S. Cedric - Of Fever and Blood

Paris, Orly Airport

7:40 p.m.

No one stopped them during check-in or at the security gate. The plane would take off shortly. As Vauvert tried to get comfortable in a seat in the waiting area, his phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and turned it off without bothering to see who was calling.

Across from him, Detective Leroy sat, looking grim.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“I’m not forcing you to come with me,” Vauvert reminded him.

The young man gave a sarcastic laugh.

“Don’t give me that crap. I’m not going to let you down now. The way you acted, well… It’s exactly what Eva would have done, okay? That’s what she’s always done, and I think we both owe it to her.”

His phone, playing a Metallica tune, interrupted him.

He took it out of his pocket. When he saw the caller ID, he hesitated, his thumb poised over “Answer.”

“It’s the boss. And now, I’m going to get my ass crucified.”

The electric guitar went silent as the call went to voice mail.

“See? It’s not that hard,” Vauvert said.

“Yeah, for you, maybe. But…”

His phone rang again, this time playing “Master of Puppets.”

The woman sitting next to Leroy, a hoary old lady sporting a loud ring on every finger and an enormous green hat, shot him an annoyed glare and sighed louder than necessary to make sure he got the message.

As for Leroy, his eyes were still glued to the phone, as though it were some beast, at once dangerous and fascinating.

“So, what do I do now?”

“Whatever you want,” Vauvert said. “I’m not your nanny.”

“Whatever your problem is,” the woman with the green hat hissed, “you’re bothering everybody in here, young man.”

“Uh, yeah,” Leroy said, his eyes shifty. “I’m sorry about that.”

He ran his thumb over the phone’s screen, hesitated over “Answer” and then turned the phone off.

“Finally,” the old lady said.

Across from Leroy, Vauvert smiled at him for the first time all day.

“Well, there you go.”

But his smile did not last.

His mind was on Eva. She had been kept captive, somewhere, for fourteen hours already.

He did not know how much time he had left to save her.

Eva has stopped calling.

Her vocal chords are nearly frayed.

Her body is an ocean of pain and cramps.

It is no use. Screaming, like thrashing, will not yield any result.

She must gather her strength. After all, it is only rope that is holding her down. It is impossible for her to move her ankles. But she can move her arms a little.

She tries to maneuver the rope against the edge of the table.

Just a little, upward.

Then downward.

The fibers of the rope scrape against the wood. There is new hope.

She does it again. Her wrist slides up, then down.

If she can wear away enough of the rope, she knows she will be able to break it. She doesn’t know whether she will have the time, but she has to try. She has to do something, and all of a sudden, nothing else in the world matters. There is only that up-and-down movement, up and down.

But the exertion is exhausting. Eva wonders how much she had accomplished. Just a little bit? Maybe nothing at all?

She stops working. She tries to ignore the cold that has settled in her flesh and bones. Her muscles petrified with terror, she waits.

That’s all she can really do, isn’t it? Wait until the flowing darkness comes back and takes her, yes. Until darkness carries her away from this world and drowns her once and for all.

No. Don’t think about that.

You have to fight.

The next moment, she is at it again, concentrating on sliding the rope down against the edge, trying to tear it, slowly, ever so slowly, one fiber after the other.

She doesn’t know how long she has been moving the rope up and down.

But she does know that her senses are a mess.

She also knows that without her pills, it’s going to get worse.

The hallucinations will come back.

Of course, the meds have only kept the hallucinations at bay-they have always been lurking-but she has never been able to live without her drugs. She has never even imagined living without them. Her doctor has told her that this is a psychological dependence, that she doesn’t need all the chemicals. But he doesn’t understand anything. He never held his sister in his arms. He never promised her that the monster would never come.

She had.

And the monster came anyway.

He snatched Justyna from her arms. He undressed her in front of her. So she could see, so she could watch. And Justyna screamed. Justyna cried. Eva had sworn that nothing was going to happen to them. She had sworn, hadn’t she?

She shuts her eyes. She refuses to remember. She doesn’t want to relive this.

But she knows that it is happening again, as it does every time. Before even looking.

She opens her eyes. She slowly lowers her gaze.

At the other end of the basement, on the stairs, there she is. Eva knew she would be there.

The little girl with the white hair.

Justyna, her twin sister. Her sister, dead twenty-four years and still there, stuck somewhere in the puzzle of her mind.

She is sitting on the steps.

“No,” Eva whispers, not knowing whether any sound has actually left her lips.

She tenses her muscles, igniting again the river of lava in her right thigh.

“I will not lose it.”

But for once, the ghostly little girl does not seem to want to mock her. She has the sad eyes of a helpless soul.

Eva shuts her eyes and breathes slowly. Her hallucinations are usually very brief. All she has to do is keep it together somehow. She will be okay. She has to be okay. She won’t let her imagination get the better of her.

Again, she opens her eyes.

The little girl is no longer at the far end of the room, no.

Now she is standing in front of her.

Justyna, her sister, is staring at her with a solemn expression in her small red eyes.

“Go away,” Eva whispers, a sob in the back of her throat.

The little girl comes closer. She opens her arms and snuggles against her, against her naked body. And even though Eva knows that this is only an illusion, a strange mirage, she can feel the warmth coming from her twin sister, a relic of her past, like some bitter joke made by Fate.

“Don’t be scared. I’m here,” the little girl says.

For the first time, Eva knows that Justyna has not come to bother her. Maybe that was never her intention. She has come as a sister to keep her company, to offer her the comfort of her little arms around her shivering body. The little girl’s hug, loving and reassuring, actually warms her.

“Everything’s going to be all right. If we stay together, the monster will not come,” her sister tells her.

“No, that’s not true. It didn’t work. He did come, do you remember? We thought it would be enough, but no. He took you, Justyna. And now he’s back. The monster’s back, and this time it’s for me. This time I won’t make it.”

“Shh,” the little girl says. “Don’t think about that. Not yet.”

Eva does not realize that tears are streaming down her cheeks and that her chest is heaving with uncontrollable sobs.

She knows that she does not have much time to live.

Toulouse

9:30 p.m.

So little time. And even less of it with every passing minute.

Once the plane had landed at the Toulouse-Blagnac International Airport, they picked up the SUV in the parking lot. Vauvert took the Toulouse beltway and stomped on the gas pedal.

Leroy turned on his cell, and this time he managed to reach Doctor Fabre-Renault on his private number. He told him that he was a homicide officer and that he needed to pay him a visit. The doctor asked why, and Leroy explained that it was a matter of life and death. They needed his cooperation right away.