19
Rematch
But, according to the dream he’d had, it was.
The gothic Montmartre Cemetery, famous for being the final resting place of such luminaries as Degas, Nijinsky, and Zola, was built below street level in the hollow of an old quarry. The gated entrance to its sprawling twenty-five acres of tended gardens and tombs was on the quiet Avenue Rachel under the overpass of Rue Caulaincourt, where he now stood well hidden from the soft yellow glow of the streetlights in the shadows of a weeping willow. Perplexed, he looked up and down the street, hoping for more clues.
The dream had shown the number two Metro stop at Place Blanche, the peep show hawkers outside the Moulin Rouge, the tiny guard shack beside the cemetery gate where visitors paid an entry fee of six euros to tour the narrow, cobblestoned walkways, gawking at the crypts and carved obelisks and blank-eyed marble statues and elaborate, crumbling monuments to the uncaring dead. In the deepening twilight of the hour past closing time, the guard shack was dark and deserted, the rusted iron gates locked.
It had been just like this in the dream, down to every detail—him standing here under this tree with his hands shoved in his pockets, thin coils of fog snaking around his ankles, the sound of music and laughter from a bistro half a block away warming the quiet cool of the evening. But now that he was here, D had no idea what to do next.
Accustomed to the capricious nature of this particular Gift of his, D decided to wait.
He didn’t wait long.
From down the street rumbled an ancient green Peugeot, belching smoke from its muffler in feathery blue plumes, one headlight flickering sporadically as if signaling in code. It neared and D stepped behind the gnarled trunk of the elm, watching. The car jerked and rattled to a stop at the curb and disgorged four young men, laughing and ribbing each other in expletive-laced French. They carried a strange collection of items: compasses, rubber boots, lumpy backpacks, flashlights, and a map they unfolded on the hood of the car that they began to peruse, arguing in a friendly way about some bet they had going.
“I’m telling you there’s no
A derisive snort. “Right, like I’m gonna let a
“That’s what Jules here thought, and he was limping for a week afterward.”
A round of raucous laughter, to which the offended Jules responded, “I did not!”
“Dude, you were totally hobbled.”
“I tripped on a rock!”
“Really? Was that before or after the Butterfly kicked your leg out from under you and slammed you on your ass?”
“That was just a lucky hit.”
“Yeah, she’s pretty lucky that way all right. You guys got your money?”
Murmurs of assent were heard, boots and backpacks were donned, and the map was folded and put away. The men kept chiding one another as they locked the car and headed toward the cemetery, flashlights raking the ground in shaky yellow swaths. One by one, they leapt the low gate and were soon swallowed by darkness.
“Well,” murmured D as he stepped off the curb and followed, “this should be interesting.”
Friday night was fight night in the catacombs, and Eliana wasn’t about to let a little thing like bullet wounds, bruised ribs, and a rapidly deteriorating sense of reality deter her from participating.
After all, she was the star attraction. And she really needed an outlet for the nuclear rage that had been building inside her all day.
She hadn’t been able to find Mel after leaving Silas in the afternoon. The need to discuss what he’d said about her father was overwhelming, a gnawing compulsion that had her heart thrashing like a shark on a chum line inside her chest. Several things Mel had said—and her voice, eyes, and posture when she’d said them—had stuck with her also, irritating as a splinter under skin.
Why? Eliana circled back to that one question, over and over. Why?
Why had her father insisted Mel keep her marriage a secret?
Why would Demetrius go out of his way to clean and stitch her wounds?
Why were those assassins—who she’d honestly told Silas were not of the
Could what Silas said about her father actually be true?
Nothing added up. None of it. Uncertainty slithered, cold and reptilian, under her skin.
By the time she entered the heated, cavernous enclave of New Harmony, she’d worked herself into an epic lather.
The crowd was huge tonight. Bodies pressed against the bare stone walls, against one another, nearly everyone with a drink in hand, many laughing, dancing, shouting to be heard above the thumping bass and electronica music of a DJ who had set up a mobile turntable and speakers in one candlelit corner. It was nights like these—drinking and talking and
And still they came.
They came to have fun and be entertained and escape the drudgery of daily lives spent at desks, in cubicles, behind windowless office walls. They came to lose themselves in darkness and adventure and the camaraderie of the underground. They came to fight. They came to dance. They came to play and drink and love.
They came to live. And tonight, more than ever before, Eliana needed to live, too.
A roar went up as she was spotted. She strode from the shadows of the connecting tunnel, her black trench billowing out behind her, a small, satisfied smile on her face. This was her home, and these were her people— related or not—and she loved it. She loved them all.
“Butterfly!” someone shouted from the back of the crowd, and hundreds of voices took it up in a chant that swelled and crested like a wave.
Always a chilly fifty-five degrees, the air in the catacombs took on a decidedly electric vibe.
She prowled to the middle of the grotto and paused. She shrugged off her coat, handed it to an anonymous person who darted forward from the crowd to take it, and let her gaze drift over the sea of bodies. She knew what the cataphiles saw when they looked back at her: choppy blue hair and tight black leather, motorcycle boots and a cinched bustier that left her arms and shoulders bare, the butterfly between her shoulder blades exposed and strangely animated as the shadows played over her skin. For the first time in a long time she’d worn makeup, smoky eye shadow and eyeliner drawn out past the corners of her eyes to accentuate their catlike tilt. Her lips were a curving slash of vermilion.
“Who wants to go first?” she shouted above the noise.
A group of four men, money held aloft in fists, pushed to the front of the crowd. One of them—the biggest one, blocky and grinning, with ham-hock hands and the cauliflower ears of a professional boxer—peeled off his shirt, dropped it to the ground, lifted his hand, and pointed a stubby finger at his chest.
Eliana smiled and thought,
“I’ll go first,” boomed a deep, masculine voice from the shadows along the back wall, a voice every cell in her body recognized, and every head in the crowd craned around to see.
They didn’t have to try very hard. He stood head and shoulders above everyone else. He stepped forward
