Weston Ochse - Age of Blood

Ice water showered his nerves. A ghostly woman stood on the path. Her body was turned away, but her head was facing in their direction as she looked back at them. She wore a single piece of fabric that could have once been a dress. Her hair hung long and had beads at different intervals. Her feet were bare and the toes were implausibly long. But it was her hands that were the most disturbing. They were wrong, nothing like a woman should have. Instead of five fingers, she had talons like those on the feet of a crow; instead of arms, she had black-ridged bones, like the legs of a crow.

Walker was finally able to look upon her and felt his skin burn with her gaze. Her nose was twice the length of a human’s and curved like a beak. Even in the green universe of IR, her eyes were twin black balls of greedy hate that dug into him and urged him to step forward so she could feed.

He wasn’t alone.

Both he and Yank began to step drunkenly toward her.

Behind them Hoover growled louder.

“Oh no, you don’t,” he heard Jen say. But Walker paid no attention. His body was locked into the apparition’s vise of black hatred and his entire being vibrated with the need to touch her, to be with her, to give himself to her.

It blinked at him with its black eyes, the motion undeniably avian.

Jen pushed her way past Yank and Walker and stepped in front of them. She held a cloth in front of her, much as a toreador would to a charging bull.

The apparition turned fully toward them. The cloth she had been wearing was ripped down the middle and her stomach had been opened, revealing a wet, black mess where her womb should have been. She reached out with bird-claw hands and snapped her talons together.

Jen began to speak in a powerful voice. “Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, that in thy celestial apparitions on the mount of Tepeyac, thou didst promise to show thy compassion and pity toward all who, loving and trusting thee, seek thy help and call upon thee in their necessities and afflictions. Protect us, La Morenita. Protect us from this demon. Protect us from this thing that would take men’s souls.”

The apparition made a sound for the first time, halfway between a hiss and a whine.

Jen repeated the prayer twice more, advancing step by step toward the thing as she did so. The apparition turned away, brought its arms to its body, and hugged itself, the long taloned fingers stark against the light of its dress.

By the end of her third recitation, Jen was close enough to throw the cloth on top of the apparition. When it hit, the cloth caught fire and as it burned it fell, until there was nothing left of the apparition.

When the last spark of cloth disappeared, Walker felt a release. He staggered back and fell against the side wall.

Yank did the same. They stared at each other for a long moment.

“What the hell was that?” Yank asked in a trembling voice.

“It was a Cihuateteo, I think. The data pack said that they are spirits of women who died in childbirth and turned into vampires,” Jen said. “As a follower of Cihuacoatl and related to Itzpapalotl, she seeks men to establish her revenge.”

“Jesus,” Yank gasped.

“No,” Jen corrected. “Mary.”

“That was one of the cloths we got from the catacombs?” Walker asked, remembering the side mission he and Laws had taken. “They didn’t look like much.”

Jen nodded. “Sometimes it’s the simplest things.” She rubbed her hands together.

Walker put an arm around her. “So she’s gone?”

“Yes.”

“And the blanket?” Yank asked.

“It was consumed in the process,” Walker said.

“Do we have any more?” Yank asked.

“One more. Want one?” When Yank held out his hand, Walker took it from Hoover’s pouch and passed it to the other SEAL.

While Yank stuffed it into a side pocket, Walker breathed for a few moments as he once again regained control of his body. He could take zombies and chupacabra and qilin and any number of creatures that could be destroyed through the liberal use of firepower, but he hated things that couldn’t. Things like the grave demon that had once inhabited him. Like this apparition that had taken control of them. If Jen hadn’t been there, he and Yank would be dead. Like the thing that inhabited YaYa and refused to release him.

“Weren’t you scared?” Yank asked, inspecting the place where the apparition had been.

Jen smiled tightly. “Not really. According to the research, a Cihuateteo won’t harm a woman. Still, it was the first time I’d seen one.” She shook visibly for a moment, then seemed to pull herself together. “Now that’s just stupid, to be scared after it happened.”

“Nerves,” Walker said, grinning as he pushed himself away from the wall. “Happens to me all the time.”

“So when you shake, you’re not afraid?” she asked, laughter on the edge of her question.

“Exactly. Just bleeding off adrenaline.”

“Well, you were sure bleeding off a lot of adrenaline there, Mr. U.S. Navy SEAL.”

He nodded. “I sure was. Glad that’s fucking over.”

They reached a point where there’d been a cave-in. It looked like the ceiling had reached down to hug the floor. For several long minutes they thought they might have to retreat and find a different way. But Hoover began to dig about halfway up the fall, her claws moving aside the dirt. Soon she had made a hole the size of her head.

Yank joined her and found a spot where the dirt was soft, between two metal beams about three feet apart. They managed to clear enough debris for Hoover to clamber through.

Walker dialed in the feed from Hoover’s Intruder harness. He saw a clear space on the other side of the cave-in, followed by a long hallway. Light sprung from an unknown source at the end of it. By his judgment, they were almost to their target set. Could that be it?

He explained what he was doing to Jen and Yank, then ordered Hoover forward. The feed came from the periscope on the dog’s back, so the view swayed back and forth as the dog moved. The crown of her head and her ears were visible in the bottom fourth of the feed. She padded down the hall until she was bathed in enough light to wash out the feed. Walker toggled the view to ambient light rather than IR, and the view instantly darkened.

He ordered the dog to crouch and she did.

He ordered the dog to move forward and she did.

As the dog’s head and shoulders moved around the corner, so did the feed, and it revealed a large open area sixty feet below the level of the doorway. Walker didn’t take the time to examine the area. Instead, he snapped a picture from the feed and ordered Hoover to return.

Once the dog was back on their side of the cave-in, they hastily re-covered the hole; then Walker ported the picture to Yank and to the tablet that Jen had brought from her cargo pocket.

“Jen, what is it we’re looking at?” Walker asked as he took in the image of a great cavern. On the left side, a man-sized pipe dripped brown water from a hundred feet up as if it had been broken during the excavation. On the right, a long staircase had been cut into the wall and reinforced. A rail ran its length. At the rear of the cavern was a great Aztec pyramid rising in the distance. Several dozen men in gold-and-red-brocade, floor-length robes stood on different intervals, looking toward the top, where five Los Desollados stood. Human skin hung from their bodies like lunatic fringe. Before and beside it were several smaller buildings, no greater than the mausoleums they’d seen in the New Orleans cemetery before the start of the mission. On each of these was a stone figure, reclining. Several oval areas had been bored into the basalt. Within these, snakes were captured, intertwining with each other. To the right, beneath the staircase, was the roof of a long rectangular building. The aspect of the picture didn’t allow for them to determine its purpose.