by S. Cedric
Vauvert understood better how things happened, now. This was totally consistent with Saint-Clair’s logic.
“She’s always done that. She finds out-of-the-way places where she can commit her murders and stash her victims. Like the Salaville farm.”
“That’s the conclusion we all came to,” Ô said.
He stood up and straightened his suit. “I have to leave you now. I’m expected at Homicide. Until all of this is settled, keep me posted about everything you do. And the same goes for you, Erwan.”
Then, before leaving, he added: “One last thing, guys, I’m setting up an appointment with a psychologist for you. You’ve been through some pretty traumatic events. He’ll help you sort things out.”
82
The blood.
Oh, the blood.
Flowing over her skin again. The delicious fluid oozes between her fingers and streams down her face. Its powerful smell rises. The salty metallic flavor fills her mouth.
She twists the girl’s inanimate body into the perfect position.
The blade of the scalpel makes an incision, ever so softly, around her charming little face. She drives her fingers underneath, and she pulls. The skin peels off the muscle with a wet sigh.
Gently, she lays the skin on her own face. Her wrinkles start quivering. A mask of blood. A mask of innocence.
“May my blood be yours. May your blood be mine,” she chants.
And with each syllable, her voice becomes younger.
Lightning sets the sky ablaze.
Thunder rolls over the city.
The gods exult. The gods are impatient, too.
The moment is near. It will come. Any minute now.
The final victim will soon be here. It is written. It has always been written this way. The gods chose her long ago. This is how it must happen. There’s no other way.
And then. Oh yes, then. The cycle will be completed.
The seventy will have been sacrificed.
The gods will be satiated.
Shivering with expectancy, she lays the skin on the table and removes her dress. It had become too large for her. The garment crumples onto the floor.
There she stands, naked, her body pulsating, and slowly she places the porcelain mask back on her face.
The wailing from the second teenager snaps her out of her ecstasy.
The girl, the one whose name is Rebecca, is huddled in a corner, blood flowing from her many wounds. She doesn’t have the strength to even crawl anymore, but life hasn’t left her little shivering body. Which is very, very good. More tears for the gods.
The girl tries to open her mouth, then shuts it. She slides a hand along the pane reaching for the handle? Her figure looks like that of a broken doll, outlined against dusk’s bluish lights from outside.
She smiles tenderly at the girl.
She exalts in the feel of skin stretching across her face again. The blood has soothed her illness.
Turning around, she looks into the full-length mirror on the living-room wall.
The frightful reflection surprises her and puts her to shame. The fresh blood is doing its work, but the illness still pulses in her veins. Her translucent skin sags over brittle bones and soft muscle.
But magic comes through mirrors, and this is no exception. Mirrors are doors. Mirrors are eyes. One only needs to know how to open them, either one.
She raises her bloody fingers and draws a line on the mirror, from top to bottom.
“Diseebeh. My eyes are opened.”
And where she has drawn the opening, the mirror contorts.
“Fearsome gods who have power over life and over death, receive this sacrifice. Abandon your solitude, and come taste the tears and the blood! Come to the scarlet feast! May the doors be opened again!”
Paws with heavy nails break through the mirror, and a black beast heaves itself out of the netherworld.
It looks like a wolf, with its hair mangy, its fangs yellow. Yet just like the woman, the beast is trembling. Every molecule of its body seems in a struggle to remain tangible in this world.
“Oh,” the woman whispers. “Yes, may life water death.”
The animal gives her a knowing look, its eyes shining with infinite malice, and goes over to the girl in the corner. It laps up her blood.
Behind her, the mirror has split in two.
Rebecca experiences one last surge of energy. A scream of despair and absolute terror escapes from her throat.
“Yes,” the woman says again. “Finally. Finally.”
She takes the girl in her arms. The girl does not have the strength to resist. Rivers of tears flow from her eyes.
She lays the girl on the sofa, next to the corpse of her friend.
“No,” Rebecca whispers in an almost inaudible voice.
The woman crouches next to her. She kisses the gaping wound in her neck and rips off her clothes with growing eagerness.
“Can’t you feel it? The gods are watching us. The gods are so close now. They have come for you. The gods desire you, do you understand?”
The wolf, lying next to her, raises its head and bares its fangs.
The girl continues to cry, continues to sob.
The woman laughs.
The scalpel slides, slowly, underneath the wet sheath of her face.
83
5:30 p.m.
After the nurse had come by to retrieve her food tray, a vegetable soup she had hardly touched, and given her drugs that she swallowed hastily, Eva was left alone to stare at the ceiling through her sunglasses.
The waves of pain shot through her without respite.
Her fellow officers assumed it was a physical pain and told her all she needed was a boost in her medication. But that was not the pain she was feeling. Her colleagues also thought that she could not stop thinking about that woman—but she could, a little. No one knew the true cause.
The nurse advised her to get some rest. Eva’s bundled nerves prevented her from falling asleep.
Memories were spinning in her head. The image of that man with white hair would not go away. His eyes filled with boundless insanity and with a love just as immense. No one had ever looked at her that way. Only that man, whom she had meant to kill.
It was for this reason and this reason only that the memory of Justyna had remained with her all those years. Just so she could open her eyes. She had been such an idiot, and now she hated herself for not understanding sooner, for having walled herself up in her fortress of oblivion to avoid the black floods and the pain.
Her stomach in knots, she let the memories flow. All clearer, and with each one of them, there were more unanswered questions.
Why did my father track down my mother that way? What had she done to him? Was she only trying to save our lives? How did he find us? And, above all, how did he manage to evade the police so easily? Did he have accomplices? That was impossible, wasn’t it?
Along with those questions were the ones that she did not want to ask, the ones she refused to formulate in her head. They lurked insistently in the periphery of her consciousness.
Could he still be alive?
Do I want him to be alive?
Why?
Those thoughts set fire to her nerve endings.
Someone knocked, calling her back to reality. Vauvert stuck his head in the half-opened door.
“Okay if I come in?”
Eva fumbled with her sunglasses.
“Sure. Come in, Alexandre.”
As he walked in, she saw the flowers he was carrying. He was switching the bouquet from one hand to the other, as though he had no clue what to do with it.
“Thank you. But you shouldn’t have.”
Vauvert set the bouquet on the bedside table, pushing aside a glossy magazine one of her colleagues had brought her. He pulled out a chair and tried to make out Eva’s eyes behind the shades.
“It’s not much, really. When I saw them in the shop downstairs. Well.” He couldn’t find the right words. “I t
hought you might like some color in this room.”
“They look great,” Eva said.
She hated flowers. Her colleagues knew that, and so no one had brought her any. Still, she was touched by the gesture.
There was an awkward silence. Vauvert fidgeted in his chair.
“I’m so glad you’re in one piece.”
“One piece, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Eva chuckled. “You don’t want to see me naked. I think I’m missing a few little chunks, here and there.”
Vauvert lowered his eyes. Not the best choice of words. She bit her lip, hesitated, and finally reached out to touch his arm. “Thank you, Alexandre.” Then, sensing another silence coming, she added, “Anything new?”
“Not yet. But we’ll find her eventually. And then all this will be over, once and for all.”
“You really believe that?”
Vauvert put his hand on hers.
“We know who she is. She’s wounded. She can try to crawl into any hole she wants. I doubt she can get very far.”
Eva looked into his eyes and saw that he was not believing his own words. Still, she was comforted.
“She almost did it, you know,” Eva said. “She called things from another world, things with a power we can’t possibly understand,” she said. “Her age really changed. I saw it.”
“But you stopped her.”
“I will be sure of that only when we find her body.”
She thought about what she had just said, and then she thought of the man with white hair leaning over her, devouring her with his red eyes. A man overflowing with pride for his daughter.
“I’m a monster, Alexandre.”
“Why would you say something like that?”
Because my father is a serial killer. And because when I tried to kill him, he was proud of me.
She looked distant.
“Because I wish this woman dead, don’t you get it? Not just for the sake of revenge, not even for the sake of justice. I just want to see her suffer. Every fiber of my body wants that swine to bleed out until she’s fucking dead. Just saying it, my heart beats faster.”
Vauvert looked at her silently.
“It’s not up to me to decide their fate,” Eva whispered. “And you know what? Before today, I never really understood that. Everything I’ve done, all those criminals whose brains I blew out, the ones I threw out windows without giving it a second thought because I couldn’t accept the idea of them spending six months in jail and then getting out. Every time I ever have a problem with someone, I wish him dead, do you understand? I have this in me. In my genes.”
“No, you don’t. What you have in your genes…” Vauvert fumbled for words. He gave her a smile full of emotion. “What you have in you, Eva, is an incredible ability to put yourself in other people’s shoes, even when you don’t want to. You can feel their sadness and anger and fear like nobody else can, because you suffer as much as they do. You can’t control the empathy you have been blessed with, as much as you would like to, that’s all.”
It was Eva’s turn to stare at him and to answer his smile.
“You really should be a profiler, Alexandre.”
She pointed her chin at the magazine on the bedside table. On the cover was a rail-thin starlet, her face symmetrical beyond perfection, in an ultratrendy dress highlighting her perfect curves “How about that? Doesn’t it stand to reason that we’d all end up insane trying to meet that kind of physical standard—always having to be young and beautiful? Look at all the money we spend on beauty products and cosmetic surgeries in the hope of slowing time.”
“Yeah. Luckily, both of us already look like models.”
Eva couldn’t help laughing. It rekindled the pain in her neck.
Then Vauvert ran a hand through her hair. She let him. He lifted her dark glasses, exposing her cherry-colored eyes, and looked into them.
She peered back at him, hoping she wasn’t blinking too much.
Her mouth parted.
Vauvert watched these wet lips. He looked back at her eyes. Eva smiled at him.
It was she who leaned forward first.
Their lips touched.
And all of a sudden, it was so obvious.
The gods will have their last sacrifice.
Those were the masked woman’s very words. She had blamed her for getting in the way, for interrupting her sacrifice.
That wasn’t what had brought her to Paris, though.
If Saint-Clair had wanted to go for her, she could have done it way before. Yet the crazy bitch had stayed in the south. She came to Paris a year later.
They found her. They showed her to me.
Vauvert frowned.
“Eva? You okay?”
“Eloïse Lombard,” Eva said, gasping.
Vauvert just looked at her.
“The girl we saved last year at the Salavilles’! Are you still in contact with her?”
“Not really, no. I talked to her father on the phone a couple of times last year. The kid was having some sort of breakdown. She thought she was being watched night and day. I just hoped it would pass.”
“That’s what we all thought. And we were dead wrong, all of us.”
They stared at each other.
Vauvert finally understood what she was getting at.
“Her father told me they would move eventually if the kid didn’t get any better. But I never checked to see if they did. Wait.”
He took out his phone and called Damien Mira’s number in Toulouse.
It took less than two minutes for his colleague to confirm that the Lombard family had moved. And one more minute to find out that they had settled in Paris just three months earlier.
84
6 p.m.
As black clouds gathered above the Seine River, and night began to fall on the city, Eloïse kept her senses alert to her surroundings.
She had been living in Paris for three months now, and walking down this street had become part of her normal routine. She had hoped that the anxiety would leave her. But it hadn’t.
She tightened the collar of her jacket, while her two friends chattered about the day at school.
“Okay, are you guys ready then?” asked Miriam, a short brunette whose breasts strained against her tight cream-colored sweater. “I can take care of the screenplay if you want.”
She was talking about the project that their teacher, Lucas Bringer, had given them. They had three months to make a short film. It would be their main assignment for the first semester.
“Scare me,” Bringer had told the class. “That’s what I want you to do. You’ll work in groups of three.” The announcement had triggered a wave of excitement in the lecture hall. They all loved horror movies, and they couldn’t wait to get started. They immediately started conferring with one another, looking for partners and tossing out ideas.
Eloïse was the only one who did not show any special enthusiasm.
She agreed to team with Miriam and Charlotte simply because they were the only two people she had talked to since the beginning of the school year. She did not know much about them, and they knew nothing about her. It was all her fault. So far, she had not opened up to anyone. She did not feel ready for it yet.
“We could do a vampire story,” Miriam suggested as she lit a cigarette. “What do you think? A boy who wants to kill a girl while she’s sleeping, but then he falls in love with her? Something real hot, like True Blood?”
“Actually, what you really want to do is find a cute boy to play the vampire so you can get laid, don’t you?” Charlotte snickered.
“So what, you never know, right? Jeremy, for instance, he’d be a hot vampire. You know, the guy with the dreads in art history class. I heard he plays in a metal band.”
“Oh, so he’s into satanism,” Charlotte chuckled.
“And you’re such a jealous bitch. I am the one he’s secretly been eyeing in class.”
“In your dreams.”
“It’s true!” Mir
iam insisted. “Every time I take a look at him, he’s looking at me!”
Charlotte laughed even harder.
“Jeremy is fucking hot, all right. I’ll give you that. But I’m sure you’ll find yourself other occasions to get laid. I say we make a movie with a serial killer, what do you think?”
“What? Like a slasher flick? It’s been done to death.”
“But it always works. And you should know, Miss Vampire Banger, that the serial killer is nothing but a modern vampire without all the cheesy romance.”
Miriam burst into laughter.
“And I think you’re spending too much time in Professor Dormesson’s class. A bit less intellectualism and a bit more sensuality wouldn’t hurt you, you know. I like romance, as long as there’s sex in it, of course.”
Charlotte sighed.
They both stopped talking and glanced at Eloïse, who still had not said a word.
“So what about you? What do you want to do?” Charlotte asked.
“You’re cute. You can play the lead if you want to,” Miriam said. Then, suddenly inspired, she added, “I know! You can play the victim!”
Eloïse stared at both girls.
“No, I can’t do that.”
“Of course you can,” Miriam said. “Look, it’s only homework.”
Charlotte stepped toward her and caressed her neck. “Be my victim,” she whispered in a suggestive voice.
“No!” Eloïse cried, backing away.
“Okay, fine,” Charlotte said. “Sorry. I was only kidding.”
“I know,” Eloïse said, breathing heavily. “I know, but…”
Unable to finish her sentence, she turned on her heels and hurried away from the girls, joining the flow of pedestrians.
“Jeez!” Miriam spat out. “Why do I have the feeling that we’re going to end up doing this assignment without her?”
“What did I do to her?” Charlotte wanted to know.
“Nothing at all, don’t worry. That chick, she’s just weird.”
Around them, swarms of people walked by in all directions, an anthill of anonymous bodies hurrying before the rain started again.
An anxiety attack. It was only that. Her limbs going numb, her heart feeling as though it would tear apart her chest. Only that, yes. As always. Like every fucking day of her life.