Keepers of the Lost City

31 Snake Eat Snake

After visiting hours at Hazelwood Private Clinic, where Miss Williams was under the best care and supervision in Europe, her grandmother returned to Grange House by taxi. It was still early, the sky virtually illuminated with cloud cover that reflected its light over Edinburgh, when the elderly lady entered her lavish home. As usual, her staff had gone home and she sat down in front of the fireplace for a sweet sherry.

Outside the window, the wind was gently moving the trees, a sign of the serenity her granddaughter exhibited when she visited her. The small-framed heiress reveled in the warmth of the sherry, like the generous fire that warmed her legs. From the other room the sound of Tchaikovsky permeated like a sweet scent. Aptly, it was Op. 76 — The Storm overture in E minor, a beautiful and terrible composition Mrs. Williams enjoyed listening to on solemn nights.

After she emptied her copita, she set the glass down on her mantle and locked the door of the study. On her way through the late Dr. Williams’ office, she grabbed the crystal decanter with his favorite cognac and two of the set’s shot glasses. With an expression of determination and a hint of anticipation, she opened the hidden compartment door in the wooden panel next to the tall window, and disappeared into the darkness beyond. Her sure fingers flicked the switch to her right, illuminating the long decline of steps that led down to her husband’s sarcophagus under the fireplace.

“I am coming, my love,” she sang cheerfully as her small feet skipped along the cold stone floor. Down here, the outside world became irrelevant and nothing above the ground floor mattered. Her mature voice reverberated in the compact grave chamber and she came to sit down next to the commemorative plaque her husband’s name was engraved upon.

“You did not think I would forget about you, did you, my darling Kenneth?” she smiled as she poured a generous helping of cognac into the small glasses. “It is our anniversary after all. Let me see, how long has it been? Do you know?”

She took a glass in each hand and left the decanter at the plaque, strolling over to the rock wall on the opposite side of the sarcophagus. With elegance, she used her elbow to press on one of the stones, which promptly moved under her pressure. Sliding out like a drawer it presented Mrs. Williams with a human skull of some age.

“Ich vermisse dich, Schatz,” she said, and raised her glass to her husband’s skull. “But you know I had to do it. I could not have you cheating on me down there in that primitive place, not with such a lesser woman. You knew I would not allow that, didn’t you? But that is all behind us now, sweetheart. Let’s drink to our anniversary — five years since I reminded you that I am the only woman you would ever be with — and see, here you are, still with me.”

Mrs. Williams poured the cognac from one glass over the skull and took a swig of the other glass. Her eyes glimmered as she watched the wetness brighten the bone around the absent part of the back of the skull, where she had crushed Dr. Williams’ head with the same rock he was now buried in. The alcohol was stronger than she remembered it to be last year, when she celebrated their anniversary in the same way.

“Ooh! I must be getting old, darling. I cannot seem to handle my drink that well anymore,” she cooed.

“It’s not the alcohol that is affecting you, Mrs. Williams,” a voice suddenly said behind her. The widow swung around and shrieked at the sight of the giant Oleg, sitting at the sarcophagus of Dr. Williams with the decanter in his hand. He gave the amber fluid a sniff and pulled a hideous face.

“Oleg, what in God’s name are you doing in here?” she screamed furiously, throwing the glass at his face. “How dare you?” Oleg dodged the weapon of the timid little woman and laughed.

“You know, we waited for you to screw up before we took these final steps to eradicate your entire accursed bloodline, Mrs. Williams… or shall I call you Frau Wilhelm?” he asked. “When the Order of the Black Sun gave your husband this mansion to hold their secret ceremonies we could never infiltrate well enough to find out which property was given to him. When he secured Nekenhalle in New Zealand, we knew you were up to some nasty double crossing, typical of your kind.”

“Who the hell are you?” she growled as her insides began to burn from gullet to gut.

“Oleg, remember?” he snickered.

“Don’t play games with me!” she tried to scream, but the special strain of acid had already begun to eat at her vocal chords. Her eye caught the fizzy tuft of vapor that was digesting the bone of Dr. Williams’ skull bone where she had poured the drink.

“Only when our security systems in Wrichtishousis picked up your conversation with David Purdue, did we get a lock on your location. Sorry about your granddaughter. We had to use her to get you to rear your ugly head.”

“You attacked my granddaughter, you son of a bitch?” she hissed, quivering in rage.

“No, I don’t attack young girls, madam. I am not a coward. We gave that job to our operative at Purdue’s laboratory to complete. In fact,” he looked at his watch, “our insider at Hazelwood Private Clinic just finished what she started. Sharon is a very proficient agent for the Brigade Apostate and its affiliates.”

“Brigade Apostate?” the old woman seethed. “The nemesis of the Order? Made up of former Black Sun members?”

“Aye, that one,” he said casually. “As you well know, we will always short circuit the work of the Order as far as we can, so when Dr. Wilhelm almost caused the demise of the world as we know it down in New Zealand, we had to put a lid on it in 1970, but he escaped us.” Oleg smiled cheerfully as he pointed to the disintegrating skull. “Delighted to see you did it for us.”

The old woman fell to her knees as her tongue and lips began to bleed, but Oleg did not budge, nor did he offer any alleviation by putting her out of her misery. “We had to plug this shit once more, having to kill innocent delegates and blow up storage facilities just to destroy the remains from the Kriegsmarine-Zwei. And after David Purdue offers to cover all your granddaughter’s medical costs and give her the best care, you send him to his doom in the Lost City? You know, even for a member of the Order of the Black Sun that is pretty low.”

“He was Renatus and he betrayed the Order,” she mouthed, but her words came as little more than grunts and squeals. “After years of grooming him for leadership without his knowledge, he deceived us! He was to be the next Hitler, the fool!”

“Nevertheless, you used his trust in your husband to fuck him over. You offered him the cipher book that would lead them straight to the Lost City, Gloria, where you knew they would discover the Dire Serpent,” Oleg roared, now devoid of his charming smile. “You sent Purdue and his expedition team in there to die, sparing you the killing effort, but you also knew the measure of expertise and resilience these three people possess. Obviously you reckoned that, should they survive by some miracle, they would discover the Dire Serpent and inadvertently let it loose on the world — what your husband failed to do.”

The dying widow wailed in pain, her cries echoing through her husband’s tomb, never to reach a sympathetic ear. Oleg seemed to scrutinize her body’s reaction to the acid. “It is rather poetic you go out this way, by means of a strain your husband devised along with the very poison currently wreaking havoc through his pets down south. Whatever becomes of Purdue, my organization will make sure the Dire Serpent does not survive. We will once more bury it under the earth and prevail as the guardians of the lost city.”

Mrs. Williams smiled. It was unclear whether her grin came from the acid consuming her lips and cheeks, baring her teeth, or from actual pleasure. Inside her body, the deadly substance gradually liquefied her innards, but she had one more thing to say. “Purdue will die or he will unleash the Dire Serpent, Oleg. Either way… we win.”