The black mountain range stuck out from the sand like a set of knives. Its thousand faces of polished rock interlaced to form a sinister barrier – sometimes catching the sun in a blinding glare. Joe could see the remains of Magnus's campsite nestled at the base of one this monstrosity. From what he could tell at this distance, there was nothing left but ruined tents and a makeshift airstrip, gradually disappearing beneath the sand.
"We told them," said Lierdly, from the driver's seat. He was barely holding the wheel as the car shook its way down the gravelled track, riding a ridge. There was a dune to their left, working its way toward the road in a surge of burning sand. The professor pointed at the speckling of tents obscured by a layer of 'liquid-air'. It's what they called the turbulent air hugging the ground which distorted anything further than arms reach. "We say, 'nothing to find there but dirt and rock'. My associate even offered them a share in our site – we could use the extra funding, but that crazy woman wasn't interested and now look, all that's left of them. They abandoned less than a week ago. In a month there'll be nothing."
"Crazy indeed," replied Joe. That sounded like the Helen Magnus he knew.
They pulled up at Lierdly's archaeological site, framed by a tent city. White linen flapped in the breeze, snapping sharply like whips cracking in Joe's ear. People hurried everywhere carting books or screaming instructions at their satellite phones. One man tripped in his haste, scattering a box of identification tags in front of Joe and Lierdly. He swore in Dutch and then set about plucking each one from the sand while at the same time hissing behind him at someone in a tent.
On this side of the mountain range to Magnus's camp, Lierdly and his team had set up shop beneath a series of tunnels burrowed into the rock. There more than a dozen of them poking out in no particular arrangement.
"We thought they were tombs," said Lierdly, pointing at several starting barely a foot off the ground. Each was just over a metre high and roughly made. They could have almost been mistaken for natural caves except the rock cleaved in hexagonal pieces, and these were circular holes. "But they just go on and on. I had one of the boys take a wander and he found nothing for kilometres. Whatever's buried in there, if anything at all, it wasn't mean to be found."
"Superstitious?" Joe raised an eyebrow.
"No..." he averted his eyes to the sun, "You can't do what I do for a living and give in to that kind of thinking." Lierdly shifted, resting his hands on his slender hips. "I'd never have made it into my first tomb. Some of my workers, locals, they think that this place is cursed. It's the same story wherever you go in this country. This is cursed. That is cursed. Don't touch that, the sky will fall. Mostly, I think that they don't want us sniffing around in case we find something about their past they don't want to know. Perhaps that is the curse."
"Do you mind if I have a look for myself?"
Lierdly shrugged. "Go ahead. Let me know if you get attacked by a mummy. Can make good money out of that sort of thing."
Joe's laugh turned into a shiver as he hopped up the rocks.
*~*~*
"Is it supposed to be doing that?" Henry backed away from the cave wall nervously, as another flicker of electricity sparked into life next to his ear. There was an ever-present crackle in the background getting louder as they progressed.
"You ask me," said Nikola, sniffing out the darkness, eyeing it cautiously, "as if I do this kind of thing often..."
Helen had her gun raised, realigning it to every sound no matter how small. "It wouldn't be a first, Nikola," she said in a whisper, as she stepped behind him. "You're always claiming an affinity with these creatures."
"Ancestry," he corrected her, shuddering as her hair tickled across the back of his neck. He hated that she did that – always on purpose, to unsettle him and remind him who was really in charge. "A different thing altogether."
"If you like," she grinned, as he ran his hands over the back of his collar.
"Seriously though," Henry had stopped at one of the walls and was entranced watching the electricity flow along tiny tracks in the rock, almost like veins. "This is not normal." He reached his hand out to the surface, lowering it slowly to the fluid patterns until – "Ow..." he shook his hand. "Ow, ow, ow..."
The spark had been quite spectacular, lighting Henry in a sudden flash.
"You once hand-picked this thing as a protégé?" Nikola widened his eyes in disbelief as Henry muttered something about, 'being okay'.
Helen shook her head. "It was more like an adoption," she confessed. "What do you know about real vampires?"
Nikola shrugged, "Not much. Their records are, regrettably, destroyed or lost."
"But you have your suspicions," Helen prompted.
"They were civilised," he said, "but civilisation millennia ago is not what it is today."
"You really are worried, aren't you? Meeting our sand creature deepened your fears that vampires have a – how would you put it, viscous side?"
"They had a talent for survival in an age noted for its brutality. Yes, it worries me. As does this..." He pointed at the currents of electricity running over the walls.
"Nikola..." she reached out and grabbed his arm with her free hand. He stopped, turning to find her eyes wide, glistening in the torchlight. "Where's Henry?"
*~*~*
Ashley stopped, balanced on the bank of pebbles to the right of the stream. The water ended at two giant doors which towered to the roof of the cavern, out of reach of her torchlight.
"Sheee-it..." she exhaled, taking a step back to take in the sight.
The doors were made of a heavy wood, intricately carved with a life-size freeze of the jungle stretching across them. Plants with their curled leaves protruded while hidden beneath them, creatures prowled. Carved trees stood at their real height, vanishing into an elaborate canopy. Two snarling jaguars faced each other in the middle, gnashing their curved teeth at each other mid-pounce. It was unlike any artwork she had seen. It was so real that Ashley hesitated to take her eyes off it in case the creatures came to life and leapt free.
The doors were not infallible though. Along their base, the water had cracked and discoloured the wood. Fragments of gold caught inside the fibrous surface making them look as if they had been dipped in liquid gold. It was like an embroidered curtain, sealing the cave. Ashley had never felt so small.
The water had not backed up at the door. Instead, it was running under it. Ashley stepped into the freezing water, grimacing as it sank through her boots and swelled around her ankles. Her skin reddened, burnt by the cold as she waded in deeper. The river's depth had been deceiving. Soon it was up around her waist as she reached the centre of the door, holding her arms up above her head.
"Bad idea," she grimaced as the cold became a stabbing pain. Her backpack was waterproof, and floated defiantly as she threw it into the water. It followed the current and hit the doors, bobbing against them.
There was a second current in the water. Ashley could feel its tug on her lower legs in the deep water, beckoning her forwards.
"Moment of truth," she said, more to convince herself than the empty chamber. Ashley reached down under the water, following the line of the door. Her fingers slipped over the golden edge. A foot under the water, the door ended leaving a gap just big enough for her to slip under.
Ashley gripped onto her bag, forcing it down under the water. It fought against her but as soon as it crossed onto the other side, Ashley took a breath and submerged, following it through.
The cold was unbearable, piercing her with such force that she thought she must have fallen victim to an ancient death trap. She kept her eyes clenched shut as she hugged her backpack to her chest, letting it pull her up through the water.
They broke the surface together. Ashley coughed, wiping the water from her face before opening her eyes. She was swimming now with the water deepening beneath her. Ashley brought her torch above the water. As with the previous room, there were banks of rock on either side. Ashley swam, forcing her stiff arms to stroke their way toward the shore.
*~*~*
They turned around together but neither could see any sign of Henry.
"Henry?" whispered Helen, about to backtrack before Nikola caught the back of her coat.
"No, no... wait," he said. Nikola tilted Helen's torch, pointing it up toward the ceiling of the cave. There was nothing but a small flock of napping bats, swaying in their sleep. "I think this is a mistake," he said, not letting go of her coat. Helen wasn't sure if it was for her own safety or his.
"Where's Henry?" Helen demanded.
"I don't know," he replied truthfully. "But nothing got past us, I am sure of it, which means that whatever it was didn't have to."
"Teleporting? Like John?"
"It wasn't John," said Nikola. "Stay close, I mean it." He didn't just mean 'within an arms distance'. Nikola wouldn't let Helen stray any further than their shoulders touching. They stepped in time with each other, following the cave as it sloped downward.
"There is something down here," she said, blinking at the darkness. Helen could hear movement, subtle but quick as it changed positions. "I think that you should say something."
"Like what?" he had morphed slightly further towards his vampire form. Nikola was a ghastly combination of pale skin, sharp teeth and large, black eyes that Helen hated to see.
"Anything. Otherwise whatever's home is going to think that we're trying to sneak in..." Nikola was silent, trying to work out how that differed from what they were actually doing. "All I know," continued Helen, "is that when things sneak into my house – it doesn't end well for the 'things'."
"Well you say something then!"
"This is your idea!" she prodded him sharply. He buckled temporarily, curling his claws.
"Fine. Tell me what to say and I'll say it."
"God, you are such a child."
*~*~*
The desert light was absorbed by the tunnel until it was nothing more than a bright circle in the distance. Joe had to duck, crouching his body to fit inside the tunnel. It smelt stale which was no surprise given the fragile bones of desert creatures he continuously crushed under his shoes. They had curled up and died all over the place, hiding from a sandstorm and forgotten to leave.
Lierdly had given him a small amount of supplies including a strong flashlight and tent pole, 'for the cobwebs'. Joe could think of other uses for a length of wood. He gripped the stick with one hand, aiming it at the tunnel like a prehistoric caveman might have done.
The tunnel worked its way into the mountain, sometimes constricting into a space barely big enough to crawl through and at other times intersecting with several tunnels in large, domed spaces. Joe left himself messages in the sand floor so that he wouldn't end up walking in circles. The deeper he progressed, the more well-worn the tracks became almost like he had been skirting through the side streets and only now finding the highway.
Eventually he found himself in a tunnel tall enough for him to stand with three others beside him. He was not the first to venture down these catacombs. Many kilometres inside, the air became putrid. Joe buried his nose in his sleeve as he closed in on the source of the smell, fighting the urge to by physically sick.
A skeleton, partially decomposed had reclined against the wall. It was difficult to know how long it had been there. With dry desert air and few scavengers, his decomposition might have been greatly slowed. His clothes were native to the area and he looked peaceful, like the remains of the animals.
Joe did not linger, pushing past the horrible sight before a mysterious urge to sleep befell him.
*~*~*
Ashley sat on the bank with her knees pulled to her chest, shivering. Her body had the slightest tinge of gold from the water and she could still taste its metallic edge. If Henry had been here, he would have made a quip about that James Bond film.
This room was different to the last. Instead of a rough cave surface, she found perfectly cut stones stacked tightly together to form smooth walls. She couldn't comment on the ceiling because it hung well out of reach of the torchlight.
Instead of a river, there was a deep pool of water filling the cave edged by a low wall, maybe half a foot tall at best. On the top of this barrier was a trail of crescent shaped lights embedded in the stone. They did not shine brightly but like glow-worms, their collective light gave the water which they encapsulated a soft aura.
As her eyes adjusted to the softer light, Ashley saw the first hint of structure emerge from the far side of the underground lake. There were buildings, several stories high, packed tightly together in a crowded facade. Her torched flickered. She hit and cursed it until its light reappeared. She may as well have held a candle to the room. There was city down here, buried away from the world. It was silent – abandoned long ago.
This, Ashley presumed, was all that remained of the Sanctuary of the Moon.