SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - By Akif Pirincci Page 0,32

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 balustrade 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 assumptions 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-asses 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 associate 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