“Come on! You throw like a girl!” Sol was exasperated with me but teasing. I’d never so much as thrown a baseball in my life. “You have to be sure to get enough range so that you aren’t caught in the explosion.”
I nodded and threw another grenade at the sofa. We had rearranged the room so that the sofa’s back was to the windows against the wall. We’d each taken turns throwing the grenades at the pillows so that we’d be prepared in the tunnels. My last throw had missed the sofa entirely and smacked David in the side while he stood braiding rope for ladders, unaware of the incoming missile.
“I think I should help with the ropes,” I finally said. I figured if I needed the grenades, I’d probably be dead anyway. Sol wouldn’t let me off though and kept me at it longer than anyone else.
He drilled us in removing the ammo and timed our reloading. We darkened the rooms so that we could practice finding each other in the dark with nothing but the glasses. Sam and Maggie were the demons in hiding for us to find. We had a lot of fun with that one. Then he insisted that we all rest and eat as night fell. I didn’t have much of an appetite. In fact, I felt like throwing up. I tried to remember how many dreams I’d had where I’d fought demons and died—or fought them and won. I had died too many times to count. When I looked at my hands, they were shaking.
11 The Catacombs
Why did we pick the dead of night to go into the catacombs? Oh, yeah, there would be far fewer innocent people who could possibly get hurt. I knew that, but it was super creepy. Our first challenge was to get over the stone wall surrounding the entrance to the catacombs or through the iron gate. Solomon had devised a homemade rope ladder with hooks on the ends so that we could climb in and out pretty easily over the wall. We all had pitched in earlier in the day to put together two ladders from the parts he brought. Fortunately, there was no barbwire or razor wire above the wall like they had in places in the U.S.
Then he said we’d be able to cut our way through the chain link fence that covered the windows to the basilica. The windows were at ground level though I knew they were high on the walls of the buried basilica. We would go through them and down into the basilica to enter the catacombs beyond via the second rope ladder. At which point I would stay on the main level and the others would descend. It was really sweet that Sol thought he was putting me in the safest position. Of course, I still had a job to do, and he wasn’t letting me completely off.
The second real challenge was the fact that it would be completely dark in the catacombs. But with the fancy glasses Sol had acquired for us, that shouldn’t present much of a problem. It might not be like looking across a sunny beach, but we’d be able to see clearly enough to move around safely and see anything attacking us. Sam really wanted a pair. He’d taken a turn playing catch the demon earlier while I hid and was hooked.
According to the maps I’d gotten from Bishop Soratino, the upper level was also the smallest, so Solomon thought that I’d be ready if any demons were flushed upward by the others.
David was the last one down the rope ladder into the basilica. We had agreed earlier that silence was to be maintained once we’d entered the church. Sol’s orders really. He had a big military background, I guess. So the others headed down quietly, and I waited, listening to the whisper of their passage before I moved into the upper tunnel.
“Pssst.” I just barely heard the noise as I paused at the entrance, and whirling around, saw Alex step out from behind a column next to an alcove! Was this it then? Was he here to kill me?
“Come over here,” he whispered. I just shook my head, bringing up my gun to point at him. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought he heaved a sigh. My .22 Beretta equipped with a silencer was filled with silver bullets, and extra ammo was strapped all over me. The barrel wavered some as my hand shook.
“Behind you!” He suddenly shouted and lunged towards me. Right. Like I’d fall for that one. I moved sideways as I fired directly at him, but because of my shaking hand, the bullet just grazed his thigh. My sideways movement though probably saved my life. I felt the wind from the passing claws as they moved through the space I had just left.
Alex moved so quickly I didn’t have time to bring my gun around to face him. Then he was on the demon in a grotesque parody of a dance, struggling briefly before I saw his arm flash upward and then down, stabbing the demon through the throat. As he released it and it dropped to the floor writhing and beginning to smoke, he turned to me. No longer was it just my hand shaking. My entire body shook with reaction to my near miss. Then his arms were around me, holding me close to his chest.
“Shhhh, there now, it’s okay,” he whispered into my hair. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“What?” I asked in confusion.
“Diana, don’t you remember the Titanic?” he asked quietly.
“Titanic? Just that I died on it. Why?”
“We don’t have time for explanations right now. Please just try to remember. But for now, we need to get you out of here.”
“No, I have to go into the tunnel,” I said stubbornly.
“No, you get out of here. I will go in for you instead.”
“What are you talking about?” We were whispering furiously at that point.
“Diana, I don’t want you to get hurt. Please just do as I ask. I will take care of this.”
“But you’re hurt.” He was favoring the leg I had shot, and it looked as if the demon had also clawed it open during their brief struggle.
“I’m fine. Will you please just go?”
But the decision was taken out of our hands because another demon attacked! The impact threw us both to the ground, but I managed to keep my grip on the gun. As we rolled apart, I sat up and fired at the demon, hitting it squarely in the back as it straddled Alex. He heaved the demon to one side, dragging himself nearer the wall and struggled to sit upright. One hand pressed to his side where a bloody stain spread. As I looked on, the demon began shaking and burst apart into a cloud of smoke, as had the other one while we argued.
“Are you going to shoot me, Diana?” he asked softly. I realized I had unconsciously pointed the gun at him. Should I—could I? Slowly, I lowered the gun.
“Why did you save me from that first demon?”
“We don’t have time right now for explanations,” he repeated. “Please just trust me.” I shook my head. He had killed me too many times for me to trust him now, I thought. But after he had saved me, I knew I couldn’t kill him outright.
“If you’re still here when the others come out, one of them will kill you,” I told him as I headed into the tunnel.
“Diana!” he whispered urgently, but I ignored him and continued on.
I kept my left hand on the wall and moved cautiously with the gun facing forward. I wondered how the others were faring. Already I had met with two demons, and Sol had thought that I’d have it the easiest with the upper level. I hoped that they were all okay.
The tunnel made a simple maze, basically square, with several interconnecting tunnels totaling just over a mile in length and a few alcoves. I needed to hurry, because to cover that distance, Sol calculated it would take me twenty minutes, but he said to allow thirty just in case of demons. Then I was to be back at the entrance to cover the others as they came up. Deep breath. I had memorized the layout but wondered if there had been many changes over the centuries. Some of the maps were ancient.
Time seemed to crawl as slowly as I moved. Oddly, I did not encounter any more demons in the next fifteen minutes, and I was already more than half way through the maze. It made me think that Sol had been right, and the demons I’d already faced had been flushed upward from the other levels.
I was at a side tunnel connector that contained an alcove and paused to listen, thinking I heard a noise, a scrapping. But my heart was beating so loudly that it was difficult to tell. Examining the alcove, the night vision glasses allowed me to see the slightly darker outline of a door in the wall. I approached it and felt
along the edges with my fingertips but couldn’t find a doorknob. Again, I thought I heard something behind me, and when I turned to look, pressed my side to the wall inadvertently pushing a hidden button that caused it to open. It was an elevator! I stepped in and the door silently slid shut. There were only two buttons, so down it was, and the elevator started moving.
Now what? If the door opened into a room full of demons, I was a goner. So taking two of the grenades, I prepared to pull the pins and throw if necessary. I was still amazed at how heavy a fourteen-ounce grenade felt in my hand. I was shaking so badly though that I wondered if I would be able to get them far enough away so I wouldn’t be caught in the blast. But when the door opened, all was quiet. It was a square room that looked like it belonged in an office building. Individual cubicles were set up each with a computer, the monitors off but the desktops below had a glowing green light for the hard drive.
I cautiously moved into the room looking to my right and left and approached one of the computers. Still looking around, I touched the mouse of one to awaken the monitor. Curiously, it came up to a login screen for a dating website called Demon Lovers, with a little, cutesy red devil complete with a forked tail that ended in a heart. I was going to check the history, but from behind me, I heard a scrabbling sound.
I wasn’t looking down, so I didn’t see anything immediately…not until I felt the searing pain in my calf. There on the floor was…something. It seemed like a cross between a snake and a dog. It had four short legs on a long tailed body, but the head looked more similar to a python with lots of teeth instead of just fangs. It seemed more scaly than furry. It had bitten me and was rearing back ready to strike again.
In a panic and gasping in pain, I realized that I only had grenades in my hands. I’d put my gun up while in the elevator worrying that I was going to meet with a pack of demons when the door slid open. The thing latched onto my leg again, tearing through my boot into the muscle. While trying to shake my leg to loosen the creature, I clutched at the closest desk and put down the grenades to pull out my gun. It was the shot that gave me away. For some reason the silencer didn’t work, and the shot echoed around the room.
A door, which until then had been unnoticed in the opposite wall from the elevator, opened. Without thought, I fired my gun at the first demon coming through, but the others began climbing over it. Trying to fire again, nothing happened. Murphy’s law. Dropping the gun to the floor, I quickly picked up the grenades sitting on the desk, pulled the pins, and tossed both into the midst of the demon pack.
As soon as I released the grenades, I dove head first through the still open door of the elevator. Rolling over, I pulled two more grenades loose from the straps crossing my chest, removed the pins, and bounced them through the closing door. Not much distance on those. Fingers in my ears, I felt the first concussion as the doors sealed. Before I could push the up button, the other two grenades detonated.
The explosions shook the elevator violently, and as I cringed on the floor curled up with my hands over my head, the door bulged inward. The chaos from the explosions seemed to go on for a while, longer than in the movies. There was a roaring afterwards with puffs of dust being forced into the elevator. Did tons of earth from above just fall down to swallow the room? I wondered. I thought so.
When the elevator quit shaking, I frantically jabbed at the up button without getting off the floor, but nothing happened. Gasping, I sat up to take stock of my situation. I had bruises head to toe, but it was my leg that worried me. The demon’s teeth had lacerated half my calf, and the bleeding had yet to stop.
With shaking hands, it took three tries to loosen my belt and get it off. Attempting to stem the bleeding, I wrapped it around my calf. Hoping it would give my leg some support when standing, I still could not put any weight on it when at last I pulled myself upright.
As in most elevators, there was a hatch at the top in the ceiling but how to reach it? Then I heard noise from above. Great, I thought, an avalanche of earth wouldn’t kill a demon, so they’ve gone around and were coming down the shaft to get at me. I pulled out another grenade.
“Diana!” I heard a muted shout from above. That sounded like Alex!
“I’m here,” I called back, starting to cry in relief.
“Are you injured?”
“My leg…a little. I can’t reach the hatch.”
“Wait, I’m coming down.” I didn’t hear anything until there was a thump up top a few moments later. Wow that was quick. Did he jump? He opened the hatch and looked down at me.
“Get back,” he said before sliding in to stand next to me. He reached out, pulled me to his chest, hugged me tight, and sighed. “When I heard the explosion, I thought you were gone again.” I was completely confused by his actions. Why was he worried? Was it necessary to kill me himself rather than letting some other demon do it?
Releasing me with seeming reluctance, he said, “Let’s get you out of here now. Can you lift yourself through the hatch if I give you a boost?”
“I think so.” Blood had soaked the side of his shirt and the leg of his jeans, but even so, he bent down, put his hands on my hips, and lifted me almost halfway through the hatch. It was easy to wiggle on through at that point. As I moved out of the way, he jumped, pulling himself up and out. Wow.
“How did you get down here?” I asked looking around at the smooth walls of the elevator shaft.
“I slid down on the cables.”
“So now what?” I was looking up the shaft dreading the effort it was going to take to get to the top.
“So now I will climb back up, get that rope ladder of yours, and bring it for you to use. Do you think you can climb it?” He raised a brow looking at my leg.
“If you can get it here, I can climb it,” I assured him.
At that, he grabbed the cables and started climbing. I’ve taken gym in school and worked out in the neighborhood gym. I’ve watched boys climb ropes almost my whole life. But the ropes had knots for gripping, the climbers weren’t injured, and most importantly, my life didn’t really depend on success. So I have to admit, I was pretty impressed by the time he gained the top of the shaft. And pretty scared when he disappeared from view.
I waited and waited. Would he come back? Why had he come in the first place? What did he want me to remember about the Titanic? I know I died on the Titanic. I remember buying the house in New York in the 1930s, and I had been in my mid-twenties. So I had to have been born in 1912 or 1913. So what actually happened on the Titanic?
“Diana? Be ready.” I was so glad to hear his voice. Until that moment I hadn’t even realized that silent tears covered my cheeks. When the end of the rope ladder landed next to me, my left leg wouldn’t work right, so I took most of my weight on my arms and other leg on the way up. As I neared the top, he reached out to help pull me over the lip of the elevator opening. I was shaking from the effort and had to sit for a minute to catch my breath. In the meantime, he coiled the rope ladder up, and I thought it was to take it with us back to the windows, but instead when we made our hobbling progress back to the basilica, we headed towards the front entrance.
“I’m supposed to go back up over there. The others will be watching for me.”
“They’ve already gone.”
“What do you mean? Did you see them?” I asked frowning.
“Yes, they were leaving when I went to get the ladder.”
“You didn’t tell them about me?” I was frustrated. I don’t think I would have left if there were someone unaccounted for, and it hurt a little thinking that they’d deserted me.
“No.”
“You just let them leave?” I asked him, and he nodded. “But why?”
“All of them seemed to have sustained some injuries, and I knew I could get you out easily enough. Now come, we have to see to your leg.” Finally he just picked me up, tired of my shambling progress.
He had a car not far from the main entrance to the basilica. I tried not to stare as he
pulled the gull wing door open and helped me inside. I looked around at the leather and chrome in the 1981 DeLorean. He’d painted the stainless steel finish a gloss black, and I had to admit, it looked sharp! He climbed in next to me, and then instead of heading for the front gate, he drove towards the east wall. There I saw a side gate standing open. Ha, if we’d known about that, we wouldn’t have had to climb over the wall.
As we drove in silence, I pulled out my cell and sent Mags a text:
Am ok. Hurt leg. Going to take care of. Don’t worry.
“Call me crazy but I thought we’d go to a hospital,” I said a short time later as we pulled into a parking garage for an apartment building instead.
“No, they’d ask too many questions,” he answered looking at me. “Questions I don’t think you are prepared to answer. Am I right?” Yeah, I guess so, I thought and nodded.
I hoped I was right that Mags didn’t need to worry. By the time we had parked, my cell buzzed with Maggie’s response:
K. Don’t forget flight tomorrow morn at 7am. Need help?
So I sent back:
No, am good. If not back, bring my stuff please and I will meet you on plane.
It was already three in the morning, and I didn’t know how long my leg was going to take.
12 Alexander the Great
Alex’s apartment was amazing. My mom was really big into watching HGTV shows, and they had nothing on his place. It was immaculate and well decorated in a style that Candace Olsen would say was modern traditional. When he opened the door, I saw a large room that included a kitchen, dining, and living area and directly opposite the door, a wall of windows. The view was spectacular, and I couldn’t even see all of it. I shut my mouth when I realized it was hanging open.