They both looked to me.
I studied the picture, and then the next. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t know?” Nick asked. “Your job is to know them.”
I shook my head. “I don’t recall any demon that sucks the eyes out.”
Colin gestured to my laptop still open on the bed. “Then search the records.”
“Only ten percent of the Valducan Archives are digitized. I’d have to go back to the chateau and search the books.”
“We don’t have time to go to HQ,” Nick said. “The authorities are going to be scouring the catacombs for whoever killed these people, which means they’ll probably get killed themselves. We have to eliminate the threat now. So think, Doctor.”
A sharp spike of anger shot through my gut at Nick’s scolding. But he was right. I was the team’s Librarian. This was my job. Closing my eyes, I searched my memory for anything that targeted eyes and didn’t leave a mark. Even beyond the Archives, my experience as an anthropologist gave me a wide knowledge of folklore and supposedly mythical monsters, the main reason I was selected for the job. Other demons ate eyes. Wendigos loved eating them. But surgical removal? “I can’t think of anything.”
Nick frowned, but only for a moment before his grin returned. “A holy weapon will destroy them, regardless.”
“We’re in Paris,” Colin offered. “Maybe the eyes are French cuisine to ghouls.”
We laughed as Nick pulled his duffel from the closet and dropped it on the bed. “We guess ghouls from the initial report. So, Mal, what harms ghouls?”
“Obsidian,” I answered.
“Good.” He withdrew a box of ammo from his bag and pulled out a round. “If things get hairy, these will drop one.” He held up a nine millimeter with a black-gem nose, prongs holding it in place like a goth girl’s engagement ring. “We don’t want to be shooting much down there,” he said, continuing his digging. “Yes, the glass tip will cut down on ricochets, but closed-quarter shooting is always dangerous. I ever tell you about that vampire nest we rooted out of the Moscow Metro?”
“Every time you drink vodka,” Colin answered.
Nick paused. “I do, don’t I?” He shook his head. “Don’t answer that.”
“What about my sawed-off?” I asked. “I have some obsidian shells.”
“You and that fucking sawed off,” he said. “Yes, it’ll work. No, don’t shoot it. The other problem with shooting down there will be report. Give us all some permanent hearing loss. We’ll need to run suppressed and even then, it’ll still be loud as hell.”
“Then why bring guns?” Colin asked.
“Cause I’d rather be deaf than dead,” I answered.
Nick nodded in approval. “That’s my boy.”
“So what’s the plan?” I asked.
“Three hundred klicks leaves a lot of room for them to hide. The sooner we begin the better. I say 2200 hours we go in. So rest up.”
The night was still and humid as Nick and I exited the van, gear in hand. My sacred charge, Hounacier, a bone-handled machete, hung at my waist. Nick’s holy nadziak, a Polish war pick named Ozkareen, clanged from the black plastic ring at his belt. Colin drove off the moment the door was closed, leaving us alone on the empty street.
We stopped at a metal door set into the sidewalk and lit by a single light post orbited by moths. We heaved up the door and a caged screen beneath, revealing a landing four feet down and steel rungs descending into the darkness below.
Nick drew a milky plastic tube from his vest pouch and cracked it in one hand. Orange light ignited within like liquid fire and he dropped it. The glow stick fell and fell, tumbling past more steel rungs until finally bouncing out of sight twenty meters below. He stabbed a finger downward and I swung my legs through the opening and dropped onto the landing. Nick handed me a heavy pack, which I set at my feet before moving to the rungs.
I clicked the lamp affixed to my caving helmet, unleashing a beam of crimson light. With a final nod to Nick, I started the climb down. Dizzying patterns of multi-colored spray-paint and marker covered every inch of the walls. Symbols, names, professions of love, and illegible slogans scrawled in dozens of different languages all stating the unspoken truth — I was here before you.
The heat of the summer night quickly vanished, the temperature dropping with each rung downward. The sweat on my neck grew colder, bringing a chill. Colin’s whispered voice sounded above me as he returned, the van now safely parked. I looked up to see his silhouette pull the door shut, sealing us in with a metallic thud.
The shaft around me opened up, revealing a long passage, the floor peppered with cigarette butts, spent batteries, empty wrappers, and burnt matchsticks. Nick’s glowsitck burned at my feet, casting its light across the graffiti-etched walls. I shone my light either way up the passage, seeing only a short way down each before the darkness swallowed the red beam. Dust rained down from my companions’ descent and I stepped aside. I brushed the grit from my face, a pointless endeavor, I knew, as there would soon be so much more to wipe over the next few hours.
Nick was grinning as he reached the bottom, his white teeth glowing red in my light. “Reminds me of Moscow,” he said with approval.
Colin’s voice echoed from above. “Reminds me of a carnival house into hell.”
I glanced over at the giant pentagram spray painted beside me, its disproportionate goat’s head leering out from the inverted star. I knew that Colin, the ever-devout Irish Catholic, was going to hate this hunt.
He reached the bottom and curled his lip at the painted symbol.
“Welcome to hell,” Nick said. I wasn’t sure if he was merely being dramatic, or translating the French words scrawled above the goat’s image.
Colin snorted and touched Saighnean, the holy anthropomorphic Celtic sword at his waist. “Fuck this place.”
“Which way?” Nick asked, turning to me. Joviality was gone. Only the cold steel seriousness of a Valducan knight remained. He was a different man when he hunted.
I pointed down the eastern passage. “Bodies were found that way.”
Nick drew his torch, clicked on a bright red beam, and started down, taking point.
We followed the winding tunnel past small chambers littered with spent candles and empty beer cans. One room was still lit with burning candles, but there were no other signs of the occupants. The air was still, completely unmoving, and when we did stop, the absolute silence was more unsettling than I cared to admit. More than once, the low passages forced us to crawl like worms to continue and I was grateful for the helmet as I banged my head into the rock above.
After two hours, the smell of decay tickled my nose. We turned into a small room. Dark splatters, almost black in our red lights, marred the pale limestone walls. Dried, bloody mud covered the floor, broken and dusty under booted footprints. The stink of ammonia prickled my nose somewhere deep below the stench of dried blood and spilt intestines.
“Here we are,” I said. Taking a moment, I removed my water bottle and washed the dirt from my mouth with a healthy swallow. My left hand burned from the numerous nicks and scrapes, and I wished I’d worn a glove on it. But the warding eye tattooed on my palm would be useless if covered and taking the time to remove a glove might not be an option if I needed it. The tattoo, one of several on my body, was a gift from Hounacier, a blessed medal to commemorate a special kill.
Nick walked into the center of the dried stains and looked around, searching the ceiling and walls for some hidden secret.
“Wish we could have seen what it looked like,” Colin said. He ran a gloved finger around one of the sharp holes left by tripod feet dotting the cracked floor, remnants from where the workers had recorded the gruesome scene before moving the bodies.