The Mummies of Blogspace9: Chapter Thirty-Nine

July 24, 2011
Seville, Spain
Samples      http://www.greatbigLeon.blogspace9.ex

I’ll admit to some small degree of terror once we split up.  I thought it unfair that Bruce got all three immortals.  All I got was Baltazar and my bud Segovia, but life goes on.  And on and on, as I would soon learn.

If I told you that the hallways smelled like death, I’d be sugar coating things.  If there were some aerosol death-scent available, I would have been spraying it liberally as we walked.  Decay was everywhere; in the woodwork, in the wilting mushrooms that sprang from the woodwork, and in the rot, which was itself somehow decaying.

What might have once been a carpet softened our steps as we crept forward and came to a room lined by louvered screens. 

“We must take great care,” Baltazar whispered.  “They are unpredictable when they change.  By means of example; Duran seems quite sane.  The same cannot be said for the other.”

“Yeah, Vasco is a nut,” I agreed.  “You’re saying Kim might not be happy to see us.”

He nodded.

Segovia let out a gasp as he peered through the louvers.  I joined him and suppressed my own shudder.  “Early risers, aren’t they?”

Sunrise was not far off, but already the curtains were being drawn on the apartments the caliph built for his harem a thousand years ago.  And as the servants unrolled the carpets, and lit the morning fires, the concubines began to rise.

Horror is a word too kind for what I saw in front of me.  I’ve made no secret of the fact that Kim got five times hotter after her transformation, but these things were horrifying.  I’m not certain what they were, but a different manner of thing.

Where once were faces, only leather on bone remained.  As the nearest concubine turned, a ray of light illuminated the rouge that had been applied directly to her exposed cheekbone.  Coyly, she peered into a mirror and brushed away the six  wispy hairs that remained on her head, presumably so they wouldn’t fall into her sunken eyes.  Even Baltazar gasped.

“What are they?”  I whispered.  “I thought we would find a harem full of mummy honeys.”

Segovia shook his head.  “A sopay’s foul breath can keep death at bay, but only a muki can transform someone.  And a muki cannot leave the pyramid.”

“So these women are what?  Zombies?”

“No,” he said.  “They are living women, centuries old perhaps, but living women.  They see themselves as they once looked.”  He pointed to a lingerie-laden crone who applied lipstick to her jawbone.  “She is making herself beautiful for her husband.”

Baltazar turned away.  “I can understand why he would want a new wife.”

“He’s not going to get that chance,” I told him.

Segovia put his hand against my mouth as a harem guard passed on the other side of the louvered screen, his scimitar dragging on the tile floor.  Something creaked as I drew back, and the guard stopped.  He turned and looked straight at me.  I would have screamed if Segovia didn’t have me by the mouth.

Something of a face remained, the face of a very old man.  He peered through the louver, his toothless mouth hanging open.  I wanted to pity him as much as fear him, but the fear was winning out.  I don’t know how much sight he had left in his clouded eyes, but fortunately he didn’t see us.  A remnant of lip drew up in a sneer as he turned back to his route, his scimitar scraping behind him.

“That was one scary old eunuch,” I observed.

“Quiet,” Baltazar warned.  “There are at least a dozen more.”

We waited until the fires had all been lit.  That’s when they brought her out.  She was wrapped from head to toe in a woven tapestry, but there was no mistaking her.  I would recognize Kim Castillo anywhere.

Segovia checked his guns.  “Baltazar will create a distraction.  I will cut a path through the guards.  Leon, be ready to grab her.  If she resists, call to me.”

I nodded, but before we could even get that underway, the attendants began unwinding the tapestry from her body.

“Madre de Dios,” Baltazar whispered when she was naked.  He must have whispered it too loudly, because another ancient eunuch appeared on the other side of the screen.  Before we could react, he shoved his hand through the louvers and grabbed Baltazar by the neck.

Segovia got off a volley of shots.  I held my fire for the next guard and then I kept shooting until he was down if not motionless.  But there were dozens more.  They mobbed us, and soon had us flat on the ground.  My face pressed into the tile and I shut my eyes.

When I dared open them, I saw an impossibly lovely foot in front of me.  I looked up and saw the rest of her.  “Hi, Kim.”  The scar at her throat had healed.

She laughed.  “Leon, don’t tell me you came all this way for me.”

I nodded as best I could. 

“And Segovia, you came too?  You had your chance.  How many times did I strip down for you, and each time you turned me away?”

“Eleven times,” he said.  “But I am a gentleman.  My love has already been promised to another.”

“That’s too bad,” Kim said.  She peeked down at Baltazar.  “This one I don’t know.  But that’s not a problem, I could use some fellows like you on my staff.  There’s just the one thing, you know, two things really.”

Baltazar began to sob.  I think I did do when Kim summoned her remaining guards and ordered them to castrate us.

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