Blood Courtesan Hooked by Selena Kitt

Author:Selena Kitt [Kitt, Selena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Excessica Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

“You’re cold,” Ulrich murmured as I slid off his back.

It was true, my teeth were chattering, and I was shivering all over, despite the warm jacket he’d made me wear to go down into the catacombs. But I wasn’t sure it was the drop in temperature that was the cause. I actually felt kind of numb all over, in spite of the cold emanating off the tunnel walls.

Lazarus had told me, on one of our crawl-throughs to another, deeper level, that the tunnels themselves had originally been part of a quarry. Miners in the thirteenth century had come down here to dig out the limestone. It wasn’t until the 1700s, when mass graves in Paris began to cause health issues, that someone got the bright idea to exhume all the bodies and put them down here into the old limestone mines.

We were down in the catacombs with the remains of six million people. It was that thought that had been so chilling for me—especially after I’d come face-to-face with half a human skull as I crawled my way through one of those crevices. I’d managed not to scream at that—probably because it had shocked me so much—although I hadn’t been so reserved when a rat scampered across my foot. Lazarus had rolled his eyes and given me an, “I told you so,” look. Ulrich had just gathered me up, although I’d felt him give a silent chuckle when I proceeded to climb him like a tree, so my feet were no longer touching the ground.

“Here.” Ulrich started to slip his jacket off.

“I’m fine,” I told him, but I smiled my thanks and leaned against him for support. My stomach was still doing flips from the last leg of our trip through the tunnels at speeds that would have left Usain Bolt in the dust.

“Through here.” Lazarus called back over his shoulder as he turned a corner to the right. There were so many twists and turns down here, it made the labyrinth in The Shining seem like a cake walk.

“Remember, stay close to me,” Ulrich warned, keeping his voice low. “Even if we find her here—it may be complicated. Let me do the talking.”

“Okay.” When I acquiesced so easily, he paused and raised an eyebrow at me.

“Okay?” he repeated, sounding doubtful. “That’s it?”

“Yes. That’s it.” I nodded, looking up at him in the greenish light from the stone around my neck. I’d asked Lazarus what it was made of, but he just smiled at me and shook his head. It was sort of like one of those luminescent things they sold at the fireworks, the kind you shook to activate, and they glowed for a few hours. But this one seemed to be activated by my body heat. If I removed it from my neck and held it out in front of me—which I’d done once when we’d been forced to walk through a narrow section of the tunnel—it stopped glowing altogether.

“Who are you and what have you done with Poppy?” he asked, frowning, which made me giggle.

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