Beauty and the Beast (4 page)

from being shot to death by them.

Lisa Campbell: She was a world-famous ballerina who grew up in the tunnels. Vincent was in love with Lisa as a teenager, and he accidentally injured her with his claws when confusing adolescent hormones overwhelmed him. Lisa saw Vincent as a playmate and was totally unaware of the effect she was having on him when she danced for him in the Great Hall. One day when she danced to him and kissed him on the cheeks, he embraced her. She became alarmed by his desire for her and pulled away. Vincent didn’t let go of her in time, and he accidentally clawed her back. Soon after that incident, Lisa left the tunnels to pursue her career as a ballerina. Vincent felt that it was his fault that Lisa left the tunnels, and he never forgave himself for injuring her.

In the episode “Arabesque,” Lisa ended up in trouble and took refuge in the tunnels. Her presence brought up this incident in Vincent’s mind, and Lisa dismissed it altogether as being simply “child’s play” and unimportant. Catherine came to realize that Lisa had been the source of some deep pain for Vincent which she couldn’t reach. Vincent finally went to Catherine and told her about what had happened. He told her that his hands were destructive and were not made for love. Catherine countered by telling Vincent that his hands were her hands, and that they were beautiful to her. She finally helped Vincent to work through that crisis and overcome the pain it had caused.

Bernie Spirko: He was a reporter Paracelsus manipulated and used to take pictures of Vincent defending Catherine from attacks that Paracelsus had arranged. Paracelsus used the pictures that Bernie Spirko took to lure Father to him with threats of publishing the pictures. He then kidnapped Father to impersonate him and deceive Vincent. Paracelsus’ evil plan was to provoke the Beast within Vincent to the surface, so he could try to manipulate Vincent into killing an innocent person. His goal was to destroy Vincent and Father’s world, and he nearly succeeded.

Margaret Chase: She was Father’s first wife. Her father had their marriage annulled when Father was labeled a “Communist” and blacklisted in the medical community above, and he lost everything. In the episode “Song of Orpheus,” Margaret looked for Father when she learned that she was dying from pancreatic cancer, and they spent the last seven days of her life together below. Father had been devastated by the annulment of their marriage, and he was grief stricken when she died after such a short reunion, but he was able to resolve that unfinished chapter of his life.

Jessica: She was a world-famous photographer who was very close friends with Father when she had lived below many years earlier. Father had not seen her since Winter Fest five years earlier, and they had discontinued corresponding by letter for more than a year. Jessica came to Little Jacob’s Naming Ceremony when one of the Helpers told her about Vincent’s tragic loss of Catherine and about the rescue of Vincent’s baby. Father felt that he was falling in love with Jessica, and he even considered leaving the tunnels to pursue his relationship with her. Mary was heartbroken that she hadn’t spoken up about her feelings for Father before Jessica turned up again, and Mary went to Vincent and told him of her fear of losing Father. She told Vincent that she had made a “terrible mistake.”

Tom Gunther: He was the real estate developer to whom Catherine was engaged in the first episode of the series “Once Upon a Time in the City of New York.” His real estate company was a client of Catherine’s father’s law firm. He was very uncharitable in his attitude toward anyone less fortunate than himself, and this attitude caused Catherine to abruptly leave him at a party he hosted to “wine and dine” the City Planning Commission, during which he promoted an architectural project he was working on. He dragged her away from a friend who needed her listening ear, and he told Catherine to use better judgment deciding whom to talk to. It was when Catherine left that party without him that she was abducted by the criminals who slashed her face, broke her ribs, and then dumped her in Central Park to die, where Vincent found her and saved her. When she left Vincent’s care and returned to the world above, she broke off her engagement to Tom Gunther.

Steven Bass: He was a dying ex-fiance of Catherine’s, who had a brain tumor. Before his illness, Catherine had broken off their engagement when his controlling personality began crushing her freedom. In the episode “Down to a Sunless Sea,” he came back into Catherine’s life after five years without contact with her, and he asked for her friendship during the final months of his life. After imprisoning her in a mansion he purchased, he tried to force her to live with him. When she attempted to flee, he knocked her out and tied her to a dining room chair. She finally managed to escape from the chair and then had to run through a glass door, cutting herself in the process, to escape from the house and from him. Driven to obsessed madness by his brain cancer, he chased Catherine through the woods, caught her, and was strangling the life out of her when Vincent finally got there and saved her. Steven Bass was then committed to an insane asylum with abdominal scarring from Vincent’s attack.

It was mid-winter in the City of New York, but here, far below her streets, in a secret world long forgotten by the citizens living above, the weather outside didn’t matter. Here, it was safe and warm. In this large cavern, furnished in rustic masculine style, a man and a woman from these two different worlds stood by a bassinet. A three month old infant boy was in the woman’s arms.

Diana Bennett didn’t look like a special crimes investigator any more than Vincent Wells looked like a poet, philosopher, and scholar. In fact at first glance, with her long auburn tresses pulled back in a loose feminine ponytail, Diana looked to be hardly more than a teenager. But, if you looked more closely, the careworn lines around her soft green eyes revealed years of struggle to protect the world from the dangerous predators she hunted. She was so good at her job that she was designated a member of the New York Police Department’s Unit 210, a lone

investigator with her pick of violent crimes to solve.

One of the most recent cases Diana had chosen to work on was the murder of the mother of the baby she now held in her arms, Catherine Chandler. The father of this baby boy, Vincent Wells, stood behind her right shoulder, gazing on both of them. That investigation was what had brought her into Vincent’s world, when she found Vincent seriously injured on Catherine’s grave on December 10
^th
. As a result of that discovery, she was now charged with the obligation and privilege of keeping this world of tunnels and caverns below the streets of New York City safe and hidden from the world above.

If Diana’s appearance was misleading, Vincent’s was even more perplexing. He didn’t look like a soft-spoken gentleman in his mid-thirties. In fact, he didn’t even look human. He was well over six feet tall, with a wild golden mane of hair falling past his shoulders. Piercing blue eyes looked out of a feline-featured face covered, except for the center of his forehead and his cheekbones, with a fine coating of golden fur. His hands were also fur-covered, with nails much harder and darker than a normal human’s, extending beyond his fingertips with tapered points, giving them the appearance of claws. When he smiled, elongated sharp canines in both his upper and lower jaws showed, and they could only be described as fangs. What he did look like was a magnificent mythological lion-faced god, at once terrible and wonderful. Their clothing was also stark evidence that these two people came from different worlds. Diana’s outfit was very stylish, although comfortable, while Vincent’s was reminiscent of an eighteenth century frontiersman who made do with the materials at hand and dressed far more for practicality and comfort than for style.

Vincent’s gentle expression of love for his tiny three-month-old son, who was perfect in every aspect of his very human appearance, was completely at odds with his own frightening features. If Diana’s eyes were careworn, Vincent’s revealed the unfathomable depths of pain and grief he was suffering over the loss of his beloved Catherine, taken from him by the violent cruelty of an human monster. That monster had stolen Vincent’s baby from the arms of his mother as she bore him, and then had her killed with a fatal shot of morphine. With Diana’s help, Vincent was able to rescue his child. Diana then shot Gabriel, the man responsible, straight through the heart with Catherine’s own gun, a fitting end to an evil tyrant responsible for a reign of terror.

Gazing around Vincent’s spacious cavern chamber, even the most casual observer would have noted that books were very important to him. They were piled on every rough-hewn shelf and table there. It was also apparent that he enjoyed artwork of all types, as his room displayed many lovely pieces. The beautiful round stained-glass wall on the opposite side of his huge bed diffused the torch light from the tunnel beyond, and that

light together with the soft candle lamps in his room gave a very homey feel to his chamber.

Everyone eventually made it to Vincent’s chamber. Aside from Father’s Council chamber and the kitchen chamber, his was probably the next most frequented chamber in the community, like a touchstone for them. The children often gathered there, cross-legged on the floor, and listened while Vincent sat on his bed and read to them or taught some of their school classes.

Theirs was an unusual world, where everyone shared their talents and possessions with one another. Between what the world above threw away, what their trusted Helpers in the world above provided, and what they could produce below with their own skills and hard work, they felt richly blessed and were a very happy people. They felt safe largely because of Vincent. He was their champion, their defender, their knight-in-shining-armor, and a shield against any evil threat. He quietly made the rounds every night, checking on everyone, being sure his beloved family and friends were all secure.

He usually spent more time during those rounds in the children’s sleeping chambers to be sure they were all resting peacefully. If a child was restless, he would tuck that one back in, and sit on the edge of the bed, speaking softly until sound sleep was restored. Many of these children had not been born below. They had been lost by the world above, orphaned or abandoned, and neglected. Here below, they found instant love and guidance from

many willing surrogate parents, and a feeling of security from Vincent. He not only watched over them but listened attentively to anything they had to say.

They were better educated than many of the children topside who had access to public and private schools.

Here, education was important to the whole community. They all made sure it was enjoyable for the children. Each child’s individual needs were carefully assessed and met. Their classes included all of the sciences, mathematics, English, literature, and the fine arts. Nearly every adult member of the community taught one or more classes for the children, and the older children usually became teachers themselves. They had an accomplished children’s choir as well as an orchestra. No child’s natural talent, either artistic or intellectual, was overlooked.

How did this remarkable world come to be? Close to forty years earlier Dr. Jacob Wells, a research physician for the Chittenden Institute, had been blacklisted and wrongfully labeled a “Communist” for telling the truth about nuclear testing harming U.S. troops. He lost everything. Jacob’s father-in-law even had his marriage to his beloved wife annulled, and Jacob ended up penniless on the streets. He would have frozen to death one winter if it had not been for the kindness of a woman dwelling in these tunnels. She took him below and nursed him until he was well again.

When Jacob was strong enough to take stock of his surroundings, he found the tunnels to be a refuge for a lot of lost and disillusioned people who had either rejected the world above themselves or had been rejected by it, and they were without either a physician or a leader. He became both to them, and they called him “Father.” Gradually, he organized them into a community. Everyone’s talents and training were assessed, and they were all given jobs which made them feel useful and needed. All of the people in this unique community agreed on one very important point: The world above was a dangerous place, and they wanted to live separate and apart from the crime, violence, avarice, apathy, and even the chaotic lifestyle of that world. They wanted their world to be kept secret and thereby safe. Gradually, as a result of both their own generosity with their time, talents, and limited possessions, and Father’s previous affiliations with those above who still respected him, they built a network of Helpers from the world above who assisted them with supplies and services they needed. Who could be accepted from the world above into their community, and for what reason, was carefully decided by the Council of eight members Father organized, comprised of four men and four women.

New Yorkers were so busy with their frenetic lives; they didn’t notice or care to know what was going on beneath their feet. For the most part, the only people from above who posed a serious threat were the occasional criminals who would also take refuge in the tunnels to try to escape justice. In order to handle this type of rare

danger, Father helped the community to set up a system of lookout points manned by shifts of sentries. From the beginning, Father had begun mapping the tunnels they were occupying, and as they explored further or dug and cut out new chambers, they updated those maps. If a criminal element posed a threat, the engineers in their community would put up new walls and change the tunnel entryways to keep intruders out of their home, and the maps would be changed accordingly.

Father also had maps not only of the tunnels themselves, but also of every access point in the city they might need in order to go above safely when necessary. They had access points through manhole covers, grates, culverts, storm drains, and the basements of abandoned buildings, as well as the buildings where their Helpers either lived or worked. They even had access to a few freight elevators from the surface to the subterranean levels which allowed the transport of larger, heavier equipment and furnishings.