The Skeleton Key (Sigma Force 6.5)

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.”

With 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.