suggesting that buckets had been placed there.
“Is this really what I think it is?” he asked.
“I’m afraid so,” Vauvert answered, crouching over the stains on the floor.
He ran a finger over them, removing the film of dried blood.
“We are in the home of a serial killer, captain. She must have tortured people right here, on this table.”
Nadal shut his eyes.
“Oh, God.”
Vauvert stood up.
“At least we know that Saint-Clair was not living in her house. She was living
He took out his phone.
“Does anyone have service?”
Leroy and Nadal checked their own cells.
“Nothing,” Leroy said.
“Nothing either,” Nadal said, shaking like a leaf.
“We’ll have to get out of here by ourselves then,” Vauvert said. “What do we have?”
They examined the room. In this house, unlike the other one, there were signs of habitation. The cupboards were full. Unwashed glasses were still sticky with wine. There was even a laptop on a shelf, along with a few thick books on European mythology.
“There’s more over there,” Leroy said, heading toward the back of the room.
Indeed, a flight of stairs led to a closed door.
“So far, I can’t see any evidence of a trap.”
He flattened himself against the wall and put a hand on the doorknob.
“But who knows. Stand back.”
He waited until Vauvert and Nadal had taken cover behind the couch.
He turned the knob.
The door opened noiselessly. And what had been lying behind it assaulted their senses.
A sickening stench poured out of the room.
A beast growled.
Two red eyes pierced the darkness.
68
On her hands and knees, the masked woman is still uttering nonsensical sounds.
“Iosua! Orilu! Sisis! Uliro! Ausoi!”
Her eyes burn in the dark.
“Come! From the mountain of the farthest midnight!”
In body, she’s in the basement, kneeling on the hard and dusty floor.
But her mind has flown away.
“Leave your dwellings and come!”
The mask is no longer porcelain.
The mirror of the souls has replaced it.
It reveals a closed room with walls full of empty eyes. This is the place where she has built everything. It is about to be violated by those police officers she can see through the eyes of the gods.
She has to know.
She needs to prevent the irreparable.
Around her the whispering of the dead has stopped.
“You who bring disorder across the universe!”
Now the gods are watching, curious.
Their fangs bared, dripping with ghostly saliva, caught between two worlds.
“Come!”
69
“Watch out!” Vauvert shouted as he stood up from behind the couch, both hands gripping his Smith amp; Wesson.
The beast burst out of the darkness, opening its jaws wide and baring its fangs.
Vauvert aimed at the space between the two red flames.
He fired a single bullet.
The deafening sound of the gunshot bounced off the walls.
The beast was gone.
Leroy, short of breath, peered into the darkness.
There was no trace of the creature that had just leaped out at them.
“Where… where did it go?”
Vauvert took a step toward him, on full alert.
“I’m beginning to think that those things aren’t real. Not in the sense that they’re real animals, anyway.”
“I don’t understand,” Leroy said. “Back out there, those beasts took out an officer. They ate his face. We all saw it!”
“Maybe their physical form is unsettled,” Vauvert ventured. “How the hell do I know? It’s the first time I’ve seen anything like this.” He covered his mouth and nose. “What’s that smell?” Leroy hesitantly stepped into the room and flipped the light switch, revealing a hallway with tile walls.
The floor was covered with coagulated blood. It looked like the beast had been rolling in it.
“These things, maybe they feed on blood? Like vampires?” Leroy suggested.
Vauvert said nothing.
Nadal, keeping his distance, started coughing.
“My father used to work in a slaughterhouse in Laissac. That’s exactly what this place looks like, a fucking slaughterhouse. And that smell. Dear God.”
“Yeah, carrion,” Vauvert said.
He walked down the hallway and found another room. When he flipped the switch, neon lights flickered and then flooded the space with light.
There was no furniture.
There was only a small table, surrounded by three banged-up chairs.
The walls were covered with pictures.
There were dozens and dozens of them. There were old black-and-white photos, as well as digital prints on large sheets of paper. Some were pictures from glossy magazines.
“Oh shit,” Nadal said.
All of them were women.
Vauvert walked over to one of the walls and studied the photos. He recognized those faces. Several of them, anyway. He had spent months pouring over them when he had put together the file on the Black Mountain Vampires. These smiling girls were those found in pieces in the Salavilles’ barn.
Most disturbing was that he only recognized a fraction of the women on the walls.
It was so obvious, Vauvert almost fainted.
