Geran and Nicole Ch. 08

We went to the main desk and I asked very politely where the restricted book section was. Wow! I don't think we've ever been thrown out of anyplace that fast.

Nicole gave me a knowing look. "So you think the room is above ground or below?"

"Below. Probably the second to last level." I answered eyeing the building.

"SECOND to last? Why not the last?"

"Need a level of protection and intervention. Probably in the center of that floor. You got the tools we need?"

"Sure do, Babe! Can you get us back inside?" She asked.

"Yeah. I spied a nice place among the shelves way behind the front desk. Ready?"

"Yep." I teleported us in. We crouched and held still making certain we were unnoticed. We were good. We found an elevator and checked out how many floors it accessed. Three up and six down.

Then we slinked through the stacks until we found the stairs. We descended to the sixth basement level.

"Now we have to find the staircase we really need." I looked at her. "How good are your instincts for this?"

"Shit! Instincts?" She rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a small box with some dim lights on it. "Here's my instincts! I told you I grabbed some tools." She started slowly waving it around. It pointed out the staircase we just came down. She pressed a couple of buttons. Waved it some more. "Got it!"

We moved stealthily to the far side of the building. She pointed at the wall. We couldn't see anything. She pulled out another smallish device and turned it on. It gave a quiet high pitched whine. I looked around to make certain no one was there. About three minutes later a section of the wall silently slid back and over revealing a staircase.

We made certain our camera fuzzers were still working and descended four levels until we reached the bottom. Then back up one level. The door was securely locked. Nicole and her gadgets made short work of it.

It would be cool to say we had to fight our way to the room to gain access but truth be told it was very boring and we got in with no incidents. Nicole let loose a whispered set of curses. "Shit! There are no fucking lights in here." We waved our phone lights around the door. There were several pitch soaked torches in a rack. We looked at each other. "Seriously?!?" We both said.

"You have a lighter in there?" I asked pointing at her bag.

"Yep." She lit two of them. They gave off bluish green flames. The walls were made of black stone, almost like obsidian. They felt menacing but nowhere near as menacing as the rows of books in front of us.

"You want left or right?" I asked her.

"I'll go right. Let's find this damn book and get out of here. That bad feeling is much worse in here. Actually, there are two feelings. The first one which is stronger, and a second one which is definitely coming from this room."

"K. Let's be quick but cautious."

We started moving up and down the rows. Along the back wall we found a series of safes mounted into the wall. It looked like the wall of a mausoleum.

Nicole looked at the wall and then looked at me, "Fuck me! There's over a hundred of these. No identifying marks either. Any ideas, Babe? I don't have any gadgets to help us. And we sure as fuck don't have the time to open all these before morning. Abort or you got some ideas?"

I was aggravated. "No. Let's get pictures of as much as we can and get out of here. Fucking hell. So close and a full strike out. Maybe Meister can help identify the right crypt. About all we can do at the moment that I can figure."

We used our phones to records the wall. For good measure we recorded all the books on the other shelves as well. Nicole and I both agreed that many of the books felt like they wanted to reach out and flay the skin from us. Others felt like they were trying to get us to take them from the shelves. No matter what, the books were definitely hostile and we agreed early on to touch nothing.

Some of the titles seemed to change as we looked at them. Maybe the book was on a shelf in plain sight and the mausoleum wall was a red herring.

It took us about three hours before we had it all. We extinguished the torches and cautiously exited the room. "Ready to teleport, Hot Stuff?" I asked Nicole.

"Yeah, I'm getting seriously fucking freaked out!" I merged my mind with hers to calm her down which wasn't much help as I was as frazzled as she was. The books were hammering on our psyches now and I was fighting myself to not go back and start grabbing some of them. We extinguished the torches and left the room behind us. Nicole locked the door and then a really cute brunette walked through the wall and I went into shock.