The Skeleton Key: A Short Story Exclusive (2 page)

The Guild.

Her former employers often harnessed such madness and honed its violence to serve their own ends.

“But the new leader of OTS—Luc Vennard—has greater ambitions. Like us, he plans to use the momentary loosening of the Guild’s reins to exert his own independence, to wreak great havoc on my fair city. For that reason alone, I’d want him stopped, but he has wooed my son with myths of the continuing existence of the Knights Templar, of the cult’s holy duty to usher in the reign of a new god-king—likely Vennard himself—a bloody transformation that would require fire and sacrifice. Specifically
human
sacrifice. To use my son’s words before he vanished, a
great purging
would herald the new sun-king’s birth.”

“When is this all supposed to take place?” Seichan asked.

“Noon today, when the sun is at its strongest.”

She glanced to the mantel clock. That was in less than two hours.

“That is why I took these extreme measures. To ensure your cooperation. The collars not only punish, but they also kill. Leave the city limits of Paris and you will meet a most agonizing end. Fail to free my son and you will meet the same fate.”

“And if I agree . . . if I succeed . . .”

“You will be set free. You have my oath. And as payment for services rendered, the documents I possess will also be yours.”

Seichan considered her options. It did not take long. She had only one.

To cooperate.

She also understood why Claude Beaupré had collared her and turned her into his hunting dog. He dared not report what he’d learned from his son to the Guild. The organization could simply let Vennard commit this violent act and turn it to their advantage. Chaos often equaled opportunity to her former masters. Or they would stamp out Vennard and his cult for their hubris and mutiny. In either scenario, Gabriel Beaupré would likely end up dead.

So Claude had sought help outside of regular channels.

“What about the boy?” Seichan asked, staring over at Renny MacLeod, unable to fit this one jigsaw piece into the puzzle.

“He is your map and guide.”

“What does that mean?”

Renny must have noted her sudden attention on him and grew visibly paler.

“Search his back,” Claude commanded. “Ask him about Jolienne.”

“Who is Jolienne?”

This time the kid flinched, as if punched in the gut. But rather than going even whiter, his face flushed. He lunged forward, grabbing for the phone.

“What does that bastard know about my Jolie?” Renny cried out.

Seichan easily sidestepped his assault, keeping the phone to her ear and spinning him with one hand. She tossed him facedown on the bed and held him in place with a knee planted at the base of his spine.

He struggled, swearing angrily.

“Stay still,” she said, digging in her knee. “Who is Jolie?”

He twisted his head around to glare at her with one eye. “My girlfriend. She disappeared two days ago. Looking for some group called the Solar Temple. I was in that pub last night trying to drum up a search party among the other
cataphiles
.”

She didn’t know what that last word meant. But before inquiring, her attention focused on the kid’s naked back and the sprawl of his tattoo. This was the first chance she’d had to get a good look at it.

In black, yellow, and crimson inks, a strange map had been indelibly etched into his skin—but it was not a chart of streets and avenues. In meticulous detail, the artwork depicted an intricate network of crisscrossing tunnels, widening chambers, and watery pools. It looked like the map for some lost cavern system. It was also clearly an unfinished work: passages faded into obscurity or ended abruptly at the edges of the tattoo.

“What is this?” she asked.

Renny knew what had drawn her attention. “It’s where Jolie disappeared.”

Claude, still on the phone at her ear, answered her more directly. “It is a map of the Paris catacombs, our city of the dead.”

F
ifteen minutes later, Seichan was gunning the engine of her motorcycle and speeding over the twelve stone arches of the Pont Neuf, the medieval bridge that spanned the River Seine. She wove wildly around slower traffic, crossing toward the Left Bank of Paris and aiming for the city’s Latin Quarter.

Seated behind her, Renny clung to her with both arms. He squeezed tightly as she exited the bridge and made a sharp turn into the maze of streets on the far side. She did not slow down. They were quickly running out of time.

“Take the next right!” Renny yelled in her ear. “Go four blocks. Then we’ll have to continue on foot.”

Seichan obeyed. She had no other guide.

Moments later, they were both running down the Rue Mouffetard, an ancient pedestrian avenue that cut a narrow, winding swath through the Latin Quarter. Buildings to either side dated back centuries. The lower levels had been converted into cafés, bakeries, cheese shops,
crêperies,
and a fresh market that spilled out into the street. All around, merchants hawked their goods while patrons noisily bartered.

Seichan shoved through the bustle, noting the chalkboard menus being filled out, the huge loaves of bread being stacked behind windows. Breathless, winded, she drew in the musky headiness wafting from a tiny
fromagerie
and the fragrant displays of an open-air flower stand.

Still, she remained all too conscious of what lay
beneath
this lively tumult: a moldering necropolis holding the bones of six million Parisians, three times the population above.

Renny led the way with his long legs. His thin form skirted through the crowds with ease. He kept glancing back, making sure he hadn’t lost her.

Back at the hotel, he had found his clothes in the hotel closet: ripped jeans, Army boots, and a red shirt bearing the likeness of the rebel Che Guevara. Additionally, they’d both put on scarves to hide their steel collars. While they got dressed, Seichan had explained their situation, how their lives depended on searching the catacombs to retrieve the historian’s lost son. Renny had listened, asking only a few questions. In his eyes, she noted the gleam of hope behind the glaze of terror. She suspected that the determined pace he set now had little to do with saving his own life and more to do with finding his lost love, Jolie.

Before donning his shirt, he had awkwardly pointed to his lower right shoulder blade. That corner of the tattooed map was freshly inked, the flesh still red and inflamed. “This is what Jolie had discovered, where she had been headed when she disappeared.”

And it was where they were going now, chasing their only lead, preparing to follow in his girlfriend’s footsteps.

Claude Beaupré also believed Jolienne’s whereabouts were important. Her disappearance had coincided with the last day he’d seen his son. Before vanishing, Gabriel had hinted to his father about where Vennard and the other members of his cult were scheduled to gather for the purge. It was this same neighborhood. So when Claude heard about Renny searching for his lost girlfriend in this area, he began moving his chess pieces together: lowly guide and deadly hunter.

The two were now inextricably bound together, headed toward a secret entrance into the catacombs. Renny had shared all he knew about the subterranean network of crypts and tunnels. How the dark worlds beneath the bright City of Lights were once ancient quarries called
les carrières de Paris
. The ancient excavation burrowed ten stories underground, carving out massive chambers and expanding outward into two hundred miles of tangled tunnels. The quarries had once been at the outskirts of the city, but over time, Paris grew and spread over the top of the old labyrinth, until now half of the metropolis sat atop the mines.

Then in the eighteenth century, city authorities had ordered that the overflowing cemeteries in the center of Paris be dug up. Millions of skeletons—some going back a thousand years—were unceremoniously dumped into the quarries’ tunnels, where they were broken down and stacked like cordwood. According to Renny, some of France’s most famous historical figures were likely interred below: from Merovingian kings to characters from the French Revolution, from Clovis to the likes of Robespierre and Marie Antoinette.

Seichan’s search, though, was not for the dead.

Renny finally turned off the main thoroughfare and ducked down a narrow alley between a coffeehouse and a pastry shop. “This way. The entrance I told ye about is up ahead. Friends—fellow
cataphiles
—should have left us some gear. We always help each other out.”

The alley was so tight they had to pass through it single file. It ended at a small courtyard, surrounded by centuries-old buildings. Some of the windows were boarded up; others showed some signs of life: a small dog piping a complaint, a few strings of drying laundry, a small face peering at them through a curtain.

Renny led her to a manhole cover hidden in a shadowed corner of the courtyard. He fished out a crowbar from behind a trash bin, along with two mining helmets with lamps affixed to their front.

He pointed back to the bin. “They left us a couple o’ flashlights, too.”

“Your
cataphiles
?”

“Aye. My fellow explorers of Paris’s underworld,” he said, letting a little pride shine forth, his brogue thickening. “We come from every corner of the world, from every walk o’ life. Some search the old subways or sewer lines; others go boggin’ and diving into water-filled pits that open into flooded rooms far below. But most—like Jolie and me—are drawn to the unmapped corners of the catacombs.”

He went silent, worry settling heavily to his shoulders, clearly wondering about the fate of his girlfriend.

“Let’s get this open,” Seichan said, needing to keep him moving.

She helped pry open the manhole cover and rolled it aside. A metal ladder, bolted to the wall of the shaft, led down into the darkness. Renny strapped on his helmet. Seichan opted for a flashlight.

She cast a bright beam into the depths.

“This leads down to a long-abandoned section of the sewer system, goin’ back to the mid–1800s,” Renny said, mounting the ladder.

“A sewer? I thought we were going into the catacombs.”

“Aye, we are. Sewers, basements, old wells often have secret entrances into the ancient catacombs. C’mon, then, I’ll show ye.”

He climbed down, and she followed. She expected it to smell foul, ripe with the slough of the city above. But she found it only dank and moldy. They descended at least two stories, until at last she was able to step back onto solid footing. She cast her light around. Mortared blocks lined the old sewer’s walls and low ceiling. Her boots sloshed in a thin stream of water along the bottom.

“Over here.” Renny led the way along the sewer with the assurance of a well-schooled rat. After thirty yards, a grated gateway opened to the right. He crossed to it and tugged the gate open. Hinges squealed. “Now through here.”

Crude steps led deeper into the darkness and down to a room that made her gasp. The walls had been painted in a riotous garden of flowers and trees set among trickling waterways and azure pools. It was like stepping into a Monet painting.

“Welcome to the true entrance of the catacombs,” Renny said.

“Who did all of this?” she asked, sweeping her light, noting a few sections marred by graffiti.

He shrugged. “All sorts of dobbers make their way down. Artists, partiers, mushroom farmers. A couple years ago, the
cataflics
—that’s our name for the police who patrol down there—discovered a large chamber set up as a movie theater, with a big screen, popcorn maker, and carved-out seats. When police investigators returned a day later, they found it all gone. Only a note remained in the middle of the floor, warning ‘Do not try to find us.’ That’s the underworld of Paris. Large sections still remain unexplored, cut off by cave-ins or simply lost in time.
Cataphiles,
like me and my mates, do our best to fill in those blank spots on the old maps, tracking our discoveries, recording every intricacy.”

“Like you’ve done with your tattoo.”

“It was Jolie’s idea,” he said with a sad smile. “She’s a tattoo artist. A dead good one, she is. She wanted to immortalize our journey together underground.”

He went silent again, but only for a moment.

“I met her down below, not far from here, both of us all muddy. We exchanged phone numbers by flashlight.”

“Tell me about that day she disappeared.”

“I had classes to go to. She had the afternoon off and left with another girl, Liesl from Germany. I dinna know her last name. They went down after hearing rumors of some secret group moving through the area.”

“The Order of the Solar Temple.”

“Aye.” He worked the back of his shirt up. “At the base of my neck, you’ll see a room marked with a little flower.”

She peered closer at his tattoo, shining her flashlight. She found the tiny Celtic rose and touched it with a finger.

Renny shivered. “That’s where we are now. We’ll follow Jolie’s map to the newest piece of my tattoo; that was where she’d been headed. She found an entrance into a forgotten section of the labyrinth, but she’d only just begun to explore it when she heard that rumor about the Solar Temple.” He lowered his shirt and pointed to a tunnel leading out. “I know most of the way by heart, but I’ll need help once we’re closer.”