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.