by Cédric Sire
“At least she has the same cell phone number as before.”
Vauvert leaned against the wall, a puddle of acid in the pit of his stomach. They had explained the situation to Erwan Leroy, who was now on the phone in the hallway, trying to get the Lombards’ address.
Eva was fuming at herself.
“When I think that she actually told me, and I didn’t get it! She’s killing these girls as a sacrifice to the ancient gods, and she’s convinced that each of the victims was handpicked by those deities in order to quench their thirst. In her twisted logic, when I prevented her from killing Eloïse, I stopped her ceremony. Without that girl’s death, her ritual can’t be completed.”
“I knew there had to be a reason for Saint-Clair moving up here,” Vauvert slammed the wall with his fist. “The crazy bitch was following her victim, planning to continue her ritual. Eloïse Lombard. That’s who she wanted all along. It was all there, right under our eyes! How could I not have thought of it earlier?”
Eva pulled the sheet away and slid her legs over the side of the bed.
“Hey!” Vauvert said.
Eva flashed him a grin.
“I’m fine, don’t worry.”
Leroy walked into the room. His eyes opened wide.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“What does it look like? I’m sitting up,” Eva grumbled. “So? Did you get Dispatch?”
“They gave me the Lombards’ address. It’s in the ninth arrondissement, the Caumartin neighborhood. I couldn’t get a cruiser to go there, though. Right now, all available men are in Seine-et-Marne, searching for Saint-Clair’s body.”
“Didn’t you tell them it’s important?” Eva snapped.
“Well, all we have is a completely hypothetical deduction.”
“We’ve seen what Saint-Clair is capable of. Eloïse Lombard needs protection until we can make sure that she’s out of danger!”
“Don’t worry, okay?” Leroy said, trying to calm her. “I told Dispatch I was going to go over myself and make sure everything is all right. They gave me the home phone number, but there’s a problem with the line right now.”
“A problem with the line?” Vauvert asked.
“These things do happen, you know.”
Vauvert felt his anxiety rise.
Eva glanced at her cell. It was after six o’clock. Night had fallen already.
She got on her feet, wobbling a little.
“God dammit! What the hell are you doing?” Vauvert asked.
“If that girl is in danger, I want to go too.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Vauvert protested.
Leroy took her elbow to keep her from falling. “Eva, you’re in no condition to go anywhere,” he told her.
She disregarded him and walked deliberately toward the closet.
“I feel great. I really do.”
She grabbed the back of a chair and coughed. Vauvert put his arm around her waist to support her.
“This is not open for discussion. There is absolutely no way you’re leaving this room now, understood?”
She pushed up her sunglasses and opened the closet door
“Have you done one thing by the book lately, smarty pants?”
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Vauvert responded.
“That you can’t stand still any more than I can. So please, don’t talk to me as if you were my mother.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it. You were in danger!”
“So is this girl.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I can feel it. Deep inside.”
She took out a suit a colleague had brought her to wear home when she was released from the hospital and set it on the unmade bed.
“Something terrible is happening right now. Trust my intuition.”
Vauvert chose not to say anything. Instead, he nodded to Leroy.
“Let’s go.”
“No, you guys are going to have to wait for me,” Eva insisted.
But the two men were already walking down the hallway, heading for the elevator. Vauvert rushed inside and pressed the button. As the door closed, he was relieved to see that Eva still had not come out of her room at the other end of the hallway.
He realized he was shaking.
86
6:20 p.m.
When Eloïse stepped into her apartment building, she found the janitor planted in front of the elevator. He pressed the button several times before giving up, mumbling under his breath.
“Power outage?” Eloïse asked.
“Yes, it’s the whole building. I don’t know what the problem is. It looks like the rest of the neighborhood still has power. You will have to use the stairs until it’s fixed.”
Eloïse opened the door to the stairwell. She didn’t mind taking them, even though her apartment was six floors up. The emergency lights were working, so she could see where she was going.
She climbed the stairs.
She couldn’t wait to get home to her cocoon. As soon as the power was back on, she would curl up on the couch under a mountain of quilts, eat chocolate, and watch stupid television shows. This had become her soothing ritual for dealing with her anxiety. And her father would soon be back home.
When she reached the second-floor landing, she suddenly had a very odd feeling.
The feeling of being watched. Again.
Come on, don’t be silly, girl, she chided herself.
She hurried to the third floor.
Now she heard a strange sound behind her.
She turned.
Probably a neighbor coming up the stairs. No reason to panic.
She listened carefully.
Nothing.
Then the sound started again.
Something was climbing the stairs after her.
But it wasn’t footsteps that she heard.
It was the sound of an animal on all fours.
Like sharp claws on the steps.
Eloïse started climbing the steps faster. She was out of breath when she got to the fourth floor. She didn’t slow down.
Behind her, the scratching on the steps was getting louder.
She was panting by the time she reached the fifth floor. She rushed to the exit and jiggled the handle on the door. The door wouldn’t open. She pulled and pushed.
The door remained stubbornly shut.
She heard breathing.
She dropped her book bag and started bolting up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time.
The animal was getting closer. She could feel it. It was a wild black creature, she instinctively knew, like the one she had seen at the Salaville farm. No one had believed her when she tried to talk about it.
But the wolf had found her. It had come for her.
She pushed hard on her legs to climb faster.
Behind her, the wolf was gaining ground.
She didn’t know how, but she finally reached the sixth floor and grabbed the door handle, praying that it would work. It did. She slid through the door and slammed it behind her.
The beast, on the other side, lunged at the door, clawed at it furiously.
Eloïse rushed toward her apartment.
She slipped in a puddle of blood.
87
Eloïse fell to her knees, yelping with astonishment. Her hands landed in the cold, viscous liquid.
Oh, my God.
There was blood everywhere. It was splashed on the walls. It was dripping from the ceiling.
She got up but slipped and almost fell again. Despite her rising terror, she forced herself to concentrate and move toward her apartment. She was not going to be a victim.
Not again.
On the other side of the stairwell door, the beast was still pounding to get through.
Then it howled. It sounded like dozens of animals.
Eloïse pressed her hands against her ears.
She staggered toward her apartment.
There were only tw
o units on this floor. Hers was at the very end of the hallway. On the right, the neighbor’s door was ajar. She ventured a look inside. Her brain at first refused to acknowledge the sight. But what her brain wouldn’t accept, her body could—and did. The blood curdled in Eloïse’s veins.
In a large room framed by a big window, Eloïse made out a leather couch and two female figures lying on it, their bodies upside down
Just like in that barn, like all the others.
Their legs were hooked over the back of the couch. Their arms were dangling on the floor. Their bodies were emptying.
Their faces, two red, gaping chasms.
Their blood.
It was running in rivers down their inanimate limbs. Open wounds were all over their bodies.
And yet there was something even more horrible.
The true abomination was crouched on the floor: a bald, naked woman, her back stooped, her face masked in white. She had her arms around the corpses in an obscene embrace. Their blood was flowing over her breasts and down her hips. This woman, this impossible vision, had smeared the blood all over herself.
She let go of the bodies and got up. The dead girl on the right tumbled into the puddle of blood on the floor.
Eloïse’s heart was beating so fast, she thought it might pierce her chest. She wanted to scream, to run, to do something, but her body felt like a concrete block. She was incapable of even breathing.
The monstrous woman’s movements weren’t human. She looked like a dislocated doll. Her backbone was twisting and distorting.
The woman smiled, revealing her blood-stained teeth, and extended a hand toward Eloïse.
“There you are!”
Something clicked. Eloïse managed to scream.
She also saw the wolf.
It was lying at the foot of the couch and was lapping up the blood. It raised its head in her direction, and its eyes shone like burning coals in the dark. Red and fixed.
A second animal came out from behind the couch.
This one must have been rolling in the blood, because its hair was sticky.
All of a sudden, all the lies the shrink had told her were torn to shreds. The truth was in front of her. The proof that her fears were real. The monster was real. The monster had come back. It had found her, as she always knew it would.
Eloïse spun around and started to dash toward her apartment.
“You can’t go anywhere. Everything ends now,” the masked woman said. “I’ve been waiting for this moment far too long.”
She was walking slowly, her body dripping the red liquid. Her feet made a squishing sound as they sank into the puddles.
Eloïse struggled against the rising panic. She frantically groped her pockets for her apartment key. She finally found it and yanked it out. In her haste, it fell to the floor. Eloïse bent over to pick it up.
Over her shoulder, she could see that the blood-smeared woman was gripping the frame of the neighbor’s door. Her backbone was twisting and wobbling even more frenetically, as though her body was changing.
“It’s no use fighting. Everything depends on you now. You have to accept it.”
There was an otherworldly tone in her voice, and it, too, was changing with each syllable. Different voices seemed to be emanating from the same throat. But that wasn’t all. The woman’s skin was rippling, like the shimmering surface of a stormy river.
“The gods chose you,” she said in a distorted voice. “You do remember that the gods chose you, don’t you, Eloïse? The dark lords want your blood. They want your tears, your sweet tears. I am the one who’s going to collect them. One by one.”
Eloïse was struggling to get the key in the lock.
Glancing behind her again, she could see the woman’s body with more clarity. Now she could see the huge gash in her chest. The wound looked raw, but it was closing. It was healing by the second.
Eloïse didn’t want to see any more of this. She got the key in the lock. She turned it hastily, opened the door, and hurled herself inside her apartment.
88
And so, everything is for the best.
The girl is trapped now.
Judith Saint-Clair comes closer, one step after another, taking delight in the wild energy that is coursing through her body again, under her blood-adorned skin. All around her, the eyes of the gods are attentive. The gods are hungry.
She rests a hand on the door. Blood is dripping from her fingers.
Slowly, she traces a circle.
She crosses it with three horizontal lines.
“I’ll tell you a story.”
“Go away!” the girl screams from inside the apartment.
A smile. She brings her lips close to the door.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. You are the last one. The gods led me to you, do you understand? You were chosen to enter into a miracle.”
The world vibrates. The walls contract. The entire building becomes an enormous heart made of gray flesh that starts beating.
“The miracle of blood. You’ll see. I’ve come to free you.”
“Get the fuck away from me!” the girl screams from the other side of the door. “Please, leave me alone!”
What a little fool.
Judith Saint-Clair smiles again, and the wolves draw near.
89
6:30 p.m.
Hurrying through the main lobby of the hospital, Vauvert listened distractedly as Leroy fumed on the cell phone. Leroy kept repeating that his request took absolute priority.
Worry was written all over his face when he ended the call.
Vauvert gave him an anxious look.
“So? What’s going on?”
“The boss is in a meeting. I could only talk to Deveraux, and he just won’t disturb him. He took the message, though. The chief will call me,” Leroy said with a shrug. “As soon as Deveraux tells him, I guess.”
“And you think there is a chance the idiot will actually tell him?”
“Well.” Leroy nervously ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not stupid, okay? I know Jean-Luc is obstructing us. The asshole has every intention of taking credit for Saint-Clair’s arrest, though he can’t figure out even half of what’s happening. You were right when you said that a stubborn guy like him can mess things up.”
Vauvert waved the thought aside.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll be at her place. We can call for backup if there’s a reason to. Do we have a car?”
“I’m on it.”
There were two uniformed officers at the entrance. Leroy made a beeline for them. The conversation did not go as smoothly as Vauvert had hoped. Leroy raised his voice when one of the cops obstinately shook his head. Finally, the cop handed Leroy a key.
“Before the end of the night shift, right?”
“You won’t even know we borrowed it, I swear.”
As he hurried back to Vauvert, he waved the key.
“Here. We’re taking a cruiser.”
“It’s parked at the hospital?”
“Yes. Right in front.”
The area outside the hospital was a maze. They had to go around two inner courtyards before they were able to spot the white cruiser.
And then they saw that someone was waiting for them.
Eva Svärta stood there, her back resting against the vehicle and her arms crossed.
Seeing their stunned faces, she gave them a wide grin, then burst into a coughing fit.
“There you are, finally. You guys took your time.”
90
The landline worked no better than her cell. Eloïse dropped the phone. She spun around and hit the corner of the table in the dark.
Don’t panic. The last thing you want to do is panic, she kept repeating to herself. That’s what she wants.
She tried to control her breathing and realized that she could not. Her heart was pounding.
She screamed as loud as she could, “I have a gun! If you come in, I’ll shoot you in the head! I swear to God I will!�
��
“Don’t be silly. Open the door. You knew it would end this way.”
Eloïse refused to listen. She ran to the kitchen and opened the utensil drawer. She grabbed the biggest meat cleaver she could find.
Would it be enough to protect her?
She stared at it.
It looked almost pathetic in the face of what was on the other side of the door. Still, she put it next to her.
She tried her cell phone again. No signal.
The screen went blank all of a sudden, and a series of letters started scrolling.
Eloïse shrieked and let go of the phone. It shattered on the kitchen floor. She went back to the living room, knife in hand, not knowing what to do.
“You must understand what’s happening,” the woman on the other side of the door said. “The gods are watching you. They are hungry for you.”
Eloïse did not listen.
Her attention was focused on the full-length mirror in the hallway.
There was a beast in the reflection.
Eloïse stepped to the side.
The beast was ready to leap out of the mirror.
“You’re the last one,” the woman behind the door insisted. “A long time ago, it was an honor to die for the gods. You’ll see. It’s wonderful to feel your soul fly away.”
Eloïse quickly crossed the living room and opened the sliding door to the balcony.
She stepped out and shut the door.
Through the glass, she saw the animal. It was no longer a mere image in the mirror. It was on all fours in the middle of the living room.
The wolf bore its fangs and darted in her direction.
She stepped back as the beast’s paws hit the glass door.
“Help!” she screamed.
She leaned over the balcony railing. There were apartment buildings all around but nobody in sight.
“Help me! Help!”
A blinding bolt of lightning tore through the sky.
The sky opened up and started pouring rain.
On the other side of the glass door, there were two black animals now. Their red eyes were glaring at her with perfect malice.
“Can anybody hear me? Help me! Somebody! Help me!”
Down below, people were rushing to get out of the downpour. They couldn’t hear her cries for help.