile of reusable grocery bags onto the floor. “I’m to be married today. The lady in question is fairly begging to feel my spirit inside her.”

Hard as it was to look away, I stole a glance at the bags – they were from SuperSol, the popular chain where I did most of my food shopping. “Those are for your heads,” he explained, “if I don’t get what I want within the minute.”

Cuellar collapsed and began to grovel. I heard some Hail Marys, but most of it was begging, which was really too bad because he wasn’t helping things. For some reason, I couldn’t take my eyes off the grocery bags.

Quiroga smiled warmly, taking us in one by one. “My children.” He nodded to Naya who backed away, and to Duran who didn’t move. “Welcome home.” Moving on to Negromonte, “you, I have not yet met. But I’m grateful for the opportunity. And you,” moving on to me, “I’ve been waiting a long time for you to join me.”

“I didn’t come to join you,” I said, but he just nodded.

“You did. You did.” One of the policemen came at me fast, sweeping my feet with a baton and dropping me flat on my back.

“You went down almost as easily as your Michelle did, though she was more eager. Quite adept with her tongue, she was.”

I tried to catch my breath as the policeman flipped me over and searched me. I had hidden the
Malleus Momias
book in the inseam of my jacket, and it took him about four seconds to find it. Dutifully, he delivered it to Quiroga.

Quiroga regarded the book solemnly, turning the pages carefully as if they might crumble in his hands. “I had no notion it even existed. Rumors, yes, but I thought them just that.” He spent a few moments staring at the text as I regained my breath. Cuellar had groveled his way closer and now hung at his leg.