S. Cedric: Of Fever and Blood

“They gave me the Lombards’ address. It’s in the ninth arrondissement, the Caumartin neighborhood. I couldn’t get a cruiser to go there, though. Right now, all available men are in Seine-et-Marne, searching for Saint-Clair’s body.”

“Didn’t you tell them it’s important?” Eva snapped.

“Well, all we have is a completely hypothetical deduction.”

“We’ve seen what Saint-Clair is capable of. Eloise Lombard needs protection until we can make sure that she’s out of danger!”

“Don’t worry, okay?” Leroy said, trying to calm her. “I told Dispatch I was going to go over myself and make sure everything is all right. They gave me the home phone number, but there’s a problem with the line right now.”

“A problem with the line?” Vauvert asked.

“These things do happen, you know.”

Vauvert felt his anxiety rise.

Eva glanced at her cell. It was after six o’clock. Night had fallen already.

She got on her feet, wobbling a little.

“God dammit! What the hell are you doing?” Vauvert asked.

“If that girl is in danger, I want to go too.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Vauvert protested.

Leroy took her elbow to keep her from falling. “Eva, you’re in no condition to go anywhere,” he told her.

She disregarded him and walked deliberately toward the closet.

“I feel great. I really do.”

She grabbed the back of a chair and coughed. Vauvert put his arm around her waist to support her.

“This is not open for discussion. There is absolutely no way you’re leaving this room now, understood?”

She pushed up her sunglasses and opened the closet door

“Have you done one thing by the book lately, smarty pants?”

“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Vauvert responded.

“That you can’t stand still any more than I can. So please, don’t talk to me as if you were my mother.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it. You were in danger!”

“So is this girl.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I can feel it. Deep inside.”

She took out a suit a colleague had brought her to wear home when she was released from the hospital and set it on the unmade bed.

“Something terrible is happening right now. Trust my intuition.”

Vauvert chose not to say anything. Instead, he nodded to Leroy.

“Let’s go.”

“No, you guys are going to have to wait for me,” Eva insisted.

But the two men were already walking down the hallway, heading for the elevator. Vauvert rushed inside and pressed the button. As the door closed, he was relieved to see that Eva still had not come out of her room at the other end of the hallway.

He realized he was shaking.

6:20 p.m.

When Eloise stepped into her apartment building, she found the janitor planted in front of the elevator. He pressed the button several times before giving up, mumbling under his breath.

“Power outage?” Eloise asked.

“Yes, it’s the whole building. I don’t know what the problem is. It looks like the rest of the neighborhood still has power. You will have to use the stairs until it’s fixed.”

Eloise opened the door to the stairwell. She didn’t mind taking them, even though her apartment was six floors up. The emergency lights were working, so she could see where she was going.

She climbed the stairs.

She couldn’t wait to get home to her cocoon. As soon as the power was back on, she would curl up on the couch under a mountain of quilts, eat chocolate, and watch stupid television shows. This had become her soothing ritual for dealing with her anxiety. And her father would soon be back home.

When she reached the second-floor landing, she suddenly had a very odd feeling.

The feeling of being watched. Again.

Come on, don’t be silly, girl, she chided herself.

She hurried to the third floor.

Now she heard a strange sound behind her.

She turned.

Probably a neighbor coming up the stairs. No reason to panic.

She listened carefully.

Nothing.

Then the sound started again.

Something was climbing the stairs after her.

But it wasn’t footsteps that she heard.

It was the sound of an animal on all fours.

Like sharp claws on the steps.

Eloise started climbing the steps faster. She was out of breath when she got to the fourth floor. She didn’t slow down.

Behind her, the scratching on the steps was getting louder.

She was panting by the time she reached the fifth floor. She rushed to the exit and jiggled the handle on the door. The door wouldn’t open. She pulled and pushed.

The door remained stubbornly shut.

She heard breathing.

She dropped her book bag and started bolting up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time.

The animal was getting closer. She could feel it. It was a wild black creature, she instinctively knew, like the one she had seen at the Salaville farm. No one had believed her when she tried to talk about it.

But the wolf had found her. It had come for her.

She pushed hard on her legs to climb faster.

Behind her, the wolf was gaining ground.

She didn’t know how, but she finally reached the sixth floor and grabbed the door handle, praying that it would work. It did. She slid through the door and slammed it behind her.

The beast, on the other side, lunged at the door, clawed at it furiously.

Eloise rushed toward her apartment.

She slipped in a puddle of blood.

Eloise fell to her knees, yelping with astonishment. Her hands landed in the cold, viscous liquid.

Oh, my God.

There was blood everywhere. It was splashed on the walls. It was dripping from the ceiling.

She got up but slipped and almost fell again. Despite her rising terror, she forced herself to concentrate and move toward her apartment. She was not going to be a victim.

Not again.

On the other side of the stairwell door, the beast was still pounding to get through.

Then it howled. It sounded like dozens of animals.

Eloise pressed her hands against her ears.

She staggered toward her apartment.

There were only two units on this floor. Hers was at the very end of the hallway. On the right, the neighbor’s door was ajar. She ventured a look inside. Her brain at first refused to acknowledge the sight. But what her brain wouldn’t accept, her body could-and did. The blood curdled in Eloise’s veins.

In a large room framed by a big window, Eloise made out a leather couch and two female figures lying on it, their bodies upside down

Just like in that barn, like all the others.

Their legs were hooked over the back of the couch. Their arms were dangling on the floor. Their bodies were emptying.

Their faces, two red, gaping chasms.

Their blood.

It was running in rivers down their inanimate limbs. Open wounds were all over their bodies.

And yet there was something even more horrible.

The true abomination was crouched on the floor: a bald, naked woman, her back stooped, her face masked in white. She had her arms around the corpses in an obscene embrace. Their blood was flowing over her breasts and down her hips. This woman, this impossible vision, had smeared the blood all over herself.

She let go of the bodies and got up. The dead girl on the right tumbled into the puddle of blood on the floor.

Eloise’s heart was beating so fast, she thought it might pierce her chest. She wanted to scream, to run, to do something, but her body felt like a concrete block. She was incapable of even breathing.

The monstrous woman’s movements weren’t human. She looked like a dislocated doll. Her backbone was twisting and distorting.