The Skeleton Key

Then a bony arm, sleeved in tattoos, rose from the tub, waving weakly as if the bather were drowning. A hand found the swan-shaped gold faucet and gripped tightly to it.

As she sidled closer, a skinny auburn-haired boy — likely no more than eighteen — used his hold on the spigot to pull himself into view. He looked all ribs, elbows, and knees, but she took no chances, centering her pistol on his bare chest. Dazed, he finally seemed to see her, his eyes widening at both her half-naked state and the obvious threat of the weapon. He scrambled back in the empty tub, palms held up, looking ready to climb the marble walls behind him.

He wore only a pair of boxer briefs — and a stainless-steel collar.

A match to hers.

Perhaps sensing the same pinched pressure on his neck as Seichan felt on hers, he clawed at his throat.

“Don’t,” she warned in French.

Panicked, he tugged. The green light on his collar flashed to red. His entire body jolted, throwing him a foot into the air. He crashed back into the bathtub. She lunged and kept his head from cracking into the hard marble, feeling a snap of electricity sting her palm.

Her actions were not motivated by altruism. The kid plainly shared her predicament. Perhaps he knew more about the situation than she did. He convulsed for another breath — then went slack. She waited until his eyes fluttered back open; then she stood and backed away. She lowered her gun, sensing no threat from him.

He cautiously worked his way into a seated position. She studied him as he breathed heavily, slowly shaking off the shock. He was taller than she’d at first imagined. Maybe six feet, but rail thin — not so much scrawny as wiry. His hair was long to the shoulder, cut ragged with the cool casualness of youth. Tattoos swathed his arms, spilled over his shoulders, and spread into two dark wings of artwork along his back. His chest was clean, still an empty canvas.

“Comment tu t’appelles?” Seichan asked, taking a seat on the commode.

He breathed heavily. “ Je m’appelle Renny… Renny MacLeod.”

Though he answered in French, his brogue was distinctly Scottish.

“You speak English?” she asked.

He nodded, sagging with relief. “Aye. What is going on? Where am I?”

“You’re in trouble.”

He looked confused, scared.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked.

His voice remained dazed. “I was at a pub. In Montparnasse. Someone bought me a pint. Just the one. I wasn’t blottered or anything, but that’s the last I remember. Till I woke up here.”

So he must have been drugged, too. Brought here and collared, like her. But why? What game was being played?

The phone rang, echoing across the room.

She turned, suspecting the answer was about to be revealed. She stood and exited the bathroom. The padding of bare feet on marble told her that Renny was following. She picked up the phone on the bedside table.

“You’re both awake now,” the caller said in English. “Good. Time is already running short.”

She recognized the voice. It was Dr. Claude Beaupre, the historian from the Pantheon-Sorbonne University in Paris. She pictured the prim, silver-haired Frenchman seated in the Hemingway Bar. He had worn a threadbare tweed jacket, but the true measure of the man was found not in the cut of his cloth, but within the haughty cloak of his aristocratic air and manners. She guessed that somewhere in the past his family had noble titles attached to their names: baron, marquis, vicomte . But no longer. Maybe that’s why he’d become a historian, an attempt to cling to that once-illustrious past.

When she had met him this morning, she’d hoped to buy documents pertaining to the Guild’s true leaders, but circumstances had clearly changed.

Had the man figured out who I am? If so, then why am I still alive?

“I have need of your unique skills,” the historian explained, as if reading her thoughts. “I expended much effort to lure you here to Paris, to entice you with the promise of answers. You almost came too late.”

“So this is all a ruse.”

“Non . Not at all, mademoiselle. I have the documents you seek. Like you, I took full advantage of the tumult among our employers — your former, my current — to free the papers you came hunting. You have my solemn word on that. You came to buy them. I am now merely negotiating the price.”

“And what is that price?”

“I wish you to find my son, to free him before he is killed.”

Seichan struggled to keep pace with these negotiations. “Your son?”

“Gabriel Beaupre. He has fallen under the spell of another compatriot of our organization, one I find most distasteful. The man is the leader of an apocalyptic cult, l’Ordre du Temple Solaire .”

“The Order of the Solar Temple,” she translated aloud.

Renny MacLeod’s face hardened at the mention of the name.

“Oui,” Claude said from the phone. “A decade ago, the cult had been behind a series of mass suicides in two villages in Switzerland and another in Quebec. Members were found poisoned by their own hand or drugged into submitting. One site was firebombed in a final act of purification. Most believed the OTS had dissolved after that — but in fact, they’d only gone underground, serving a new master.”

The Guild.

Her former employers often harnessed such madness and honed its violence to serve their own ends.

“But the new leader of OTS — Luc Vennard — has greater ambitions. Like us, he plans to use the momentary loosening of the Guild’s reins to exert his own independence, to wreak great havoc on my fair city. For that reason alone, I’d want him stopped, but he has wooed my son with myths of the continuing existence of the Knights Templar, of the cult’s holy duty to usher in the reign of a new god-king — likely Vennard himself — a bloody transformation that would require fire and sacrifice. Specifically human sacrifice. To use my son’s words before he vanished, a great purging would herald the new sun-king’s birth.”

“When is this all supposed to take place?” Seichan asked.

“Noon today, when the sun is at its strongest.”

She glanced to the mantel clock. That was in less than two hours.

“That is why I took these extreme measures. To ensure your cooperation. The collars not only punish, but they also kill. Leave the city limits of Paris and you will meet a most agonizing end. Fail to free my son and you will meet the same fate.”

“And if I agree… if I succeed…”

“You will be set free. You have my oath. And as payment for services rendered, the documents I possess will also be yours.”

Seichan considered her options. It did not take long. She had only one.

To cooperate.

She also understood why Claude Beaupre had collared her and turned her into his hunting dog. He dared not report what he’d learned from his son to the Guild. The organization could simply let Vennard commit this violent act and turn it to their advantage. Chaos often equaled opportunity to her former masters. Or they would stamp out Vennard and his cult for their hubris and mutiny. In either scenario, Gabriel Beaupre would likely end up dead.

So Claude had sought help outside of regular channels.

“What about the boy?” Seichan asked, staring over at Renny MacLeod, unable to fit this one jigsaw piece into the puzzle.

“He is your map and guide.”

“What does that mean?”

Renny must have noted her sudden attention on him and grew visibly paler.

“Search his back,” Claude commanded. “Ask him about Jolienne.”

“Who is Jolienne?”

This time the kid flinched, as if punched in the gut. But rather than going even whiter, his face flushed. He lunged forward, grabbing for the phone.