Several looked crooked and ready to fall.
"This is the ancient handiwork of Charles Guillaumot," Renny said, speaking in a rushed, nervous tone. "Back in 1774, a major section of the catacombs collapsed, swallowing up several streets and killing lots o’ people. After that, King Louis hired himself an architect, Guillaumot, to shore up the catacombs. He became the first true cataphile. He mapped and explored most of the tunnels and had these room pillars put in place. Not that collapses don’t still happen. In 1961, the ground opened up and swallowed an entire Parisian neighborhood, killing a bunch of people. Even today, cave-ins occur every year. It’s a big danger down here." Seichan only half listened to Renny’s story. A glint off one of the pillars had drawn her attention. The reflection was too bright for this dank and dreary place. She approached the pillar and discovered a ring of wires wrapped around the middle of the stack of stones, linking transmitters and blasting caps to fistfuls of yellowish-gray clay.
C4 explosive.
This was not the handiwork of that eighteenthcentury French architect.
She examined the bomb, careful not to disturb it. A small red LED light glowed from the transmitter, awaiting a signal. She cupped a hand over her flashlight and motioned for Renny to do the same with his helmet lamp.
The room plunged into darkness. As her eyes adjusted, she picked out the telltale pinpoints glowing across the room, hundreds of them, coming from pillars throughout the chamber. The entire room had been mined to explode.
"What is all of this?" Renny whispered beside her.
"Vennard’s purge," Seichan surmised, picturing the bustling city above.
She wondered how many other chambers across this necropolis were similarly set with explosives. She remembered Renny mentioning a reported gas leak.
Such a ruse would be a good way to evacuate the catacombs, leaving the cult free to plant charges throughout this subterranean world.
Renny must have feared the same. His voice grew somber with the implication. "They could bring half of Paris crashing down." Claude Beaupre had said Vennard wanted human sacrifice, to herald the birth of a new sun-king in fire and blood. Here was that plan about to come to fruition.
As she kept her hand cupped over her flashlight, her eyes acclimated themselves enough to note a wan glow from across the room, marking the entrance to a tunnel on the far side.
She continued across the chamber, heading for that light. She slipped out her pistol and pointed it forward. Keeping her flashlight muffled in her other hand, she allowed just enough illumination to avoid obstacles. Renny kept behind her with his helmet’s lamp switched off.