Peter followed Greg deeper underground. The tunnel led them almost perfectly due south for about a half-mile before coming to a two-way fork. The path leading left continued deeper underground and was lit with the same blood red torchlight as the tunnel leading up to it. The opening on the right was something entirely new.

Instead of crude rock walls and dim torches, this new area had been cut and carved into clean, perfect lines. The opening was a remarkable and perfectly symmetrical doorway wide enough for perhaps 3 Greg Van Helsings to enter walking shoulder to shoulder and around ten feet tall. Within, Peter could see an ancient sarcophagus. Its lid was left open and, from his position just outside the room, Peter was pretty sure it was empty. He turned to Greg and attempted to mask the growing knot of fear and apprehension in his gut.

Greg looked right back at him with unwavering resolve.

“Now or never,” he said with a shrug before stepping toward the room on the right.

“Wait!” Peter shouted, stopping the big man in his tracks. “It could be booby trapped.”

Greg considered it, nodded in agreement, and began rummaging about in his travel bag. He removed a baseball sized item, it was coated in a glossy black and appeared to be emitting a small amount of dark mist. Greg raised an eyebrow at Peter, and then threw the orb with great force into the rock floor. It exploded on contact.

Dark mist raced out of the shattered remains of its container and then coalesced into a vaguely humanoid form. Peter tilted his head to the side as he compared the mist-creature to Greg. Oddly, the two had nearly identical dimensions. With nothing more than a wave of his hand, Greg sent the mist-creature hovering along the ground and into the room beyond.

Peter watched, transfixed, as tiny cylindrical projectiles passed through the mist-creature harmlessly. This went on for several seconds, the little arrows continuing to spring out of the walls on either side of the room. The clattering of wood against the stone floor intensified as the mist-creature continued to the far side of the room. Once it reached the far side, the final handful of projectiles clacked against the walls, and then it was silent. With another wave, Greg banished the mist-creature. With a discomforting shriek, it condensed nearly down to its original size and then, with a pop, it vanished entirely.

“You always take me to the nicest places,” Peter remarked.

“I’m glad you said something,” Greg said, eyeing the room warily. He reached into his bag again and began rummaging around. “That could have gone significantly worse.”

“All ancient ruins have booby traps,” Peter reasoned, audibly. “Think there are more?”

“Doubt it,” Greg replied. He jutted his chin toward the room. “Sarcophagus. That means a vampire once lived in that room. I’m surprised there was a trap at all. Who booby traps their own room, right?”

“That does sound inconvenient,” Peter agreed, still not entirely convinced. “It stands to reason that this first trap was triggered by movement…” he continued, thinking aloud.

“The wraith I sent in there was imitating the dimensions and particularities of a human with incredible accuracy. I’ll bet a vampire could walk right in without triggering that barrage.”

Without further deliberation, Greg walked through the carved-stone entrance. Peter held his breath as he waited for something terrible to happen, but even after a full ten seconds, nothing sprang out of the sarcophagus, floor, ceiling, or walls. Hesitantly, Peter stepped through the archway.

Now close enough to make out details in the dim light, Peter was blown away by the incredible precision and fine detail work on the lid of the sarcophagus. There were several depictions of nude men and women, clearly dead, blood draining from two fang-sized holes in their necks. Featured in the center of the lid he saw… Batman? But it couldn’t be. It had to be an ancient depiction of a vampire’s head, and not the caped crusader’s iconic face covering with the two horn-like ear-points.

Could have fooled me, though…

Morbidly curious, Peter forced himself to dismiss the definitely-not-Batman carving on the lid and leaned over the sarcophagus itself to peer inside. To his surprise, there was nothing at all inside. Not even dust from ages of neglect. Peter considered that for a moment and concluded that he was looking at an impossibility.

Curiosity waged a battle against prudence within the eccentric mind of Peter Mayhew for 3 long seconds. Curiosity won. Cringing with fearful anticipation, Peter pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and dropped it into the sarcophagus. He hadn’t known what to expect but, when the pen vanished the second it passed into the sarcophagus, he realized that he probably should have expected exactly that. There was simply no explanation for the complete emptiness in there after spending centuries underground.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Even if there were a vampire cleaning crew - which Peter paused to consider the comedic value of just that in a sit-com format - in charge of cleanliness, there would still be some dust in there, at the very least.

“Hey Greg,” Peter said, looking up to see Greg attempting to peer into an adjoining hallway on the far side of the room. Peter hesitated to ask, hoping it wasn’t ‘another stupid Peter question’, but he’d only been involved in the supernatural world for a few weeks. And it wasn’t like he could research things on the internet by himself. Greg was literally his only source of information on the subject, so Peter just asked the question plainly. “Are, uh… Are portals a thing?”

Greg turned back to face him, and then looked at the sarcophagus again with renewed interest.

“They are,” Greg confirmed. He moved to stand next to Peter and peered in. “But they’re complicated and expensive to make. Only a handful of beings in the world can do it.” Greg paused, and then looked back and forth between Peter and the empty sarcophagus. “You don’t think…”

“Watch,” Peter replied, pulling a second pen from the side pocket of his backpack. He dropped it in and, just like the first, vanished the second it broke the plane.

“Hmm,” Greg grumbled thoughtfully. “I guess it could be a portal. But every portal I’ve ever seen has a visual tell that even humans can pick up. It’s a faint shimmering, like sand shifting between layers of glass. This place is older than any magic I know, though, so I guess anything’s possible.”

“If it is a portal…” Peter continued thinking aloud. “Then is it safe to assume that, if someone were to drop in a pen from the other side, it would pop right out of the sarcophagus? And also, that’s Batman, isn’t it? It looks exactly like Batman.”

“The locals call it Camazotz,” Greg said, waving his hand dismissively at the lid. “A bat god. An ancient legend.”

“How many guesses do I get to guess the origin of that legend?”

“To answer your other question,” Greg continued right along as though Peter had not spoken. “Yes. If this is a portal, and I’m not certain that it is, then you just dropped a pen through to the other side.”

“Two pens,” Peter corrected, two fingers held up for demonstration. His lips scrunched up as he thought about what someone on the other side would think, and hoped nobody was nearby. At the very least they’d know someone was here in Kuzco’s tunnel system. “If not a portal, what the hell is this thing then? A dimensional space like your bag? A sarcophagus of holding?”

“No way,” Greg said, though the consternation on his face gave lie to his confident answer. “You could find out, if you wanted. Just put your hand in there.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t going to do that. “How about you put your hand in there. I’m pretty sure it’d grow back in an hour if anything terrible happened.”

“It wouldn’t.” Greg grumbled for a moment, then gritted his teeth and stuck his hand into the sarcophagus.

Just before his big hairy mitt passed the threshold, a crumpled piece of paper rocketed up and out of the sarcophagus. It landed on the Batman lid and rolled to a stop. Peter and Greg met eyes, and then Peter picked up and uncrumpled the page. There was a note written, solidifying in Peter’s mind that the sarcophagus was a portal, but Peter’s Italian was a bit rusty. It took him a moment to translate before reading it aloud for Greg’s sake.

“Stop throwing things through the gateway, Alessa. It isn’t a toy. If Lysander was on watch today you’d have hell to pay. I expect more from My blood-sister,” Peter paused, frowning. “I think blood-sister. Or blood-daughter? I get them mixed up. No, it’s blood-daughter, I remember. Expect more from my blood-daughter. That’s it. That’s the whole note. It’s signed, ‘Alexandreta’. I don’t know about you, but I’m glad Lysander isn’t on watch today… I’m guessing,” he went on, gesturing to the now-empty jacket lying on the ground, “that was Alessa.”

“Good bet,” Greg agreed. “I guess it makes sense that these vampires have a portal here if they are Italian…” he trailed off, considering.

“Is that like a racist vampire thing? That all Italian vampires have portals or something?” Peter shook his head at Greg, eyes narrowed in disappointment. “I used to look up to you.”

“What? No,” Greg said, looking at Peter incredulously. “Peter, sometimes trying to be too ‘woke’ just makes you sound like an idiot. Do you know that? That alarm went off at, what, one in the afternoon yesterday? And despite only being able to travel openly when the sun is down, they were already here waiting for us when we got back? Vamps can move pretty fast, but not Italy to Mexico in a single night fast. Alexandreta, why does that name sound so familiar?”

Peter folded his arms over his chest. “You’re telling me that, any second, any number of vampires might just pop out of that thing? That’s what you’re telling me right now?”

“Yeah.”

“And our exit got blocked by a gigantic rock.”

“Yeah.”

Simultaneously, Peter and Greg both shifted their gazes to the lid.

“I mean,” Peter said, lips downturned and brows raised, “it couldn’t hurt to just…”

“Yeah.”

Hands on the lid, the two men pushed against the stone lid of the sarcophagus with all of their strength. Greg’s side moved, barely an inch, accompanied by the sound of grinding rock after several seconds of intense effort.

They continued relentlessly for long minutes, the lid ever so slowly covering the portal as beads of sweat formed all over Peter’s body. He noticed Greg sweating profusely as well as the two pushed with all of their might, grunting with effort. When only a two-foot section, the section on Peter’s side, remained, a bony white hand with dagger-like fingernails reached through space to appear directly in front of Peter Mayhew’s face. Despite the situation, Peter couldn’t help noticing how well manicured the blood red fingernails were.

The snail’s pace of the lid stopped entirely when the creepy, but well cared for, hand pressed against it. Before Peter could entirely wrap his mind around the situation unfolding before his eyes, Greg had the hand impaled with his too-large hunting knife - pinning it against the lid of the sarcophagus.

Another hand reached through. And another. Each was distinctly different. Three vampires, at least, would be coming through the sarcopha-portal any second. Wide eyed, Peter looked to Greg for direction. The big man’s head was tilting to one side and he was grinning like a lunatic, eyes wild, impeccably white teeth gleaming in the dim red light of the room.