SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition (13 page)

»Samantha, this is our only chance to free the whole gang!« I said. »We only have little time!«

She nodded, and together we ran down the stone stairs next to us. The sprint towards the platform happened to be a dangerous slalom, as the panicking and bustling
fratelli
almost trampled and squashed us. Bolting legs dashed towards us like fragments of exploded astro-garbage. Just a teeny-tiny mistake, and we would actually have found ourselves on the astral level with a smashed skull or some broken rips. Even more, the enormous draft gave us a hard fight, even here on the lowest ground. It wasn’t just that our fur was ruffled like we had been blow-dried by a drunken haircutter, as a mater of fact we also feared
to get swept away by a squall.

Finally we reached our target unscathed and got to the podest in a single bound. Without hesitation I dived to one corner of the cage where matted drawstrings and sheer kinks held its bars together. Just a couple of blows with my paw did the trick and opened the knots. We both jumped and pulled on the strings, and Samantha and I made a good job of it in next to no time. Eventually, the front part of the cage was knocked over to the front, and our trapped brothers and sisters gushed out in all directions like they were a jinni leaving his bottle
...

Everyone but Giovanni. Motionless, he stood in front of me and gave me such a deprecating stare as i
f I was the holy saber-rattler.

»
Signore
Francis, ever since you showed up in our city, you’ve been perturbing the order«, he said. »Would you like to tell me, what this charade is all about?«

»Just a second, let me think about that shortly«, I replied. »O yeah, now I remember: I wanted to keep you from listening to the thudding sound of spoiled Spaghetti being dumped across the fence with just one ear.«

»
Idiota
«, he barked. »You were pretty self-defeating. Once a week, this here happened to be the only chance to wrap our laughing gear around something else than those freaking Spaghetti!«

G
iovanni’s surprising answer didn’t just leave me flabbergasted but also almost made me fall from the platform. But as the motto now was escaping at all cost, Samantha, »the released« and I saw fit to do this. When I turned around, there was a scene from a nuthouse or maybe better, a scene from a heavily shaken snow globe. Due to the hurricane that I had created, theosophists, conspecifics from the cage, toppers and bank notes were blown in all directions like they were down feathers. The arches, which led to the catacombs, functioned as some kind of vacuum cleaner for the flushed chaos particles, which buzzed around headlessly. »Keep your hair on«, I would have loved to shout at them, »it’s just air!«

Anyway, we wanted and had to follow their lead and hurried down the stage with a dauntless jump. Our route led us through running human legs and the rest of the stuff that was flying around us towards the nearest arch. If we made it there, we might be o
ff the hook for now, I thought.

Tremendously mistaken, as we were about to find out, because the first catastrophe happened even before we reached the much longed for destination. When the arch was only a stone’s throw away, a fleeing theosophist’s foot suddenly appeared to our right and accidentally kicked Samantha’s stomach. With her eyes wide open, she got flung through the air, and the last glimpse I was able to catch of her was when she was catapulted into the bottomless darkness of another arch. It wasn’t the time to go look for her. I calmed my bad conscience with the thought of her knowing the maze of catacombs like no one else, she would find her way out without our help – of course given she had survived the kick in the gut!

»You seem to have blossomed out into a real Rome expert, can you maybe tell me where this journey is headed, 007«, Giovanni said smugly, though he was catching his breath. We scampered down a corridor, which looked exactly like one of those that had led to the vault. The torches that grew out of the walls were still blazing, because the airflow weakened within the maze, little by little. Again we passed tombs in which skeletons with open jaws seemed to laugh at us, small nooks with carved religious symbols and
pitch
-
dark
rooms where I rather not guessed what was hidden inside. In the distance I could see a giant junction with several branches, which was about to ban the near end of this nightmare into the land of illusions. The thought of me wandering about this maze for days and going around in a circuit till my bitter end made me almost wish that the theosophist’s foot from a moment ago had also hit me here and now. There was at least something good out of this whole situation: There wasn’t anybody except Giovanni and I in this dark corridor. We were all on our own. Neither did one of the batmen follow us nor some ghost from the astral level.

»You’re the most ungrateful creature I ever met!« I replied to the old buffer running next to me. The scarred, copper-eyed, flea-bothered gray reminded me of a brewery horse
whom nobody managed to baffle.

»Ungrateful?«

Giovanni seemed to be capable of a mellow smile even on an endurance run.

»What am I supposed to be grateful for?«

»Maybe for me saving yours and your Largo-Argentina-fellows’ life!«

»Saving our lives? You cut us out of the best food once in a blue moon, chief detective.«

»What’s that supposed to mean? Are you actually saying that
Signore
Ku Klux Klan wanted to slash one of you open to feed you his intestines like some yummy delicacy?«

»
Stupidaggine!
Nobody would have gotten slashed open.«

»But then what was his plan?«

Giovanni was irrigated.

»Believe it or not, uber wise guy, but he was about to do the same as you!«

»Excuse me? He had already raised his saber ...«

»... to unravel the knots!«

Our mazed route mirrored the abruptly starting chaos in my mind. Meanwhile we had reached a big junction and had to decide on one out of several tunnels. This fact though caused neither me nor my mysteriously talking fellow to panic as we didn’t have a freaking clue of the complex interlacing, so it didn’t matter which road we took anyway. But even for such wonder eyes as we had, it was always a good recommendation to stay away from the darkness. So in the end we preferred a catacomb which was illuminated by torches, just li
ke the last one.

All of this happened without thinking, and as for Giovanni, I doubt that he took notice of this junction issue at all. At least he kept talking as if nothing had happened. »
Signore
Francis, I had gotten the impression that in regard to education you slept on some ivy University’s foot mat, a least for a couple of months. These theosophist guys belief in reincarnation. If you were half the genius you act like, you might have figured out that fans of this reincarnation stuff would either cut their own ears off than to hurt, let alone kill an animal. Because after their own death their precious soul mind accidentally be reborn in some Giovanni, with what it would appreciate in value enormously, at least in my humble opinion.«

»On the other hand the ear in these circles is considered to be the door to the soul«, I tossed in. »The soul is supposed to leave the body through the ear. At least this is what Samantha told me. And didn’t the hooded bloke declare that you are about to experience the
ritual
inside the cage? He talked about the opening of hearts so that all souls could have a cozy chat. To me that sounded like
›Let’s do
some exploratory ear drilling and let’s see what we can
find.
‹
«

»I don’t know your Samantha. But her theory creates the impression that she might get along perfectly with the pack of theosophists. The ritual the guy talked about is sheer acting. An, how do you call it, emblematic exoneration ceromy. Once a month, the penguins in tuxes collect us at the Largo Argentina, bring us to their bunker and build their cage around us, which can barely called a cage. We could easily escape from it without your air show, but instead we make tortured faces to increase the pity. Well, at first there’s some proper singing, a little abracadabra, some reincarnation and a lot of bloviating of otherworldly nonsense. Then comes the stunt with the saber. These idiots actually think of their race as equal to ours. Sheer megalomania, but whatever, Adriano Celentato also thought of himself as a great actor for a while! On the zenith of the fuss, the saber gets swung, the knots loosened and the poor, poor animals get released from the cage. Then there’s a right royal meal every time, in order to propitiate us for some exchange of souls later, and afterwards the travel back to misery. A little boring if you’ve been through the procedure for about thirty times, but still more sublime than stealing salami from an old woman’s sandwich.«

I started to wonder.
Could Samantha, who had studied the theosophical subject so hard, have been wrong in such a volatile matter? It didn’t seem very likely to me because she had identified the killing method of »deseeding ears« as a specialty within their theory. How could she have fixated on the exact opposite of what Giovanni had experienced? I took another try in showing the inconsistencies of the th
eosophists’ kind-hearted image.

»Giovanni, during his preach hoody talked about a miracle that was soon to be revealed«, said while we still running like the devil himself was chasing our ears. »The whole thing didn’t really sound like an international understanding of souls. More like world politics. Can you maybe tell me what that was about?«

»I don’t know about world politics, I have a full plate with the politics of bumming. And I don’t know much about miracles either. And like I said, these guys are nuts all and sundry. Maybe the master thinks of it being a great miracle when he puts a lighter to his butt as he farts and it makes Bang!«

»I don’t understand it. It doesn’t make sense. Why would the smart Samantha start a rumor like that if pretty much everyone in Rome knows that it can’t be true.«

»I have a theory: She lied to you, Francis!«

Without wanting to admit it to myself, I had already thought of that. The reason for this feisty lie was hidden from me though, but it suggested the assumption that these strange murders were connected to something more complex
and
–
more than that
–
far
more outrageous than this silly chapeau-claque-club’s necromancy. And so I had to go back to zero with my sleuthing, given that the characteristic wound also applied to the victims that bit
ten the dust before my arrival.

»Okay, one last question, Sicilian«, I said, slowly realizing that the previous events had sapped my energy quite a lot. »If these batmen don’t celebrate happy ear studding, and in contrary just want to cuddle our fellows esoterically, if there lies no danger within them, can you then please tell me why and whom we are fleeing from?«

Giovanni decreased his pace like a pendulum that lost momentum, until eventually he stood still. I also stopped and stared at him. The glowing, reddish eyes, the zigzaggy graying whiskers, the half-bald chin, the whole face that was covered in scratches no
w was an absolute astonishment.

»Uh, hasn’t this been your idea?« he said after a while.

I wanted to fly in the face of him – until I suddenly realized that he was absolutely right. I didn’t want to bet on how my face looked now, but  »stupid« might have been a better description than »astonished«.

We now were in the middle of the corridor, which spanned a broad curve behind us. The torches indicated an arched chain of lights, containing of single and shrinking dabs of brightness. The way ahead of us led straight line, whereas there seemed to be a crossing corridor on its right end. While Giovanni and I were still busy helplessly staring at each other, in the following three events took place almost simultaneously. After the previous confusion they literally took the cake, and I want to go to the trouble of describe them, num
erating in the local language.

Numero uno. »Do you maybe have a useful idea how we get out of his damn maze?« I wanted to know from Giovanni whose visible composure began to bother me.

»Why don’t we simply go back and see if the theosophists have calmed down? Maybe they will fork out some five-course meal, relieved coz the end of the world hasn’t come yet. My empty stomach actually has been sending SOS for the last couple of hours
...
«

This very moment, a shadow appeared at the end of the tunnel. Coming from a cross connection, he blew up to a scary silhouette on the wall. Giovanni and I stopped talking immediately, and although we both knew that the now dancing light of the torch was able to convulse a figure to an unrecognizable silhouette, we both shuddered. Now we could also hear footsteps which left no doubt that the figure would show up in short. My neighbor swallowed audibly, which obviously wasn’t caused by hunger. And as for me, I probably produced a whole symphony of sounds, which were owed to sheer terror. The relentlessly approaching black ghost got smaller, but this didn’t calm our nerves, which were t
ense like piano strings at all.

Eventually the shadow guy turned the corner – and hey, it was an old buddy! But not really one who made the strings ease. Without really noticing us the hooded man rushed towards us. I could only guess why he was still on the site. Probably he hadn’t dared to leave his hideout before the chaos calmed down to some degree. In his dark dress and with the chrome saber in his hand he looked even more terrifying at close quarters than he had on the platform in the vault. His flowing dress made nightmarish dragging sounds when he walked, and in the red-rimmed observation slits nervously swaying, azure blue eyes were glowing. When he finally did notice us, it only took him a moment of shock from which he recovered very quickly, just like he was annoyed en passant of trash at the roadside. Then he just kept resolutely walking towards us.