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, Eloise 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. Eloise 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, Eloise 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 spilled 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.
Eloise 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.
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.
Eloise tried to heave her whole body onto the roof.
But the stressed gutter broke, and, once again, Eloise 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.
Eloise 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 Eloise 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.
