First Blood

by S. Cedric

  The white-haired, red-eyed ogre.

  “And so be it,” he had said, thrusting in the knife.

  67

  And so be it.

  The cold was intense. It felt like needles of ice on her face. Eva did not care. She staggered for several yards before stopping under the pale cone of illumination coming from a streetlamp. She held onto the pole to steady herself, feeling like she was going to throw up.

  It can’t be.

  She had tried to find out. She had dug so deep. She had inspected everything, analyzed everything, turned over every stone. What had she hoped to find one day? Had she really done everything to discover the truth?

  Now the truth was right in front of her.

  And it was unbearable.

  She could not breathe. The world was spinning around her. Burning bile rose in her throat. It splattered the sidewalk as she threw it up.

  Then there was a presence, next to her. A massive shadow covering her. A hand brushing her shoulder.

  “Eva,” Vauvert murmured.

  “No,” she repeated.

  It was the only word that would cross her lips. A negation. Total refusal—of her past, of her secret, of her all-consuming obsession. She should have known. It was so clear. How could she not have imagined it? But she did not want to. No, she did not want to. It was out of the question. What she wanted was to wake up and be someone else. To never remember this life at all, this flesh of hers, this blood of hers.

  “Eva.”

  She shrugged him off and starting walking down the street, her head thrust into the bitter wind.

  Her colleague followed her. She heard his heavy steps. She felt his unease, his hesitation. She did not care. It had been a bad idea to see him again. She knew it from the start. Now everything was crumbling, taking her along with it.

  “Wait,” Vauvert said, begging in a low voice.

  “No.”

  “We need to talk. I’m here.”

  “No.”

  This time, his large hand grabbed her arm. She tried to shake it off, but he refused to let go. She twisted and managed to slip out of her leather jacket, which remained in Vauvert’s hand.

  “Leave me. Leave me alone,” she said, running into the icy night.

  When she slipped on the ice, she felt Vauvert’s arms close around her, keeping her from falling. “No.” She burst into tears, suddenly feeling so tiny, so vulnerable, a prisoner in his arms. “No. No. No.”

  “Stop,” he whispered in her ear.

  “Let me go.”

  She was sobbing and shaking. Vauvert covered her with her jacket and wrapped his arms around her again. She felt herself lifted off the ground. Ignoring her protests, Vauvert carried her to the car and opened the door.

  “Alex,” she said, with a sob.

  “Hush.”

  He slipped her into the front seat. She doubled over. The tears blinded her. The ceiling light in the car was suddenly too intense, even with her dark glasses on. She shut her eyes tight. Everything was jumbled. She felt the car move, vaguely perceived the streetlamps go by, as shadows alternated with light more and more quickly. She felt like she was six again. A child. A little girl. She felt empty, and she longed for her mother’s arms around her, knowing without a doubt that she would never feel them again. The pain of separation was there, in her heart, as sharp as it had always been, as it would be every second of her life. The absence tore her apart inside. Her sister. Her twin. Half of herself. No therapy would ever fix that. She would never be whole again. She had been ripped apart twenty-five years earlier.

  The day her father killed them.

  The day he made Eva who she was.

  She can’t do anything.

  She is only six years old, in her white dress, in her vulnerable little body.

  SHE CAN’T DO ANYTHING.

  “Justyna,” Eva murmurs.

  She can’t close her eyes.

  Every second of that horrible act is being engraved in her memory, plunging deep inside her, like the blade slipping into her sister’s flesh, into her double, into half of who she is. She will never be whole again.

  “Justyna.”

  The ogre has taken her sister’s life. He is holding her tight, as though he is experiencing the most intense pleasure he has ever felt. His eyes are closed. He is giving himself over to his ecstasy, and she keeps watching. She smells the blood, an odor she will never forget.

  The man’s smile gets bigger.

  He opens his eyes, red eyes that look at her with monstrous longing.

  When the blade comes slowly out of her sister’s flesh, she watches it, convinced she is next. That the blade will steal her own life away.

  “Please,” the little girl cries. “Please.”

  The ogre takes in Justyna’s broken body. His red eyes are damp with an evil kind of joy.

  He looks up and sets the eyes of death on her.

  His white hair flings above her.

  “My girl,” he whispers, reaching out to the little Eva. “Finally.”

  Finally...

  68

  The heat was stifling in Vauvert’s apartment, as usual. But the woman was shivering. Lying on the sofa, she had turned her head toward the window and seemed to be gazing at the city lights, or maybe she had her eyes closed. It was hard to tell with her dark glasses.

  “It’s him,” she said, her voice flat.

  “I know,” Vauvert said. “I understood that.”

  The picture Mrs. Wilson had given them was now on his desk on the other side of the room. All five students, each of them looking arrogant and charismatic, were in the photo.

  Ferrand.

  Constantin.

  Loisel.

  Alban.

  They knew these four.

  The fifth and final member of the group was sitting on the right. He was wearing enormous sunglasses, but what stood out most was the color of his hair. Or rather, the lack of color.

  Hair like snow. And those glasses. The same damned glasses that made Vauvert think of Eva.

  The family resemblance stood out.

  Eva sniffed.

  Vauvert sat down next to her. The questions were spinning in his head and in his heart, but he did not want to press too hard.

  “We need to talk.”

  She did not answer. She was rocking herself almost imperceptibly. Her pale lips trembled.

  “Your mother and your sister,” he whispered. “Twenty-five years ago.”

  She took off her glasses, revealing her tear-filled red eyes. He felt a shiver run up his spine, like a thousand cold pins.

  “I need a cigarette.”

  “Of course.”

  She sat up, and he lit one for her, and then slipped another into his mouth. They were silent for a long moment.

  “I knew it was my father,” Eva finally said, exhaling blue smoke. “For years, well, for nearly my entire life, my mind pushed away the memories, but they always came back, of course. When we were together two years ago, it was too late for me to talk about it. I couldn’t talk to anyone. Do you understand?”

  She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. Her hair was sticking to her face. She looked like a child, an irretrievably lost child.

  “Not for a minute did I think he was one of the people we are looking for. Yet it explains so much.”

  More tears rolled down her cheeks. More pins ran up Vauvert’s spine.

  She spoke the words that had waited so long to come out, words that had been hidden in her heart, behind her armor.

  “The Night Scourge, the serial killer who killed fifteen women twenty-five years ago and whose identity nobody ever uncovered was Louis Canaan. He is the one who killed my mother and my sister. My very own father.”

  She trembled again. Vauvert wanted to touch her hand. For a minute, he even thought he had. Then he realized he had not moved.

  “I brought together everything I could find on him,” she continued. “I know he hunted my mother for years, trying to
find us, his girls. Why did he kill all the others? Maybe as training, maybe just for the pleasure. But in the end, all he wanted was us, his children, the first blood, of his own loins. He killed Justyna. And in doing that, he killed me.”

  Eva blew out more smoke.

  “Do you know why he spared me? Do you want me to tell you what he said to me? I was six, but I remember every word as if it were yesterday.”

  Vauvert felt a knot in his throat.

  “I’m listening.”

  “He said... He said he was proud of me, that I was exactly like he was.”

  Her voice was broken and distant and gave the impression that she was not really talking about herself.

  “I jabbed a kitchen knife into him to defend myself. That was all I had. I thrust the blade into his flesh, and instead of dying, instead of showing any pain, he saw himself in me. That is why he spared me. That psychopath was proud of his daughter.”

  She opened her eyes and crushed her cigarette butt in the ashtray.

  There was a moment of painful silence.

  “Where is he now?” Vauvert asked. “We have to find him.”

  A bitter smile appeared on her face. She shook her head.

  “I tried. I’ve looked everywhere. There hasn’t been a trace of him since that day. He totally vanished. Even his social security number disappeared. It was as though he died twenty-five years ago, except that he didn’t, and he is still around.”

  She looked at him, and he felt pulled into her beautiful red eyes.

  “Day after day, I feel like there is this hellish puzzle in my head instead of a brain,” she whispered. “My memories are so impossible. Sometimes, sometimes I wish I had been Justyna, because I can’t stand living this way.”

  Vauvert could not bear hearing her talk that way. But he did not want to stop her. Conflicting emotions boiled up inside him. This woman was usually so strong, no matter what happened. He realized that he had to be the first person in the world to see her in such a state of weakness, and that very thought broke his heart. If someone could protect her, it had to be him. He wanted to be the one. But he did not know what to do.

  “Ismael’s mother knew,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Amina Constantin. She knew that my father was part of their little group of witches. She recognized me. She said so, but I refused to understand her. It was so obvious, and I was so blind. She said that I was born without any color, that I was the devil’s daughter.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Vauvert said.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. And that’s what’s so horrible. That nutcase woman was right. My father is the devil in person.”

  She turned to the window again. It was snowing.

  Her voice was filled with painful finality.

  “I’ve always hunted monsters to prove that I am not one myself. I’ve refused to accept that his blood is pumping through my heart.”

  “Stop, now,” Vauvert said. “Don’t ever say that again.”

  She wiped her cheek once more.

  “He’s the one killing them, Alex.”

  “You can’t say that. We don’t know.”

  “I know it. Deep down, I know it’s him.”

  “You have no proof,” he said.

  “I saw him.”

  Vauvert shivered despite himself.

  “When? Where?”

  “When I arrived in front of Constantin’s building. I got a glimpse of Louis in the street,” she said, her voice broken. “He was watching me. He was smiling. And I thought I was hallucinating. I thought I was losing it again. I was wrong. He was there. He is the one who tortured Ismael Constantin and set his apartment on fire. He is the one, the monster who is hunting down his former comrades, one by one. And that’s not all. I think he is watching me. I don’t know if he knows that I’ve been doing all this research on him, but, well, he comes to me in my dreams. I don’t know what is real and what is not anymore.”

  “Eva,” Vauvert said.

  This time, he put his hand on hers. He feared that she would push it away. But instead, she squeezed it tight.

  “Alex, I’m afraid.”

  In response, he leaned in.

  He pressed his lips against hers.

  She kissed him back.

  69

  He remembered every scar on Eva’s body. His fingers brushed over the lines and furrows that had been there before. He was both hesitant and hungry as he retraced this treasure map written in human flesh. He looked for meaning in her scars. They were like a mystical alphabet to decipher—an understanding of who Eva was, her secrets and maybe her ghosts.

  She turned toward him. Her skin was so pale, so thin, almost luminescent under the subdued illumination of the lamp. The intense embers in her eyes were two wells of strange, forbidden light that devoured him.

  He kissed her round breasts tenderly until she was breathing hard, and her stomach was pressing against him.

  “It’s not what you think,” she said, muffling a groan. “Don’t start imagining things.”

  He crushed his lips against hers to get her to shut up. He held her tight in his powerful arms. He wasn’t forcing her, but he wasn’t giving her a choice, either. He felt her body melt into his, stick to him, as she herself held him tighter and tighter.

  I don’t give a shit what it is, he thought as he kissed her all over her body and got lost in her blood-red eyes. His whole being had been waiting for nothing but this moment, the moment that they would find each other again. He did not care about the consequences of this act. You are here. We are here, both of us, and that’s all that counts.

  She held onto him, smiling at him, kissing him back, and groaning. When he entered her, she closed her eyes, her smile widening. She was beautiful. She threw her head back and moaned louder.

  They made love for a long time, slowly and then quicker, throwing the sheets to the floor, changing position, the greed not letting up. They loved each other as if it were their final opportunity to feel alive and share this life. Alexandre lost all sense of time, of the minutes, or hours maybe, spent inside her. All he cared about was her body against his and giving her pleasure, always more pleasure, climbing up and down delicious plateaus.

  She was straddling him, holding him tight between her thighs, riding him faster and faster, when something strange happened.

  Her hair was shimmering like a curtain in front of her face, and her mouth was open in a long, slow moan, when he thought he heard her speaking to him.

  Alexandre, it’s always been you. I don’t want you to know it.

  The words had slipped into his mind. Eva had not really spoken. That he was sure of. He gasped. He could not have heard her thoughts. He had imagined them. That had to be it.

  Eva leaned over him, guiding her breasts to his mouth. He nibbled on her nipple.

  “Alexandre, what is it?”

  He ran his hands through her silky snow-white hair and pulled her even closer.

  “Nothing, nothing at all.”

  He kissed her with an animal voraciousness, and their hips returned to their synchronized movement, one melting into the other.

  Always been you. Those words echoed in his mind.

  He stopped thinking and got lost in her.

  VI

  Communion

  When Louis does it—the instant the sky opens and the fabric of the world tears—the four others stop breathing. Their pupils dilate and change shape. An intense feeling of fire runs through their veins.

  “The first blood,” Ismael says.

  He is lying in bed, shaking uncontrollably.

  Madeleine is next to him and convulsing in the same way. She forgets about the cocaine in the back of her throat and the pleasure the man next to her has just given her. It is as though she has been projected into his body, and her senses have rebooted. Every nerve is turned inside out.

  “He did it. The madman really did it.”

  They look at each other, holding hands, and the
muscles in their bodies contract and rise up in waves. When they finally get up, they dress themselves in silence.

  Near their apartment, Pierre is sitting in an armchair in his parents’ house. His head falls back, and blood drips from his nose. The book he is reading lands at his feet.

  A primal fear grabs him deep inside and spreads to every fiber of his body.

  The wheel is turning.

  The course of the stars has been changed.

  He has trouble pulling himself out of the armchair. He wipes his bloody nose and walks across the room. It feels like it takes hours. His parents are watching television. They do not look at him, and he does not speak as he walks past them and out the door. He could not have spoken, even if he had wanted to. He crosses the driveway like someone sneaking into the stuffy May night.

  In the sky, a star falls.

  Guillaume is in an underground bar in Montauban. Shoving aside the girl who is trying to go in before him, he has just enough time to lock himself in the restroom. His grabs the toilet and vomits all the whisky he has drunk that night.

  The ground trembles.

  A wavering film slides across the dirty walls, ripping off the posters, pulling down the stickers, and carrying off the faces of punk bands. Everything flows together on the floor, and it feels like the ground is sucking up the restroom.

  When he finally opens the door, a boy is waiting in the hall. It is the girl’s boyfriend, who has come to defend her. But he just stares when Guillaume comes out covered in blood. Guillaume walks past him and makes his way through the crowded bar and out into the street. He rushes to his car, which is in a disabled-parking spot.

  The starry sky looks like a wavering carpet of nails.

  Their cars arrive at the forest road at the same time and go up the switchback in single file.

  Louis’s car is already there at the end of the road, under the pine trees. He is waiting for them.

  The four students stare, disbelieving, speechless. It is Ismael who decides to go first. He starts up the path that leads to the chapel.