Her scarlet eyes glare at the eyes behind the porcelain mask. She has nothing to lose anymore. She can defy this crazy bitch.
The eyes behind the mask darken.
The woman lets go of her throat. She pulls back and gives Eva a tremendous slap across her face.
Pain courses down her neck. “You know… you are… nothing but… a sick bitch,” she manages to spit out.
The woman stares at her with even more interest and slowly smiles. It is a predator’s smile, baring sharp teeth.
“Sick? Interesting you should say that.”
She slaps her a second time.
“Why do you think I’m doing all this?”
With the third slap, blood streams from Eva’s nose.
“You think I’m enjoying any of this?” the woman continues.
She brings her face close to Eva’s. Eva can feel her breath on her skin.
“Although, actually, you get a taste for it, after a while.”
She reaches for Eva’s face. Eva winces as the icy fingers caress her cheek. Then they caress her forehead, pushing aside her tangled hair.
And the look on his face-shock transformed to joy in an instant, when the knife blade stuck in the middle of his chest.
The little girl, with all her might, thrusts it deeper into his chest.
Eva blinks, returns to the present.
She forces herself to remain clear-headed.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Why not?”
“That’s not an answer,” Eva whispers. “If you have to kill me… at least tell me why.”
The woman’s mouth stretches into a depraved smile.
“I told you already. It’s beyond anything you can understand.”
Eva swallows a trickle of salty saliva. “Do you think you’re another Elizabeth Bathory?”
Saying the name has the desired effect. The woman tilts her head.
“Maybe you can understand, after all.”
She straightens. She pushes the long brown locks of her wig over her shoulders. Eva has the impression that the woman is going to remove her mask but she does not. Instead, she opens the front of her dress and exposes her heavy, white breasts. She presses them together with her hands.
Eva’s vision is blurred, but she notices something strange about that bare chest. Not the breasts, but the skin. It seems to be stained with bruises.
58
It had been more than half an hour since they had passed another vehicle.
For good reason. They were not on a paved road anymore. The were driving over a rutted dirt lane in Rouergue that was barely wider than the SUV.
Vauvert kept a firm grip on the steering wheel as he navigated around the potholes. Leroy hung onto the passenger seat and the handle above the door to avoid being tossed around the cabin. He did not dare say a word about the inspector’s driving.
The headlights illuminated only the space immediately ahead of them, but Vauvert was not slowing down. Time was ticking, minute by minute, and it was already two in the morning. The GPS was telling him to keep driving down this tight, bumpy road, and he was doing just that.
Judith Saint-Clair’s address was about six miles outside Rodez. It was not in a village, though. Not even a proper hamlet. They had gone through a few of those, small clusters of houses by the side of the road. They had even drive past the ruins of a small castle. That was when they were still on a semblance of road.
“Vauvert, seriously,” Leroy finally muttered.
He stopped in midsentence when a narrow bridge loomed in front of them. Vauvert did not let up on the gas. The vehicle sped to the other side of the bridge and bumped back onto the dirt road.
“Seriously,” he tried again, “are you certain this is the right way?”
“We’re almost there,” Vauvert said.
And, indeed, just a few minutes later, the road widened and ended in front of a small house. Vauvert brought the SUV to an abrupt halt and turned off the headlights.
“You have reached your destination,” the GPS’s synthetic voice announced.
Vauvert turned off the engine. There was total darkness now, inside and outside the vehicle. It took them a good minute to adjust their vision. A black mass in the dark, the house stood about ten yards away.
“Ready?” Vauvert said.
Leroy drew his handgun from his holster.
“Ready.”
They opened their doors at the same time.
59
“Can you see?” the woman asks as she walks over to her.
Eva squints, and she sees. The woman’s naked breasts have the deadly white color of a corpse. They are slack and wrinkled. Eva can also make out bloated veins, blue and green, under the age-damaged skin.
“How old are you?” Eva asks.
“About the same as you.”
“No. That’s not possible.”
“What would you do if such a thing were to happen to you? If suddenly your life started to fly by too quickly? If fate decided to con you? Would you just accept your lot, without doing anything?”
For the first time, Eva notices the wrinkles at the corners of her lips below the mask. And suddenly she understands why this woman does not want to show her face.
“What would you be willing to do? What would you be willing to give?” she hisses.
The woman leans into her ear, and Eva feels the icy porcelain mask grazing her temple.
“
The woman blows softly on her face.
“Magic, you understand? Once it was a basic part of life and death. It’s still here, even after thousands of years. The gods are still here, just at the periphery of our senses. They’re the gods that we forgot about, the gods that we denied. They’re still here. They’re still waiting to be served.”
Eva strives to remain clear-headed.
“You sacrifice innocent lives.”
“I have to.”
“There are no gods listening to you,” Eva spits out. “You’re nothing but a psychopath looking for excuses to murder people.”
The woman pushes down on Eva’s hip. The fresh wound gapes open again, sending an explosion of pain through Eva’s body.
Eva understands what is coming next. She tenses, unable to do anything to prevent it.
