by Cédric Sire
The three men stared at her.
“It’s in the Bible, isn’t it?” Leroy finally asked.
“Not really, Erwan. Countess Bathory was a Hungarian aristocrat in the sixteenth century. And she was a sadistic psychopath. She had four minions, who were also said to be sorcerers, whom she used to torture her female servants in every possible way. She would have them drive needles under their skin, for instance, and flay them until they bled to death. The official tally was three hundred and fifty victims, which makes her the most prolific serial killer in history. To this day, she’s remembered as the Blood Countess in Hungarian folklore.”
“Three hundred and fifty victims?” Deveraux responded. “You’ve got to be kidding?”
“No, I’m not. All this really happened. The Blood Countess has inspired a lot of modern vampire legends, as many legends as Prince Vlad Dracula. She was convinced that the blood of young girls could remove all traces of aging. She spread it all over her body, even bathing in a blood-filled bathtub, all for the purpose of becoming immortal.”
“Did it work?” Deveraux asked, chuckling.
“Not exactly,” Eva said, unfazed. “Actually, things got so out of hand, her own family brought her to trial. She was sentenced and ultimately walled up in her own bedroom. She died three years later, in 1614 to be precise.”
Eva’s colleagues stared at her. Leroy leafed through the book in silence, then handed it to Deveraux. He opened it, brows furrowed, and closed it almost immediately.
“I don’t get it. What does a Romanian dyke dead for hundreds of years have to do with our case?”
“You think that our killer is replicating those murders?” Ô intervened. “That he’s inspired by this Bathory character?”
“I don’t think so,” Eva responded vehemently. “I’m absolutely certain of it. “Last year, when I studied those symbols and inscriptions, I let myself get thrown off by the gibberish the Salavilles had written on the walls. With all possible names of gods we found there, I got my head full of satanic ceremonies, voodoo, African rituals. And all that time, I was looking in the wrong places. The person who perpetrated these barbaric acts wasn’t inspired by any occult rituals as we know them nowadays, but by what Countess Bathory did. He kills and tortures just the way she did.”
Eva paused to let what she intended to say next sink in.
“And it’s possible that this person actually believes she is Elizabeth Bathory.”
Her three colleagues kept looking at her, puzzled.
“What you mean here is that the killer could be a woman?” Ô asked.
“Come on, that’s ridiculous,” Deveraux groaned. “A woman?”
“Why not?” Leroy said.
“Because women don’t use knives!” Deveraux barked. “It’s never been seen!”
“That’s just it, Jean-Luc. I think we’re dealing with a killer the likes of which we’ve never seen before. And if things happen the same way they did last year, the killer is going to keep on striking, again and again until we stop her.”
Deveraux shrugged to show his disdain.
Eva paid him no mind and continued, “As I was saying, Countess Bathory surrounded herself with minions who took care of the dirty jobs for her, like getting rid of the bodies. We have in that case a typical slave-and-master relationship. It is possible that the Salavilles were actually servants at the beck and call of the killer, man or woman.”
“Hence the removal of the faces?”
“I think so. The only thing these girls have in common is that they were all very pretty. And Elizabeth Bathory was a complete narcissist. Other women’s beauty made her jealous.”
“Like the Evil Queen in Snow White?” Leroy asked.
“That’s the idea,” Eva said.
“Couldn’t it be simple cruelty?”
“Not with this degree of ferocity, no. There’s an intent to dehumanize these girls. Taking off their faces, that’s negating their status as human beings. And let me remind you that those trophies were never found.”
“Because the killer kept them,” Ô concluded.
“That’s what I believe. What do you think?” Eva asked.
Ô sighed.
“That we’re in deep shit.”
III
THE WOLVES
25
Sunday, 8 a.m.
It was barely dawn when Vauvert’s SUV left Highway 61 and sped onto Route 119, heading for the heart of the Ariège mountains. The sun was slowly rising in a charcoal sky above the Pyrenees’ pale outline.
As he drove over the wet asphalt, his mind was somewhere else.
He had just spent another sleepless night. He had tried, of course. He had stared at the ceiling for hours, listening to the sounds of the city, the neighbors’ sighs in their bedrooms, the drunken laughter coming from the street. But sleeping was simply impossible. At four in the morning, he got up, turned the television on again, and started sifting through the files. He immersed himself in the flow of blood the Salavilles had unleashed.
Twenty-four women murdered in less than a year.
Snatched from their own homes. In three different regions.
But how their killers had selected them, that had never been understood. Just as why the two brothers had suddenly started to kill had never been understood.
There was a key. He knew the key was somewhere in front of him, so close at hand, God dammit.
Maybe the key was still somewhere at their farm. A detail that was neglected last year. Something new, anything at all that could be a lead.
Arriving at an intersection, he took a sharp right turn. The SUV sped onto the narrow access road.
It was actually a muddy track because of the torrential rains that had been pouring the past weeks. Bordered by tall fir trees and fences, it twisted up the mountain. Vauvert had the odd feeling that he had driven this road just a few hours ago. But a full year had gone by. One year already. And nothing had changed.
The track was the same reddish scar across the country. It seemed to be running away from the realm of reality, entering the foggy lands bristling with black conifers of the mountains.
Last year, Vauvert had stopped at a crossroad in this very spot, unsure as to which way to go. Inspector Svärta had been with him. They were facing two dirt tracks, one to the right, the other to the left, and both led into the depths of the Ariège’s forest. Vauvert had wondered if they had taken a wrong turn.
Now he knew that they hadn’t. He was heading in the right direction.
He didn’t hesitate for a second this time and turned right. The SUV skidded, spraying rocks in its wake, forging full speed ahead on what was no more than a goat path.
The bends leading uphill were steep now.
Vauvert engaged the four-wheel drive, just as he had the year before.
This time, however, the passenger seat was empty. There was no girl to rescue. It was just a routine expedition to bring fresh eyes to an old crime scene.
Then why wouldn’t this persistent feeling of déjà-vu leave him? It was as though the past and the present were converging, blending in a strange and complex manner. Deep down, a small voice seemed to be crying out to him: Turn around. Right now.
Everything has been finished here.
Turn around before it’s too late.
He knew what the voice was.
It was his instinct. The voice of his most atavistic sense. Detective Damien Mira, his colleague and friend, had once told him that he believed everyone had a special gift and that his was precisely that: instinct.
Damien was probably right. He would have been an idiot not to understand that if his senses were on such high alert, it could only mean he was going in the right direction. Whether he liked it or not.
He had no choice but to go on.
Suddenly, the farmhouse rose up at the end of the track. Alone and gray. A rectangular hunk of stone with a decrepit balcony on the second floor. All the windows were shut.
Vauvert stopped
his vehicle in the driveway. In the same spot as the year before.
He put one foot on the ground, listening, smelling the air.
The farm was perfectly silent, like the landscape. Not a single bird singing. Not a frog was croaking. Even today.
There’s a reason, the inner voice whispered.
He got out of the vehicle and took a few steps in the driveway.
The rain had left the ground slimy. His military boots made sucking noises with every step.
He reached the front door. That very door where Claude Salaville had shot him. He noticed that the crime-scene seals were still intact. Obviously, no family members had seen fit to claim this inheritance. No one could blame them.
The giant inspector considered ripping off the crime-scene tape but changed his mind. He started walking around the house, aware that he was following steps he had taken before.
The barbed wire-topped gates were closed, but no one had replaced the padlock, snapped by the response team during the raid. Vauvert leaned with all his weight against the gates. They creaked and moaned until they opened just enough to let him slip through.
26
Like everything else, the farmyard had not changed. It was deserted and muddy, engulfed in that same unreal silence.
But there was one notable difference. Time had washed the ground clean. A few faint stains were all that remained of the blood that had been spilled there. Or perhaps the stains were just a vague memory.
A memory that Alexandre Vauvert was reliving with unpleasant clarity.
He tried to chase the thoughts away.
Because the place had remained untouched, maybe there was still some evidence here, preserved all this time. That was what he wanted to focus on.
He headed toward the barn.
The seals on the door had been ripped off. That was the first anomaly.
The door was ajar. An invitation.
His heart beat faster.
It was too late to retreat. He had to know.
He pulled on the wooden handle, sensing something familiar and terrible.
The door creaked open.
Déjà-vu.
The suffocating smell seized his throat.
Vauvert immediately took a step back, drawing his gun.
The barn was still. The only sound was the wind blowing in the trees. But maybe he was imagining it.
Vauvert took the handle again and opened the right door wide before doing the same with the left door. Light poured into the barn, illuminating every corner.
His weapon in hand, Vauvert took position in the entryway, trying to determine the cause of the stench.
The barn looked deserted. The shelves were empty. The chains hanging from the beams were gone, as were the butcher hooks and bloody buckets. It had all been taken away, tagged, and filed as evidence.
All what was left was a vast space, the ground layered with moldy hay, and the leprous stone walls.
So where was this pestilential smell coming from?
He stepped into the barn and saw the small black mounds all over the ground. That was the source of the stink: feces. Just excrement. Animals had made their home in the barn and had done their business all over the place.
Whatever they were, it didn’t seem that they were there any longer.
His gun still raised, Alexandre Vauvert surveyed the rest of the barn.
The walls were still covered with nonsensical inscriptions, faded memories that time was slowly erasing from the stone.
Except for the wall on the far end.
There, the words were perfectly legible.
The blood the words were written in was still red and wet.
Vauvert froze.
Still wielding his gun with his right hand, he took out his cell phone to call this in. On the screen, a series of letters were scrolling.
“What the fuck?”
He turned the phone off and then turned it back on again. The letters were gone, but there was still no signal.
“Shit.”
He used it anyway to take a picture of the inscription on the wall. Then he turned around and took more pictures of the piles of excrement. It was all he could do for now.
His stomach was churning.
He turned around to leave, still on the lookout.
Outside, the light was declining. Thick black clouds were gathering in the sky. A storm would break soon, and it would probably be as violent as the one the night before.
Vauvert jogged across the yard toward the house.
Then he saw the back door. It, too, was ajar. The police tape looked like it had been ripped off a good while ago.
Vauvert raised his weapon. He pushed the door open with his foot.
The inside of the house lay in darkness.
A flash of lightning crossed the sky, followed by thunder--rolling, heavy, distant, like a demon approaching.
Vauvert stepped inside.
The smell assailed him. The stink of shit.
The house seemed deserted.
Turn around. Right now, before it is too late.
He unsnapped the flashlight from his belt and pointed the ray of light at the floor. Black droppings were all over the tiles.
There was something else, something underneath the stench.
“Can’t you smell it? The smell of blood.”
Those were Eva’s words last year.
But now? Was he really smelling blood? Or was his mind playing tricks?
He didn’t know anymore.
He wasn’t sure of anything.
Outside, it thundered again.
He focused, pointing the flashlight at the walls. The inscriptions were still there, overlapping each other. He recognized some of the names that had been frenetically scribbled on the wallpaper. Sekhmet, Adonaï and other names borrowed from all religions. And in the middle, the large circle drawn in blood. He guessed it more than he could see it, brown and faded now, in the beam of light.
He swept the walls with the flashlight, looking for more recent marks. He found none.
At frequent intervals, he glanced at his phone.
Still no signal.
He carefully scanned the living room. No movement, just the dust particles dancing in the waning light. This was where Eva had discovered the girl with the knife planted in her vagina.
On that sofa, still in the center of the room.
Vauvert aimed his light on it, taking a step forward.
And stopped in his tracks.
A figure was curled on the sofa. A slender form covered with some sort of fur blanket.
“Police,” Vauvert shouted, pointing the flashlight with one hand and his gun with the other.
The form moved.
“Police! Show me your hands!”
The figure turned and stretched.
On its four legs.
The fur was not a blanket.
It was a wolf. A black wolf, with eyes that gleamed like mirrors.
“Oh shit,” Vauvert grunted, stepping back.
Then, through the other door, a gaunt second figure slipped into the room.
Vauvert stared at one and then the other. He realized he must be exuding fear. Did they smell it on him? If he fired at one, would the other have time to leap on him?
He did not feel like taking the chance. He just wanted to get out of this place. Quick.
He took another step back.
He turned off his flashlight. And yet he could still see the animals’ eyes. Four small red flames burning in the darkness. Were wolves’ eyes supposed to glow like that?
No, wolves’ eyes were not supposed to glow, and they were not red. Not outside nightmares.
Then, with terror, he placed that feeling of déjà-vu.
He was facing the wolves from his dream.
He was descending into his own fucking nightmare.
Finally he felt the door against his back.
The two wolves lunged at him.
He threw himself through the doorway and
slammed the door shut.
27
Alexandre Vauvert ran across the yard.
Whatever it was that was going on in there, it was far from normal.
He had to call for backup.
As he reached the iron gates, he pulled out his cell phone. Once again, the screen was filled the impenetrable text:
He didn’t have time to think about its meaning. The shutters on a window flew open, and one of the wolves leaped out, its red eyes locked on him. The second wolf followed on its tail.
The two black beasts separated and took positions on both sides of the gate, cutting off Vauvert’s escape.
Vauvert dropped the phone and gripped his gun with both hands, aiming it at the two animals. Why weren’t they just running away?
He shot at the closest wolf. The wolf crouched and sprang to the side as he fired. The bullet hit the mud, heaving up dark muddy matter.
The two beasts began to move together, as if they were of one mind.
They came at him.
Vauvert fired again.
He missed and fired again.
Then he fired a burst of shots.
His sixth or seventh–Vauvert didn’t know--hit one of the animals in the breast. The wolf fell back and emitted a howl like the scream of dozens of babies, blood seeping from its jaws.
Still, it got back up. In its eyes was the fiery glow of pure hatred.
It lunged at the man, its bloody jaws open wide, its fangs like razors.
Vauvert fired one last time. He hit the beast in the head. The wolf stiffened, as though electrocuted, and crashed at the inspector’s feet.
He raised his gun toward the other beast.
It was not there.
Vauvert pressed his back against the side of the house. He whirled his gun from one side to the other, covering all the space in front of him. No wolf. Somehow it had bolted off.
But where? The wolf had been at least thirty feet from the gate. He would have seen it heading in that direction.
So where had the animal run off to? And how could it have just slipped away?
The inspector blinked. He wondered whether he could trust his senses. Was he seeing things? Nothing like this had ever happened before.