by Alex Archer
“Toxico,” Ascher said. He toed the kid’s shoulder. “Drug addict.”
“It’s the drugs that make him so violent,” Annja said. “It’s not his fault. I didn’t cut him too deeply, did I?”
“A flesh wound,” Ascher said after he’d examined it. “He could have killed you.”
“I could have killed him.”
“But you did not.” Ascher swiped a palm across his face. Adrenalized from the challenge, he bounced still, ready for more action.
“He was more a threat to himself than us,” Annja said.
She replaced her helmet. Rolling her shoulder forward worked at an ache in her shoulder blade. She’d hit the wall hard, but didn’t sense any injuries. “I want to put some distance between us and him. If we’re lucky, your cata-cops will get to him before he wakes. What?”
“Miss Creed, you do not cease to amaze me.”
She followed his glance to the kid sprawled in the darkness.
“Not only are you talented in standing against thugs with guns, and accomplishing parkour at the drop of a hat, but you seem to slip from danger like a rat and can protect yourself with your physical prowess, as well. What can’t you do, Annja? Tell me, because you put me to shame with your talents.”
“There are a lot of things I can’t do,” she said.
“You must name one. Please, anything to make me feel as if there’s the smallest need for my presence should danger again strike.”
She cast a small smile to the side so his headlight wouldn’t beam upon it. He desperately needed to gain some macho points, and not appear as someone who needed to be rescued by a woman.
Annja wasn’t about false confidence. The man was an athlete. He’d had a bad bit of luck with the drug addict. Toeing the rounded ball end of what was possibly a femur, she decided tossing him a bone wasn’t entirely beneath her.
“I can’t hit a baseball to save my life.”
Ascher perked, but a smile didn’t quite curve his mouth.
“I don’t know the first thing about engines and cars,” she added. “I like to drive them, but how to fix them? Forget it.”
“I’ll take that,” he said. Bending to retrieve his supplies, he managed a wink in her direction as he slapped on his helmet.
Annja walked onward, digital camera ready for another navigational picture. “Do you hear that?”
Ascher swiped a hand over his face. Blood trickled from his nose, which he wiped away with the back of his hand. “Music?”
“Not far ahead.”
“Be careful, Annja. If the kid came from wherever the music is—”
“Could be an underground rave,” she finished, and marched onward.
Around the corner and shuffling through a narrow tunnel three feet in diameter, the twosome came upon a huge sheet of plastic draped over an opening about ten feet high by four feet wide. Red-and-green lights flashed on the other side in rhythm to an erratic techno beat that lost its tone in the thick earth walls and did not carry beyond a muffled base thump.
Annja approached slowly, and peeked through the dirty plastic sheeting. The room was narrow and dark, save for the flashing lights. Dancing bodies packed the contained area. Fists rose high to pump in time with the beat. Sloshes of alcohol from plastic cups sprinkled the crowd. Most heads were shaved bald. Combat attire and the flash of blades at hip, ankle and torso cautioned her.
“Looks like all men,” she whispered.
The warmth of Ascher’s body pressed alongside Annja’s arm as he peered in along with her. “Supremacists. You don’t want to go in there, Annja.”
“Aryans?”
“Oui. Not a crowd you want to introduce yourself to.” Ascher tugged her away from the plastic sheeting and pressed her against the wall. “We’re going this way.”
“I don’t think so.”
A new voice spoke. Annja recognized it instantly.
22
“You are a difficult woman to track, Mademoiselle Creed.”
“Oh yeah?” The sight of Jacques Lambert’s face sent Annja’s heart plummeting. Though she hadn’t entirely ruled out being tracked. “Apparently not difficult enough.”
“I employ the best trackers in the country. We’ve been on your trail since the cheese shop.”
Annja sucked in a breath. She prayed the owner and his wife were unharmed.
“And Monsieur Vallois.” Jacques Lambert nodded to Ascher, the headlight beam catching him under the nose and momentarily spookifying him. “You guard that right side well, eh?”
“I do not like you,” Ascher growled.
And Annja had to agree. But for the moment she was more concerned about taking in the periphery. Beyond the immediate glow of the flashlights and headbeams, she counted six men, suited in overalls and night-vision goggles. Each wielded a semiautomatic with a tiny red blinking LED at the stock.
“You will do the honor of leading the way,” Lambert said to Annja. “Unless you wish to attend the party?”
The raucous vibrations of the techno beat warned Annja there may be worse trouble behind the plastic sheeting than Lambert and his men may offer.
“We’ve not completely deciphered the map,” she offered. “We’re still tracking it, taking odd turns and coming up against dead ends. There are ten times more tunnels now than there were in the seventeenth century.”
“I’m in no hurry,” Lambert said, before turning to one of his men. “But you’ll do me the privilege of holding the weapon Monsieur Vallois has in his boot?”
Ascher bent and took out the blade. It was the one Annja had lost when they’d battled the drugged-up teenager. He dangled it, tip down, and one of the dark goons lunged from behind Lambert to swipe it.
“And what of you, Annja Creed?”
She met Lambert’s eerie gaze. “I don’t have any weapons.”
“Visible,” he said.
He’d seen her use the sword in the file room. It was on the surveillance tape. A tape she should be keen to get at. The last thing she needed was a leak to the press that one of the stars of Chasing History’s Monsters might herself be a monster who wielded a magical sword. Wouldn’t Doug Morrell have a heyday with that?
Briefly, she wondered if Roux might be able to infiltrate BHDC to steal the tape. The man had certain skills that continued to befuddle her, yet she would utilize them whenever she could.
“You can search me,” she offered, holding her arms out to her sides. “If it’ll make you feel better.”
“Not necessary,” he said, though the same goon who’d stepped forward for Ascher’s knife had already stepped up to cop a free feel. “Step back, Theo. Let’s be to it.”
AN HOUR LATER, and after passing through many, twisting tunnels, Annja wondered if they were completely lost. They’d descended another thirty or forty feet deeper through makeshift steps and holes that literally dropped from one dark realm to the next. If they hadn’t had the map, she might grow old and die down here. Cataphiles could add her bones to the walls. She would become a literal fixture in Parisian history.
A discomfiting thought.
And if she were not holding the map, she might wonder if Ascher was leading them astray. There were moments they both studied the map and he suggested a direction completely opposite to where Annja felt they should go. Yet she deferred to his knowledge; he had the most experience in the Paris underground.
She took comfort having Ascher close, and trusted he did not ally himself with BHDC. He may not necessarily be on her side, but he did want the same thing she wanted—to keep the treasure out of Lambert’s hands.
The air grew thicker the farther down they traveled. Annja could feel the icy darkness out to her side, where her headlamp did not beam.
She wanted to find the treasure and get the hell out of here. A goose chase in this hellacious labyrinth was not tops on her list.
Their next pause, at a T in the tunnels, found her and Ascher disagreeing about yet another turn.
Was he purposefully agreeing to go on a co
urse he knew was wrong?
“Oh, stop it,” she murmured under her breath. She had decided to trust Ascher. Enough said.
They passed through tunnels nearly fifty feet wide and twelve feet high. These had been used during the German occupation when Hitler had driven tanks below to hide or ambush.
They bent and shuffled through tunnels three feet high and no wider.
When Ascher suggested they squeeze through a tunnel about a foot square, Lambert adamantly refused. Though it would have served a means for their escape, Annja was more than a little relieved. Not her favorite way to die, entombed within a worm tunnel like a giant, well, worm.
Not that she hadn’t been in equally tight squeezes when on digs. She’d been trapped in a sandy trench dug into Highborough Hill when doing a segment on the Saxon deities for Chasing History’s Monsters. Good thing she wasn’t truly claustrophobic. But then she’d had a crew of trusted colleagues to help her out of trouble.
Now it was every man for himself.
They had been underground almost three hours. Ascher had said the batteries would last for six. Or should. Annja crossed her fingers on that one.
They now walked a narrow tunnel lined in yellowed skulls and leg bones. The stacked bones were placed in a definite pattern. Three rows of leg bones, the ball-like lateral and medial condyles pointing out to form a knobby line, and then a row of skulls, most facing outward to display empty eye sockets, and the occasional disturbing hole in the forehead that, Annja decided, could only be from a sharp weapon. It was possible these were from a former cemetery.
Running her fingers lightly over the cold, smooth bones, Annja fancied which ones might have been soldiers and had given their lives for their country. Or were most victims of a cruel plague or unclean living conditions? A particular skull, still with all its teeth, grimaced at her.
There was something scratched into the limestone. She flashed her light over it. The date 1670 was very clear, but the mark below it was not. A circle with an indistinguishable letter inside it. A stonecutter’s mark. Cool. She snapped a picture.
“Perhaps we are beneath Saint Ignace,” Ascher suggested softly. “It must be, to judge from our turns and the distance we’ve walked.”
“Which arrondissement?”
“Saint Ignace is in the seventh. A small but gorgeous church,” he said. “Can you smell the quicklime?”
It had been poured over the rotting bodies to extinguish the putrid smell, and though at the time they hadn’t known it would kill germs, it had.
So they were in the seventh. One of the ritzier neighborhoods in Paris, it boasted the Eiffel Tower. Interestingly, its high-class status was not apparent from beneath. But they had to be close; this was where she and Ascher had determined the treasure might be found.
The tunnel they traversed ended abruptly at a wall of skulls. A design had been worked with the bones of former Parisian residents. A large circle, two skulls thick in outline, expanded about five feet in diameter before them, and filling in the non-circle parts were thousands of femurs. In the center of the heart was a small plaque.
“Did we take a wrong turn?” Lambert wondered. He commandeered the map and swept the flashlight over it. The beam flickered.
“You’re running out of juice,” Ascher said slyly.
“We’ve got reserves.” Lambert was quick to cut him off. “It appears as if the end, the glorious X marks the spot, is ahead. Through that wall.”
“This could be a new addition created by stray bones. The cataphiles are always putting up new walls and tearing down old ones,” Ascher noted. “They haul cement blocks and jack-hammers down here.” He tapped the wall of bone before him.
Annja leaned against the wall and listened, as Ascher did, while he tapped. “No, it’s original. These skulls are tight and the debris solid, like mortar,” she said.
“Very possible. For as old as these tunnels are, they could contain any number of blocked-up passages. Either by necessity or because they were dangerous.”
Annja brushed her fingers over the plaque, which was thick with dust. There was something engraved on it.
Their heads turned away from the intrusive flashlights over their shoulders, Ascher whispered, “As soon as we get the treasure, we will overtake them, oui?”
“Seven against two. I like those odds.”
“I like a woman who can get behind those odds.”
“What’s the holdup?” Lambert called. “Push it down!”
“There’s a plaque,” Annja said.
She bent before the small piece of stone and beamed her flashlight over the small French words. Selon Mes Mérites. Hmm…“As I deserve?” she whispered.
An appropriate saying for anyone who may have found a treasure, but not for a treasure left behind. Her heart sank. They were too late. Or this was the wrong X marks the spot.
“Perhaps we should retrace our footsteps,” Annja offered. She beamed her headlamp down the direction they had come. The sandy floor glinted with fine mica particles as if crushed diamonds. “We may have taken a wrong turn.”
“You’re not looking at all the options,” Lambert said.
“Which are?”
“Break down the wall.”
“I will not damage a historical structure,” Annja said. “Such destruction is worse than theft and piracy.”
Lambert looked to one of his men.
The man with shoulders as solid as a Mack truck, took a bouncing step back, prepared, and as he lunged forward, Annja dashed in to push him away. “Are you insane? You will destroy history!”
“Annja, be careful,” Ascher warned.
Lambert beamed his flashlight down the passageway. “You don’t think the ravers we passed haven’t destroyed enough already?”
“Bloody pirate,” she spit out.
“Mad Bloody Jack thanks you kindly, mademoiselle.”
Why she was allowing herself to get so worked up must have something to do with being entombed for hours under duress, she thought. Annja kicked the rubble-littered floor with her heel.
“Do whatever,” she snapped.
Lambert lifted a hand and gestured. “Theo!”
Another of the thugs charged the wall, and this time Annja allowed it. It was either that or more arguing, which would only result in her defeat.
The thug bent up a knee and connected with the wall of skulls, foot flat and thick heel of a combat boot torquing to dig into any give that may result.
While the entire wall didn’t come crumbling down, the force of the impact did push in two skulls and dislodge the plaque. The flat stone piece teetered forward and fell.
Compelled to rush for the piece, Annja missed catching it. It didn’t break upon landing the dirt floor. Small thanks for that.
Musty quicklime dust scented the air. It was a familiar smell to Annja, that of ancient times best regarded with reverence and not the blatant disregard Lambert inflicted with his greed.
Icy cold air gushed from the enclosed section of tunnel, streaming over Annja’s nose and cheeks. Angry ghosts of history.
If only.
As Theo dragged himself upright and brushed off his hands, another thug began to pull out the skulls.
“Careful,” Lambert instructed from over their shoulders. “One wrong skull and the whole thing could come down.”
“Isn’t that what you want?” Annja asked.
“Not if it’s connected to a wall we need to get back out of here.”
“Let me do it.” Annja shoved aside the thug. She might be able to limit the destruction some. Fitting her fingers through two eyeholes, she carefully rocked at an ancient skull. “I’m going to hell for this.”
“They are long dead,” Lambert said over her shoulder. “Their souls don’t care what you do with their bones now.”
He’d said something similar about stealing DNA from dead historical figures. The man was utterly mad. He thought he was serving mankind, but instead he destroyed it.
“You sh
ould respect the dead, no matter their state,” Annja muttered, and proceeded to carefully extract the skulls.
The actual wall was only three skulls thick, equal to the length of the femurs, which were tightly stacked about the skull circle. Once Annja removed the skulls that curved along the top of the circle, the femurs loosened, and the structure slowly collapsed.
She jumped back to avoid the dust of centuries’ dead.
A warm hand gripped her arm from behind. She didn’t startle, because the touch wasn’t rough. Ascher silently conveyed his presence. And she took some relief in his being there. Not completed surrounded by the enemy, then. But a little lost as to what would happen next.
And what if there was a treasure? That would mean she and Ascher no longer held value to Lambert. And a tunnel full of bones was the last place Annja wanted to die.
Lambert leaned inside the hole and poked in a flashlight. He popped back out and handed Annja the flashlight. “Ladies first. It’s a small room, about four feet long by three feet high.”
“I’d rather watch.” Annja crossed her arms firmly. She’d gone to the limits with helping these crooks.
Lambert nodded to one of his men. He moved swiftly, wrapping an arm about Ascher’s neck in a chokehold. Shoving the barrel of his weapon into his left side elicited a pained moan from Ascher. The side where he’d lost a kidney a few weeks earlier.
Regarding her calmly, Lambert said softly. “I was unable to uncover relatives or close allies who would mean something to you, Annja. But I suspect Vallois should serve to prick a personal nerve or two.”
“Give me the damn flashlight.” Annja grabbed it from Lambert and stepped through the hole. Coffin-like and musty, the surroundings were familiar, and yet this was the first time she’d been inside a room completely constructed of bones.
Lambert’s head popped inside her hiding spot. “Your lover awaits your victory, my warrior Creed.”
“He’s not my lover.”
“You often kiss friends so passionately?”
When had she—? The only time she and Ascher had—
Had there been spies in the hotel? How could they have witnessed that kiss without—they must have been observing through the window with a sniper scope.
