SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - By Akif Pirincci Page 0,38

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 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 like 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