HA SATAN (THE ADVERSARY): An Elena Duran/Corazon Negro Story 3/12
Vi Moreau (vmoreau@DIRECTVINTERNET.COM)
Mon, 16 Sep 2002 14:03:36 -0400
HA SATAN (THE ADVERSARY)
An Elena Duran-Corazon Negro Story 3/12
vmoreau@directvinternet.com & divad72@prodigy.net.mx
Glastonbury, England
March 25, 2013
The doors of the cemetery were locked. "No time for finesse," said Corazon
Negro, grasping the handle of his Maquahuitl. With all his strength, he
struck. With a crack, the mechanism snapped. "After you," he said to Elena,
pulling the door open.
"I expected no less from you," she said smiling as she walked past him into
the graveyard. "You're such a gentleman, as always."
Corazon Negro chuckled. "You know, we would have made a wonderful pair of
thieves. Think of the fun we missed all these years."
"Yes," Elena commented as they hurried through the burial ground. "Amanda
would be jealous."
"Yes," Corazon Negro said walking fast.
"Do you know her?" Elena asked suspiciously, a spark of fire shining in her
eye. "Don't tell me that you and that skinny ass --"
The chatter of machine-gun fire brought Elena's sentence to an abrupt close.
"It sounds like the Hunters are right behind us," Corazon Negro said, a
little relieved to be able to change the subject from Amanda. Elena could be
jealous -- dangerously jealous. "We'd better move. I doubt they'll prove to
be
too much for Heru-sa-aset."
The Egyptian had offered to watch their back once they discovered they were
being followed. After he finished dealing with the leading Hunters, the
Prince would reunite with them. "How are we going to find the entrance to
this fabled cave?" Corazon Negro asked.
Elena shrugged. "At the end of the cemetery," she said. "Call it a hunch."
They ran to the rear of the burial ground then spent five minutes searching
for any sign. There were hundreds of places to be investigated. Finally,
just as Elena's nerves were beginning to frazzle, they found the right
location. It was true. The entrance was hidden inside a huge mausoleum, an
inner door behind a grave.
"The firing outside has stopped," Elena said. "That's good news. The attack
is over. For now," she added sarcastically. She reached out and put both
hands on the lock. "Let me try this one," she declared. "It looks fairly
simple." She flexed her fingers gently across the metal. With an almost
inaudible click, the lock opened. "Amanda taught me that."
Corazon Negro smiled. "There's a place for brute strength in the world. But
your finesse works in most situations."
"Flattery is good, but don't ever think you are off the hook about her. If
we survive this, you are going to be in deep shit, mi vida," she said
menacingly.
Corazon Negro stopped smiling and bent to the task at hand. In the center of
the hidden chamber was a large trapdoor with a metal ring in the center.
Resting near the wall were four large wooden sarcophagi. Next to them were
several lamps. They each took one, and Corazon Negro pressed on the switch.
A ray of light flooded the room. "Someone has been here recently. The graves
look well maintained. Maybe things aren't as bad as I expected."
Reaching down, Corazon Negro pulled open the door in the floor, revealing a
patch of absolute blackness. Elena pointed her flashlight into the dark
hole. The beam revealed a smooth passage.
"Heru-sa-aset told me that stories claim that several tunnels lead from the
edge of the cave. The problem is that the passages are invisible in the
darkness," Elena said, looking at Corazon Negro.
"Terrific," he answered. "Finding Myrddin is going to be lots of fun. Not
that we have much choice anyway. Let's go."
They both descended into the earth. Down there, the stench of death was
stagnant in the atmosphere. Corazon Negro tried to scan the surrounding
darkness, trying to spot a break in the walls of the gigantic chamber.
"Any direction in particular you want to try first?"
"You tell me," Elena said. "You were the tracker, remember? Make it snappy.
We don't have all night to locate Myrddin."
Corazon Negro's brow crinkled with concentration. "Over there," he declared
after a few seconds, waving to the right. "I believe I sense an Immortal
over there. Surely there is a break in the walls. It has to be the entrance
to the tunnels."
"Odd smell in this place," Elena spoke as she walked in the direction
Corazon Negro indicated.
Then from far away they heard the unmistakable sounds of explosions.
"Heru-sa-aset," Corazon Negro said. "The Hunters must be back."
"We'd better find Myrddin right away," said Elena shining the beam of her
flashlight into the tunnel ahead. "I have a bad feeling about this. A very
bad feeling."
"Right," Corazon Negro commented. "I feel it too."
========
Alarm bells were ringing everywhere in Myrddin's commander center. The
shrill noise upset the pack of wolves that were with him inside the chamber.
They howled in annoyance. Myrddin, sitting at his chair in front of the main
computer monitor, was equally anxious. As he expected, his underground cave
had been invaded. However, he had been totally unprepared for the sheer
numbers of his foes. It was no longer a battle between him and Lilitu.
Several unexpected wild cards had entered the game.
"There are intruders in five different passages," he muttered to himself as
his hands flew across the keyboard. First, he shut off the alarms. The bells
were upsetting his wolves. Their constant howling made it difficult for him
to concentrate. Then he studied the view on his hidden video cameras. It was
not a cheering scenario.
"These Hunters think to trap me in my own lair," he said angrily. "The
fools. I may be one against many. But a cornered wolf fights the hardest."
Four tunnels, leading to his lair from major landmarks located in the
corners of the city, were filled with Hunters. Evidently, their plan was to
surround him from all sides. Myrddin snorted in derision. As if there
weren't a dozen other emergency exits from his cave. Cornering him wasn't so
easy.
It had been tried before, but never by an army. This would be... a
challenge. Merlin's greatest advantage lay in the fact that they couldn't
just blow up his cave-complex. They had to be sure he was dead, which meant
they had to come close. "Come into my parlor," he whispered softly.
He could see on the video monitors that each war party consisted of twenty
killers; they carried flamethrowers and powerful submachine guns. All four
groups were connected to the others by walkie-talkies. Myrddin had never
directly dealt with Hunters before. A denizen of the shadows of the past, he
had always believed himself unknown to this group of renegade Watchers.
Tonight's four-pronged attack made it clear that he had been mistaken. Or
even worse, someone had revealed his identity -- and his location. He
suspected
that a member of the Ancient Gathering was somehow involved in this sudden
reversal of fortune. But who? He intended to find out, and for that he had
to survive. Myrddin intended to survive, too.
The war parties had been in the tunnels for close to half an hour.
Originally, they had been advancing at much faster pace; apparently
confident that there was nothing Myrddin could do to stop them. They had
abruptly slowed down when another pack of wolves made their presence known.
The horrible howling uttered by the wolves and their attacks along the
tunnels were enough to frighten the Hunters. Also, Myrddin's medieval traps
were working fine. Several Hunters had died under the shriek of metal and
blade. The thugs had come in force searching for a single Immortal who had
been in hiding for centuries, seemingly afraid of his own shadow. They had
obviously not expected to encounter major problems.
Myrddin watched impassively as one of the groups entered his water trap. As
soon as they were all within the area, metal doors clicked shut and very
cold water from a nearby lake began to flow in. Myrddin had timed it-the
entire watertight section of passage would fill to the top in ten minutes;
the invaders would be drowned five minutes after that. It was not a pleasant
way to die, but relatively quick, and just as merciful as the death they
planned for him, Myrddin thought as the party started panicking, slipping
and falling under the rush of water, then wading, using their flamethrowers
to try to burn their way free until the flames sputtered out, pounding on
and shooting frantically at the heavily reinforced metal doors. Finally they
were all swimming, getting rid of their heavy equipment and fighting to
reach the air at the top, desperate to live a few minutes longer. One camera
gave the Mage a good view of a swarthy man trying to hold his breath as the
water completely filled the passageway. After a few minutes they stopped
struggling, and soon twenty bodies floated in the corridor. Shaking his
head, Myrddin dismissed them and turned to look at some of the other images.
On another monitor Myrddin noticed a couple, a tall man and a slim woman,
who had entered the tunnels using the passageway connected to the cemetery.
Thieves, he thought disdainfully, adventurers or fools, Myrddin decided,
lured by the wild stories of his treasure. Mortals were such dolts,
believing the most outrageous stories as long as they concerned money. For a
moment, Myrddin considered flooding the hallway with poison gas. He hated
fortune hunters. Then, he relented, realizing that if the pair had come
searching for buried loot, it was because of rumors he himself had started.
It seemed unfair to penalize the two for his sense of the dramatic, and the
poison would drift through the passages killing everyone indiscriminately --
including his beloved wolves. That would not do at all.
Suddenly, he sensed the Immortals' presence. Strong and nearby. His eyes
narrowed. "Obviously, I have made a terrible error in judgment," Myrddin
said softly. "This pair is neither innocent nor ordinary."
His hands flashed across the keys again. The cameras in the tunnel moved.
Adjusting the focus and infrared lighting, Myrddin zoomed in on the woman's
face. She looked vaguely familiar. He brought up her image, then searched
his database of Immortal photos until he found a match, which wasn't
difficult, considering she had an eyepatch on her right eye. A few seconds
later,
he identified her as Elena Duran.
Myrddin shook his head. The Mapuche here! He had studied faces for
centuries. The woman's features displayed incredible strength of character.
Hopefully she wasn't here to attack him! Then a bell rang in his head. If
Elena was here, then the man with her -- no, it wasn't the Highlander -- it
must be...
Fingers dancing across the keyboard, Myrddin directed his cameras to focus
on Elena's companion. The devices zeroed in on him. Then they shifted
direction a second time, trying to lock onto his features. Then shifted
again. Several seconds passed as the image changed from camera to camera in
the tunnel.
Another quick comparison and identification, then Myrddin nodded. Just as he
thought and hoped: it was Corazon Negro, the new Dreamer! The newest member
of the Ancient Gathering, according to Methos! And if one member of the
Ancient Gathering was here, more must be around. Even if there were a
traitor among the group, surely it was not the Dreamer! He'd have to trust
these two, he decided, and let them know where he was and how to reach him.
Although Myrddin was in essence a misanthrope, he had foreseen the
possibility of speaking with someone in the tunnels, even if only to
frighten off those who had been too bold. He followed the progress of the
Immortals, waiting until they got to a place where he could address them
directly and urge them to greater speed.
He looked at the monitors that showed the remaining three war parties. They
were still coming and getting closer. It was a four-way race to his lair.
And if Elena and Corazon Negro did not arrive first, there would be hell to
pay. Literally. But he had a way to get them here faster. Fortunately,
Myrddin always had a backup plan.
========