S. Cedric - Of Fever and Blood

“Sebastien speaking. I’ve been trying to get you for ten minutes. The signal’s really bad up here.”

“How’s it going?”

“Is this a gag? Because I have to tell you that we really don’t get it.”

Vauvert felt his stomach tighten.

“Why? Was there a problem?”

“Absolutely not. Actually, there’s nothing to report. Everything is clean. The only thing we found were bullet impacts on the front gate. There was a shooting here.”

“Yes, I know. Those were my bullets. It will be in my report. What about the excrement.”

“There is no fucking excrement, Alex.”

“There isn’t?”

“Of course there’s not. Everything is perfectly clean. It’s freaky, actually, how there aren’t any animals around here. I haven’t heard a single bird.”

“The inscriptions,” Vauvert insisted, blood rushing to his temples. “You saw the inscriptions at the back of the barn, right? Fresh blood was used…”

“Nothing that wasn’t here last year. We checked everything several times.”

“You’re sure?”

The silence lasted for a few seconds.

“I don’t see what you’re getting at, but it’s not funny.”

Vauvert didn’t know what to say.

“We’re heading back now. But you’d better take care of the report tonight. The boss will want us to justify that trip to Ariege.”

Vauvert uttered something that sounded like a groan.

“So?” Mira asked.

Vauvert said nothing. Things were getting out of control. He stared at his cell, tiny in his enormous hand. In the menu, he looked for the folder where he had saved the photos from the farm. There they were, the photos.

He opened them one by one.

He couldn’t see any traces of the black lumps that had littered the ground in the barn. The droppings had vanished from the images.

“This can’t be possible.”

He had also taken three photos of the wall. “Lords of death and resurrection.” He couldn’t have imagined that, too.

He scrolled down and opened the photos.

The wall was blank. There were no traces of blood on the wall, not in any one of the photos.

Alexandre Vauvert turned off his phone. He tossed it on the desk and glared at it for a long time. Then he took his head in his hands and shut his eyes.

“Damien, I think I’m losing my fucking mind.”

Paris

Sunday evening

It was night when Eva drove back home in her Audi. Rain was pouring down in sheets, hitting the sidewalks with raging force. The gutters were overloaded with black rivers that rushed into the streets. Eva had to be careful, because her wipers could not move fast enough to clear away all the water on the windshield.

She saw the hooded figure at the very last moment. The guy was wrapped in a large coat that had not reflected the car’s headlights. He was leaning over the edge of the curb, and the Audi came dangerously close to hitting him.

“Holy shit!” Eva swore, swerving away from him as she could.

She tried to get a glimpse of the man in the rearview mirror, but all she could distinguish was the shape of his coat and the flash of a surprisingly white face turned toward her.

This idiot was going to wind up in real bad shape if he was always this careless about crossing the street.

A second later, it was forgotten. Eva was exhausted. She had just spent more than fifteen hours plowing through computer files in her office, and her eyes ached. All she wanted now was her apartment cocoon. She needed a break, if just for an hour or two. Nothing else mattered.

She brought the car to a stop in front of the parking garage gate and stretched her arm through the window to press her magnetic key against the reader. She pulled in, and the first gate slowly came down behind her. Only then would the second gate open and allow her to drive into the underground parking lot. The system was supposed to prevent burglary. Even so, two vehicles had been stolen already this year. It seemed that criminals could always crack a security system.

Eva drove down the curved tunnel to the third level, where her spot was. She maneuvered into her space and turned off the headlights.

The parking lot was silent, as usual. It was one of those empty silences that always made Eva uneasy, despite her years of police training. Tonight was no exception. She hurried toward the exit, her heels clicking on the concrete floor. Again, she pressed her key against the magnetic reader and went through the two successive fireproof doors. The elevator was right behind the second door, by the staircase. Here too, she needed her magnetic key. The elevator doors slid open, and Eva stepped inside.

The doors closed with a swish and the elevator started up, slow as ever. It always seemed to take hours to get to the ninth floor.

Eva leaned her back against the mirrored wall of the elevator and closed her eyes to rest them. Information swirled in her head. All those names and nightclubs, possible leads and rejected explanations. Before leaving headquarters, she had made a final progress report with her colleagues. But neither the neighborhood interviews nor the phone analysis had yielded any clues. Even the fingerprints provided no information. Leroy was still digging through the archives of the many mental institutions, with the help of truckloads of coffee. He came across a few disturbed teens who fantasized about Countess Bathory, Gilles de Rais, and satanism, but none of them seemed that dangerous. As for Deveraux, he was fixed on putting together a list of youths who had desecrated graves with the intention of holding them for questioning. He most likely hoped to force a confession out of one of them. It was an obvious abuse of power, but Eva refrained from saying anything and let the man do his thing. At least he was off her back and she could do her work.

Not that she had made much progress, but at least she had managed to retrace the victims’ steps. On Desiderio’s part, there was nothing too surprising. The editor was a typically sad case of a workaholic who had sacrificed her personal life for her career. She spent most of her time at the office. Late at night she used sex with strangers to drown her loneliness. Her unlikely affair with Barbara Meyer, however, actually seemed to be serious. The two women would have spent the weekend together if their lives had not been cut short.

That made Eva think.

When it comes to behavior and relationships, it is rare that anything happens by accident. There are no coincidences. Only choices.

Certainly, those two slayings were by choice, not accident.

But why those two specifically?

Was it because he - or she - already knew them? Because they could have recognized him - or her?

Maybe it was for an altogether different reason.

As for Meyer, her computer was crammed with Goth music and old black-and-white horror movies. The girl spent a fortune on shoes, corsets, concert tickets, and nightclubs. It was in this nightlife’s loud and inflamed fringe that she had met Desiderio.

This was one point of convergence.

A lot of people in that crowd had a passion for the occult. Many would know about Countess Bathory’s life, no doubt about that. But to assume that any of them would actually take the plunge, now that was another story.

Still, it was a tangible lead, and Eva had every intention of following up.

The elevator stopped on the ninth floor.

She opened her apartment door.

It was almost nine o’clock. She had time to rest a bit before going back to work.

She hung up her jacket and placed her shoes neatly in the closet and headed for the bedroom. Lying down on the bed, she stretched, then turned her head left and right until she felt the delightful crack of the vertebrae. She gazed at the ceiling.