34
THE CREATURE
Rubble piled up at the entrance of the tomb. The mountain trembled, sending snow drifts cruising off the cliffs and into the valley like soft, white waves. Ashley, Declan and Henry landed the helicopter on a rocky outcrop. The chopper canted oddly to one side on the uneven ground, its blades batting at the frigid air.
"Something's not right!" Henry clambered out onto the mountain peak. He peered over the edge but couldn't see the gap in the rocks where the entrance to the tunnel lurked.
Declan was barking orders over the radio. Ashley crawled over him, joining Henry in the snow. "Most of the ice has broken off and fallen into the valley. The tremors must be getting stronger."
"They're localised here in this valley," Henry tapped his tablet. It was leaking battery in the cold. "Something in this mountain must be causing them. I really hope Magnus isn't down there."
"You know mum..." Ashley sighed, tugging up her fur hood. "I'm going to grab the climbing gear and take a look. Coming?"
Henry went paler than usual. "Uh, no I – should keep an eye on these quakes and-" his Ipad died. Henry frowned, shaking the tablet in frustration. "Guess I could help you lay a few ropes – but that's all!"
The darkness trembled as they edged deeper; Immortals, Vampires and the Half-ling herding together. They found themselves encased by polished silver. It covered the curved ceiling, bled over the walls and carpeted the floor which sloped ever downward, snaking toward the gaping void ahead. Their footsteps echoed soullessly, hushing them all into an awkward silence.
Helen remembered the Egyptian tombs she'd spent decades crawling through with a more troublesome version of Tesla thieving bits of cursed treasure. She reached out to the interlocked slabs of silver beside them. These perfect passageways were eerily similar. Everything had a purpose in an ancient tomb. Each tunnel, every random side room – nothing was functionless and Helen got the feeling that this place shared a harsh purpose in its architecture.
It unnerved her how it guided them in, stretching out its silver tongue. Her feet slipped on the floor, her hand pressing against the wall to keep her standing. She knew it would be impossible to run.
She had to admit that Nikola was right. There was something of another world about the dull reflection of their torchlight on the walls. If any creature had stumbled in here twenty thousand years ago, it would have been easy to mistake the elaborate holographic displays for magic. Could this truly be it? Had they found the source of humanity's fascination with the underworld and the gods that played there?
Gods they were potentially about to meet.
"Nikola!" Helen tugged gently on his sleeve, pulling him back from the others. His eyes were dark, swollen orbs, stark against his pale skin.
Nikola dropped back a fraction, falling in step beside her. "Calm yourself, Helen. We're meant to be here, I can feel it in my claws." He flexed them playfully for her. Sometimes she couldn't tell if he was trying to cheer her up or just naturally in possession of an irresponsible nature.
"I am not a blushing debutante," she scolded.
He was about to rebuff with, 'I remember when you were', when she cut him short.
"You recall that old quip about curiosity and a kitten?" Helen eyed the hallway ahead warily. "Pretty sure we're the hapless feline in this story."
"Re-lax..." he drawled. "There's nothing alive down here. No life form in the world is that immortal. If there ever was a nasty little critter lording over the underworld, it has starved to death by now. Gods, even evil ones, are fodder for our children."
Helen levelled a suspicious gaze at him. He didn't have any children that she was aware of. "I doubt very much that you believe that."
"Can't you unravel my mind by now?"
She smirked, though it grieved her to admit that she couldn't. "Uncharted chaos is by its nature impossible to predict."
He enjoyed that, lingering a touch too close to her, fangs peaking under his lips. "Improbable, not impossible," he purred at her.
The Immortal leading their pack stopped, raising his hand to halt the others. They all skidded uneasily into a line behind him. Even Nikola looked up, tilting his head at the corridor which had ended abruptly in a doorway whose absent door lay about their feet in pieces. Beyond was an unlit room whose depth they could feel but not see.
"Do you hear that?" Helen whispered. There was a faint beating on the air – a steady but soft thud that felt like another heart pressing against hers. It wasn't another vampire, she could hear Apries, Amasis and Nikola all too brazenly. This was something fragile.
The Immortal professor nodded. "Strange, I did not hear it before. Something is still alive down here."
The raw violence overwhelmed his senses. It surged with warmth inside him. He inhaled it – revelled in it – basked at the cascade of bodies strewn over the city. There was a mad beauty in the annihilation. John knew that as he gazed at the hundreds of corpses, that he was a novice in the art of murder.
There was a flicker of movement along the edge of the city. Something scrambled over the roof of a crumbling building before diving into the rat-nest of rock. The Magoi, John presumed.
"Nooooo!" a voice shrieked in agony. The cry cut through the caves, circling the enormous dome of rock above. A dark figure appeared at the city doors, his shredded robes billowing from the flame-fuelled winds. Even the tall, ancient vampire was dwarfed by their gilded exteriors. Blood dripped down the ornate carvings and onto the sand, drying in pools beside Amasis. His dream of peace had torn itself apart. Limbs littered the ground, creatures gasped in the final throws of life. He could hear their heartbeats drag to a stop. "No..." he murmured, falling to his knees at the peak of the city. "I don't understand."
An Immortal lingered by the pool of water at the foot of the city. Colonel Percy Fawcett outstretched his arms like a great eagle spreading its wings. His eyes were violet, almost iridescent in the filtered moonlight peaking through the cracks in the cave's ceiling which gave his skin a silver gleam. "You are not an easy creature to lure from its den," Percy's voice echoed up the city streets – now silent.
Tears littered Amasis's grey hair. Long and fine, it fell to his shoulders, wasted by the years he refused to feed. Now there was blood all around him. He could smell it, burning at the side of his nostrils. He hated the way his stomach growled and claws flexed. How he wanted to feed, to fall to his knees and lick the walls clean.
"What are you?" Amasis hissed, creeping down the city street toward the figure. Whatever it was, he had it pinned against the great Moon Pool with nowhere to run.
"I'm the darkness you tried to hide," Percy replied, eyeing the dead city. It was only in these distant worlds that the violence of the past could truly manifest. He stopped to admire his work. Who could have known that one Magoi let loose could prove so effective? Maybe he'd keep the creature after all and let it have free run of London.
"You killed them!" Amasis snarled, stumbling forward. He reached for one of the buildings, leaning his weary body against it. There was a corpse at his feet. The wretched, vacant eyes he'd known well over the years. "All of them! They were mine."
And there it was - a vampire and his empire, always. Sick and twisted. This vampire had found a way to rule, keeping his prisoners under the guise of safety. "You would have killed them one day, vampire," Percy shifted, revealing an assortment of silver knives strapped to his body. "It is in your nature, just as this is in mine."
Percy pulled out one of the small throwing knives. He spun, hurling it at the unsuspecting vampire. Amasis growled as the silver spike embedded itself in his arm. His limb burned, heavy with the toxic blade.
"I thought about leaving you to your torment, alone in this cave with their corpses for company. Sadly I am on a bit of a schedule. The modern world, it doesn't have the patience of the past."
Amasis shivered, flashes of his brother filling his mind. He'd left his own family in the dark, wasting away through the aeons. Was his brother still alive? He straightened and stared the Immortal down. His eyes were clear and blue even though his claws scraped against the stone leaving scratch marks and a fine rain of dust. For a moment he looked almost human. "Do it, then. I am finished with this world."
"You are one hell of a prize – pay my to whatever continent I want with your blood," Percy withdrew a long, silver edged knife. Even the curve of its ornate blade was evil. "Do not despair, I have put plenty of your friends in the world beyond. You will meet them soon."
An arrow head burrowed its way straight through Percy's skull, protruding from his forward with a gasp of skin. His eyes turned inwards, staring blankly at the shimmer of bloodied metal.
"What-" he started to say but his mind went dark. All thought left him. The rage that drove Percy's lust died as his limbs crumbled. The Immortal adventurer fell, landing in the dirt beside the water's edge. His unseeing eyes gazed toward the crumbling city, flames dancing in their pits.
John stood behind, lowering the bow he'd found. He didn't say anything to the vampire. Instead, he walked up to the corpse, grabbing Percy roughly by his collar and then dragged him backwards into the water – down under the doors as though he were a spirit of the underworld claiming his prey.
Amasis clutched his heart.
John emerged on the other side of the door. Flecks of gold that had been drifting in the water caught in his hair, making him shimmer in the stray beams of light pouring in through holes in the cave that would eventually be filled with dirt and trees.
He stepped out of the water, dragging Percy over the pebbles until he was a safe distance from the doors. John looked down at his prize. He decided that all Immortals looked the same in death – smug. They died with their secrets and even to the last breath it seemed as though they didn't believe the end could come. They were victims of their propaganda. Immortal – John laughed at the thought. The universe and all its creatures were mortal.
John made an artwork of Percy. The head he separated and placed on a pyramid of stones, meticulously arranged by the banks of the underground river. His limbs were left circling it – though no one would ever appreciate his gory fascination for style. The water washed away everything but the skull.
Nikola childishly kicked the remnants of the door. "Now what?"
"Turn off your torches," Helen whispered. Reluctantly they did, one after the other until only hers pierced the darkness. Helen knelt down, slowly lifting her light. The white circle roamed over an empty wall, lingering on the featureless expanse until -
Helen flicked it sharply away – her breath catching.
"What was that?" Nikola hissed. They'd all seen something.
The Immortal's mouth fell agape. He turned his torch on and aimed it straight at the creature.
Six limbs of equal length were folded up against its translucent body. Its tissue-paper skin, pale and silver, barely concealed bulging veins and white bones clustered in bizarre arrangements. Its chest was a cage, visibly throbbing with what they could only assume to be its heart. The face was where the nightmares began. Its mouth was a nest of long, sharp fangs, tapered nearly a foot in length – black, not pearl. Above its mouth was a bat-like nose with multiple holes, only some of which moved in breath. Its eyes were open, set too far apart to be human. They were huge black orbs, ringed by a scarlet edge. They didn't blink.
"Is it – awake?" Apries whispered, horrified. It was a creature of his darkest nightmares.
Helen could feel the foreign heartbeat, pounding steadily.
"I don't think so," she whispered, too terrified to move. Helen swallowed hard. This creature existed – she couldn't deny it. Although some of its features alluded to creatures that she recognised it was purely co-incidental. There was nothing earth-bound about this monster. It looked awkward, surviving rather than thriving down here in the depths of the mountain.
Nikola shone his torch first at the Immortal, then at Apries – who was in full vampire mode. "Fuck..." he whispered, his torch also falling on the creature. "Sometimes I really hate it when I'm right."
"Nikola?" Helen didn't like his tone.
"It's us," he whispered. "Your father had a point when he said that Vampires and Immortals could not have arisen by chance. He never bough Griffin's theory about arising out of Africa in parallel with humanity. He never found a shred of evidence older than the dawn of modern humans."
"You said you didn't read his paper!"
Nikola shrugged. He read everything. "We're not an accident or two halves of a faulty gene. We're this. I don't know how but that monster is our origin, Helen. The perfect, immortal violence and we've wandered into its lair."