The Skeleton Key: A Short Story Exclusive (4 page)

She leaped as the guard screamed and toppled forward. She caught him up, embracing him with one arm like a long-lost lover, and used her momentum to carry him into the room. She pointed her SIG Sauer past his body and targeted the guard to the right as he stepped clear of the pillar. She shot him in the face.

Screams erupted across the room. The flock scattered to all sides, like a flushed covey of quail. The remaining guard fired at her, strafing wildly, but she used her new “lover” as a body shield, bulldozing forward. Rounds pelted into the man’s Kevlar armor, but one bullet struck the back of his head. His struggling weight went suddenly limp.

She carried the deadweight another two steps, enough to get a good angle around the pillar. She fired at the exposed man, squeezing the trigger twice. She clipped the guard’s ear, knocking his head back. The second shot ripped through his exposed throat, severing his spine. He crashed to floor.

Seichan dropped the guard in her arms and took up a shooter’s stance, aiming toward the altar. Vennard had retreated behind it. Gabriel, still dazed and slow to react from the drugs he’d ingested, looked confused. He still held the sword at the throat of the bound woman. A trickle of blood flowed from where the blade’s razored edge had already sliced that tender skin.

The other sacrifice, unguarded now, leaped to her feet and fled away. Seichan waved the blond woman toward the exit as she came running at her—only too late did Seichan notice the dagger clutched in the woman’s hand.

With a scream of rage, she lunged at Seichan.

Unable to get clear in time, Seichan twisted to the side, ready to take the knife strike to the shoulder, rather than somewhere more vital.

It proved unnecessary.

Before the dagger could hit, something flew past Seichan’s shoulder and cracked the woman square in the face. A white human skull bounced to the stone floor and rolled away. From the corner of her eye, she spotted Renny running over, clutching another skull in his fist. He’d clearly grabbed the only weapons at hand from one of the niches.

His attack caused the woman to stumble, long enough for Seichan to get her pistol around and fire point-blank into the woman’s chest. The impact knocked her assailant off her feet. She slid across the floor, a bloom of blood brightening the front of her white shift.

Renny came rushing up. He tossed aside the skull and snatched one of the guard’s assault rifles from the floor, but from the way he bungled with it, it looked like he’d been better off with the skull. Renny stared down at the dead woman, his face a mask of confusion. The reason for his bewilderment became clear a second later.

From the altar, Gabriel cried out, pain cutting through his drugged haze.
“Liesl!”

Seichan recognized that name. It was the German girl Renny had mentioned during his recounting of Jolienne’s disappearance. The two girls had come down here, exploring together, when Jolienne disappeared. It now seemed that the circumstances surrounding that disappearance weren’t as much a matter of accident as it appeared. Renny’s girlfriend hadn’t stumbled upon the cult’s location here—she’d been lured, led by Liesl like a cow to the slaughter, to be the final sacrifice.

“Non!”
Gabriel wailed, heartbroken. With his eyes fixed on the bloody body, he fell to his knees, the sword clattering to the altar.

Others of the flock began to flee out the tunnel, abandoning their leader. But Vennard was not giving up so easily.

From a pocket of his robe, he pulled out what looked like a transmitter. A green light glowed at the top. He had a finger pressed to a button.

“If I let go of this switch, we all die,” he said calmly, his voice resonating with that hypnotic quality that had so easily swayed the gullible. He stepped around the altar. “Let me go. Even follow me out, if you’d like. And we can all still live.”

Seichan backed away and waved Renny aside. Despite Vennard’s grandiose vision, he was not suicidal. She took him at his word. He would refrain from blowing up the catacombs, at least until he himself got clear.

Vennard studied her, attempting to read her. A good cult leader needed a keen eye to judge people, to predict their actions. He slowly moved forward, step-by-step, toward the exit, pushing Seichan ahead of him.

“You want to live as much as any of us, Seichan. Yes, it took me a moment, but I recognize you now. From what I’ve read, you were always reasonable. None of us need to die this—”

A sword burst from the center of his chest, thrust through from behind.

“We must
all
die!” Gabriel yelled as Vennard fell to his knees. “Liesl cannot ascend without the proper sacrifice. Blood and fire. You said so. To become the angels you promised!”

Gabriel shoved the sword deeper as madness, grief, and exaltation glowed in his face. Blood poured from Vennard’s mouth.

Seichan dropped her pistol and lunged forward, grabbing for the transmitter with both hands. She got her finger over the trigger before Vennard could let go. Nose to nose, he stared back at her, his eyes shining with disbelief and shock—but also with understanding.

In the end, he had reaped what he had sown.

Gabriel yanked back on the hilt and kicked away Vennard’s body to free the blade. Seichan fell to her backside, getting tangled as the cult leader fell on top of her. Gabriel raised his sword high with both hands, ready to plunge it into Seichan.

But Renny stepped behind him and cracked him in the back of the skull with the butt of his rifle. Gabriel’s eyes rolled back, and his body crumpled to the floor.

“What a loony bampot,” Renny said.

He came forward to help Seichan up, but she waved to the altar. “Go free Jolienne.”

He stared down at the transmitter clutched in her hands. “Is it over?”

Seichan caught the glint of steel shining above his scarf.

“Not yet.”

W
ith the midday sun cresting high overhead, Seichan waited beside the parked Peugeot 508 sedan in front of the Ritz Paris. The rental had been arranged by Dr. Claude Beaupré to transport them from the Latin Quarter to the rendezvous back at the hotel.

As a precaution, she kept the sedan between her and the doors to the hotel. Additionally, she had Renny retreat to the square of the Place Vendôme. Jolienne was safe at a local hospital, having the cut on her neck treated. He had wanted to stay with her, but Seichan still needed him.

The doors to the Ritz Paris finally opened and discharged a trio of figures. In the center strode Claude, dressed again in tweeds, but he’d donned a rakish hat to shadow his features, clearly as cautious as Seichan about this very public meeting. It would not be good for him to be found associated with a Guild assassin-turned-traitor. He was flanked by two massive men in black suits and long overcoats, surely hiding an arsenal of weapons within those folds.

Claude offered her the barest nod of greeting.

She stepped around to the rear of the sedan to meet him. She kept her hands in the open, offering no threat. Claude motioned for the two men to stay on the curb as he joined her at the back of the car. He carried a black leather Louis Vuitton briefcase.

The historian squinted up into the bright sky, shading his eyes with his free hand. “It is noon, and Paris still stands. I assume that means Luc Vennard’s plan failed, his
great purge
quashed.”

Seichan shrugged. By now, Renny’s
cataflics,
the elite police of that subterranean world, were likely scouring the catacombs, accompanied by the city’s
démineurs,
their bomb squads.

“And what of Monsieur Vennard?” Claude asked.

“Dead.”

A small smile of satisfaction graced his features. He glanced to the darkened windows of the sedan. “And according to your brief phone call, you rescued my son.”

Seichan stepped to the rear of the Peugeot sedan and pressed the zero in the silver 508 emblem beside the taillight. The hidden button popped open the trunk. Within its roomy interior lay Gabriel Beaupré, his limbs bound with duct tape and a ball gag secured in place with her own cashmere scarf. Gabriel winced at the sudden brightness, then struggled when he spotted his father.

Interrupting the family reunion, Seichan slammed the trunk closed. She didn’t want anyone passing by to note what was happening. Neither did Claude, who raised no objections to her abrupt gesture. He dared not attempt to free his bound son from the trunk in such a public space.

“As you can see, Gabriel is fine,” she said, and held up the sedan’s electronic fob. “And here is the key to his freedom.”

Claude reached for it—but she pulled her hand away.

Not so fast.

She tugged down her jacket’s collar and exposed the steel one beneath it.

“What about this?” She also nodded over to Renny, who still had his scarf in place. “An exchange of keys. Your son’s freedom for ours.”

“Oui
. That was the deal. I am a man of my word.” He reached into a pocket and removed a hotel key card. He placed it on the top of the trunk. “Inside your hotel room, you will find what you need to free yourselves.”

He must have read the suspicion on her face and smiled sadly.

“Fear not. Your deaths will not serve me. In fact, I plan to pin Vennard’s loss upon your traitorous shoulders. With the Guild hunting you, no suspicions will be cast my way. And the faster you run,
ma chére amie,
the better it is for all of us. But, as an additional sign of good faith, I believe I promised you a reward.”

He swung the briefcase onto the trunk and ran a hand over the rich leather surface. “Vuitton’s finest. The Président Classeur case. It is yours to keep.” He smiled over at her with amusement and French pride. “But I suspect what is
inside
is the true price for my son’s freedom. A clue to the shadowy leaders of the Guild.”

He snapped open the case to reveal a stack of files. On the top folder, imprinted onto the cover, was the image of an eagle with outstretched wings, holding an olive branch in one talon and a bundle of arrows in the other. It was the Great Seal of the United States.

But what does this have to do with the Guild?

He snapped the briefcase closed and slid it toward her.

“What you do with this information—where it will lead—will be very dangerous territory to tread,” he warned. “It might serve you better to simply walk away.”

Not a chance.

She took the case and the hotel key card. With the prizes in hand, she placed the sedan’s fob on the trunk and backed to the curb, well out of the reach of Claude’s guards.

The historian didn’t make a move to take the sedan’s key. Instead, he placed a palm tenderly on the trunk’s lid. His eyes closed in relief as the tension drained from his shoulders. He was no longer a Guild associate, merely a father relieved at the safe return of his prodigal son. Claude took a long breath, then motioned for one of his men to retrieve the key and take the wheel. As his guards climbed into the front seats, Claude ducked into the back, perhaps to be that much closer to his son.

Seichan waited for the sedan to pull away from the curb and head down the street.

As the car vanished out of the square, Renny crossed over to join her. “Did ye get what ye wanted?”

She nodded, picturing the relief Claude must be feeling. For the sake of his son, the historian couldn’t risk that she might have searched the papers first. They had to be authentic.

“Do ye think he can be trusted?” Renny asked, reaching to his scarf.

“That remains to be seen.”

As they both stared across the plaza, Renny took off his cashmere neckpiece and revealed a close-guarded secret, a secret that Seichan had kept from Claude.

Renny’s throat was bare.

He rubbed at the red burn from his earlier shock. “It was good to get that bloody thing off.”

Seichan agreed. She reached to her throat and unsnapped her own collar. She stared down at the green LED light. After Vennard’s death, she’d found herself with an extra hour before the noon deadline. Taking advantage of the additional time in the catacombs, Seichan had reached out to Renny’s network of resources. He’d claimed that his fellow
cataphiles
came from all around the world and from every walk of life.

Upon her instructions, Renny had sent out a clarion call for help. One of the
cataphile
brothers responded, an expert in electrical engineering and microdesign. He was able to get the collars off and removed the shocking mechanism from Seichan’s. This was all done underground, where Claude was unlikely to be able to receive any warning signals from the collars.

Once free, Seichan risked making a play for the briefcase.

As she stared at her collar now, Renny’s early question played in her head:
Could Claude still be trusted?

The answer came a moment later.

The green light on her collar flashed to red as it received a transmitted signal, but with the shocking mechanism neutralized, there was no danger.