Rogue Angel - Swordsman's Legacy Part 25

Francois had gotten the notion to tuck away the treasure after the miserable experience constructing the cathedral. It was still under construction. They'd only completed reinforcing the tunnels beneath the building site a fortnight earlier. Dirty, sweaty work. That he could determine. Francois was merely the architect.

"Look there! A macabre temple of death!"

Half of the revelers split from Francois and veered right, into the small chamber he'd noted the previous week. Completely lined in skulls and femurs, a sort of makeshift temple had been erected. He suspected unsavory sorts used it for devil worship. He'd detected candle wax and perhaps a drop of blood on the surface of the stone dais. He'd leave the drunken party to it.

Hugging the amorous wench to his side, he proceeded onward after the queen's maid. Perhaps after the treasure had been laid, he could convince the woman to loosen up her stays and put caution aside.

Two wenches, one for each hand. Now that stirred his appet.i.tes.

Present day ANNJA DASHED DOWN the pa.s.sageway, bending as the stone ceiling angled a sudden lurch downward. Rubble on the floor consisted of pebbles, chunks of rough limestone fallen from the wall and the occasional bone. Putting aside dread-because the adventure was far too thrilling-she climbed a steep rise, and then the pathway tilted down forty-five degrees.

Momentum moving her briskly, her headlamp glittered across two sets of eyes.

Two men shouted French obscenities as they struggled with one another. Ascher's backpack slammed against the floor at Annja's rubber boots. His helmet followed. A beam of light glared up into her face.

From what she could determine, the other guy was young, a teenager, and had long dreadlocked hair. Definitely not a cata-cop. But then, what did she know? Maybe the police tried to blend with the underground life.

He clawed at Ascher with dirty fingers and kneed him in the thigh. No, policemen did not act like that.

Sliding her hand inside Ascher's backpack, Annja pulled out the folded leaf dagger she'd noticed earlier and opened it up. Using caution-she would allow Ascher to handle this one, as long as he was able-she kept a keen eye on the action. If the boy was high on drugs, he could possess remarkable strength, and may not feel his injuries as Ascher would.

Ascher delivered a punch below the kid's rib cage. A kidney shot. The boy bounced against the limestone wall behind him, arms splayed out. Annja's headlamp highlighted the track marks littering his inner arms. With a growling sneer, the kid barreled right back into Ascher.

It was plain to Annja that Ascher was doing his best not to harm the boy-who now appeared much younger than her original guess, perhaps only fifteen or sixteen.

They exchanged oaths and the kid declared Ascher a dirty c.o.c.kroach, the epitome of French curses.

This was getting nowhere fast.

Removing her lighted headgear and nestling it into Ascher's backpack so it spotlighted the brawl, Annja waited as the two struggled. Finally the boy's back spun to her.

She jumped, hooking her arms over his shoulders, and clamping her thighs around his hips for hold. The boy slammed her back against the curved dirt wall. Annja choked on falling bits of dirt and stone.

Dagger firmly in hand, she had the sense not to use it. She could cut him fatally. And how to get emergency help down here? But she had dislodged the attacker from Ascher.

"It is you who attracts this danger to me!" Ascher hissed. And then he chuckled.

Adrenaline flushing his system made his eyes wild with menace. Dancing like a prize fighter from foot to foot, he wound up and then punched the boy in the gut. The force banged the kid's head back into Annja's throat. Breath chuffed from her lungs.

"Me?" She let her hand fall and poked the dagger into the boy's thigh. He fell to his knees and Annja slunk away. "You're the bad-luck charm, Frenchman."

The boy beat at his bleeding thigh and fisted a mad gesture at Annja. She wielded the dagger before her in a threatening move. She jumped to dodge the kid's spit.

Ascher leaned in and with one good punch knocked the kid's lights out. He knelt there, momentarily frozen, and then dropped forward onto his face.

"Toxico," Ascher said. He toed the kid's shoulder. "Drug addict." 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 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." 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 m.u.f.fled 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." 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 Chasing History's Monsters might herself be a monster who wielded a magical sword. Wouldn't Doug Morrell have a heyday with that? 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 pa.s.sing 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 h.e.l.l out of here. A goose chase in this h.e.l.lacious 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 course he knew was wrong?

"Oh, stop it," she murmured under her breath. She had decided to trust Ascher. Enough said.

They pa.s.sed 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. 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. 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 k.n.o.bby 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 arrondiss.e.m.e.nt?"

"Saint Ignace is in the seventh. A small but gorgeous church," he said. "Can you smell the quicklime?"