She had come to the hotel-the Ritz Paris-for an early-morning meeting with a historian who was connected to the Guild. Something major was afoot within the organization, stirring up all her contacts.
She knew that such moments of upheaval, when locked doors were momentarily left open and safeguards loosened, were the perfect time to snatch what she could. So she had reached in deep, pushed hard, and risked exposing herself perhaps too much.
One hand gently touched the collar-then lowered.
Definitely too much.
One of her trusted contacts had set up this rendezvous. But apparently money only bought so much trust. She had met with the historian in the Hemingway Bar downstairs, a wood-paneled and leather-appointed homage to the American writer.
The historian had been seated at a side table, nursing a Bloody Mary, a drink that had originated at this establishment. Next to his chair rested a black leather briefcase, holding the promise of secrets yet to be revealed.
She had a drink.
Only water.
Still a mistake.
Even now, her mouth remained cottony, her head equally so.
As she moved back into the room, a low groan drew her attention to the closed bathroom door. She cursed herself for not thoroughly checking the rest of the room upon first waking, blaming it on the fuzziness of her thinking.
That lack of vigilance ended now.
She stepped silently and swiftly across the room, snatching her holstered pistol off the nightstand. She shook the weapon free as she reached the door, letting the shoulder harness fall silently to the carpet.
She listened at the door. As a second groan- more pained now-erupted, she burst into the bathroom, pistol raised. She swept the small marbleadorned chamber, finding no one at the sink or vanity.
Then a bony arm, sleeved in tattoos, rose from the tub, waving weakly as if the bather were drowning. A hand found the swan-shaped gold faucet and gripped tightly to it.
As she sidled closer, a skinny auburn-haired boy- likely no more than eighteen-used his hold on the spigot to pull himself into view. He looked all ribs, elbows, and knees, but she took no chances, centering her pistol on his bare chest. Dazed, he finally seemed to see her, his eyes widening at both her half-naked state and the obvious threat of the weapon. He scrambled back in the empty tub, palms held up, looking ready to climb the marble walls behind him.
He wore only a pair of boxer briefs-and a stainless-steel collar.
A match to hers.
Perhaps sensing the same pinched pressure on his neck as Seichan felt on hers, he clawed at his throat.
"Don’t," she warned in French.
Panicked, he tugged. The green light on his collar flashed to red. His entire body jolted, throwing him a foot into the air. He crashed back into the bathtub.
She lunged and kept his head from cracking into the hard marble, feeling a snap of electricity sting her palm.
Her actions were not motivated by altruism. The kid plainly shared her predicament. Perhaps he knew more about the situation than she did. He convulsed for another breath-then went slack. She waited until his eyes fluttered back open; then she stood and backed away. She lowered her gun, sensing no threat from him.
He cautiously worked his way into a seated position. She studied him as he breathed heavily, slowly shaking off the shock. He was taller than she’d at first imagined. Maybe six feet, but rail thin-not so much scrawny as wiry. His hair was long to the shoulder, cut ragged with the cool casualness of youth. Tattoos swathed his arms, spilled over his shoulders, and spread into two dark wings of artwork along his back. His chest was clean, still an empty canvas.
"Comment tu t’appelles?" Seichan asked, taking a seat on the commode.
He breathed heavily. "Je m’appelle Renny…
Renny MacLeod." Though he answered in French, his brogue was distinctly Scottish.
"You speak English?" she asked.
He nodded, sagging with relief. "Aye. What is going on? Where am I?" "You’re in trouble." He looked confused, scared.
"What’s the last thing you remember?" she asked.
His voice remained dazed. "I was at a pub. In Montparnasse. Someone bought me a pint. Just the one. I wasn’t blottered or anything, but that’s the last I remember. Till I woke up here." So he must have been drugged, too. Brought here and collared, like her. But why? What game was being played?
The phone rang, echoing across the room.
She turned, suspecting the answer was about to be revealed. She stood and exited the bathroom. The padding of bare feet on marble told her that Renny was following. She picked up the phone on the bedside table.
"You’re both awake now," the caller said in English.
"Good. Time is already running short." She recognized the voice. It was Dr. Claude Beaupre, the historian from the Pantheon-Sorbonne University in Paris. She pictured the prim, silverhaired Frenchman seated in the Hemingway Bar. He had worn a threadbare tweed jacket, but the true measure of the man was found not in the cut of his cloth, but within the haughty cloak of his aristocratic air and manners. She guessed that somewhere in the past his family had noble titles attached to their names: baron, marquis, vicomte. But no longer.
Maybe that’s why he’d become a historian, an attempt to cling to that once-illustrious past.
When she had met him this morning, she’d hoped to buy documents pertaining to the Guild’s true leaders, but circumstances had clearly changed.
Had the man figured out who I am? If so, then why am I still alive?
"I have need of your unique skills," the historian explained, as if reading her thoughts. "I expended much effort to lure you here to Paris, to entice you with the promise of answers. You almost came too late." "So this is all a ruse." "Non. Not at all, mademoiselle. I have the documents you seek. Like you, I took full advantage of the tumult among our employers-your former, my current-to free the papers you came hunting. You have my solemn word on that. You came to buy them. I am now merely negotiating the price." "And what is that price?" "I wish you to find my son, to free him before he is killed." Seichan struggled to keep pace with these negotiations. "Your son?" "Gabriel Beaupre. He has fallen under the spell of another compatriot of our organization, one I find most distasteful. The man is the leader of an apocalyptic cult, l’Ordre du Temple Solaire." "The Order of the Solar Temple," she translated aloud.
Renny MacLeod’s face hardened at the mention of the name.
"Oui," Claude said from the phone. "A decade ago, the cult had been behind a series of mass suicides in two villages in Switzerland and another in Quebec.
Members were found poisoned by their own hand or drugged into submitting. One site was firebombed in a final act of purification. Most believed the OTS had dissolved after that-but in fact, they’d only gone underground, serving a new master." 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 Beaupre 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 Beaupre 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." Fifteen 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 cafes, bakeries, cheese shops, creperies, 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 Beaupre 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 carrieres 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.
