“Um…” Emily said. Her eyes shifted side to side, but it was Fiona who answered.
“He wasn’t like official. Not official official. He was one of the ones who works secretly, so we can see the side stuff. People might not have known he was down here.”
Lucie started crying while Fiona looked on with a cold expression.
“Gabe, my hero,” Ingrid told him. “Save us.”
She still wasn’t too scared. She supposed it was Gabe’s shoulders that made her feel so safe. They looked so capable of finding the way out. They were good and responsible shoulders. She glanced around and said. “Let’s saddle up and head out, yeah?”
“What will you do for me if I do find the way out?” His grin was wicked. He was letting her lighten his mood.
“Ew, stop. Hecate!” Emily said, swearing more and pulling out her phone as if she could somehow make it work.
“Camping,” Gabe said, suddenly. “Go camping with me.”
“Our phones should work,” Ingrid said, ignoring Gabe’s request. “I mean, even we can boost our cell signals on the island.”
“Oh yeah…what in the hells?”
“Odd,” Gabe said, examining the walls with greater attention. “Think on the camping, Ingrid. You’ll love it."
“This place creeps me out. Save me. Now please. I need to eat. And then I’ll need someone to save me from this fool who thinks I will like camping with him.”
“What is with you?” Emily asked, looking Ingrid up and down. “Even you don’t eat so much. And you barely drank your coffee after that first few sips. Listen Gabe, there is no way that Ingrid will like camping.”
“It tasted funny,” Ingrid said. “I thought it was going to be magic. And it was. But then it turned on me. Speaking of coffee though, I could really use some. And to get out of here.”
“You said Hecate,” Fiona said. “And you said you boost your cell signal. I mean…there are science boosters, but that isn’t what you meant.”
“You recognized Hecate,” Emily said, looking the girls up and down. “And Abel was a shifter according to that chick who told me about his stupid, evil, I’m going to kill him for this tour. You’re a witch?”
“Oh pentacle necklace on Lucie,” Ingrid said, noticing the shape of the necklace once she stopped looking all the boob flesh the girl was displaying. “They’re witches. Are you better than us? Because we don’t know any spells about not being lost.”
“Or any spells at all really,” Emily said, shrugging as if it made sense to be a witch with no skills.
“We’re shifters,” Lucie said. “The necklace is from my boyfriend, he’s a witch.”
“Why couldn’t you bring him?” Ingrid said, leaning back against Gabe and trying not to see all the skulls staring at her. She felt like she should apologize for eating that éclair now that she was done with it.
“We could try a spell,” Emily suggested. She glanced around doubtfully and then looked back at Ingrid and Gabe.
“Do you recall when you made the mountainside explode on Sheldon’s body?”
“Oh geez,” Emily said. “That was forever ago.”
“Most of Hazel’s spells require moonlight and nakedness,” Ingrid said. “And I’m not stripping down here.”
“Why don’t we try a more prosaic method of exploring, marking out paths, and finding a way back to something we recognize?”
“You mean…not even bother using magic? Right,” Gabe said. “We’ll go this way since that is the way Abel said we were heading, and when I asked—he said we weren’t too far from an exit.”
Ingrid hadn’t noticed but everyone had gathered up around them.
“Why are you leading us?” Someone asked. Ingrid didn’t look for the speaker, because as far as she was concerned, he was leading them. Emily, Ingrid and Gabe, them. Not the group.
“He’s a sheriff back home,” Emily answered.
Ingrid shot her a dirty look and kicked Emily’s ankle. Emily scowled back at Ingrid and said, “You’re a nasty hooker.”
“You’re a stupid cow,” Ingrid said. “Let’s just go and then send back help for these guys.”
“You can’t leave us,” Lucie said in that panicky tone.
“We’re going to try to find the way out. We’ve been walking too long to try to reverse our path,” Gabe said.
“That sounds incredibly stupid,” the professor-type said. “You heard Abel, there are hundreds of miles of these bedamned tunnels.”
“Go your own way, then,” Ingrid said. “Good luck to you.”
The professor’s mouth opened and closed and then opened again.
“Fine,” the girl with long thick hair and leggings said. “We will.”
“Wait,” Gabe said. He scrambled through Ingrid’s purse to find a pen and a paper. The look he gave her when he found her stash was amused, but he didn’t say anything. Which was good, because she wasn’t sharing. “Here’s our number. Text us if you get out. We’ll do the same. If there’s no reply, we’ll report you missing and you us.”
“You can get in trouble for being in this part of the catacombs,” the professor said as if helping the others get out wasn’t worth a fine.
“Better a ticket than dead. This is Paris not some 3rd world country where we’ll be beaten to death for breaking the law,” Emily said, rolling her eyes. “Besides think of what not telling will do to your reputation when we tell the cops you didn’t report us as lost.”
The professor examined their faces and then nodded.
“Wait,” Lucie whine as he was leading Emily and Ingrid across the gallery. “Can we come with you?”
Gabe nodded before Ingrid could object and then before she’d even started to react, the other members of the group were splitting, and most of them were coming with them. Hell! What a load of crap. Gabe was going to feel responsible for all of them.
She looked at Emily who was looking back at Ingrid and then glancing around the group.
“I suppose we can’t really run away and leave them if they want to come,” Emily said under her breath.
“I don’t see why not. We’re all adults here.”
“You shouldn’t be dating an official type,” Emily said. “This is all your fault for lusting after Gabe when you could have lusted after a hundred other guys. He’s a boy scout.”
“A pretty one,” Ingrid said and then tucked one arm through Emily’s as she wound her fingers with Gabe’s. “Save us, my pretty.”
“And you’ll go camping with me?”
“Oh goodness, you evil pretty face,” Ingrid said. “Do I have to?”
“Yes,” he said immediately.
She sighed a long slow sigh and made no promises.
Chapter 4
“I’m pretty sure I can smell rats, Ingrid,” Emily whined. “I know I’ve a got a pretty strict don’t-set-living-things-on-fire rule, but I’m promising you right now, in front of you, the good sheriff, and all these thousands of souls entombed down here in these great catacombs, that I will roast those little rodents like I’m trying to burn Paris to the ground.” She felt her jaw tightening as she ground her teeth. “I hat rats. Hate. Them.”
“When have you been around real rats?” Ingrid walked beside Emily with the old couple in front of them and a few others behind them.
Gabe led the group as they splashed through the dank, wet tunnels and Ingrid pulled her bag closer to her, as if trying to protect her stash of pickles from the rodents.
“You know what? If there are rats, they are totally going to come for the rodent trap that is your purse. Get rid of that food!”
Emily grabbed at Ingrid’s bag, but as languid as Ingrid was, she snatched her food back.
The professor interrupted and stepped forward as Emily and Ingrid faced off. They paused as one to give him a dirty look, but he was unfazed.
“I think we might be in the section of the catacombs where it was rumored that vampires lived by day. They used these catacombs as a base camp of
sorts and harassed the people of Paris at night. It was quite gruesome,” he droned as he spoke, making Emily want to punch him in the Adam’s apple.
“Ok,” Ingrid said, stepping back, but the professor didn’t stop. She shot him a nasty look, but he didn’t even seem to notice.
“Quite, quite gruesome, indeed. The death tolls mounted nightly and there was panic in the streets. I’m told that there was a vast shortage of the vampire potion. It caused several to go mad, and they retreated into the old mining tunnels and survived off of of plain blood instead of the vampire potion. In fact, you are less likely to find rats and more likely to come across bats.” He chuckled at his own joke.
“That…that’s not true,” Lucie stammered.
“Oh yes, it’s quite well-documented. An early version of the Presidium stepped in and found the poor vampires and even werewolves that had gone completely wild. They were quite unrecoverable. I believe that they were…put down. There have been rumors that they never caught them all.” The professor cleared his throat delicately and coughed.
Emily rolled her eyes at the professor and made a mental note to scorch Ingrid’s purse at the first hint there might be rats around and turned her attention to the mad professor. “Listen, Professor of Creepy Paris History, vampires and werewolves are characters in teenage romances.”
Emily knew, of course, that they were real, but this guy was irritating her. So she continued, “And if they were real, I don’t think they would actually turn into bats. You probably believe they sleep in coffins and are afraid of garlic and holy water. That is mythology. Vampires are not real and therefore your story cannot be real.”
She swallowed her own lie and suddenly wished for a cup of hot tea. And to be out of these damned tunnels. What if they hadn’t found all the crazy vampires and werewolf and there was some poor crazy fool jumping on people and eating them?
“Oh,” the professor said, “It’s quite true. This is where the legends of vampires come from. Living in the tunnels, eating the living, drinking blood in an attempt to stave off the vampire hunger.”
Emily shook her head and looked around, certain she’d heard something. It might have been Lucie’s hysterical whimpers but behind that there was the distinct sound of tiny clawed feet on stone. She wanted to vomit and run and set everything on fire, all at once. Instead she gulped some stale air and concentrated on Gabe. Plus everyone knew vampire stories came from Vlad the Impaler or something else. This was just all…and just because they called him a professor didn’t make him one. Why let him freak her out?
She said, “Hey, Sheriff Hotpants, what’s your verdict? Can you see any light at the end of that tunnel? Tell me we are going to get out of here soon. Like in the next five minutes, m’kay?”
Ingrid chomped on another bite of her pickle and eyed the ceiling warily, like she was looking for bats. Emily had met a vampire in Prague. He’d been her first and hadn’t seemed so bad. But she had no idea what they could do. If you were a vampire and crazy, would you win against a witch? Especially a really crappy witch?
Ingrid eased up next to Gabe and looped her arm through his, looking sideways at the professor. “Shut up about the vampire, you idiot. You’re scaring Fiona and Lucie.”
“We…we’re not scared,” Lucie lied. Ingrid rolled her eyes at that comment and Emily could almost read the sarcasm in her friend’s mind.
“That’s not the only story about the things that happened down here,” Betty 2 said. She and Bernard were walking arm in arm as she added, “The vampires have long since been gone, but there were wild parties down here all through the 90s. Some say they’re even happening still. The police, of course, say they’re not. But what’s really interesting is how people disappear into the catacombs and never come back.”
“That’s not true,” Lucie said. And her friend Fiona added, “Those are just urban legends.”
“But are they?” Betty 2’s glance to her husband seemed to declare that the rumors of people being lost in the catacombs. “This is the perfect location to store stolen property, traffic humans, you and Fiona would be excellent targets for that. You’re young. You’re lovely.
Maybe Emily could like Betty 2, after all. She seemed just the right amount of snarky and terrifying in her seemingly idle discourse. Emily thought she might have noticed Lucie’s eyebrow panic-twitching. Awesome.
They kept going, following Gabe’s lead, and Emily’s mind wandered. Vampires wreaking havoc on Paris didn’t seem too far out of the realm of possibility. And weren't there stories of the loup garou? That was werewolf stuff right? If there wasn’t the vampire potion, she was pretty sure they’d go mad. So eating people was probably the reason the legends started.
Although it did sound like the professor may have stolen his story from the plot of Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire. She made a mental note to check with Dean. If anyone had the scoop on supernatural encounters in Europe, it would be the Presidium. And she’d much rather ask Dean than Hazel. Her aunt would make her work for the answer, whereas Dean would maybe just want to make out in return. That was a price she was more than willing to pay. Of course, she’d make out with him anywhere. She heard a commotion in the distance ahead of her, thought about what could making that noise and instantly decided that she would definitely not kiss any man, not even Dean, in these light-forsaken tunnels.
The professor didn’t stop his stupid stories. “Yes, now I’m sure of it. Do you see these sconces on the walls…and that numbering scratched into the stone? I’m certain this is the part of the catacombs where there have been several instances of missing persons. In fact they stopped giving tours here because of it. It’s like the Bermuda Triangle of Paris.”
Betty 2 added, “That does make sense with the research I’ve done. Really, it’s a miracle that the news hasn’t picked up the stories, but I suppose that it’s so easy for the criminals to make it seem like urban legends while they keep going about…what…they do.”
Emily bit her lip in her effort to not say anything. He rambled on, unaware of her unease. “The last person to go missing was said to be a victim of a murder/suicide. The group with the victims said they heard screaming and gurgling and some sort of ancient language and then nothing. Literally nothing. It was as if they’d all temporarily lost their hearing. By the time they made their way to the street level, all their hearing had returned but the two that had gone missing never did turn back up again.”
Gabe asked, “Why did they think it was a murder/suicide then?”
Emily wished she had a gun so she could shoot him in the leg. What was he thinking, encouraging these stories? Couldn’t he see they were freaking her out, let alone Ingrid?
The professor nodded, as if to indicate it was a good question. Emily resisted the urge to puke in her mouth. She didn’t want to talk about this anymore. Not while they were lost in this damn place.
“The police found a note in the woman’s apartment, as part of their investigation. Her husband wrote that he was taking her into the tunnels to offer her blood as a sacrifice to the catacomb monster. They all assumed he was just crazy, but the investigation didn’t turn up any bodies or evidence of foul play. And their bodies never turned up. The idea of the catacomb monster dates back even farther than the stories of the vampires. They said that the original miners who dug these tunnels would disappear until they started dragging in street urchins and leaving them hobbled for the monster.”
Lucie actually covered her ears with her hands and Fiona hissed, “Shut up.”
The professor, however, did not have an off switch. He said, “So, the couple never turned up. The cult followers of the catacomb monster, a sort of supernatural club famous in Paris for their knowledge of the supernatural, insisted that the husband sacrificed his wife in order to become one of the elite. Supposedly they still exist. And still sacrifice in the tunnels.”
“That’s just ridiculous,” Emily said, maybe just a little too loud. “You need to stop your crazy and stop dis
tracting Gabe from finding a way out. Unless you’ve discovered how to get us out of here?”
As if on cue, the air got colder, and Emily heard a strange gurgling from out in the distance, where she’d heard the nails scratching before. No. Absolutely not. This was not the Bermuda Triangle. Emily looked at Ingrid who’d gone paler and then Emily noticed Gabe reach for the gun that he didn’t have. Delightful. Ingrid was moving her mouth, but no sound was coming out. Ancient chanting that sounded an awful lot like chants she’d heard in the coven back home, only slightly different, evil somehow, echoed through the chamber and Emily was certain she would vomit, any second.
As quickly as the sounds began, they vanished, but something was up with their hearing. Just like in the professor’s story. Fortunately, after only a few moments, their hearing returned and the haggard group all just leaned against the wall looking around at nothing trying to figure out what had just happened.
“Well, damn it,” Emily said. She leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and said, “We have got to get out of here.”
“I’ll be going to scout ahead. There are three exits here. You,” Gabe took the professor’s arm, “Will be coming with me.”
Chapter 5
“This place is going to give me a heart attack,” Ingrid said. She was sitting on the floor of the tunnel with her mining hat next to her. The light from the hat pointed at the top of the tunnel to brighten up her corner of this hell. “Spa day if we survive?”
“It was weird how Bernard and Betty 2 didn’t seem to be freaked by the creepy ancient voices and cold wind. Maybe they are too old to even notice the hearing loss the rest of us experienced. Oh. Maybe they didn’t even hear that creep-tastic chanting or the gurgling or the cold smell of death,” Emily said. Her normally wild curls had morphed into a white girl afro. “But I think that whatever you have in that bag is going to give you a heart attack. Also, obviously, we’re having a spa day. Don’t make me slap you. I need the pedicure of all pedicures and a massage to rub out whatever wandering in this hell hole has done to my muscles.”
Paris Murder: An Inept Witches Mystery Page 4
