by Cédric Sire
She blinks, trying to adjust her vision.
She can see that her tormentor is still there. In this basement. She is sitting in an armchair, legs crossed, her face still masked. She’s petting an enormous black beast at her feet.
Eva recognizes a wolf.
The animal raises its head, and its eyes cast red rays in her direction.
One blink, and it’s no longer there.
The woman stands.
The strangeness of her figure strikes Eva for the first time. There is something unnatural about this woman’s posture. Or is it just the way her black dress drapes the curves of her body? Eva can’t figure it out. Her tears blur the details.
The woman comes closer. Her movements are jerky.
Her white mask still sparkles, despite the blood spatters.
There are brown smudges on her lips.
“This is only the beginning,” she says, a perverse pleasure in her voice. “Let’s pick up where we left off.”
Eva is terrified. The smell of her own blood is suffocating.
“Why?” she manages to whisper.
Then she breaks into a coughing fit, reviving pain throughout her body.
“Why?” she asks again. “You… sick… fuck…”
“Why?” The woman leans over, so close this time that Eva can feel her breath against her face. Her hair brushes Eva’s naked chest. It has a synthetic feel. So it is a wig. “Because it must be.” Locks from the wig sweep over her wounds. “You are here because you wanted to be. You selected yourself. What’s happening to you now is entirely your fault.”
“N… No…”
The woman smiles.
“They never chose you, though. They are very specific when they select their sacrifices, you know. And believe me, they’ve never shown any interest in you. But see, you wouldn’t mind your own business. You interrupted the scarlet feast. The gods were furious.”
Eva moans.
“Oh, of course, you’re not intelligent enough to understand,” the woman continues. “For you, they were all just murders, weren’t they? All you can see is the flesh. But what was at stake remains invisible to you. You have to live with death inside you to understand.”
She raises the scalpel.
Runs it in front of Eva’s face.
The inspector flinches. She doesn’t dare breathe, as the blade is too close to her eyes.
“Such pretty eyes. People say that albinos have the gift of clairvoyance. Is that true?”
Eva’s heart becomes a beating drum. She bites her tongue to remain motionless, at any cost.
The masked woman continues her monologue.
“Have you ever longed to speak to the gods, to ask of them what no mortal being could ever offer you?”
Eva breathes as slowly as possible. A drop of blood falls from the blade and lands in her right eye. She does not blink. The blade is so close. One tiny move, and the point will pierce her cornea.
She finds herself praying.
Make the monster leave, please.
She restrains a moan.
When the blade draws away from her face, Eva can’t help letting out a long whimper of relief, gratitude, or maybe terror. Or all of that combined. Her thoughts are muddled. The black river is approaching, coming to embrace her.
“I’ll let you have your eyes,” the woman tells her. “At least for now.”
Suddenly, behind the masked woman, Eva sees a black and indistinct figure. An animal with red eyes. Then a second animal and a third.
She shuts her eyes for a second, and when she opens them again, they’re gone.
“You can see them? That’s a good sign. They have come for you. They will take you when the time is right.”
Eva does the only thing she is still capable of. She spits in the woman’s face.
The woman laughs softly.
“You’re still feisty, little tiger. That’s good.”
“What do you want?” Eva utters.
“Your blood, your life, your soul. What else? I’m going to take back what you stole from me, do you understand? The ritual has been interrupted for a year because of you. One whole year lost. For a while I thought I’d lost her track. Fortunately, the gods are helping me. Thanks to you, the ceremony can start again. Nothing will stop it now.”
She raises the scalpel.
44
Only I had the courage to face the men across the Danube, and only I have conquered the Dacians, the fiercest nation ever known. These great warriors are fearsome, not only for their physical strength, but also because of the scriptures of Zalmoxis, who is said to dwell among them and is held in such profound reverence, he keeps sole dominion over their hearts and minds. Because of these scriptures, it is the Dacian belief that in death they do not die but instead move from one dwelling to a better one, and so the Dacians are happiest when facing death.
Vauvert put the book down.
“The Dacians are happiest when facing death.”
“Fucking barbarians,” he muttered.
He had read so many pages—and skimmed through so many others—his head was starting to spin. He rubbed his temples, his thoughts still muddled.
“In death they do not die but instead move from one dwelling to a better one.”
He was not sure he understood what that meant.
But that is what he had read—or at least what he thought he had read—in the Salavilles’ barn. He remembered the words perfectly: “Lords of death and resurrection. Leave your dwellings.”
He glanced at the photos on the wall. On one of them, the inscription written in lipstick on the bathroom wall, defied him with its big capital letters:
The books he just read corroborated everything Leroy had told him about. The first European tribes did worship a god of death. His name was Zalmoxis, which meant “Ancient God,” and wolves were his envoys to the world of the dead. Messengers of death, in other words.
“Lords of death and resurrection…”
Thoughts raced through his mind.
The worship of animal spirits was a component of many primal religions, but for the Dacians a truly dark veneration was fundamental. They made the wolf their ideal, the very symbol of their nation.
Their dream was to become one with the wolves so as to triumph over death. To “move from one dwelling to a better one,” as Emperor Trajan had written. The Dacians were eager to take the lives of others in the hope of becoming immortal.
And nowadays? What would happen if serial killers could actually free themselves from life and death?
People like the Salaville brothers, for example?
This was nonsense, of course. This kind of thing just was not possible, Vauvert kept saying to himself over and over again.
It’s nothing but folklore.
“Feast scarlet…”
He kept thinking in the silence of the tiny room. And the more he thought, the more convinced he became that the mysterious killer was actually inspired by this tradition. Whether these myths were actually true or not, she believed them, and that was the important thing. She believed them to the point of trying to resurrect the tradition.
He still had to figure out which ritual she was trying to recreate. The Dacians had many ceremonies, and all of them were gory. On some occasions, the men would pluck out the eyes of their enemies and slash their faces. There were also times when they would decapitate their enemies and display the heads on spikes. Every five years, they asked the gods of death to choose young boys to be used as human sacrifices. They were dropped alive onto a bed of spikes.
With such a catalog of horrors, a psychopath certainly had ample choice.
Pieces of the puzzle. So many pieces. And all of them red.
Vauvert’s vision was blurring.
He craved a smoke.
There was a knock. Detective Leroy stood in the doorway. He entered the office, his face grim.
“What’s going on?”
“Well, I’m not too sure,” Leroy said. “It’s
about the AB negative blood we found at Eva’s place. The lab ran a DNA test.”
Vauvert took a slow breath. He had already lived this very moment.
“It is someone we know?”
“In a way. This blood belongs to Barbara Meyer.”
“The Goth victim?”
“Yes, except she’s been dead for more than three days. This is totally crazy. This girl’s blood splashed on Eva’s walls. It’s impossible!”
It was. But it was also the second time this kind of thing had happened. A new piece of the puzzle was falling into place.
Vauvert kept his thoughts to himself.
“Is there anything else?”
“As a matter of fact, there is. I went through the Salaville file again. I found something unsettling.”
“Which is?”
“The list of the psychiatric institutions they were in.”
“Yes? They were in three different ones in fifteen years. Each time, they went in together.”
Leroy raised four fingers.
“We thought there were three. It seems now that we missed a fourth.”
“It’s not in the file?”
“Yes, it’s in the file. But it’s in the appendix. It was their detox treatment. It wasn’t filed in their psych histories. They were in Rodez, at the Raynal Medical Center, to be precise. The reports didn’t mention anything else, so I dug a little deeper in the database, looking for any event we might have recorded related to this institution. And, you know what? There was an incident involving both patients and staff members who had what appeared to be hallucinatory visions.”
“You’re not going to tell me that they were seeing wolves?”
“Yes. Both the patients and several staff members said they saw animals prowling the hallways. The district sent in specialists to check the facility for any toxic emissions that could have caused the hallucinations.”
“Did they find any?”
“Nothing at all. But now it gets even weirder. During the same period, four young female patients went home on weekend leave. They never returned, and they were never found again. Vanished in thin air. Well, except for one: Christine Garnier, twenty-one years old, unemployed. She was found. She had been bound in her own home with her throat slit.”
Vauvert slammed his hand on the desk.
“How come there was no investigation?”
“There was one,” Leroy said. “At the time, all the evidence pointed to her boyfriend, Mario Dupuy, so the police down there nabbed him.”
“Did he confess?”
“They didn’t have a chance to get the confession. He killed himself in his cell. It caused a hell of a scandal. The very next day, the local chief was fired by the region’s chief of police. The chief wanted the case tied up as fast and quietly as possible.”
“You mean they buried it,” Vauvert grunted. “God dammit, why do they always do that?”
Leroy shrugged.
“For them, Dupuy was the man, and I can’t really blame them. I would have assumed the same thing. The couple had a long history of drug abuse. Their apartment was found trashed, the walls splattered with the girl’s blood. Someone had written inscriptions and all sorts of pentagrams all over the place. The officers didn’t look any further. For them, the boy was high and just slaughtered his girlfriend. And actually, after this incident, there were no more disappearances.”
“No further reports of disappearances. You have hundreds of girls going missing every year. Students who start college and don’t come back to class after the first week. Runaway kids no one cares about. People who move away without anyone noticing.”
“Exactly,” Leroy said.
“Okay,” Vauvert said, standing up. “Was that hospital in Rodez?”
“It is down south, in the region.”
“I know exactly where it is, thanks,” Vauvert said with a sigh.
He walked over to the map of France, riddled with thumbtacks, and he stuck four new ones on the city of Rodez. Then he took a couple of steps back.
Seen from that angle, the city stood dead center in a swarm of red tacks.
“All right,” he said. “So maybe the Salaville brothers started their killing there.”
Leroy shook his head.
“Not them. Those girls went missing before they were sent to Raynal.”
Vauvert stared at the detective. Now he got it.
“You think our killer was already in that hospital?”
“Eva is convinced that we’re dealing with a deranged person. Someone who’s already been in treatment. Assuming that this person actually was at Raynal back then and also assuming that she managed to commit her first murders without anyone catching on.”
“The Salaville brothers could have met her when they came in for rehab,” Vauvert said. “And this person could have taught them how to kill, like some sort of mentor?”
“There you go.”
Vauvert scratched his two-day beard.
“It’s not like there haven’t been cases that are more far-fetched. Did you get in touch with the hospital?”
“Well, I tried,” Leroy said. “But there’s a problem. The place was shut down. Not profitable enough. New government regulations. Same old story.”
“When did it close?”
“Over six months ago. The building has already been leveled to make room for a mall. I asked for a copy of their archives, but you know the procedure. It’s going to take at least a week to get them.”
“We don’t have a week!” Vauvert burst out. “Eva is…. We’re losing too much time!”
“I know that,” Leroy said. “But listen, I searched the hospital staff, and I tracked down the ex-director, Jacques Fabre-Renault. He’s been transferred to Millau. That’s where he works now. I called him but only got his voicemail. I’ll get his personal number, and I’ll call him, okay?”
“Fine,” Vauvert said, calming down.
He picked up a photo of Barbara Meyer clad in vinyl and fishnet. A dead girl whose blood had spilled out of Eva’s mirrors.
Just as Roman Salaville’s blood spilled out of the flesh of some hellish beast.
He had to tell Leroy.
As he opened his mouth, a voice boomed in the hallway.
“Where is he? Where the fuck is he?”
Leroy frowned and looked toward the door.
“That’s Deveraux. Sounds like someone has him royally pissed off.”
“Where?” Deveraux bellowed.
A second later, he stormed into the office. It appeared that he had run all the way up the stairs, because he was out of breath, and the front of his shirt had come untucked from his pants. His cheeks were crimson, and his face was contorted. He was not just pissed. He looked like he was about to have a coronary.
“You!” he barked at Vauvert. “What’s with the bullshit?”
Vauvert straightened. He figured this kind of thing was going to happen eventually. He had just hoped it would take longer.
“Is there a problem?”
“The problem is that I called your supervisor, you fucking liar,” Deveraux yelled. “It seems that you never told Chief Kiowski that you were coming up here, and he certainly never gave you the go-ahead to join us. In fact, he was wondering where you were all morning. You abandoned your post without telling anyone!”
Leroy stared at Vauvert in dismay.
“Is that true?”
“What does it matter? I’m here, okay?”
“You don’t understand,” Deveraux said, still seething. “Not only did you lie to the chief, you disregarded standard operating procedure and chain of command in the middle of a manhunt where a cop’s life is on the line. This is a serious breach of professional ethics. Now get the fuck out of here.”
“But we’re making progress,” Vauvert responded.
“Well, you can go make your progress back down in the boonies and let us do our job.”
Vauvert slowly rose to his feet, his mass towering over Deveraux. Then, em
phasizing every word, he said, “I don’t know what the fuck is going on in your head, man. We are not in competition here. I’m trying to help save a colleague, and we are running out of time. Every minute we waste…”
“I don’t give a fuck if that stupid cunt got herself in trouble,” Deveraux flared. “If she had followed procedure, we wouldn’t be in this sorry mess. The entire department wouldn’t have had to drop everything just to try and bail her sorry ass out because she had to get pounded once too many times by some dipshit she picked up in a bar!”
Vauvert stared at him, motionless for exactly two seconds.
Up until now, Vauvert had been proud of how long he had restrained himself. This much self-control was rare for him.
But he had reached the point where polite behavior would only slow things even more.
Jean-Luc Deveraux did not see the head butt coming. Vauvert’s forehead swooped toward his face so fast, he couldn’t have dodged it anyway. It collided brutally with his nose, lighting up a big scarlet sun behind his eyes.
45
“You did what?” Ô repeated, furiously eyeing Vauvert, who was sitting in a chair in the hallway while the whole department gathered around.
“He broke my nose! The hick broke my nose!” Deveraux whined. “I want Internal Affairs! Right now!”
Ô raised a hand to quiet him.
“They’re on their way, Jean-Luc. Now, shut up.”
Deveraux pressed his handkerchief to his nose. It was quickly filling with blood.
“You guys, get him to the infirmary, now,” Ô ordered curtly.”
Two officers helped their colleague to his feet. As Deveraux passed Vauvert, he shot him the kind of hateful glare Vauvert had often gotten from the criminals he busted. Vauvert looked away and checked the time on his cell phone. He vaguely heard Deveraux demand to see Internal Affairs again as the other officers tried to calm him down.
Chief Ô waited until they were out of sight. Then, clearly angry, he turned to Vauvert.
“Dammit who the hell do you think you are?” he bellowed.
“I’m sincerely sorry, chief. That dumb piece of…”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Ô thundered. “You lied to me! I would have helped you out anyway, and maybe I would even have covered your ass if you had just had the guts to be straight with me. Now let me tell you, I won’t cry if you lose your badge over this. We do take assaulting colleagues very seriously here!”