Seven Kinds of Hell (18 page)

A strap of the pack had snagged on the window latch behind me. I tried hauling myself up with both arms to relieve the weight on the pack, hoping it would come off of its own accord. No luck. I tried reaching up with one hand to work the strap off, and that unbalanced me further. I scrabbled to keep from falling out while caught and tangled.

There was a tremendous crash. The bedroom door burst open, slamming the splintered futon frame against the wall.

One of the men saw me, pointed, and shouted in French. The other…

The other was the scarred clean-head who’d tortured and killed Rupert Grayling.

We stared at each other for a fascinated moment. His eyes were the gray of the sky seen from under a foot of icy water.

He cocked his head. “But you’re the stray.
You
have the keys?”

Grayling’s keys? My stomach fell away when I realized he meant the figurines, what Grayling believed were the keys to Pandora’s Box. I struggled to pull myself free.

Three steps and he’d grabbed the back of my jeans. Yanked me out of the window, into the room. I landed on my butt, hard. He kicked me in the side, once, twice. The blows took my breath away.

The Beast roared. It flushed the pain away, gave me enough energy to vault up and turn on Clean-head. I snarled at him.

He pulled out a knife.

I slashed at him so quickly, I startled both of us. My fingernails left bloody trails on his hand and he dropped the knife. I turned and dove through the open window.

I had just enough time to hope I didn’t turn into a wolf as I plummeted.

I crashed onto the terrace. I landed better than I had a right to expect. I destroyed a few potted plants in my fall, but I was OK.

I pulled myself out of the greenery and saw the men intended to follow me. I ran to the roof door, which was open, and let myself in, locking it behind me.

The easiest thing for them to do is follow me on the ground,
I thought as I skidded down the stairs.

Maybe I could move a few buildings over before I took to the street. I’d managed the last jump OK.

I found a window and a fire escape on the second floor. I climbed to the top of the railing, and it wasn’t far over to the next fire escape, but it was high above my head. I doubted even another werewolf could jump that high. I had to go down another flight before I found a window I could crawl inside.

I was surprised at how far I was able to travel this way, sometimes up a few flights to a close-by roof, sometimes down a bit to an open window.

It was
fun.

If I’d only see Paris for a few hours, at least it was with terrific views of the narrow streets, the tiny shops with perfect produce, and the occasional stone church. And every time I looked around, I was able to see my attackers, moving farther away, looking for me in the wrong direction. I smothered a laugh, but it felt wonderful to use some of my abilities to my own benefit.

I still didn’t feel safe enough to trust the sidewalk. I put another few blocks between me and my pursuers. My agility, even without the Beast, was a treat, and I moved faster than I ever dreamed possible.

I was moving toward the Seine when suddenly the adrenaline left me and I petered out. I hated how exposed I now felt, but pushed on. I found a wine bar down an alley near the Pont Neuf that was half-full. I took a corner seat inside where I could see who came in and out and who was on the streets through the long windows. I ordered a glass of wine and began to relax.

The door opened. It was Clean-head and his friend.

They were moving toward me, brushing aside the polite welcome of the hostess.

I began to cast about for an escape route. There, a back room.

I pressed back there, then stopped. The room was full of rough-looking men drinking steadily. They went silent as I entered.

Only one of the several dozen French words I knew seemed appropriate: “
Merde
!”

The resentful silence was replaced by a loud guffaw.

I turned back; Clean-head had stopped and suddenly taken a seat at a table nearby.

“Little girl, I think you want the other room,” one of the men said, in English. “We have serious business to discuss here.”

“And serious drinking and eating to do, too!” said another.

“
Mais non!
Come, sit with us! Stay a while!” one shouted, to the approval of his friends.

“
Pardon,
” I said, backing out of there. I now was caught between that room of toughs and the seated killers.

The hostess came over to me. “The WC is downstairs,” she said in English. “That back there is most of the police detectives in this
arrondissement.
”

“Ah, I’m sorry to have bothered them.” A flash of inspiration. “Perhaps I should apologize again.”

“I do not think—” she began. I dashed back into the room.

“Ah, our little friend is back! Have a drink with us!”

“Or, two, or three,” I said. “Madame? Three bottles of—” I glanced at the chalkboard and pointed at a wine I’d never heard of, in the middle of the price range.

This met with a roar of approbation. I sneaked a look past Madame as she went for the wine; Clean-head was still out there.

Drinking with the rowdy detectives won.

An hour later, I was starting to get nervous. The three bottles of wine had only lasted so long, and others were ordered. My days of swilling vodka to tame the Beast had helped me keep up with them, but I was starting to feel the travel, the wine, and my flight across the rooftops and alleys of Paris.

As if responding to my worries, the detectives began to stand and sort themselves out. A few new ones joined us, and I realized
it was shift change. Some of these guys were going to work, some were going home.

I stood up and started to shake the hand of the detective next to me.

“
Non, mais non,
not like that!” He grabbed my shoulders and kissed me roughly on each cheek.

And since I couldn’t kiss one and not the others, I went around in a circle. At the last cheek kiss, made scratchy by five o’clock shadow, I pretended to stumble.

“
Alors!
Be careful there!” Scratchy said as he steadied me. “You were drinking with professionals!”

“Veterans!” said another. “Of many campaigns!” More guffaws.

“A taxi, perhaps?” I said, seeing Clean-head glaring at me from the main room. “I need to get to the train station. I’ll ask Madame—” I wobbled again, my fingers crossed.

“
Mais non!
We will find you a taxi!”

“Come, come, our little friend!”

In a scrum, the entire shift of police detectives escorted me from the back room, right past Clean-head and out to the sidewalk. In a few more moments, a cab had been flagged down and an argument had about the best route the driver should take. Then another argument ensued just for form’s sake.

The cab took off. I was safe.

Once inside the station at Gare du Nord, I went to the ladies’ room. I closed myself up in one of the stalls and took out the spice container. Inside was a piece of crumpled plastic, and when I unfolded it, I saw that it was an ordinary artifact bag, about two inches by three inches, with a ziplock. Inside was something wrapped in cotton.

I pulled the bag open and carefully eased the cotton out of the plastic. I unrolled it, wondering what could have cost Grayling his life. Some vital clue, perhaps even valuable in its own right. Gold or silver? Diamonds? Perhaps a rare—

It was a piece of thin red pottery. Samian ware, I thought, terra sigilata. It wasn’t any bigger than a quarter, reddish-brown. It was just about the most ordinary sort of artifact one could find on any Roman site, apart from fragments of roof tile or brick. Like its cousin redware on American sites, it was ubiquitous, common as muck. Even if it wasn’t gold or silver, a coin or brooch, I reasoned, maybe it was valuable as all artifacts were, for the information they contained, unlocked to the right questions.

It was nearly flat. There weren’t any even molded patterns, which might have helped identify its origins. It wasn’t a rim sherd, a handle, a lip, or a spout; there was nothing to tell specifically what kind of vessel it came from, though there was a blotch of extra glaze on top of the glossy red surface.

It was, outside of its context, useless. Worse than useless, because at least if it had been left in whatever location it had been deposited, it might have told
somebody
something.

Of all the things that Grayling could have risked his life for, this piece of pottery was about the last thing on earth to be worth it.

I stared at the sherd, willing it to be other than it was. Perhaps its very ordinariness meant that it
had
to be meaningful. I mean, people who aren’t archaeologists don’t just happen to have small pieces of Roman pottery in their kitchen cupboards.

I pulled the sherd up to my face and stared at the blob of glaze. It was so similar in color to the body that it nearly blended in. When I examined it more closely, I saw there was a series of numbers and letters.

Not glaze. Clear nail polish. Applied by some archaeologist to protect the numbers, which detailed where on the site the sherd had come from. I’d done tens of thousands of them myself.

This was more like it—this, I understood. A provenience mark…but how to tell which site it was from?

The combination of letters and numbers could have been for anywhere, on any site.

I stared at the sherd, my fatigue and fear crashing on me all of a sudden. To have gone so far, risked so much, for
this
? Some teaching specimen culled from the sifting pile of a long-abandoned site? This was worth lives?

I must have misunderstood what Grayling wanted me to do. I must have gotten something wrong. He was dying, he was delirious.

Maybe he was trying to get back at me, setting me up so the others could find me. Certainly Clean-head and company might be evidence of that.

But at one point, the sherd had meant something. No one makes marks like this for no reason. They have meaning. If it’s provenience, I could track it down, maybe in fifty years. If it’s something else, a code or coordinates, I’ll figure that out, too.

Another puzzle, and I still needed to negotiate what I’d found for Danny.

I left the stall and found a bench inside the station. I had some calls to make, but I didn’t want to use either my phone or the one Dmitri had given me. I still had some cash from the ATM at Logan, so I changed it and bought myself a phone with an international SIM card. Dmitri might have connections, but he couldn’t control all the kiosks in all the train stations.

I looked at my watch and risked a call to the Steubens. If I was very lucky, they were in England, having connected from Germany. After I struggled with the combination of country codes and area codes, someone picked up on the first try.

“Yes?” A female voice, strong but cautious.

“Claudia, it’s me.”

“Are you OK?” Either she was hoping to hear from me or her vampiric senses identified me.

“Yes.”

“And Danny?”

“Still alive, as of last night.”

“And did you find…what Dmitri wanted?”