S. Cedric - Of Fever and Blood

For some stupid reason, Vauvert had expected to find a swanky FBI-style office. Certainly not this windowless closet. A green banker’s desk lamp gave the room a pseudo-library look. Of course, everything was perfectly lined up and ordered. Eva’s files were carefully stacked in piles of equal height. Two large maps, one of France and the other of Paris, were hanging on a wall. Red thumbtacks indicated the places where the victims had been found. To the right of those maps, on a cork bulletin board, were photos of Barbara Meyer and Audrey Desiderio. Vauvert recognized the Bathory coat of arms among photos of the esoteric inscriptions found at the crime scenes.

“All of Eva’s files are here,” Leroy told him. “Just try not to mess things up, okay?”

“Yeah,” Vauvert muttered.

He walked over to the desk and put down the books they had bought on the way over. Indo-European Mythology, Wolf Folklore in Europe, and From Zalmoxis to Genghis Khan .

On one corner of the desk was a stack of photos.

“That guy, I know him. It’s that pedophile.”

“Ugo Falgarde,” Leroy responded. “That’s him, all right. Eva, she, Well, she threw him out a window two months ago. It brought the case to a pretty brutal conclusion.”

“I heard about that. I didn’t know she was the one involved.”

“It was her, yes. She came very close to losing her job.”

Very close? It was a miracle she kept her job.

Vauvert turned to the officer to ask the question that had occupied his mind for so long: “What was done to her that was so bad, Erwan?”

“You don’t know?”

“That’s why I’m asking.”

Leroy hesitated. Then he sat on the edge of the desk.

“When she was a child, Eva was the victim of a serial killer. I figured you knew that.”

Vauvert frowned.

“I didn’t. What happened?”

“Well, remember that killer they called the Night Scourge?”

“Vaguely. That’s an old case.”

“It was twenty-four years ago,” Leroy said. “The Scourge killed fifteen people. All single women. And they were all platinum blondes. Eva’s mother fit the bill.”

“She was a victim of that killer?”

“Yes. He followed her home from work, just like he did with the others, and he slit her throat. Victoria Svarta was twenty-six. And she had twin daughters.”

“Eva has a sister?”

“She had one. She was the Scourge’s fifteenth and last victim, I don’t know the details, of course. Eva isn’t the type to confide in anyone, and you can imagine that it’s a topic she never brings up. All I know is that on the night Eva’s mother was killed, while the crime scene was crawling with cops, no one could have ever guessed that the killer would stay in the neighborhood.”

“You mean he came back to the scene?”

“Exactly. Or maybe he never left in the first place. No one knows why he stayed-or came back. He had never behaved that way before. Victoria Svarta’s daughters were at the babysitter’s house down the street. The woman was supposed to keep the girls until social services took over. The killer sneaked into the house and cut the babysitter’s throat. Then he took the two children into the basement. The monster did all of this a hundred yards from the officers busy looking for evidence. Only Eva survived,”

“Then, she saw…”

“Yes,” Leroy said. “She saw everything. Her twin sister was murdered before her eyes. And she was only six.”

“I had no idea.” Vauvert dropped into the chair. “That’s horrible.”

“Anyway, now you know,” Leroy said.

“Yes.”

Vauvert stared into space, taking it all in.

“Did we get him? The Night Scourge?”

“No, he was never caught. He slipped through all the nets, and he stopped killing after that night. Maybe he finally died, one way or another. Who knows? Or maybe he was busted for something else. It happens. We’ll probably never know who he was.”

“God dammit. Thanks for telling me, Erwan.”

“Any time. You would have learned about it sooner or later. Anyway, it explains why she behaves the way she does sometimes,” he said, pointing at the photo of Ugo Falgarde on the desk. “Especially when children are involved.”

“Yeah. It explains things.”

Once alone, he grabbed the Falgarde photos and turned them over. He did not want to see the pedophile’s face.

The victim of a serial killer…

The human soul could be a sordid fucking puzzle. What he had just heard kept playing in his head.

Eva is reliving this.

For the second time, God dammit. There is no justice.

He turned on the computer and shut his eyes for a few moments. With a puzzling clarity, he could smell Eva’s scent. It filled the room. He could not tell whether he liked this sensation or felt terribly embarrassed.

Did she spend her nights in here, as he sometimes spent nights in his own office, searching the Internet for leads, new pieces for the ever-renewed puzzle of human cruelty?

He could not help imagining what Eva had gone through, what she must have felt every time she faced a monster in men’s clothes.

Then he opened his eyes, aware that time was going by.

Terribly fast.

He swore that he would not let his emotions take over.

He also swore that he would not sleep until he found her.

One way or the other.

When Eva comes to, she is still lying on the table.

She gags, chokes, swallows a long trickle of blood.

She can’t see anyone in front of her, and for one crazed moment, she imagines that her tormentor has left her, just as another tormentor had once spared her.

It’s the nightmares that never left her. Memories of another basement, another monster.

“You’re back,” she hears the woman saying.

Eva flinches. She tries to turn her head, but the back of her neck hurts.

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.”