The man yelped in pain and grabbed his cheek. In the process he released the woman’s arm, dropped the candle, and the light crashed out.

They were enveloped in the thick darkness of the catacombs. “Run!” Ava yelled, hoping the French woman would have a chance to escape. There was a scuffle, the sound of something like cloth ripping and meat tearing, a grunt, and a thud. Her heart pounded inside her throat. She crept forward and reached around to where she knew her phone must be, just feet away from where the man was standing. He was panting heavily.

"I can hear you.” But it wasn’t a man who spoke in this surprisingly excellent English. Ava breathed a sigh of relief that the woman was alive, and felt her fingers finally close around her poor phone.

But her breath caught in her chest when the white light of her screen fell across the man’s bloodied body. Lisette, as the man had called her, stood over him, wiping a thin, dripping knife against her petticoat. She was holding her outer skirt up as she did so, smiling calmly. There were several other, darker stains across the petticoat, but as soon as she dropped the scarlet trail of her dress back over it, the stains disappeared from view.

Lisette took a slow, deep breath and met Ava’s gaze with a grin.