"Have you ever witnessed such a sacrifice or were you threatened to become a victim yourself?"

"No, I'm too much soul-candy and inventory for the Prince. Also I have been spared from such creepy demonstrations so far. But I studied all the crude things that Savoyen reads every day. That way I got to know that even the Ancient Egyptians, but also many other cultures that were characterized my mysticism, thought of the ear as being the door to the soul. According to tradition the soul leaves the dying body through the ear. And if someone lends a hand with dying, maybe the good soul can be trapped right at this point. Do you understand what this is about now? All of this is adding up, Francis, especially with regard to tonight. A herald came to tell Savoyen, that there would be another ritual at this time."

"And what are we planning to do if the time has come? Maybe alert the mobile task force of the World Wide Fund for Nature?"

"I don't know what you are going to do against it, Francis. But I will certainly think of something to save our brothers and sisters! And after that, I will leave this royal monster once and for all."

Weird singing started to reach our ears, which instantly caused our conversation to stop. We winced and held our breath. When we had gathered courage a little later, we saw that the recent sight of the formerly endless corridor had changed. We headed towards the last round arc, apparently the destination of our journey. Behind that it got brighter and brighter, and the weird singing, coming from hundreds of throats, increased in screaming loudness. Beyond the door a high bal.u.s.trade was blocking the view, so that we still had to puzzle over what might be hidden behind it. Samantha and I exchanged a long anxious look, entailing the question whether we would really find the courage to leave our catacomb which suddenly, considering the real horror outside, didn't seem as eerie anymore but actually quite cozy. But then I let the suicidal nosiness guide me, made an effort, ran to the bal.u.s.trade and jumped upon it.

Saying that what I saw now was h.e.l.l might be over the top. No, it was the musical version of h.e.l.l. In fact, featuring Giovanni and Co. from the Largo Argentino in starring roles.

The circular vault resembled an arena, architecturally as well as dimensionally. The ceiling was a hemisphere, the floor was a jigsaw of slates. The place was lined with a rather vast number of arc-shaped portals. Those revisited on the upper level, giving the walls a perforated appearance. Stony staircases connected the individual levels, so that one could go upstairs very easily, regardless of the catacomb one just had left. Without a doubt, this temple had once been built by people who were forced to practice their religion secretly. Whether they had been Early Christians or some other bullied religious a.s.sociation, I had no clue.

My high look-out on the bal.u.s.trade offered an amazing sight, not just from architectonical aspects. First of all, there were burning candles. Candles? Yeah right, my glimpse down spotted something more like a sheer sea of lights. Fixed to head-high holders, they illuminated the place in addition to the torches surrounding us. There was as many bats as candles but in human form. An army of figures looking like bats crowded between the candleholders. Shiny toppers, tailcoats with long laps, long black capes and exquisite canes in velvet-gloved hands. All of them wore masks to hide their ident.i.ties. Prince Savoyen totally got lost in the shuffle. The whole thing looked a little like an international conference of ancient sorcerers.

Actually, hocus-pocus did seem to be involved, and apparently a pretty dangerous one. Intonating some Latin sing-song, which left the vaulted cellar trembling, all of the batmen cl.u.s.tered round a place in the center, some sort of stage. On this podest, clearly visible from all sides and flanked by two torches, stood a guy in a hooded robe. The costume reminded a little of the Klansmen's working clothes, though this one consisted of shiny black silk. The vision slits on the hood had scarlet edgings, and instead of a cross, some garish gold jewelry in the shape of a smiling sun dangled on the protagonist's neck. The hooded man rested upon a saber, which sparkled so bright as if it had been polished for days.

Out of the corners of my eyes I noticed a minor matter, which nevertheless gave me an answer to my minor questions from a few minutes ago. Underneath the vaulted ceiling I spotted four giant portholes. They were positioned according to the four cardinal directions and had wooden hatches in the front. An ancient cable operation with steel wires, big levers, cogs and dangling sandbags used as tension weight could be used to open the hatches. It didn't take much brain acrobatics to figure out the function of these hatches. They acted as fresh air supply and sucked oxygen from the world above us down to this point. This was why the quality of air in the temple was better than that in the catacombs. Right now, there was just one hatch open, probably the one that benefit the most of the current wind direction.

The sight of the countless toppers and black capes in candlelight wasn't quite enough to catapult my blood pressure (which by the way hadn't been that low anyway) into alarming heights. No, the reason for my increasing panic was something that was behind the cape man: a cage that sparkled in the same chrome color than the saber in his hand. It was a funny construction: about seven feet high and so roomy that a whole mid-range car would have fitted inside. The bars on the side were tied into rectangles only by matted drawstrings and simple knots. There wasn't any grating, so the whole thing looked like an oversized playpen. These safety defects didn't quite offer any chance of escape to the prisoners though, as they were inferior to even such a primitive cage due to their size and strength. Inside, the whole crew of the Largo Argentina was gathered, some apathically squatting on the floor, some nervously jumping over the others' heads. The frightened whimpering of our brothers and sisters was drowned out by the choir's sing-song; only the distress could be seen in their twisted faces. In the first row Giovanni crouched and stared down on the creepy goings-on just as startled as me. Apparently, this night he hadn't been able to mourn the killed Siamese for long.

Totally fascinated by this spectacle, I had edited out everything around me for a while. Also Samantha, who had joined me on the bal.u.s.trade in the meantime. In her sapphire-blue eyes lay as much desperation as in mine, and her fog-colored face was haunted by twitches. "Well, did you think that we would face the killers that fast, Francis?" she quietly said next to me.

"No", I replied. "You really did a good job, Samantha. However, you should have come out with your a.s.sumptions a little earlier. Apparently, we're not in time for a rescue."

"I am sorry. But I just didn't feel confident enough."

"I wonder how those monsters managed to catch all of our colleagues at Largo Argentina. And why did they only commit one murder at a time so far, when apparently they could have killed all of them at a blow?"

"Do you have more of those witty questions in stock? I have the funny feeling that we will be bathing in knee-deep blood before we can think of the right answers."

"Yeah, one last question", I said trying to drown out the roaring singing which slowly began to give me a headache. "How in the world did this hooded clown manage to drill so delicate holes in the victims' heads with such a giant thing?"

"You can study that in a minute! Mamma mia! Are you the king of the smart-a.s.ses or what?"

"You'll laugh but yeah, where I'm from, they actually call me that."

"Francis, quit talking and do something!"

"Why me? You were the one who boasted that you would think of something in case you faced this doomsday scenario."

"Unfortunately, at the moment I'm totally tied up mentally."

"Well great! And opposed to these batmen down there I don't have a topper nor a wand, so I can't perform magic."

Suddenly the singing died down, and harrumphing and coughing filled the vaulted cellar. But there also was another kind of sound. Now I was able to hear the frightened howling of our caged fellows at full volume. It sounded as if the Latin sing-song was continued in a pretty screwy way.

The hooded man knocked on the floor of the podest with the saber for three times, then there was total silence. Even the prisoners kept quiet. Their eyes beamed so intensely from their red-rimmed observation slits as if they had been brought to gleaming with a welding burner, and the hood sway from one side to the other in a pretty careful manner as if it was filing everyone in the room like a demonic scanner.

"Cari amici, I thank you for making me your teacher of mankind and your master", the hooded guy said. Despite his dark appearance, his voice was surprisingly soft. It came as a shock to me: I knew this voice from somewhere! But no matter how hard I tried to a.s.sociate this voice with a familiar face, I just wouldn't succeed. In the face of the soft acoustic color, it still awed me, which may have been caused by the fact that it resonated formidably in this deadly silent vault.

"I had to earn your devotion in the first place, which I did with pleasure", the masked man continued, and with that he flourished his hands so hammy that he reminded a little of a sign language interpreter for deaf-mutes. "As you all know, the theosophical model of development consists of the knowledge that mankind is divided into different stages of development. Some souls are far ahead, some are far behind. The progressed souls can face the underdeveloped in teaching them. But no matter what stage each of us is in, we all answer just one purpose, peace. Not just peace that is noncommittally, mindlessly and painlessly preached in those soapbox oratories. No, brothers, we want ultimate peace!"

Roaring yells of approval resounded from the audience. Topper hats were yanked from the heads in excitement and thrown in the air, canes were raised as a sign of confidence. The hooded man received this deference with his head bowed.

"But peace doesn't come for free, cari fratelli", the hood continued after silence had settled again. "Neither does it come into this world on invitation nor on wheels nor can it be summoned. You know that. It takes a miracolo, a miracle that we have to work for. This miracle is soon to be revealed, and when it does, it will deliver the world! The miracle will bring endless peace, because there will be no escape for the inferiors, for those who seed hate and war. This miracle will heal the world, cari fratelli!"

"Ah grande maestro, esaudiscimi!" someone from the audience yelled all of a sudden. In contrast to the smooth voice that was floating down the platform, this yell sounded like the last croak of a frog that just happened to make the acquaintance of a hiking boot's sole. From afar, it wasn't locatable which brother it was.

"Grande maestro, you have talked about the approaching miracle so often, and with that you bathed our souls in ointment. I am aware of you being several levels above us and of you being able to see the future that we can't catch on, yet. But still I already want to know something now, so that I can praise you and our teaching even better. Therefore I ask you: What kind of miracle is this, what does it do and what does it look like?"

Like Moses at the time of his famous prime deed, I saw how the sea of batmen split into two parts in wavy motions. As if the impudent brother had announced that he was infected with the plague, the other brothers departed so that the s.p.a.ce around him emptied and he stood alone. Apparently, they feared the master's anger, and even I didn't want to be in the heckler's shoes. The Master though was full of goodness, after he had paused for a little while.

"Fratello, that's a good question", he said, and if the stupid hood hadn't hidden his head, I'd surely been able to see a canting face, just conjuring up the phoniest smile in the world. But, whose face was this? Fanned by the familiar voice, the musing in my head grew into some kind of mental tooth pain.

"You are right. Because a man, who enters a train without knowing where it's headed, must be either a fool or crazy. I understand you, my friend. But do you really feel strong enough already for the miracle? Wouldn't its sight dazzle you in your current level of incarnation, blind you and in the end maybe totally tear you up? I will still give you a description. The miracle knows the face of the evil, of the misanthropist. And wherever the evil may hide, the miracle knows where to find it. Many know the road to evil, but they founder on the guards and the thousand nooks of the maze do you think that? The miracle won't! The miracle won't, cari amici!"

The hooded guy yanked his arms up as if finally there had been the long-awaited goal for his favorite soccer team. And as if his followers had just waited for this sign, they went giddy with excitement. In the now closing sea of the batmen the recusant inquirer shrank back into the insignificant black spot he had been before, until he totally disappeared in the billowing crowd. Everyone took of their toppers, cheered their master with waving arms, applauded and hooted their heads off. The hooting and the stamping of feet got louder and louder until the whole room began to tremor. Meanwhile I seriously worried about the intactness of my ears. Samantha faced the same issue, a single glance to my side was enough to get a full impression of the total distraction in her face.

"So, have you thought of something by now?" she asked me. Her right gray ear twitched in impatient fever.

"Yeah", I replied. "If you happen to have a map of the route we took here, I'd be willing to pay ten times the price or if you're into stuff like that let you watch how Antonio and I become lovers!"

I quickly averted my eyes, because I didn't want to see her reaction on my sarcasm that was born out of pure desperation. My eyes were totally caught by the stage on which the hooded guy, cheered up by his roaring fans, ecstatically flounced like a pop star at the zenith of his show and wildly sw.a.n.g the saber in the air. When the crowd eventually began to yell-sing again due to sheer euphoria, the star made some provoking gestures with his free hand as if he was demanding something that he deserved.

"Manna for the miracle!" he shouted at the audience which appeared to be in some kind of a frenzy. "Manna for the miracle, cari fratelli! Manna for the miracle, cari fratelli!"

This demand seemed to be the final trigger for the brothers to grant their brains to some nice long vacation. Because, as if they had totally mutated into similar programmed roboters, they reached into their jacket pockets, took out some sort of packets and threw them at the stage. First I thought that it must be little tracts, although the sheer ma.s.s of this flood of paper made me wonder. But then the significant color and the typical volatile property of the paper made me realize the outrageous: The lads pelted the master with real bank notes! Countless bills rained on the platform, blew down on the big cheese until they softly slit to the ground. Had they thrown confetti, the scene hadn't looked any different. The master showed his grat.i.tude by bowing humbly. When the carol ended and the platform was almost completely cluttered with bills, he continued his speech. "Grazie grazie mille grazie, o voi fratelli generosi!" he said, panting and exhausted from the schlep of collecting the donations.

"Dear brothers, today we are ahead of the founders of our teaching. To them it felt unthinkable that the race which came from the First Reich in the Atlantic Ocean would remain a minority. They didn't think that the majority of people will be kept frozen in the physical world, on the lowest level, and that they would so vehemently refuse to move up the ether and astral level, that the world would choose dispeace over the singing of angels. In short, our masters, which by now have reached the highest level, didn't have a clue that mankind nowadays wouldn't differ a single bit from the morons, lazy hacks and monsters of the ancient world."

Although the brothers were literally steaming from the recent sportive performance, an almost dignified silence lay all over the place. The last sound of the choir's singing had died, no one made a sound, and there wasn't a single movement.

"Life is beautiful mankind is ugly", the hooded man said in a low voice. "That is the sad conclusion, even today. The world is full of demons, which keep those we need to guide from ascending to a higher form of being. Ancient images of G.o.d, narrow-minded views on the so called only saving way of living, but even more than that brute force, this is the message which is spread by the demons, and this is how they act. On that account we will no longer hole up in our ivory tower, but we will step into world history with the help of the miracle. We will shatter the furies of darkness, cari fratelli!"

A murmur went through the crowd, when actually I had been waiting for another roaring applause. This was a clean-cut case: Although the theosophists esoterically dressed up had a lot of skeletons in their closet, they hadn't yet left their cozy simsalabim-bunker to enter the depths of world politics. They'd rather sing mantras, incarnate a little, magic up some angels and let things slide for the rest of the day. The evil if there was something like that in their teaching anyway to them came in an abstract figure, from a dark kingdom without further description, maybe somehow ga.s.sy and in the shape of a fantasy dragon. In the end, they didn't really want to know. This charismatic master though demanded something concrete from them, an involvement in some dirty deal, reality. Little by little it probably dawned on them that what the master was trying to sell them as a miracle and for what they had been very generously donating until now might turn out to be something really earthly, maybe even real dynamite.

I for one didn't have to battle with less mental stomach pain. Questions upon questions buzzed in my mind. Among what kind of morons had I ended up? What did this megalomaniac master have in mind, who didn't plan for any less than saving mankind from the evil? Who was "the evil", "the misanthropist" anyway? And the most important question: What was this miracle? And I almost forgot this little unimportant question: Which relation did this absurdity bear to the murders? Not with all the will in the world it would make sense to me. Because the only miracle that Giovanni and his friends were able to perform was identifying different shades of green on Spaghetti Bolognese.

But I didn't have any time to think this through as the master now went to his ceremony, which kept me from wondering. This item in the agenda looked a lot the thing Samantha and I had been scared of the whole time. Horror crawled through my veins like poison and exerted some numbing influence on all of my organs. Because after the big savior had given the bitter medicine of healing the world to his followers, he wanted to give his soul a treat and put on some old record. This was the overture of the literal saber rattling.

"Dear friends, we want to turn to the actual reason of our meeting", he said and raised the sparkling saber. The reflection of the thousand candle flames that emerged from it shortly blinded my eyes. The pitiful guys inside the cage, who had kept quite until now, got nervous again and began to meow pathetically, as there didn't seem to be any doubt about what was going to happen to them.

"These creatures are valuable vessels in which affiliated souls live. It needs the ritual that they can get in touch with us. Let us open our hearts and let them inside, hoping that they will open for us too. Let the freeing of the souls begin!"

The batmen found this tremendously splendid, as they were able to devote themselves to this cozy necromancy than being dragged down by their master's mysterious suggestions, which actually promised some rather comfortless future. Immediately another Latin tune was struck up fervently, which now sounded a couple of shades darker though. The dark sound was the final signal for me to finally give birth to a clever idea and get to work. If I didn't want to attend a ma.s.sacre, I really needed to do something soon. Samantha also piped up with a similar request.

"Francis, Francis, I beg you, if you don't want Rome to remain in your memory as the most terrible sight in your life, you need to perform an even bigger miracle as these murderers are about to! Hurry! In here's a real bad atmosphere, and I'm afraid it's about to explode into a gush of blood!"

And as if this begging needed some more graphic underlining, I saw how the master turned his back to the audience, walked towards the cage and sw.a.n.g the saber dramatically. Okay, I was to perform a miracle on the spot. The only problem was that in contrary to the master I didn't have any connection to the ether and astral level so I could accomplish this. The horror, which had silently been lurking in the depths of my mind, now rose with decimal power. I began to shiver, and inside the chaos in my skull fractures of Samantha's words resounded in what seemed to be an infinite loop. "... bad atmosphere ... wonder ... gush of blood ..." I believed to hear again and again as I stared into my fellow sufferer's sad eyes, idle and like crystallized. The master's hand grabbed the bars of the cage.

In my head a single phrase resounded: "... bad atmosphere ... bad atmosphere ... bad atmosphere ..." These two words rotated in my mind like the inside of a spin top, where it endlessly multiplied and interfered through an overwound segmentation. They had turned into a mantra, a repet.i.tious prayer in which content played a far less role than the calming act of praying itself.

It might have gone on like that forever, endless droning and frozen in fear, until the prisoners' ears would have been "deseeded". But then something yelled inside me: "If there's bad atmosphere, then open the d.a.m.n windows!" I furrowed my brow. Shortly after, I got the message. Yes, it was true, when there was bad atmosphere, one should let in fresh air. From there it was a short walk to suit the action to the word.

"Francis, you really need to ..." I heard Samantha shout another time, and I knew immediately that she was gaping in astonishment. She had turned away from the frightening scene to face me, and so in the middle of her sentence she had noticed that I wasn't sitting next to her on the bal.u.s.trade anymore. Because I was already on my way to the cable control.

"Follow me, Samantha!" I yelled without looking back. "I need your help."

"But what are you doing?" she shouted breathlessly. "Isn't it too late already?"

"No. It won't be too late until you feel somehow strange and the thermometer tells you that your body has been brought down to room temperature!"

The construction on the wall looked pretty much like the rolled out inner workings of a primitive hall clock. There was a real tower of ponderous old cogs, which were moved by chains with weights on them, rusty cranks and flywheels. Steel ropes ran from here through rings at the ceiling up to the hatches. Above all, the four ma.s.sive levers on a panel caught my eye, as they were relevant for the opening and closing of the ventilation hatches. The first one was turned up, so I concluded that it must operate the open hatch. Somehow I had to get the other ones into the same position.

"Samantha, come here and give me hand, quick!" I said and noticed at the same moment that she was already standing next to me, full of expectation.

"We got to move this lever!"

"But why?"

"Bad atmosphere!" was all I said, while I jumped up with stretched forelegs. My paws. .h.i.t the lever at full tilt. But it only moved in a narrow angle. I was falling down when I saw with a glimpse to the side that Samantha shot up and gave the lever another trouncing, using the same technique as I. With a dull snapping sound it finally veered! On the ground I watched how the cable control mechanism began to move, the cogs creakily meshed and began to turn, the heavy weights moved downwards, and a steel rope tightened. The second compartment slowly moved upwards.

Samantha, who took turns in watching my satisfied face and the situation she created, had become a cartoon of skepticism by now.

"And what is this about?" she said. It wasn't a question, it was criticism.

"The infiltration phenomenon", I replied shortly and shrugged.

Down in the vault a silent wind got up. The flames of the candles began to gutter, and even the fire of the torched on the walls got gradually plagued by a flicker. The batmen's silk scarves were gyrated to the side and their capes were blown up a little. Some of them grabbed the brim of their toppers, so the good piece didn't take off. Even the hooded guy paused his ritual, turned away from the cage and let his eyes wander to find the cause of the interference.

This created a little bit of hope inside me. But I wasn't allowed to pause now, if I wanted my plan to succeed.

"Keep going!" I cheered Samantha up, who still didn't get what I was aiming on but apparently sensed that I had something sensible in mind.

Our hind paws vaulted us skywards once again, and our front paws. .h.i.t the third lever. This time it was real torture. The thing hardly moved an inch. We had to jump again and again. I felt my paws begin to glow from the pain of hard jumps, they'd turn numb soon. Little by little the d.a.m.n lever shifted upwards in the end, and with a little inching it leaped up. The rope started moving, the third hatch moved up and another airflow caused one more eddy within the already existing wind-chaos.

It was a spectacle according to my taste! Based on their impact, we were able to study the roaring strength of the air so imposingly as if they had a physical appearance. Half of the candles in the room went out, after the flames had battled against the wind without a chance, also a couple of torches. But it was the textile part of the panoramas that amused me. As if all of the brothers had been brought into microgravity at once, the toppers took of from their heads, flew up in the air in dancing motions, gyrated in a circuit inside of a tornado, then drifted apart and hovered along before the whole game began anew. The capes were exposed to a sheer hurricane and streamed in the wind, trying to outdo each other. It wouldn't be fair to say that they panicked. But among the pa.s.sel of theosophists notable concern arose. They had stopped singing by now. Heads were raised or shaken nervously. The initial dumbness turned into some awkward whispering, and from that some excited and loud chatter emerged. A couple of the old buddies even took of their mask because they just couldn't believe their eyes. Ours inside the cave watched the spectacle as astonished as us, but unlike the humans they seemed to sense that this windy turn happened to be in their favor. The hooded guy stood in a hurricane of flying bills and inched the edge of the stage, prepared for flight in case the situation sharpened.

And it actually did sharpen! Samantha and I enjoyed the confusion for just a second and then pored on our act of sabotage. Compared to the last time it turned out to be a walk in the park. Like basketball artists, who aim to shoot the ball through the basket with dash, we took off simultaneously, and when our paws concurrently hit the fourth lever, it actually did us the favor to turn up immediately. Finally the fourth hatch opened, and the concourse of the airflows from four directions created the utterest chaos.

Before the candles and torches went black for good, for a couple of seconds I was honored with the very view that I had wished to invoke: The theosophists now stood in the epicenter of a real hurricane. The draft, which got increased in brute force due to the lengths of the tunnels and the property of the room, turned the tailcoat folks into human guinea pigs in some kind of cruel experiment in the middle of a wind channel. By now, they all held on to each other so no one got blown away. Several lost their masks. The black capes flapped so hard as if their owners were about to take off any moment. I could hear a scream here and there, which didn't really speak in favor for this communities trust in G.o.d, and I could also see some of them looking for an escape from this squally h.e.l.l in pure desperation. Only the cape man fled from our view by now it was as if the earth had swallowed him up. Then even the last light went out and there was total darkness. But not for our phosphorus eyes.

"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 if 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!"

Giovanni'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 off 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.body 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! n.o.body would have gotten slashed open."

"But then what was his plan?"