S. Cedric - Of Fever and Blood

Until the hand of the woman rises over her again.

Eva can see the glittering blade. She can see the arc that the scalpel makes as it comes down toward her hip, and she can see the red splashes in front of her eyes or inside her eyes-she can no longer tell.

She keeps on screaming.

Until her vocal chords snap. The pain devours her and chews her up with fangs of red fire.

Above the fiery smile, the hand goes up again.

The blade comes down again.

Her eyes roll back in her head.

She cannot even see the woman anymore as she raises the blade yet again, casting fresh arcs of blood.

But she can feel the explosion of pain when the blade strikes. Yet again.

Until Eva, finally sinking into unconsciousness, stops screaming.

2 p.m.

Erwan Leroy was waiting for them in the hallway, a cloud of smoke around him. When the office door opened, he dropped the cigarette into his coffee cup and tossed everything in the trash can.

The chief pointed at Vauvert.

“He’s with us. I’m expecting full cooperation. Understood?”

“Loud and clear, boss. I was actually thinking of going back to Eva’s apartment, in case we overlooked anything.”

“Both of you go,” O said, heading for the interrogation room. “Bring back something .”

Vauvert shook the young detective’s hand.

“Thank you, Erwan.”

“Any time,” Leroy said. “We need all the help we can get. Besides, Eva talked about you often.”

“Oh, really?”

Vauvert waited for him to say more. But he did not. Leroy just walked toward the stairs. Vauvert followed, burning to ask why she had mentioned him, and what had she said about him. Instead, he bit his tongue and followed Leroy down the black linoleum stairs.

They crossed the inner courtyard and climbed into a white Peugeot. Inside, the smell was a mix of tobacco and sweet perfume.

Vauvert stole a glance at the officer: his fashionable vest under his leather coat, his pale-gray Hugo Boss T-shirt. He looked like a typical playboy, barely thirty, blond hair falling over his eyes, wrestler’s shoulders, and gleaming-white smile. More often than not, Vauvert felt an instant dislike for this kind of guy. But not this time. He noticed that the young man’s hands shook almost imperceptibly on the steering wheel. There was an old wound, carefully hidden behind Leroy’s pretty-boy looks.

They drove along the Seine River until they reached the Bastille and then took Avenue Ledru Rollin. Traffic was light for a Monday. Leroy gave Vauvert a rundown of the past two days’ events and told him about the few bits of evidence they had so far. Broken mirrors. Blood belonging to an unknown woman, AB negative. He also shared the link that Eva had made with the crimes committed by Countess Bathory, who tortured her handmaids until they died.

“As creepy as the story is, it’s true,” Leroy said. “I spent a good chunk of last night reading up on that countess. She mutilated those poor girls with extreme perversity, exactly like our killer. She stuck needles all over their bodies, and she carved up their skin with razors.”

“So she could drink their blood like some kind of vampire?” Vauvert asked.

He could not help thinking about what Mira had told him. The parallel between the Salaville brothers and Dracula’s servants. But he chose to set aside those thoughts for the time being.

“Actually, yes, she drank some of it,” Leroy said. “The witches who surrounded her had convinced her that blood was some sort of elixir for eternal youth. So she took it from young women. She smeared it all over herself. She bathed in it, especially at the end. She took baths in a big tub filled with blood.”

“That’s absolutely disgusting,” Vauvert muttered.

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“And you think Eva is right, that our killer is actually a woman?”

Stopping for a red light, Leroy turned to Vauvert, his hands still clutching the wheel.

“What I think? What I think is that every time Eva profiled someone, she was dead on. So if she thinks our killer is a woman who believes she’s the reincarnation of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, then I agree. Not to mention the blood we found in her place. The blood of a woman. It could very well belong to the killer.”

Vauvert lost himself in his thoughts as Leroy took off again and drove down Rue de Charonne under the pouring rain.

He wondered whether he should tell him about the two wolves he had encountered at the Salaville farm. There had been blood there, too. The blood of a man who had been dead for a year already. He decided not to say anything. In any case, they had arrived. Leroy parked on the sidewalk.

On the other side of the street was a park that was probably filled with sun in the summer. But it looked sinister in this downpour. The rain was falling from the sky in thick gray sheets, causing the gutters to overflow yet again.

“This is the building. Ninth floor,” Leroy said.

They got out of the car and ran toward the entrance.

Two uniformed officers, drinking coffee in the hall, greeted them and let them go in.

As the elevator rose, Leroy suddenly asked, “You really care for her, don’t you?”

Vauvert did not know how to answer.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ask that kind of question,” Leroy said. “I just want to let you know that if I were you, well, I would have flown anywhere to help her.”

They reached the ninth floor.

Blood was spattered on the threshold. Just beyond that was a large, tastefully furnished living room with red walls. There was blood there, too, on the broken mirror. Yellow plastic evidence markers indicated bullet holes in the floor.

One look was enough for Vauvert to absorb the details. He knew these kinds of scenes only too well. Crime scenes. God dammit, he hated that term and all that it implied. These scenes, they always seemed new, and yet they were always terribly alike. Theaters of tragedy. Vauvert knew what happened to the people involved in such disappearances. They were found eventually, yes. Most often in small pieces in plastic bags.

He tensed. There was no time to lose.

“What do we have?” he asked in a grave voice, walking to the center of the living room.

“Other than the blood? Not much,” Leroy said. “Just a phone number on a piece of paper. That’s what helped us trace down the guy who spent the night with her. But we already interrogated him. He claims he left the apartment shortly before Eva was attacked.”

“Had the two of them been dating for a while?”

Leroy gave him a strange look.

“There’s no the two of them. She didn’t know the guy. Eva is…” He tried to think of an appropriate term. He couldn’t find any. “Eva behaves rather oddly sometimes.”

Vauvert said nothing. Instead, he took in the place. The apartment was sparsely furnished, but with an obvious taste for cold beauty and luxury. Straight lines. Smooth surfaces. An imposing charcoal-gray couch in the middle of the room. And the tidiness that prevailed here was way beyond organized. It was obsessive. Abstract lithographs were meticulously aligned on the walls. Each object was carefully set in its place. No trace of dust anywhere. It felt unsettling to him. He had always surrounded himself with chaos, as if it were armor.

He examined the furniture. A bookcase with glass doors displayed old books, all leather-bound, all in perfect condition. Each one exactly the same size. On a small wooden desk there was an ivory-white laptop.

Leaning over it, Vauvert spotted an image under the sheet of glass that protected the top of the desk. It was a newspaper photo that he recognized instantly. It had run with a story in Le Temps Reel . In the photo, he was talking with Inspector Svarta outside the Salaville farm.