Catacomb

by Madeleine Roux

  Dan shook and finally turned away. The last picture was too much, just a gaping, empty mouth. He could feel that tiny bit of hospital candy bar rolling around nauseatingly in his stomach. Her smile had been pretty and perfect, and now there was nothing left of it at all.

  A soft rustling drew Dan’s attention, even if he refused to look at the horrifying photos. Finnoway produced a small black velvet bag and upturned it. A cascade of glittering white teeth spilled onto the table, scattering and rolling, dropping off the table and twinkling like falling beads.

  “She fought back, though, didn’t she? The spitfire . . . Going so far as to bite off your little finger.”

  Finnoway’s grin was slow and easy, and the way he deliberately emphasized each word made Dan cling to the chair under him. It wasn’t possible, was it? But he hadn’t seen the raw wound of his taken finger. He had no idea how it had been done, or with what. . . .

  He doubled over, reaching for the bucket and retching up the contents of his stomach.

  “You can get a person to do anything, provided the right motivation is given,” Finnoway added softly, flicking away one of the fallen teeth that had landed too close to his expensive trousers.

  Dan wiped at the sour taste in his mouth, relieved when Finnoway gathered up the photos like a spread of playing cards and tucked them back into the briefcase. “S-so what do you want me to do?” Dan croaked. “What’s my motivation?”

  “I want you to rot in prison for the rest of your meaningless life, because you’re an Ash, and just like your mother, you can’t seem to help but get annoyingly underfoot,” Finnoway told him with a faraway smile. “And you will. Rot in prison, I mean. You take medication, don’t you? Mild dissociative disorder? You lose time occasionally, right? Minutes, even hours . . . Plenty of time to murder an innocent girl and flee the scene.”

  Dan shook his head fiercely. No, no, this wasn’t right. It couldn’t happen this easily. He couldn’t be this powerless. “I haven’t had an episode in a long time.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Dan thought back to the night in the Ninth Ward, when he’d lost so much time on the way home and had to recall it in pieces. He remembered falling asleep in the taxicab this morning, and wondering how it could have happened so fast. Those hadn’t been blackouts, surely?

  “You see,” Finnoway said smartly. “You’ve had them—your whole life, you’ve had them. And that’s all a jury will need to hear about that. Your little finger lodged in a dead girl’s throat will just be the icing on top.”

  Dan felt boneless. Defeated. He sat back heavily against the chair, pinned there by the waves of nausea and terror that seemed to crash over him one after another. He knew the question he wanted to ask, and so he did it, even though it hardly mattered now. He would be branded a murderer—in all the history books, the files, the photos, this would be his legacy. His life.

  “You killed my parents,” he said softly. Sadly.

  “They took a long dive off a steep cliff in a Cadillac,” the Artificer replied with a shrug. “That’s not something most survive.”

  “But you did it,” Dan whispered, tremulous with rage. If he didn’t keep control he would lash out, dive across the table and throttle Finnoway just like Finnoway claimed Dan had throttled Tamsin. He might as well earn his sentence. “You drove them to it.”

  “And you would never be able to prove as much.”

  It was tempting to play his hand, to tell Finnoway about the call Abby was making to Maisie’s coworkers in hopes that it would buy him some leverage. But that would be a mistake. He didn’t want Finnoway on their trail at all. He needed time. Time for Abby and Jordan to get help before one of Finnoway’s people got to them first.

  Dan looked at the teeth scattered across the table and closed his eyes. He did have one bit of leverage left. One desperate hope to trade up. “What’s worth more to you, me sitting in jail or a powerful talisman? A person’s blood means something to you people, right? Their legacy determines the talisman? Luck turns into luck, power turns into power. That is, if those things even work.”

  “Of course they work,” Finnoway sneered, squinting down his beak of a nose at Dan. “What do you know about it?”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Dan lied. “But I know my family tree. And my family tree doesn’t just have Ashes, it has Crawfords. Go ahead, look it up. Look up Warden Daniel Crawford. The man did all kinds of experiments. He knew a lot about passing on a legacy. I bet his bones would make a mean talisman. I could tell you where they are.”

  “This is an amusing game, but I’m not interested in playing.”

  Dan shrugged, hoping he looked more confident than he felt. His stomach trembled, threatening another vomiting spell. “Your loss.”

  The Artificer circled him, watching, buzzard-like and silent. Then he paused behind Daniel’s chair, and in the dim light of the room, Dan could see the glow of a mobile phone reflecting off the metal table. Finnoway was reading.

  “Hm.” A chilly pause. “Interesting. More interesting than an Ash, that’s for certain.”

  “So what does that mean?” Dan asked. “Still want me to rot in prison?”

  Finnoway’s dark laugh echoed off the walls and in his head. “Oh, you’ll still rot, Daniel, but now that I know how powerful your blood is, you’ll be rotting in pieces.”

  “Does your wife know you’re a complete head case?” Dan asked, swaying slightly in the passenger seat of Finnoway’s car.

  He had been handcuffed, and with the help of Officer James—who it turned out wouldn’t have required much evidence at all to bring Dan in—smuggled out down a long, narrow hallway and through the back door of the police station. They had hurried him across the parking lot, perhaps nervous about drawing attention. That gave Dan hope, at least. He was tempted to scream to try to get help right then, but Officer James had a gun, and there was also the matter of Finnoway’s two new assistants, who were waiting to meet them. They were both young women, dressed as sharply and cleanly as Tamsin once was, but Dan could see a bulge under each of their blazers. Three armed captors would be hard to escape.

  Now those two armed women sat in the back of the black Rolls-Royce, silently keeping an eye on Dan and Finnoway in the front. But Dan was interested in the wedding band on Finnoway’s hand. He was trying to imagine the woman who would marry him.

  Finnoway rested one wrist lazily on the steering wheel as he drove, and laughed wryly at Dan’s question. His cufflinks flashed in the afternoon sunlight—tiny silver molars. “I’m surprised at you, Dan. I thought your generation was supposed to be so progressive. Do you think that just because she’s a woman and a mother she’s some kind of blameless saint?”

  “She married you,” Dan replied darkly. “So I guess that means she’s a total nightmare, too.”

  “If pressed, I’d say Briony is the more sadistic of the two of us,” Finnoway answered. It was a serene observation, one he made with a fond, distant smile. Ugh. Dan didn’t want to know what kind of moment he was remembering. “Sorry to say you probably won’t be making her acquaintance. She’s rarely at the Catacomb at this time of day. Little Jessy has Tae Kwon Do.”

  Jesus. They made the Bender family look like the Brady Bunch.

  “She doesn’t ride motocross, does she?” Dan asked bitterly. It would be just so fitting if his shadow on a motorcycle was Finnoway’s batshit wife.

  “Not to my knowledge. Why?”

  Dan huddled against the window, weak with hunger and a more insistent, gnawing feeling that left him feeling sore and fragile. “No reason.”

  His hand ached, but he didn’t want to give Finnoway the satisfaction of seeing him in pain. Dan clenched his jaw, trying to ignore the persistent throb and burn.

  The route from the police station gradually turned familiar—Dan had gone up and down these same streets twice now, once when chasing the masked vandals, and again when he traced his way back to the funerary home. He didn’t need to be told where to w
alk, though the Artificer’s assistants helped him along anyway. They were headed to the basement door, Dan knew. He noticed they were shuffling over a deep, single tire tread in the pavement as they marched him up to the curb.

  The main, silver door of the first floor was X-ed with police tape that fluttered over the open space. This must have been where Finnoway had set up the supposed crime scene. Dan flinched and turned away, remembering those horrible photos. He didn’t bother to hope that Finnoway had made things painless for Tamsin. He didn’t want to know how it all had really happened. Finnoway’s version of events was the only one that really mattered now anyway.

  Dan’s hand throbbed as if in sympathy; he was not looking forward to the day when he removed the bandage and had to look at the damage on a regular basis.

  Please, God, when I look closer don’t let there be teeth marks.

  Just before he was shuffled through the door, Dan saw the familiar black motorcycle parked a little ways down the block, just beyond the police tape. Behind it, the back of the office building across the street had been heavily graffitied with the same white chalky paint he’d found outside Steve’s apartment. Instead of the French sentence he remembered, though, this mark had symbols he didn’t recognize.

  “What do they mean?” he asked idly. Finnoway didn’t seem interested in holding anything back now that he had Dan trapped in every possible sense.

  Finnoway’s glitzy watch flashed as he flicked his hand at a circular symbol with a slash running through it. “That one means we’re low on toilet paper.”

  “What? Really?” Dan stumbled a little over the uneven ground. Then they were inside the door, and he slowed down, trying to stall.

  “No, not really. Keep walking, you’re boring me.”

  Instead of heading in the direction Dan had gone last time, Finnoway took them left at the corridor. They passed through a series of nondescript rooms before finally stopping outside a heavy, ancient-looking door under an arched doorway. Finnoway rapped three times on this door, and then Dan heard a key turning from the inside, scraping the metal noisily before the creak of locks and hinges gave and the door stuttered open. A breath of musty sewer air flooded out to meet them, wet and choking.

  “Never heard of Febreze, I take it?” Dan was shoved unceremoniously through the archway and into a cool, dank hall. A figure in a dog mask was there to greet them, and it was impossible to tell through the mask whether the person was surprised to see Dan or not.

  “I’m glad you’ve turned the corner on sullen,” Finnoway said, shouldering up next to Dan. He was taller, however, and had to duck his head to safely navigate the tunnel. “But you won’t rile me up, Daniel, though your attempts do hint at a joie de vivre I wouldn’t have counted on from you. Your parents were pathetically easy to wipe out. I’m glad you’re interested in making things more fun.”

  The door slammed shut behind them, leaving them in momentary blackness. Dan’s vision adjusted, showing an ordinary brick tunnel. There was nothing particularly sinister about it, though Finnoway’s presence at his side kept him in a constant state of alert unease.

  Finally, the passage around them widened. Still, Dan pulled his shoulders in close to his body, finding that they were watched on both sides by Bone Artists in their crude, crumpled animal masks.

  “Why do they wear those things?” Dan asked, averting his eyes from the watchers, their heads turning slightly to follow his progress.

  “Mardi Gras was always the easiest time of year to do our work,” Finnoway explained sternly. “The tradition kept.”

  On and on they went, the air turning more tepid and rank while also getting cooler, the smell of wet mud and worms tickling his nose. He had no idea how Finnoway could navigate in such total darkness, but the man’s grip on him was sure, and Dan began to get the hang of measuring each step before taking the next.

  At last, they reached the end of the tunnel, where they were greeted by another door. It was illuminated on either side by torches that flickered over uneven, craggy walls. Dan wished the torches would go out. In this newfound light, he could see that surrounding them, cemented into the ceiling and walls, were hundreds upon hundreds of white, grinning skulls.

  It was just the two of them in the corridor of bones, but still Dan didn’t struggle. Where would he go? He would trip and flail back through the tunnel behind them, only to meet thirty or so assailants hungry to fall on him.

  Dan never should have mentioned the warden to Finnoway. He would gladly take his chances in court, or even a lifetime in prison, over this. How many times did he have to learn that things could always get worse?

  His steps slowed. Everything felt hopeless. Just putting one foot in front of the next felt like too much to ask.

  “You’re weak. We’ll get you some food and water,” Finnoway said, pushing Dan farther down the corridor.

  “I don’t want anything from you.”

  “You’ll eat what you’re given.”

  Dan shook his head, leaning forward into his heavy steps. “I know what happens to people who eat food in the underworld. They can’t leave.”

  Finnoway smiled darkly. “I was still thinking about Hansel and Gretel, but that’s good. I’ll use that.”

  On the other side of the door, they came into a huge, vaulted space with floodlights and scaffolding. The tunnel must have connected them to another building. It reminded Dan of an archeological dig, with shelves balanced against the outer walls and crates littering the floor and some of the scaffolding flats. Straw stuck out of some of the crates and packing peanuts spilled out of others. Dan smelled and tasted gritty dust on the air.

  An enormous fabric flag hung from the center of the ceiling, aged white with black paint lettering across it.

  THESE WERE THE RULES AS THEY WERE FIRST PUT DOWN:

  First, that the Artist should choose an Object dear to the deceased.

  Second, that the Artist feel neither guilt nor remorse in the taking.

  Third, and most important, that the Object would not hold power until blooded. And that the more innocent the blood for the blooding, the more powerful the result.

  Dan wondered if that was an actual code of conduct or just more legendary nonsense to keep the populace afraid of the mere possibility of the Bone Artists existing. But they were beyond possibility now, and judging by the number of skulls Dan had seen on the way in, these people were not about idle threats.

  The shelves along the walls were overflowing with deep plastic buckets, each one marked with a name in huge, black block letters. Dan scanned the names. Most of them were unfamiliar, but others he recognized.

  CRAWFORD, M.

  BERKLEY, E.

  BERKLEY, R.

  BONHEUR, M.

  He couldn’t take his eyes away from the box marked with his father’s name. His body felt hollowed out, all of his will and fight gone.

  A bin labeled BERKLEY, O. was still on the ground, open and empty. It occurred to him that he should warn Oliver that they were coming for him next, but that was ridiculous. He’d never leave there alive.

  And now Dan would have a bin of his own, and parts of him would be transformed and sold, and his doomed bloodlines could make life miserable for someone else.

  Maybe he could warn Oliver as a ghost, the way Micah had tried to warn him.

  He wasn’t a ghost yet, his hand reminded him helpfully, stinging beneath the bandages. A dozen or so Bone Artists were here, too, wandering the vault, their masks removed and clipped to their waistbands or belts. There was no uniformity among them that Dan could detect. Some were young, some were old, all races and genders represented.

  “Get him something to eat,” Finnoway was saying, snapping his fingers at a man who nodded and scampered down an adjoining hall. A few low archways went off in different directions, but there was no telling where they led.

  “So is this where you make the talismans, or just where you organize everything to ship?” Dan asked, casting his eyes around the huge
expanse of the vault. Finnoway didn’t try to stop him from wandering around the outer wall. He looked almost pleased, noting the impressed look on Dan’s face.

  “I’d rather not give you a lengthy explanation of the process,” he replied. “It would be a waste of breath, considering how soon you’ll be dead.”

  Dan gulped.

  “What if I had something more valuable for you? Something I could offer.”

  “That doesn’t work twice,” Finnoway said. “You already traded up. The trick somewhat loses its effect the more you do it.”

  Dan stopped at one of the messy tables, on which several cardboard boxes sat open, revealing alphabetized labels. Inside the boxes were hundreds upon hundreds of folders, not unlike the ones Dan had found back in the funeral home. In fact, these might have been the same folders, transported in stacks—Dan could see what looked like the Ash folder now; it was right on top with its silly pen doodle on the cover.

  With the feeling that he had nothing much to lose, Dan lifted the folder with his left hand and opened it.

  Immediately, he heard the echoing clap of Finnoway’s shoes behind him, but the man made no move to restrain or interrupt.

  The folder had a lot more in it besides the funeral arrangements Dan had found inside earlier. There were notes and maps, and Dan found copies of the articles Maisie Moore had given him. There was even a transcript of testimony from what sounded like the trial that ultimately shut down Trax Corp., in 1995. The closing statement for the defense read:

  These accusations are absurd. Trax Corp. and Jacob Finnoway are blameless. These are just the mad rantings of an environmental fanatic, a fanatic who is currently evading arrest for trespassing and so refuses even to appear before us to testify. There is simply no hard, compelling evidence that this “under the table” drug ring ever existed. All we have are these conspiracy reports from a journalist who won’t even reveal her sources.