She puled on the handle and the door opened outward. Cold air roled over us, smeling of dark holows, sightless creatures, and epochs of time underground.

'Maybe it's time to bring him down,' said Crowe.

I nodded, and double-stepped up the stairs.

Boyd showed his usual exuberance at being included, prancing and snapping the air. He lapped my hand, then danced beside me into the house. Nothing on the ground floor dampened his delight.

Starting down the basement steps, I felt his body tense beside my leg.

I added an extra coil to the wrap around my hand, and alowed him to pul me down the steps and across toward Crowe.

Three feet short of the door he exploded, lunging and barking as he had at the wal. Cold prickled up my spine and across my scalp.

'Al right, keep him over there,' said Crowe.

Grabbing his colar with both hands, I dragged Boyd back and gave Bobby the leash. Boyd continued to growl loudly and attempted to pul Bobby forward. I rejoined Crowe.

Crowe.

My flash revealed a cavelike tunnel with a series of alcoves to either side. The floor was dirt, the ceiling and wals solid rock. Height to the tunnel's arched top was approximately six feet, width was about four feet. Length was impossible to tel. Beyond five yards, it was a black hole.

My pulse had not slowed since I'd entered the house. It now went for a personal best.

Slowly we crept forward, our beams probing the floor, the ceiling, the wals, the recesses. Some were nothing more than shalow indentations. Others were good-sized caves with vertical metal bars and central gates at their mouths.

'Wine celars?' Crowe's question sounded muffled in the narrow space.

'Wouldn't there be shelving?'

'Check this out.'

Crowe iluminated a name, then another, and another, chiseled the length of the tunnel. She read them aloud as we progressed.

'Sawney Beane. Innocent III. Dionysus. Moctezuma… Weird bedfelows. A pope, an Aztec emperor, and the party meister himself.'

'Who's Sawney Beane?' I asked.

'Hel if I kno—'

Her beam left the wal and shot straight into nothing. She threw out an arm, catching me across the chest. I froze.

Our lights leapt to the dirt at our feet. No dropoff.

We rounded the corner and inched forward, sweeping our beams from side to side. I could tel from the sound of the air that we had entered a large chamber of some sort.

We were circling its perimeter wal.

The names continued. Thyestes. Polyphemus. Christie o' the Cleek. Cronus. I recognized no one from Veckhoff's diary.

Like the tunnel, the chamber gave onto a number of alcoves, some with bars, others ungated. Directly opposite our entrance point we found a wooden door, similar to that at the head of the tunnel, and secured with the same chain-and-padlock arrangement. Crowe dealt with it in the same way.