S. Cedric - Of Fever and Blood

Leroy was not saying anything, but his face was ghostly pale.

Vauvert squeezed his hostage’s throat a little more. His feet were almost dangling above the ground, and he was choking.

“Lower your weapons,” he told his two young officers in a raspy voice. “Please, lower… your… weapons”

The two boys exchanged powerless looks and decided to obey.

“Remove his cuffs!” Vauvert barked.

One of them inserted the key in the tiny lock. The cuffs sprang open.

“Give him your weapons. Go on!”

They complied, passing over their guns. But Leroy didn’t take them. Instead, he turned to Vauvert and said, “Wait, we’re all colleagues, here.”

“That’s what I kept trying to tell them.”

The two young officers were shaking like leaves.

“It’s okay. Relax now,” Leroy told them. “We don’t mean to harm you. We just need your help.”

Vauvert put his hostage back on the ground and pushed him toward his partners. The man broke into a coughing fit.

“You sick fucks! Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

“My job, that’s what I’m doing,” Vauvert shot back. “And I’m just asking you guys to do yours.”

He put his weapon back in its holster and slowly raised his hands in a gesture of appeasement.

“God dammit, can’t you just trust another cop? I promise you can book us as soon as we’re done with what we came here for. Is that all right?”

The man remained silent. His eyes gleamed with anger, and Vauvert understood that he would have to be wary of the guy, no matter what happened.

“What’s your name?” he asked, trying to break the ice.

The officer gave him a dagger-filled look before answering, “I’m Captain Ludovic Nadal. My men here are Pierre Lascrosse and Arnaud Puech.”

Vauvert gestured at the path in the bushes.

“So, Ludovic, if it’s okay with you, we’ll go this way. All of us.”

But barely after they started along the path, it ended.

A fence rose in the middle of the tall grass. It looked like an ordinary fence, but this one was topped with a thick nest of barbed wire.

“Can’t you see that there’s nothing for us to find here?” the officer named Lascrosse whined. Vauvert pointed his flashlight at the fence. He had seen barbed wire like that before.

The Salaville farm had been protected exactly the same way.

“We keep moving,” he announced. “Let’s climb over it. Come on.”

They found a space where the barbed wire had come apart just a little, and the officers did as they were told. They managed to get over the fence with just a few cuts and scratches.

“There’s nothing here,” one of them said after he had jumped to the other side.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Vauvert said, following them over the fence.

The metal prongs ripped his trousers, but at that point he did not care.

If there was actually something to be discovered on this piece of land, they were getting very close to it.

And so they moved along. They followed an old overgrown path until their flashlights found a square stone structure amidst the coniferous trees.

“What’s that?”

“A sheepfold house,” Lascrosse said. “They’re everywhere out here. Usually they’re abandoned. No one wants to redo them.”

Vauvert walked up to the building. He could not see any windows, but there was a large wooden door. It was locked.

“Ever been here?” he asked.

“What for?” Captain Nadal protested. “There’s nobody here. The Saint-Clairs died a long time ago.”

“Did you know their daughter Judith?”

“The sick one? Yes, sure…” He shrugged. “But that shit’s old. What can I say? She must have inherited the property when her folks died. And she must have died years ago, too. She had some kind of disease, you know…”

Vauvert pointed at the small building.

“Okay, let’s take a look in there.”

“You are out of your fucking mind,” Nadal said.

“It’s private property,” Lascrosse added. “You can’t.”

“Look, we believe that Judith Saint-Clair is still alive,” Vauvert said, cutting him off. “And we suspect that she’s killed dozens of people.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Nadal asked in an alarmed voice.

“I’m telling you the truth. She abducted one of our colleagues, and we have reason to believe that she’s going to kill her if we don’t find her. She may be in Paris now, but it’s possible that she lives here most of the time. We’re going to go in there, and then we’ll know for sure. Okay?”

The three officers looked at each other, far from convinced.

“Now, move back.”

He raised his Smith amp; Wesson and shot the lock twice.

Leroy gave the door a hard kick. The remains of the lock fell to the ground, and the door opened.

Revealing a dark entryway.

“Can’t see a thing,” Leroy said. “I’m going in.”

Everything happened in a split second. Vauvert sensed it even before he heard the click of the mechanism the moment his colleague set foot in the building.

“Erwan!” he yelled.

There was a sharp whiz.

“Look out!”

The blade shot out, and Leroy couldn’t move fast enough. The projectile grazed his shoulder. Leroy howled in pain.

“Down! Everybody!” Vauvert shouted.

There was another click. Then another.

The blades nearly shaved Leroy’s skull as they whizzed toward Lascrosse.

The boy stood frozen in the path of the blades.

Shock registered on his face when the first blade struck him in the throat. A second later, another blade flew into his forehead.

The projectile had all but decapitated him. His head slumped to the side, and from his slit throat, a crimson geyser shot into the air. He raised his hands as though trying to put his head back in place, but his cervical vertebrae snapped with a sharp crack

Still more blades raced toward them.

“Pierre! Oh, shit!” Captain Nadal moaned. “No! Christ, no! Shit! Shit!”

Lascrosse remained on his feet another few seconds, his severed arteries spurting all around him.

Then a final blade hit his neck again and finished severing his head.

His torso crumpled.

His head fell into the grass.

Eva has stopped screaming.

She doesn’t have enough strength anymore.

She doesn’t have any chance of getting out.

She’s way too little.

When the man is done slitting Justyna’s throat, when her sister’s blood is done spurting every which way, he sighs and says “ohh…” as though it is the most beautiful thing in the world. He opens his arms and lets go of the little girl’s body. Justyna collapses on the basement floor with a horrible, dull sound.

The lifeless body continues to pour out blood, bringing with it the smell of death.

The red stream works its way toward Eva. Toward her white skirt.

The man raises his eyes in her direction.

“One mistake righted,” he says.

Then he approaches her.

Eva has thrust her hand into a cardboard box. Mrs. Rieux stores old cooking utensils in there. She grabs what feels like a huge kitchen knife. It looks very sharp. She closes her little fingers around the handle.

Pulling the knife out of the box, she stands up.

The man with the white hair stares at her. They are in the basement. There is almost no light, and yet her eyes are perfectly adjusted to the darkness. Just like those of this man. She has never seen a grownup with her kind of white hair before. She’s never thought about anyone else having it. Mommy told her that she and Justyna had a special look, something from their father.

The man gets closer. She is frozen with fear, yes. But for some strange reason, she cannot help grinning, in spite of herself.