Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (I am that I am) 7/34 Julio Cesar divad72@prodigy.net.mx Vi Moreau vmoreau@directvinternet.com Moscow, Russia March 26, 2013 Vlad sighed. His face was clearly of Middle Eastern extraction, and the fullness of such ethnic traits as his gypsy skin, long black hair and handsome face made it probable that he was not too many generations removed from his homeland. He wore a mustache that helped fill his narrow face, and his hands were clasped with index fingers projecting and pressed together against that line of hair above his lip. Although he was five hundred years old, his features made him seem no older than thirty. His hands were his most remarkable feature: they were long and slender, and the fourth finger on each was longer that the middle one. Long ago, Vlad had once been accused of being a werewolf because of those remarkable hands. He rubbed them slowly back and forth, while his dark eyes glittered in the greenish light of the desk's banker's lamp. Though in repose now, he looked like a predator, a man who was thoughtful in his stalking patience yet could ambush with extreme speed and purpose if the situation required it. He was also a powerful and wealthy man, and the office could have been that of any such man pondering unwanted and mysterious intrusions. But Vlad was no ordinary man. Beyond the fact that the blood of the most powerful warlocks flowed in his veins; beyond the fact that he had risen toward the top of the Russian Mafia years ago, and that he ruled his underground world with an iron hand, merciless, as every Mafia leader should be-beyond all that was the fact that his name was well known to the world as a monster thanks to that crazy Irishman Stoker... And beyond that, was the fact that he still enjoyed tormenting and killing mortals by impalement, just as before. For above and beyond all these facts, and likely others to be noted, Vlad, was an Immortal. Not a vampire as legends said, not a werewolf as fairy tales whispered or claimed. Just one fact was true: he was eternal, Immortal. He only could meet death if another of his kind took his head, and with it, his power, his Quickening. Moreover, he was a Headless Child, and a very special one, because he was one of the few who knew for fact the existence of Lilitu and worshipped her as the source of the Game. Few other Headless Children trifled with Vlad, as he had a rare mixture of substantial intelligence, devilish good looks, ungodly wealth, raw physical power, and eternal depravation. Of course, there were other Immortals who possessed many of these advantages as well, but they were not from the Order of Dracul-they were not him, the mythical Dracula-and to Vlad's thinking at least, that meant a lot. Vlad had been born in 1431 in the city of Sighisoara. At that time Vlad's stepfather, Vlad II Dracul, was living in exile in Transylvania. The Impaler had had an older stepbrother, Mircea, and a younger stepbrother named Radu. His early education had been left in the hands of his mother, a Transylvanian noblewoman, and her family. But his real education had begun in 1436 after his father succeeded in claiming the Wallachian throne and killing his Danesti rival. Young Vlad had been trained in the style typical to a son of European nobility. Through the centuries, his legend had survived as the gallant prince who had fought against the enemies of Christ. However, more than anything else Vlad had been known for his inhuman cruelty. Impalement had been his preferred method of torture and execution, because impalement was one of the most gruesome ways of dying imaginable. Vlad usually had had a horse attached to each of the victim's legs as he hung by his arms, and a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the body. The end of the stake was usually oiled and care was taken that the stake not be too sharp, or else the victim might die too rapidly from shock. Normally the stake was inserted into the body through the buttocks and was often forced through the body until it emerged from the mouth. However, there had been many instances where victims were impaled through other bodily orifices or through the abdomen or chest. Infants were sometimes impaled on the stake forced through their mother's chests. Some were impaled so that they hung upside down on the stake. Such deaths were slow and painful. Victims sometimes endured for hours or days. Vlad often had the stakes arranged in various geometric patterns. The most common pattern had been a ring of concentric circles in the outskirts of a city that was his target. The height of the spear indicated the rank of the victim, and the decaying corpses were often left up for months. In 1461 Mohammed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, a man not noted for his squeamishness, returned to Constantinople after being sickened by the sight of twenty thousand impaled corpses outside of Vlad's capital of Tirgoviste. The warrior sultan turned command of the campaign against Vlad over to subordinates and they returned empty handed. Impalement had been Vlad's favorite but by no means his only method of torture. The list of tortures employed by this cruel prince could be read like an inventory of hell's tools: nails in heads, cutting off of limbs, blinding, strangulation, burning, cutting off of noses and ears, mutilation of sexual organs-especially in the case of women-scalping, skinning, exposure to the elements or to wild animals and boiling alive. Those were happiest times for him, and they always put a smile in his face. The screams of the dying, their pleas for mercy. Many times Vlad had thought that such joy couldn't be gained again. More often he had doubted such power could be his once more. Until now. Nowadays, everything was different. The news coming from all corners of the world were all bad-or excellent, depending on one's point of view. The Watchers had been practically destroyed. The Hunters existed no more. Powerful Immortals were disappearing throughout the world without a trace. Some of them inside Holy Ground. The answer to the riddle was clear. Just one being was that bold: Vlad's mistress, the eternal being Lilitu. The Endgame was at hand. Vlad sighed again. Tonight, he managed a grim grin, for even he-the Eternal Dragon-was sometimes scared of the power of Lilitu. Even he, a powerful member of the Headless Children, suspected only slightly the extent of the supremacy and influence Mother wielded over the world. Lilitu was free again, and hell-literally-came with her. To make things worse, someone was taunting him tonight with phone calls he could not trace, even with all his expensive equipment. Now that dawn approached, Vlad continued to wait patiently but with rising ire to see if more information would be revealed. Whoever the caller was, he was clearly immensely confident because the phone rang yet again. Vlad looked at the phone, and he made certain the lines were acceptably oriented before picking up the phone after its fourth ring. "Yes." It was not a question like the previous three times he'd answered. Instead, it was a familiar but with a slight bite of anger, for Vlad wished the caller to believe he now knew the caller's identity. There was silence on the other end. Vlad did not speak again, waiting silently to press a potential advantage, but also so that he might detect the slightest revealing noise. The connection clicked dead. Vlad knew he'd gained ground. If there was another call, then Vlad believed this time he could track the caller. After all, he had reached his present position largely because he was a skillful negotiator with death as his only advisor. He didn't know the law particularly well, unless law meant death, and he didn't have a grasp of the subtleties of international economics, unless they meant narcotics, but he did know people. Not what gave them joy. Not what they might want. But what they did not want. What they feared. Once Vlad knew that, he broke them, often seeing them capitulate without the need to raise his voice or make subtle indirect threats. He knew, of course, that the calls were on purpose. A misdialing caller might have inadvertently tapped the numbers for his left-most phone, with its Los Angeles area code, or his right-most phone with its Amsterdam area code, or even his wireless desk phone with its Madrid area code. But the 666 area code existed only for use by his Mafia, and that was the prefix of his central cellular. It was his most important communications device, for it put him in immediate touch with other Dons, and they would know the call was an important one if it required the use of 666. Regardless, he turned off the other two cellulars. The ring of the 666 phone was singular in its tone, so there was virtually no chance Vlad was mistaking the ring of another phone for it, but this was becoming worrisome, so he took no chances. A fourth time cinched it, revealing this as a provocation, a game. The delay before disconnection was too great, so Vlad began to tabulate possible responsible parties. No member of his family would have such lack of respect for this secret area code to play games on a 666 line, but Vlad did not know who else might posses the secret. Of course, there could be scores of others who did. Who among these individuals, though, would call Vlad thus? Another one of the Headless Children? Of those who might posses the secret, he could only imagine a stinking Headless Child playing such games. None of his mortal enemies could have possibly managed to crack the security precautions that protected his phone and its communicating bandwidth from unwanted intrusion. No one accidentally overheard conversations over the 666 line. Whatever cannot occur through happenstance will not occur through intent. Most certainly, no one accidentally misdialed the 666 area code. There was no triple-digit area codes, and the only double-digit beginning that was close on a keypad was the one from Shangri-La. Nevertheless, the phone rang again. Vlad quickly considered his best strategy. Feigning knowledge had rattled his opponent earlier, so he stuck to that tactic. "Why now?" he asked of the unknown party. He spoke with some insistence but also with a hint of concern or befuddlement so the caller might perceive ad advantage and strike from it. There was silence, but the connection remained. Something more, Vlad thought. He or she needs some bit more evidence that I've seen through this charade. He wanted to press the game to the next stage, beyond the bullying that seemed to give his assailant pleasure, but he might also dramatically weaken his position if his blind guessing revealed a complete lack of credible suspicions. Therefore, after a moment, Vlad added. "I'm waiting. Why now?" The voice from the other end was surprisingly clear, as if the call was from the next room and not from Borneo, as the area code showed now, though it was foolish for Vlad to imagine his caller was indeed there. It was this clarity, though, that somehow kept Vlad for panicking, or at least from revealing any panic in his voice. If the voice from the past had been muffled and revealed the speaker's identity to Vlad over the course of seconds instead of instants, then he suspected the surprise and fear would have shown. There was a chuckle first. "How could you know it was me? If only you'd seen through things so well a couple of centuries ago, Vlad." Vlad's eyes narrowed. "You used subtlety then. Now carelessly you reveal your bullying nature." It was a quick quip of a response, and thank goodness words came easily to him, for he'd have otherwise been lost. Without further banter, the Immortal on the other end of the line said something more before disconnecting. Vlad allowed the phone to clatter from his hand onto the desk. His sense of anger was such that several minutes passed before he straightened it's position and the others, which it had disturbed as well. After that first hesitation, though, Vlad reacted calmly and thoroughly. First, he buzzed his present secretary, Ms. Moreau, a beautiful platinum blonde. "Sir?" "Cancel my plans for Kiev but do not reopen that time for appointments." "Of course, sir." Second, he buzzed the head of building security, his strong-willed chief Valdost. "With particular attention to my own suite, double building security until I can speak with you about more specific and applicable plans." "Is there immediate danger, my prince?" Vlad exhaled for the effect of impatience. "No, or there would be no reason to save a discussion of specifics for later." Then he hung up. Vlad reclined in his plush leather chair and was momentarily aware of the unconscious gesture to bring his index fingertips to his mustache again. He'd best be vigilant for all such events normally invisible to him. Suddenly, he buzzed Ms. Moreau one more time. "Sir?" "Bring Carradine and Davanzati. Find them and send them to me immediately." "As you wish," Ms. Moreau replied. Then Vlad spun the chair around and looked at his Toledo broadsword hanging behind him. ======== Watcher's Headquarters Vienna, Austria March 26, 2013 For the past forty-fives minutes, Joe Dawson had stared into the dark recesses of the room and tried to calm himself. Still, he could not stop his hands from trembling. Upon receiving the news, he had managed to clack out the relevant data on his computer before succumbing to the nervous palsy. Reading the understatements recorded in ink did little to soothe him. The solution to a puzzle that had dogged him for hours might very well be revealing itself to him, but at what price? His fingers flew over the keyboard in front of him. -Original Message- From: Joe Dawson To: All Watchers Subject: Urgent All Watchers everywhere-field, research, historians, and telecommuters-are instructed to retreat until new orders. Do NOT approach any Immortal. I Repeat: Do NOT approach any Immortal. This whole mess started six days ago in Australia. Stay out of everything. Joe Dawson -End of Message- ======== THE CRIMSON SUNSET "And in those days in one place the fathers together with their sons shall be smitten and brothers one with another shall fall in death till the streams flow with their blood." Book of Enoch 100: 1 Apocrypha His Dream possessed him, shaking him like a feather in the wind. Corazon Negro flew up and down, while his soul was sealed inside the timeless sea of his mind. He felt himself placed inside a comfortable and warm gray mist. The fog whirled around him, becoming golden with the light in front of him. The realm of the Dream possessed him. Around his soul, the Spiral of time manifested itself in the calm shape of the universe. The stars shone and blinked in the curtain of the gloom. In order to understand the Dream he had passed through a door in reality, his body left behind him like some discarded cloak. He was an astronaut of his psyche, naked and free from gravity, earthly and otherwise, walking to the edge of the world and staring off into the universe. Then he saw a light in the distance. It was a speck that increased in brightness and size as he approached it. The calming voices of the Dream told him that everything was in danger, that no one was safe now. The world was dying. He looked to the beacon and it blinded his eyes. It was so bright that he began to burn. The luminosity did to his soul what the sun did to his flesh every morning. It made him feel alive. However, he was not afraid. Now he was more than a warrior, more than an Aztec. Now he was a Dancer, he was the new Dreamer. Suddenly, the mist seemed to transform into the features of a God wearing a snake's mask. "Son of the Wolf." said the God in the mask. His figure shone like the sun, and around him, the darkness seemed to disappear. "Hear me calling you." "Quetzalcohuatl?" Corazon Negro asked, floating like a feather inside the dimness. "What do you want of me?" The blackness of the Dream surrounded him. He raised his hand trying to catch the apparition in front of him, but the golden mist disappeared, leaving just the soft emptiness while the light became dark one more time. "Look upon me." The force of the words seemed to emanate like the charcoals inside an ancient bonfire. Corazon Negro turned toward the voice, and made out shapes in the darkness. A vast, serpentine creature with a body like tar filled his vision. The God's flesh met only at the horizon. Directly beneath him, the figure of a giant woman with the red mane of a lion, the beak of a bird, and the horns of a ram lay fettered in its coils. As Corazon Negro watched, the God in the mask writhed in his trap, his muscles straining until the veins stood sharply up. Quetzalcohuatl freed one arm, and the ropy limbs of his opponent flailed about him until they found better purchase on his neck. Freeing his neck, Quetzalcohuatl sacrificed the arm again, and the fight returned to its staring point. "My lord," said Corazon Negro, kneeling. His own legs, he saw, were wrapped with the coal-black tendrils of the beast. "Stand! You cannot afford to bow to us until the Dream will be free from Lilitu! Look upon us!" Quetzalcohuatl commanded. Corazon Negro watched. On every side of Quetzalcohuatl there were other figures. Some, lying quietly but with their eyes open, were nearly free of the creature. Others, equally still, were so covered by the tarry scales that nothing showed of their own bodies; Lilitu had conquered all, and only the shape of the victim remained. A few-very few-wrestled as Lilitu did. "Look now, at what stands behind you," Quetzalcohuatl spoke again. Corazon Negro turned, and found only the empty darkness he had seen before. "Look, new Dreamer, and understand." And Corazon Negro followed Quetzalcohuatl's commands, and realized that the night in front of him had a shape. It was a twisted pillar formed from the body of the thing below him, and it rose higher than a mountain into the dull sky. At its peak, wrapped almost entirely in the coils, was a figure the Aztec knew well; she possessed a statue carved as its portrait. Lilitu, the mother of the demons, four-armed and draped with horrendous weapons, glinted in a black and blue sickly sea of substance and color and down the column that served as the she-devil's spinal cord dripped red rivers of blood. "Rivers of blood," Quetzalcohuatl whispered. "Blood of the Immortal martyrs on Holy Ground. The blood of hundreds of thousands of mortals who will die if Lilitu succeeds." Astonished, Corazon Negro blinked. "Dead on Holy Ground? Help me stop her!" "Find my holy mask," said the God Quetzalcohuatl. "Only the mask can open the Dream." Corazon Negro turned back to see his master, and as the dream faded, heard the muffled voice of Quetzalcohuatl shout from beneath the twining body of Lilitu. "Find the mask! Remember! Save the world! Save our souls! Save the Dream!" ======== Glenfinnan, Scotland Connor MacLeod's farm March 27, 2013 Elena looked at Corazon Negro who lay in a sleeping bag right next to hers in the loft/exercise room over Connor's barn. His eyes moved like a Dreamer's, and his face never relaxed into peaceful sleep. Elena sighed. She knew Corazon Negro had not eaten for two days; he was purifying himself in order to fight against Lilitu. The Aztec took water only when bullied into it, and even then in small sips. Elena looked at her lover with concern; even though she knew why Corazon Negro fasted, she knew that only his Immortality saved him from a hospital stay for dehydration. She pulled him by the shoulders into a sitting position, and then propped him against the wall with mounds of pillows she'd liberated from Connor's linen closet. Corazon Negro showed no reaction. Elena called him by name-softly, lovingly, caressingly, with tenderness in her voice to bait him. She took his hands-he neither resisted nor clasped back. The expression on his face reflected things he saw outside the room. Elena simply sat back observing Corazon Negro, quietly smiling. Then suddenly, he moved uncomfortably, as if a painful vision had appeared inside his dream. Elena noticed at once the Aztec's troubled expression. Then Corazon Negro seemed to relax once more and Elena returned to her own feelings, thinking how her world was once more upside down. A strange fear invaded her soul. Lilitu could be unstoppable. Time passed. Elena looked at a weary Corazon Negro, who seemed to be finally asleep. The smells and sounds of horses drifted up to her and made her smile, they made her homesick for Argentina. She sighed. She might never see her home in Argentina again. Meanwhile, oblivious to her worries, he slept fitfully, tossing and softly moaning. Elena turned her face, trying to sleep too. Across the wooden floor she could just make out the mounds of the other sleepers, the MacLeods, Connor and Duncan, and Cassandra. Connor had graciously given his house up to the Ancient Gathering, and now, just as graciously, the Scots and Cassandra lay obviously awake but uncomplaining while Corazon Negro continued to disturb their sleep. But then, the Aztec began to groan and shudder as if in the grip of some horrible nightmare. She came up to her knees beside him. Vaguely she heard one of the others sit up. Corazon Negro awoke from his sleep with a start. Dazed, he looked about him, and then obviously saw, by the light of the moon coming in through the glass windows, Elena's worried expression. "Lilitu is killing Immortals on Holy Ground!" he cried out. "What? Inside Holy Ground?" Elena asked, at the same time Connor MacLeod got smoothly to his feet. "How do you-no, wait, I know. Your visions," she replied. "Is that her Game?" Connor asked, standing over them, while Duncan spat out, "Dammit!" "I've known such evil before," Cassandra said from her blanket-covered exercise mat. "But not such malevolence and such power combined. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we're in big trouble." In response, Corazon Negro lowered his sad gaze. Elena could feel the sorrow of the world placed upon his shoulders. "!Que Dios nos guarde!-May God sep us from harm!" she said simply. At the mention of God, Corazon Negro put his head in his hands as if trying to avoid the pain that invaded him. Elena held him against her. "What else?" Corazon Negro's mouth was tense, his teeth biting his lips, making them bleed. "Quetzalcohuatl!" he exclaimed. "The Dream was showing me . a mask! A green mask hidden in a forgotten city! Deep within a cave! A snake mask! Quetzalcohuatl's mask!" As suddenly as it had started, the vision abandoned him. His long black hair covered his features as he lay again back onto the sleeping bag. Elena watched him, trying to decide what to do. Almost unconsciously, her hand caressed his face. Corazon Negro's hand grabbed her. "Are you ok?" she asked. He sighed before answering. "Not quite. The Dream sent me that vision with a purpose. We must go to Mexico." "Why?" Corazon Negro looked at her, his gaze almost lost. "We will need that sacred mask in order to find Lilitu, and later to enter into the realm of the Dream. The mask is in Mexico, in a cave not yet discovered by the scholars, near the village of Texistepec." He made a pause, swallowing hard. "Mexico? Good. I haven't been in Mexico in over a century," Duncan said happily. "Unless of course, your vision tells you you're supposed to go alone-" "He said 'we' must go to Mexico, Duncan," Connor interrupted. Elena looked at the shadows of the two men, amused by their good-natured, brotherly bickering. A month ago she'd been alone in a convent, with only mostly-silent nuns for companions. Now she couldn't have a single moment of privacy with her Aztec lover. But he seemed worried about the mask, so she asked, "Is there going to be a problem getting to this mask?" "There might be," the Aztec answered. "The cave is protected by forces from the other realm. No one can approach it." "And how are we going to find that cave then?" Elena inquired softly, trying to calm her thoughts. "The Dream showed me the way, my love," Corazon Negro said as he raised his body to hold her. "I know the way." ========