First Blood (29 page)

“Are you okay?”
Blanca asked.

Vauvert moved his shoulders. He ribs hurt. Maybe come of them were broken. His left wrist hurt more, as it had banged against the steering wheel, but the pain was bearable.

“Everything’s fine. The two cars are totaled though.”

Feeling around, he grabbed the door handle and pulled. Nothing happened. He pulled harder. Still nothing.

“I think I’m stuck.”

He stopped moving.

The BMW headlight was moving backward.

“Shit! No way!”

“Alex? Alex, I’ve located you. I’m calling for help. Can you hear me?”

Vauvert did not lose time answering. The rescue team would not be of any use if he could not get out of the car.
Right away!

He tried to unbuckle his seatbelt.

Nothing doing. It was stuck.

He was too big to squeeze his way out, and the belt would not loosen.

Then what he was most worried about happened.

He heard the BMW’s engine roar.

Loisel was having a hard time controlling his crushed car, but the engine was still working. And he was heading straight at Vauvert.

The single headlight blinded him.

The engine sounded like the thunder of a thousand devils as the car sped up.

“He’s ramming me.”

“What?”

Vauvert was desperate. He would never be able to get loose on time.

“Benjamin.”

The BMW came at him.

Vauvert tried to brace himself for the impact. It was useless.

The collision threw him to the side like a rag doll.

His window shattered, sending out threads that made it look like a large white spider’s web.

It was enough to send the SUV into the abyss.

He felt himself sucked up.

No, not that.

He didn’t have time to be afraid. He kept tightening his muscles, as he felt himself roll over, his head bashing against the ceiling, then back to normal and upside down again, as the vehicle tumbled down the steep slope.

Vauvert was not counting the rollovers anymore. Up and down no longer existed. It was all dizziness and a dazzling whiteness.

He was cold.

And then even colder when the final impact came.

In the headlights, the abandoned horse farm looks like a shipwreck, a frozen derelict, lost in fog.

They are not here anymore.

That would not stop him. The memory of their presence is in the air. In the walls. Everywhere.

He approaches the house, finding the blood splattered on the old stones irresistible. Clearly, it is not Loisel’s blood, but he always finds blood interesting. All blood.

His sticks out his tongue to lap up the blood the same way an animal licks up the blood of its wounded prey.

It is the cop’s blood. The giant with the scarred face.

Interesting.

Very interesting, indeed.

His rough tongue goes over the stone over and over again until it is licked clean.

That done, he turns to the door. He is wearing a carnivorous smile. His chest expands as he takes in the smells carried by the ice-cold wind.

His nostrils shiver.

The remains of magic are floating here. Powerful miasmas.

A beastly groaning comes from the main room.

He already knows what he will find, but he wants to see it with his own eyes. He pushes open the door and walks down the hallway. His shoes crunch as they come down on the splintered wood and broken glass all over the floor.

The creatures are in the living room, amid overturned furniture and fragments of dishes, lamps, and plaster. They are nameless things that once were horses, proud creatures made of love, fear, and pride. Now, they are sticky, counterfeit horrors. One is cringing in the corner of the room, while another one seems to be melting on an overturned table, as if its flesh is made of mud—living trembling mud.

The thing lifts its decaying snout, baring its teeth.. They are harmless now.

What a waste,
he thinks.
A terrible waste.

He turns to the stairs and finds the third creature. This one clearly tried to make it down the stairs, but its physical form had not held up. It is slumped halfway down the steps, with one leg caught in the banister. The abject beast lifts its head, flames of rage in its eyes, and tries to get up again. It pulls its leg so hard, a bone cracks, and the flesh tears. The creature manages to rise but can’t stay up and immediately tumbles forward, a spiral of gelatinous muscles. It lands on the ground floor, moaning in pain and incomprehension. The creature’s vocal cords are even disintegrating. The only sound it can make is a gruff snort.

He brings his hands together, prayer-like, and then blows on the three creatures. They are of no use to him.

“Poor Pierre. You could have been a god, and this is all you know how to do.”

With three simple puffs of air, he removes the semblance of life still animating their carcasses.

He watches them melt and disperse along the tiles, turning into oily puddles.

The spicy smell of dead flesh disappears, along with the ghosts.

He can once again smell Loisel’s blood in the cold night.

Loisel, who is losing blood by the minute. In the mountains. So near now.

He returns to his heated car.

The night is far from over.

He had done it.

Pierre Loisel felt a shiver of joy run through his painful limbs as he gripped the steering wheel.

That damned cop. He’s dead now.

He could not believe his luck.

The pain in his shoulder reminded him how urgent the situation was. He had to get out of there as quickly as possible, before the first responders arrived and found him so vulnerable. Before
the other one
arrived and found him.

That was what he was most afraid of.

How much longer do you think you’ll be able to escape him?

Loisel silenced the voice in his head. He refused to think about it. As long as he was alive, there was hope.

He shifted into reverse. The BMW backed up with a sputter. The engine still worked.

He headed toward the mountains, toward the Spanish border, toward hope.

He drove slowly, the single headlight illuminating the way. He would drive as long as he could. With a little luck, just a little luck...

The pain was unbearable.

The blood was draining out of him. He knew it. He felt it under his clothes. The cold was getting to him now. It was biting, devouring. And he could do nothing about the shattered window that was letting in the icy stream of wind and snow.

He shook his head to chase away the bright stars of unconsciousness that were assailing his retinas. He was determined to hold on just a little bit longer.

He looked down at his hands. They were white from gripping the steering wheel. He thought he could see frost forming on his fingers. It was an illusion, a sign. He was sure now that his time was growing shorter.

He pressed down on the accelerator.

He had not yet played all his cards.

As he drove through the night, he began to chant. His voice was barely audible. But the words slipped from his lips, and he knew that was all that counted. The power of the words. The power that resided in his flesh and his soul.

“
Nefesh kedosha shel hahoshech, ata she bekolsha metzaveh, adon kol hadevarim alei adamot, zrom orcha letochi.”

He had learned the words by heart thirty years earlier, and they came back to him, intact, as if they had stayed on his tongue, ready and quivering. And with them, he felt the air warp and ripple. It was massaging his wound and slipping into his open flesh.

“
Molid kium, shemesh shechora hameira et haaretz, lahet bepi ve-hafoch bessari lebessarcha.”

He felt his splintered clavicle moving in his shoulder. It hurt, but that was a good sign.

“Lev sodi shel hagehenom, nachash elohi shel hamavet, hazrek bi et raal hayecha.”

His flesh was pulsating as it cauterized and healed itself. The bone fragments were knitting back together. The wound was beginning to close. A little.

Not enough.

“Oh, please,” he begged.

As soon as he stopped reciting the mantra, his flesh split open again, and the blood flowed. The magic was not strong enough. He had gone too long without practice.

“Shit. Holy mother shit.”

The intense pain was sending shudders down his arm. It was getting harder and harder to steer the car.

On the next turn, he even lost his grip on the steering.

The car swerved.

He hit the brakes, but the tires skidded on the snow. The BMW plowed into a huge snowdrift. The engine stopped.

“No,” he said. “Not that.”

He turned the key. The engine started.

He shifted into reverse.

The car moved backward.

Then the engine sputtered and stopped for good.

“Please, please.”

He turned the key again. The starter made a sighing sound and then nothing more. He tried again and again. Nothing. The one remaining headlight blinked and went out.

He wiped the snow off his face. The snow settled on the seats and dashboard, colonizing every inch.

He was alone. Alone in the gusts of wind and the absolute darkness.

It was over.

“No. Not yet.”

He pushed the door open and got out of the car, offering himself up to the elements. His eyes adjusted to the darkness.

He will not get me.

Holding his arm against his chest, he limped toward the forest. He started chanting again.

“
Nefesh kedosha shel hahoshech, ata she bekilcha metzaveh adon kol hadevarim alei adamot, shmah koli.”

The air rippled. He saw the surface of the snow shift and rise up all around him, as if a layer of dead skin were being sloughed off the landscape. He did not see the veil with his eyes, but with other, more ancestral senses, which were now on full alert.

“
She kochoteicha irrapou shulshotai.”

He took a few more steps and felt the ground shift, as well.

He’s coming.

He’s found me.

Loisel gasped. Blood flowed from his lips and turned to ice.

He distanced himself from the pain and started to run toward the forest with the last of his strength, like a wounded animal before slaughter.

He tripped and fell to his knees in the moving snow.

Strong headlights cut through the night behind him.

Get up, now.

He managed to stand up. But he did not have the strength to run anymore. He started trudging, sinking knee-deep in the snow.

The trees were a few yards away.

He focused on their black shape cut out from the sheet of show.

The car came to a stop right behind him. The headlights were on him. He felt pinned to the night like a helpless, insignificant insect.

Keep going.

He reached the trees and lifted one leg and then the other.

Just a little more.

The trees began to move.

Loisel froze.

The black pines sagged before his eyes. Their shaggy branches were curved like monstrous claws, reaching out, blocking the way.

The other’s magic. It was stronger than his. It had always been more powerful, much more powerful.

A car door slammed.

He felt the presence, the radiating power, behind him.

He turned around. He had to.

A form rose up in front of the headlights.

“You won’t get me,” Loisel cried out, raising his good arm in front of his half-blinded eyes.

The effort it took to say these words caused a sharp pain in his throat.

The other advanced.

“I am ready,” Loisel moaned in a tiny voice.

He was not, but he had no choice.

He forced himself to look at the shape coming toward him.

“You’re not...”

It was not the enemy he expected, but a blond woman wearing a white fur coat that was flapping in the wind.

“Madeleine?”

In this setting, standing erect and superb with those gashes on her face, she looked like a snow witch from some Japanese fairy tale. A white fairy of death called to suck the life out of travelers put to sleep by the cold.

“Leave me. We promised.”

He fell to his knees. Tears streamed down his face. They were thick tears of blood.

The woman approached. He heard her chant, her spell. He felt her power twist the air and slip into his body.

“If you kill me...you will give him...more power. You know that...”

She reached him.

He collapsed in the snow.

Madeleine Reich watched for a few minutes. Then she leaned over him and lifted him up with one hand.

“Idiot,” she said. “I always have to do everything, don’t I?”

She carried him effortlessly. He was nearly dead but not entirely. Not entirely dead yet.

“Time has been our judge,” she said. “We have all changed. What we did changed us, each of us. The five points of the star.”

She carried the body to the car and laid him down in the backseat, all the while chanting. She compelled the forces of nature and the night. She called on the gods of light and darkness. She used words of domination, words that changed the course of the planets.

Loisel gasped and regained consciousness.

He coughed up thick, black blood.

He was shivering.

Madeleine smiled.

He would live a little longer.

Maybe.

White. A world of white.

That’s where he is.

A vast, blinding, endless expanse of white.

Vauvert does not dare to move. He does not know how long he has been here. He is lying in whiteness, in a space of infinite light that was perfectly white.

He doesn’t like it one bit. Some part of him deep down, the most primitive and wisest part of his soul, recognizes this world for what it was.

I’m dead, he thinks, being pragmatic. Well, shit. It had to happen.

Now it’s really over.

His body had been torn from the world of flesh and blood.