S. Cedric - Of Fever and Blood

“Yes,” he said in a thick voice. “But what you’re saying doesn’t make sense. I knew Judith Saint-Clair, years ago. She was a poor sick woman. She must have died a long time ago.”

“That’s what we’re going to check out now,” Vauvert said.

Nadal, pallid and bloody in the beam of the flashlight, looked crazed. His breath vaporized in puffs as it hit the frigid air.

“At least let me call for help, so they can send an ambulance,” he said.

“Go ahead,” Vauvert responded.

Nadal took out his phone and, with a trembling hand, pressed an emergency number. Nothing happened.

“It’s not working. No signal.”

Suddenly, the officer named Puech let out a scream. They all turned to him.

“Arnaud!” Nadal called out. “You okay?”

“I saw… I saw…” the young man stammered.

“What? What did you see?”

“Some kind of beast. With fucking red eyes.”

Vauvert felt the blood rush to his temples. If he did not take charge right now, things were going to get out of hand very quickly.

His sensed movement and spun around.

All he could see were the two flaming globes in the bushes.

He raised his gun and shot several times.

“What the hell is that?” Nadal exclaimed.

Now there was movement all around them.

Vauvert knew he was losing control of the situation.

“We need to take cover,” he ordered in a voice that he hoped sounded steady. “Quick.”

“What if there are more traps in there?” Nadal yelled.

“We don’t have a choice.”

The bushes rustled. He raised his gun, ready to fire blind.

But he couldn’t see anything. Only darkness. The tall grass rippled in the beam of his flashlight.

There. A figure.

And another.

He fired. Movement in every direction.

“Hurry! Get inside.”

Before Vauvert could finish, something leaped out of the bushes and landed on Puech. He let out a dreadful scream just before the creature took his face in its jaws. There was a terrifying cracking sound.

“Arnaud!” Nadal screamed.

The beast moved from the face to the neck. In one simple twist, he tore out the man’s throat. A fountain of blood spewed out.

“Do something!”

The animal settled on its victim. There were sounds of fabric ripping and bones splitting.

Then a second beast leaped out, and the two monsters together pulled the officer’s mangled remains into the bushes.

The attack hadn’t lasted more than ten seconds.

There was silence again.

“Follow me!” Leroy cried as he dashed into the building.

Nadal and Vauvert rushed in after him. They slammed the door.

Leroy flipped the light switch. They were in a large, very long room that must have been both a living room and a kitchen, judging from the sink and the counter at the far end. A table and a battered couch took up the rest of the space.

The yellow tile floor was spattered with brown stains.

“Give me a hand!” Vauvert ordered, grabbing a wooden dresser.

Pushing it as quickly as they could manage, they barricaded the door.

Leroy stood at the only window and scanned the yard. At first, he didn’t see anything. Then, here and there, red eyes appeared and disappeared.

“Looks like there’s more and more of them.”

“What are they? What the fuck are these things?” Nadal cried out.

“Wolves,” Vauvert said.

“Are you kidding me? Those fucking things are not wolves.”

“Then I don’t know what they are,” Vauvert admitted.

“In any case,” Leroy said, “we’re surrounded.”

The three men looked at each other, their eyes filled with distress.

Fiber by fiber.

Eva can feel the rope getting weaker.

Or else she is imagining this too.

But she continues. She must.

The masked woman is now on her hands and knees. Eva can make her out. She is quivering, growling, and chanting.

“Oriens! Paymon! Ariton! Amaymon!”

Eva pays no attention. She keeps moving her wrists.

“Gebeleizis! Diseebeh! Dark sons of Isten! Come taste the life beyond death, for death has just freed life!”

Up.

Down.

“What’s that?”

Nadal was looking at the heavily knotted wooden table. It was covered with dark-red and lumpy-black stains.

The tiles underneath the table had the same kind of splatter. There were circular rusty stains too, suggesting that buckets had been placed there.

“Is this really what I think it is?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Vauvert answered, crouching over the stains on the floor.

He ran a finger over them, removing the film of dried blood.

“We are in the home of a serial killer, captain. She must have tortured people right here, on this table.”

Nadal shut his eyes.

“Oh, God.”

Vauvert stood up.

“At least we know that Saint-Clair was not living in her house. She was living here . Those things outside.” He paused before continuing. “Whatever they might be, they seem to be protecting Saint-Clair.”

He took out his phone.

“Does anyone have service?”

Leroy and Nadal checked their own cells.

“Nothing,” Leroy said.

“Nothing either,” Nadal said, shaking like a leaf.

“We’ll have to get out of here by ourselves then,” Vauvert said. “What do we have?”

They examined the room. In this house, unlike the other one, there were signs of habitation. The cupboards were full. Unwashed glasses were still sticky with wine. There was even a laptop on a shelf, along with a few thick books on European mythology.

“There’s more over there,” Leroy said, heading toward the back of the room.

Indeed, a flight of stairs led to a closed door.

“So far, I can’t see any evidence of a trap.”

He flattened himself against the wall and put a hand on the doorknob.

“But who knows. Stand back.”

He waited until Vauvert and Nadal had taken cover behind the couch.

He turned the knob.

The door opened noiselessly. And what had been lying behind it assaulted their senses.

A sickening stench poured out of the room.

A beast growled.

Two red eyes pierced the darkness.

On her hands and knees, the masked woman is still uttering nonsensical sounds.

“Iosua! Orilu! Sisis! Uliro! Ausoi!”

Her eyes burn in the dark.

“Come! From the mountain of the farthest midnight!”

In body, she’s in the basement, kneeling on the hard and dusty floor.

But her mind has flown away.

“Leave your dwellings and come!”

The mask is no longer porcelain.

The mirror of the souls has replaced it.

It reveals a closed room with walls full of empty eyes. This is the place where she has built everything. It is about to be violated by those police officers she can see through the eyes of the gods.

She has to know.

She needs to prevent the irreparable.

Around her the whispering of the dead has stopped.

“You who bring disorder across the universe!”

Now the gods are watching, curious.

Their fangs bared, dripping with ghostly saliva, caught between two worlds.

“Come!”

“Watch out!” Vauvert shouted as he stood up from behind the couch, both hands gripping his Smith amp; Wesson.

The beast burst out of the darkness, opening its jaws wide and baring its fangs.

Vauvert aimed at the space between the two red flames.

He fired a single bullet.

The deafening sound of the gunshot bounced off the walls.

The beast was gone.

Leroy, short of breath, peered into the darkness.

There was no trace of the creature that had just leaped out at them.