Of Fever and Blood

by Cédric Sire

  She crossed the narrow balcony. At the far end was a rusty metal ladder bolted to the wall. It led to the roof.

  Eloïse grabbed on and started climbing.

  She had gotten halfway up when she heard the glass shatter and the beasts leap out, growling, on the balcony.

  She climbed faster.

  Just as her hand reached the edge of the roof, she lost her grip on the knife. It went twirling down.

  “Shit!”

  The beasts jumped up at her. Their jaws clamped the air just a few inches from her legs.

  Eloïse Lombard quickly pulled herself onto the edge of the slate roof, grazing her hands in the process.

  Now she could rest.

  Maybe.

  91

  6:45 p.m.

  Leroy parked on the pedestrian crossing in front of the building as the rain began to fall again, at first hesitantly.

  Then lightning streaked the sky. The crack of thunder followed, and a torrent of rain pummeled the cruiser.

  Vauvert, in the passenger seat, had kept his mouth shut the entire drive. Now he turned and shot Eva a hard look.

  “Me and Leroy are going. You watch the car.”

  But he knew there was no reasoning with this inspector. She just adjusted her dark glasses. “The car will watch itself just fine. You wouldn’t want me to catch a cold, would you?”

  Vauvert stormed out of the vehicle.

  Sensing something, he ran his eyes up the building. All he could see were the furious sheets of rain.

  “A problem?” Leroy worried.

  “Just a feeling,” Vauvert said. “Did you hear anything? Sounded like someone was screaming.”

  “I have a terrible feeling too,” Eva said as she headed toward the entrance.

  The main doors were wide open. Three people were standing in the hallway, which was dimly lit by two emergency lights.

  They shot questioning glances at Vauvert and Leroy as they walked in. They stared at the strange woman with white hair and sunglasses who was shivering in her suit and leather jacket. “Can I help you with something? I’m the janitor.”

  The man who had just spoken stepped out of the group. He was tall, all skin and bones, with intense blue eyes and a face full of wrinkles. His thinning gray hair was combed across his skull.

  Leroy took out his police ID and waved it so that everyone could see it.

  “Got a power outage?”

  “That’s right, sir. No juice at all in the entire building, but don’t ask me why. I called the power company. They should be here soon.”

  Back outside, though, all the street lights were working. The neon sign on a pharmacy across the way was flashing. And through the window of a bar next door, they could see a soccer game on the wide screen.

  “A selective outage, for sure,” Eva said.

  “Maybe it’s just the lighting,” the janitor replied. “It came down pretty close a couple of times. Hell, it felt like it was aiming for us. These landlords could care less. I’m the one stuck with all the problems, with no help at all. I have the feeling that I’m spending all my time putting bandages on a broken leg, if you know what I mean.”

  Vauvert grinned. “We’re cops, sir. We know exactly what you mean.” He quickly scanned the hallway and didn’t see anyone else. “Do you know all the tenants here?”

  “Pretty much,” the janitor said.

  “How about a girl, Eloïse Lombard?”

  “Sure. She lives with her father. A shy kid, but really nice. Actually, she got here right when the power went out. She took the stairs.” He pointed at the ceiling with his index finger. “Their apartment is on the top floor. Say, they’re not in any trouble, are they?”

  “No, don’t worry,” Eva said. “But we have to talk to them right away.”

  Leroy opened the stairwell door.

  “Is this the only way up?”

  “Well, yes,” the janitor said.

  “Perfect. Make sure nobody else goes up. We’ll be right back.”

  92

  They made it up the first two floors as quickly as they could. They walked in single file, not saying a word to each other. Vauvert led the way, followed by Leroy. Eva came last. She had removed her sunglasses. In here, there was only the dim glow of the emergency lights.

  Halfway between the second and third landings, even the emergency lights were off.

  “Shit. What does that mean?”

  “That we’re heading into some real trouble again,” Leroy said, his face lit by the screen of his cell phone. “Guess what? No signal in here.”

  He put away his cell and turned on his flashlight.

  The beam swept across the steps.

  “We keep going anyway?”

  “You bet we do,” Vauvert said.

  They reached the fourth floor. Leroy directed his beam at the emergency light. It wasn’t on here either.

  Behind them, Eva suddenly called out.

  “Did you guys hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  They froze.

  “I can’t hear anything,” Leroy finally said.

  “Me either,” Vauvert said.

  “I swear I thought I heard a growl,” Eva said.

  Leroy swung the beam of his flashlight down the stairs.

  There was nothing there.

  They started up the stairs again, more slowly this time.

  On the fifth-floor landing, they found a book bag. The contents had spilled all over the stairs.

  Vauvert bent down and picked up a plastic ID card bearing Eloïse Lombard’s name.

  None of the three said anything.

  They had only one floor left to go, and then they would know.

  As they headed up the steps, Eva checked her cell phone. It was not working.

  Whatever they might find up these stairs, they’d have to deal with it all by themselves. Still, they pressed on, their guns out and ready to fire.

  93

  “Here we are,” Vauvert said.

  He grabbed the handle of the door leading to the sixth floor.

  “We’re covering you,” Leroy whispered.

  Vauvert nodded. He pushed the door wide open, his gun brandished before him.

  The flooring gleamed with fresh blood.

  “Holy shit,” Leroy mumbled.

  Vauvert scanned every dark corner. There were only two apartments on this floor. Both had their doors open.

  “Be extremely careful,” he whispered, pressing his back against the wall.

  With the huge inspector leading the way, they took a few hesitant steps. Their shoes made sucking sounds as they walked through the puddles.

  They pointed their guns into the first apartment.

  “Holy shit,” Leroy said again, this time in a stricken voice.

  Two naked bodies, horribly mutilated, the flesh punctured numerous times. One was still hanging upside down on the sofa. The other one lay broken on the floor in a river of blood. Bloody footprints led directly from the corpses to the door.

  “We came too late,” Vauvert said. “She took their faces. Do you think the Lombard girl is one of them?”

  “I don’t think so. They look like they were just young teenagers. Eloïse is older than these poor kids.”

  They turned to the second door, which also was open. They could hear a loud rumbling, as though the thunder was right in the building.

  “Over there,” Vauvert said.

  “That’s the Lombards’ apartment,” Leroy said. “You hear that? A window must be open…”

  Leroy got into position on the right side of the door. Eva did the same on the left. They held their guns at arm’s length as Vauvert, crouching, carefully stepped inside the Lombards’ living room.

  There were no corpses, but the furniture had been thrown all over the room. Vases had been hurled to the floor, and the bookcases had been swept empty of their contents. Smashed chairs lay in pieces in a corner. On the far side of the living room, the sliding door to the balcony had b
een shattered. Shards of glass were strewn all over the place. Rain was furiously pelting the linoleum floor, and the long drapes were flapping in the wind.

  Vauvert crossed the wasteland and stepped onto the balcony to make sure no one was there. It was deserted. A bolt of lightning momentarily illuminated the glistening zinc, tiles and chimneys on the roofs all around him. Then he hurried back inside.

  “All clear,” he told his colleagues.

  Leroy, his back pressed against the entrance wall, scanned the small kitchen, its floor littered with smashed dishes.

  “All clear here, too.”

  “There’s blood on the floor,” Eva pointed out.

  She crouched to inspect the red puddle that was almost unnoticeable in the bluish and ever-changing light of the storm. Deep inside, her stomach protested, and a familiar feeling ran down her spine. In spite of her exhaustion and the morphine they had given her at the hospital, Eva’s reflexes were still spot-on. She concentrated on breathing slowly as her senses blurred and changed, becoming those of someone else—those of the victim trapped in this apartment and fleeing a terrible, impossible tormentor.

  “Those aren’t Eloïse’s footprints. It was Saint-Clair walking barefoot. The girl, she was trying to hide.”

  She looked down the apartment’s hallway, which was plunged in thick darkness. Leroy headed that way, toward one of the bedrooms, while Vauvert covered him.

  “Can’t see shit.”

  “Be careful.”

  Leroy pushed the door open with his foot. A fetid stench greeted them.

  But no monster lunged out.

  The room looked as deserted as the rest of the apartment.

  “God, what is that smell?” Eva said, covering her mouth and nose.

  “I have no idea,” Leroy answered.

  In the blue glow coming through the window, they could see bedsheets in disarray. The night stand had been toppled, and pieces of a broken lamp were all over the floor.

  “Looks like animals rolled around in the bed,” Leroy said.

  “That’s what happened,” Vauvert said.

  Without moving any closer, he pointed to the black globs all over the sheets.

  “I’ve seen that before. It’s shit. That’s what stinks so bad.”

  “But where are the animals that did it?”

  “I have no fucking clue,” Vauvert answered.

  They opened the other doors, took a look inside a second bedroom, the laundry room, and the bathroom and found nothing. The apartment was deserted.

  “I can’t believe this!” Vauvert fumed. “They couldn’t have vanished just like that.”

  Eva was still in the living room, her stomach burning with terror. It was the same terror that Eloïse Lombard had experienced. It was palpable in this room. The inspector slowly felt her way through the living room debris, recreating the girl’s flight.

  She momentarily steadied herself against a wall.

  The world was swaying.

  In front of her, the full-length mirror was split in two. She called out to her colleagues.

  “That’s how the beasts from hell got in.”

  “What?”

  Eva pointed at the broken mirror.

  “They go through mirrors. I haven’t stopped thinking about it. It’s a form of very old magic. In ancient times, the seers used mirrors to perform their rituals. These beasts are doing the same thing. They use mirrors like doors to go from one world to the other.”

  “And you think that Saint-Clair can walk through mirrors, too?”

  Eva weighed the idea before waving it away with her hand.

  “No, I don’t think so. Those beasts are spirits. They come from the netherworld. But Saint-Clair is still human.”

  She turned. Her heart was thumping wildly. The danger was very near, so very near and yet invisible. She let out a cry of rage.

  “She can’t be far, for Christ’s sake! She took refuge here just before Saint-Clair managed to get in. She was looking for a way out.”

  “But where the hell to?” Leroy asked, also losing patience. “It’s not like she jumped off the balcony or anything.”

  “The balcony,” Eva said.

  Vauvert understood. He rushed to the shattered doors and stuck his head into the rain. Once again, he scanned the roofs, a sea of gray chimneys and steep inclines. Some of the new buildings had flat concrete roofs. Others were covered with corrugated iron and pierced by skylights that reflected the lightning.

  At the end of the balcony, an old ladder was bolted to the wall. It was probably used by the chimney sweeps to reach the roof.

  “Wait,” Eva screamed, a high-pitched note of panic in her voice. “What if you slip.”

  But Vauvert had already put his gun back in his holster and grabbed the ladder. With his suit sticking to his body in the pouring rain, he determinedly planted his right military boot on the first rung.

  Lightning uncoiled in the black clouds. Thunder shook the entire neighborhood.

  The ladder swayed. A little.

  Vauvert climbed the first rung.

  Eva hurried along the balcony and grabbed the ladder with both lands to keep it steady. Leroy did the same.

  Vauvert kept hoisting himself up.

  About seven feet up, he reached the edge of the roof. Slate and metal spread as far as he could see, forming a vast and hilly landscape of peaks and slopes. He walked cautiously along the gutter, carefully scanning the rooftop terrain. Interspersing the roofs were chimneys, abrupt ledges and ladders. On the horizon, the lights of the Eiffel Tower glowed through the rain.

  “Can you see them?” Eva shouted.

  Vauvert stopped before he could answer.

  “Oh, my God,” he finally managed to say.

  He could see them, all right.

  About fifty yards from him, Eloïse Lombard was inching along ledge that was not much wider than a hand. The girl was moving very slowly, her balance more than precarious, trying to reach the next roof.

  On the slanted tin roof right above her was a naked woman on all fours. In her hand shone a tiny blade, no doubt a scalpel. Vauvert watched as the woman stabbed the air around the girl, trying to destabilize her.

  “Saint-Clair!” he screamed.

  The women and the girl were too far away to hear him.

  He raised his gun and aimed at Saint-Clair.

  The rain was blinding him.

  From this distance, he probably would not be able to hit her. Besides, there was the risk of hitting someone in the building if the bullet went through a window.

  He could only watch as the woman continued to swipe while the girl tried to move faster along the ledge.

  What had to happen soon did. Eloïse Lombard began to wobble. When one of her feet slipped, she grabbed a pipe on the wall above the ledge.

  “No! Goddammit, no!” Vauvert shouted.

  He saw the pipe bend under the girl’s weight and snap away from the wall.

  He screamed, powerless as he watched the girl lose her balance and fall.

  “No! No! No! No!”

  The masked woman turned to him, and despite the distance, he could make out her insane smile. She leaped off the roof.

  He could not see either of them anymore.

  Vauvert didn’t think it was possible, but the rain began to fall even harder.

  94

  For just a moment, Eloïse thought she might regain her footing.

  That was not the case. The metal pipe she had grabbed bent like a piece of cardboard. She felt herself thrown off the ledge and hurled toward the ground.

  She crashed painfully onto the next roof, about five feet below, and started tumbling, head over heels, down the steep incline. There was nothing to break her fall.

  At the last moment, she caught the edge of a gutter.

  Her fall came to a brutal stop.

  Her stomach slammed against the wall while her legs dangled in midair.

  She clung to the gutter. The rainwater that it carried spil
led over, splashing her face and making it impossible to breathe. She was terrified of what would happen if the gutter gave way, but as she kicked the air, she felt the edge of another roof below her. If only she could get a foothold on the tin.

  Eloïse flailed, trying to secure her footing. Finding that it was impossible, she realized that her only alternative was hauling herself onto the roof above. Did she have the strength to do it, though? Her arms were cramping and cut.

  She would not be able to hold on much longer.

  And so she decided to give it all she had. Gathering every bit of strength left in her, she managed, miraculously, to throw an elbow above the gutter, and she pulled her head above it. Her hand found an iron bar running horizontally along the wall. She held on.

  She was almost there.

  Gripping the bar with both hands, she swung her legs, once, then twice, and got a knee on the gutter at the edge of the roof.

  Just one last effort.

  Looking up, she saw the terrible woman coming through the driving rain.

  The woman was on all fours, like an animal, and skillfully slinking across the steep rooftop. The rain had washed the blood from her body, but more than ever, she looked like a monster out of a grim fairy tale. Her whole body was changing. Her hair was growing longer by the second, black curls dancing around her face. Her mask was a mirror reflecting the flashes of lightning.

  Between her fingers, the triangular blade gleamed with a bluish hue, an obscene promise.

  Eloïse tried to heave her whole body onto the roof.

  But the stressed gutter broke, and, once again, Eloïse was dangling in the air. She held onto the iron bar with all her might. The bar was still holding.

  That was all that mattered.

  Eloïse slowly slid one hand forward, then the other and managed to move along the bar. The rain had plastered her hair against her eyes, making it hard to see. Drops pelted her skin. Her hands felt slippery on the wet metal. But Eloïse held on. If she could manage to cover three more feet, maybe four, she could reach the safety of the next roof. That was all she could think about now.

  Move one hand after the other. Hold on tight. Don’t look back at any cost.