Of Fever and Blood

Just below her belly button.

Her skin breaks open, and the blade sinks into her flesh a half-inch maybe. Maybe more.

This time, Eva howls.

“Ah, you see?” the woman says, raising the blade.

She brings the scalpel to her mouth. The tip of her tongue catches a drop of blood.

The smile is radiant below the porcelain mask.

Eva is gagging. The world is spinning, all around her. She can feel the black river coming back, the darkness waiting to engulf her and drown her, once and for all. The burning sensation devours her belly. Her whole body screams with pain, this too-intense pain. Her blood runs slowly down her sides. Her life becomes a river churning against her naked skin, against her goose pimples, following the shape of her hips, and puddling under her buttocks. She can hear the dripping in a metal container.

As it was with the others.

The container that collected their blood.

That’s what the crazy bitch is doing. She is going to bleed me like she did the others.

“You know that this is going to go on for a while, don’t you? It’s important. The ritual must be done correctly.”

Eva tries to catch her breath. Her throat is filled with blood. She spits it out, sending a ruby splash onto the immaculate whiteness of the mask in front of her.

In her mind’s eye, the details stream past, all that this woman has done to her previous victims. She has studied the photos of their bodies, mutilated beyond imagination. She knows all the specialists’ reports by heart. She knows precisely what the women went through. Stabbed thirty times, some of them. More than sixty times, others. Their faces cut. The eyes gouged out. Their skin ripped off. While they were still alive.

This last thought is like a trigger, and all Eva can perceive is this pain pulsing through the wounds in her thigh and her belly and the blood oozing out of her. She cracks. Absolute panic takes over. She lets out a scream that rises and turns into a howl, louder and higher-pitched, and even that doesn’t stifle the sound of the blood dripping into the container. She arches her back, pulls on the ropes.

Until the hand of the woman rises over her again.

Eva can see the glittering blade. She can see the arc that the scalpel makes as it comes down toward her hip, and she can see the red splashes in front of her eyes or inside her eyes-she can no longer tell.

She keeps on screaming.

Until her vocal chords snap. The pain devours her and chews her up with fangs of red fire.

Above the fiery smile, the hand goes up again.

The blade comes down again.

Her eyes roll back in her head.

She cannot even see the woman anymore as she raises the blade yet again, casting fresh arcs of blood.

But she can feel the explosion of pain when the blade strikes. Yet again.

Until Eva, finally sinking into unconsciousness, stops screaming.

40

2 p.m.

Erwan Leroy was waiting for them in the hallway, a cloud of smoke around him. When the office door opened, he dropped the cigarette into his coffee cup and tossed everything in the trash can.

The chief pointed at Vauvert.

“He’s with us. I’m expecting full cooperation. Understood?”

“Loud and clear, boss. I was actually thinking of going back to Eva’s apartment, in case we overlooked anything.”

“Both of you go,” O said, heading for the interrogation room. “Bring back something.”

Vauvert shook the young detective’s hand.

“Thank you, Erwan.”

“Any time,” Leroy said. “We need all the help we can get. Besides, Eva talked about you often.”

“Oh, really?”

Vauvert waited for him to say more. But he did not. Leroy just walked toward the stairs. Vauvert followed, burning to ask why she had mentioned him, and what had she said about him. Instead, he bit his tongue and followed Leroy down the black linoleum stairs.

They crossed the inner courtyard and climbed into a white Peugeot. Inside, the smell was a mix of tobacco and sweet perfume.

Vauvert stole a glance at the officer: his fashionable vest under his leather coat, his pale-gray Hugo Boss T-shirt. He looked like a typical playboy, barely thirty, blond hair falling over his eyes, wrestler’s shoulders, and gleaming-white smile. More often than not, Vauvert felt an instant dislike for this kind of guy. But not this time. He noticed that the young man’s hands shook almost imperceptibly on the steering wheel. There was an old wound, carefully hidden behind Leroy’s pretty-boy looks.

They drove along the Seine River until they reached the Bastille and then took Avenue Ledru Rollin. Traffic was light for a Monday. Leroy gave Vauvert a rundown of the past two days’ events and told him about the few bits of evidence they had so far. Broken mirrors. Blood belonging to an unknown woman, AB negative. He also shared the link that Eva had made with the crimes committed by Countess Bathory, who tortured her handmaids until they died.

“As creepy as the story is, it’s true,” Leroy said. “I spent a good chunk of last night reading up on that countess. She mutilated those poor girls with extreme perversity, exactly like our killer. She stuck needles all over their bodies, and she carved up their skin with razors.”

“So she could drink their blood like some kind of vampire?” Vauvert asked.

He could not help thinking about what Mira had told him. The parallel between the Salaville brothers and Dracula’s servants. But he chose to set aside those thoughts for the time being.

“Actually, yes, she drank some of it,” Leroy said. “The witches who surrounded her had convinced her that blood was some sort of elixir for eternal youth. So she took it from young women. She smeared it all over herself. She bathed in it, especially at the end. She took baths in a big tub filled with blood.”

“That’s absolutely disgusting,” Vauvert muttered.

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“And you think Eva is right, that our killer is actually a woman?”

Stopping for a red light, Leroy turned to Vauvert, his hands still clutching the wheel.

“What I think? What I think is that every time Eva profiled someone, she was dead on. So if she thinks our killer is a woman who believes she’s the reincarnation of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, then I agree. Not to mention the blood we found in her place. The blood of a woman. It could very well belong to the killer.”

Vauvert lost himself in his thoughts as Leroy took off again and drove down Rue de Charonne under the pouring rain.

He wondered whether he should tell him about the two wolves he had encountered at the Salaville farm. There had been blood there, too. The blood of a man who had been dead for a year already. He decided not to say anything. In any case, they had arrived. Leroy parked on the sidewalk.

On the other side of the street was a park that was probably filled with sun in the summer. But it looked sinister in this downpour. The rain was falling from the sky in thick gray sheets, causing the gutters to overflow yet again.

“This is the building. Ninth floor,” Leroy said.

They got out of the car and ran toward the entrance.

Two uniformed officers, drinking coffee in the hall, greeted them and let them go in.