First Blood (41 page)

She wavered.

Get it together.

She would not be able to do it.

“I came. I came to put an end to this, to all of this,” she said. The sentence had required herculean effort.

“Oh yes, you are going to do that.”

He held out a blood-covered hand.

“Come kiss me. I promise that I will turn you into an invincible star of the night.

(Never...)

Eva raised her gun. The movement was laborious.

(Not that blood!)

She pressed the barrel to her father’s heart.

“
Never
,” she said.

Then she pulled the trigger.

The bullet entered the man’s chest. His blood spurt. The impact threw him back, but he was still standing. On his face, there was a mocking smile.

Eva shot again, several times. Louis was thrown back each time a red chasm opened in his chest. But the animal-divinity smile did not leave his lips. He did not collapse.

She stopped shooting.

The bullets had lacerated his jacket. She saw gaping orifices open up in his chest cavity, though his organs, but the monster refused to die.

He walked toward her again.

Now he was whispering something barely audible. A quiver escaped from his lips and traveled toward her. Eva felt like she was hearing the monster’s voice deep in her bones, deep inside each of her muscles.

The steeple started trembling, and clouds of snow fell to the ground. The crows circling overhead cawed more frenetically.

“
E-va! E-va! Blood! Blood”

She pulled the trigger again.

A single time.

The nine-millimeter bullet lodged in his throat, pulverizing his vocal chords.

Louis Canaan’s voice died.

And his spell with it.

“Dammit. You’re driving too fast,” Damien Mira said. “The others can’t keep up.”

Vauvert did not bat an eye as he sped around a hairpin turn and sent the back wheels of the vehicle into a spin. The flashing lights behind them were soon swallowed up in the dark night and the snow.

“They know where we’re going. They’ll catch up.”

Mira held on as tight as he could. They were the first of four cars rushing to the Saint-Jean-du-Pic chapel. Vauvert had managed to convince every available officer—that amounted to ten people—to follow him.

“The chief is going to be furious,” Mira said. “You know that, right?”

“Not if we find them.”

“And you think they’re going to be up there?”

“I know it,” Vauvert insisted. “Trust me, okay?”

Another bend in the road appeared. He skidded again but did not slow down.

In the headlights, the landscape was black and white. It was snowing heavily as they climbed the twisted road to the mountaintop.

“I think she’s in danger, Damien. My gut hurts, I’m so sure of it, and I’m afraid we will be too late.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I know it, that’s all.”

Mira sighed. The bumps in the icy, snow-covered road were making his double chin jiggle.

“There’s no doubt about it,” he said, “You are both really freakish.”

Vauvert looked at him from the corner of his eye.

“Why do you say that?”

“Oh, come on, you know as well as I do. She said the same thing about you when you went off to that Dupin horse farm. It’s like she knew.”

“That I was going to have an accident,” Vauvert added.

“Yep, exactly. You should have seen how worried she was. It was like she knew you were risking your life. Luckily, it ended well.”

Vauvert did not say anything.

It ended well for him that time, yes.

But what about for her? Tonight?

The fear was gnawing at his gut.

The road got steeper and steeper, and the skidding became constant as the vehicle careened up the road. He looked at the GPS.

“We’ll be there soon. I hope we make it in time.”

“I’d like to get there alive, if that’s okay with you,” Mira said, hanging on for dear life.

Vauvert shifted into second gear and pumped the gas as they climbed the final hairpin turns.

There was so much going on in his mind: the scenes from his nightmare, the forest filled with spider webs, the ghost of Justyna Svärta transforming into a man.
You alone have the power to save her. You alone.

“Damien, do you believe in magic?” he asked.

“Magic?” his colleague asked.

“You know very well what I’m talking about. This is not the first time in the last few years that our cases have, well, confronted us with things that can’t be explained.”

Mira whistled and said, “Yep, that’s for sure, and I don’t like it, okay? You’ve got a knack for digging up out-of-the-ordinary things, don’t you?”

He looked back again. The rest of the team was nowhere to be seen.

“But to answer your question,” he added, “I’m sure there is always some rational explanation.”

“Well, you’re about to change your mind,” Vauvert responded.

Eva lowered her gun.

Snow was falling silently around her.

She had done it. She finally had done it. The last two years had been nothing more than a long march through the desert to reach this precise moment.

She felt immense relief.

She watched Louis falter and finally collapse on the carpet of snow.

“Sss,” he hissed. “Sss.”

He opened and closed his mouth but could not say a word. The blood was spurting from his throat and spreading all over his clothes.

But he still was not dying.

The snow began falling more heavily, extinguishing the fire. She was happy about that. She saw better at night when there was no other light source.

Eva approached Louis, pointing her gun with both hands.

“It all has to stop now. You’ve done enough harm.”

He stared at her with pure savagery in his eyes.

Some of the crows that had been circling above started swooping down. A few brushed Eva. She waved her Beretta at them to chase them away.

Then she once again pointed the gun at her father, trying to sort out her contradictory feelings.

“If I kill you, will all these horrors you caused stop?”

The crows answered.

“I-diot! I-diot!”
they cawed.
“You-can’t-do-anything. Nothing at all.”

Eva shivered. The monster had not yet lost all his powers. He could still talk through the crows.

“Let me go!”
He begged through the crows.
“My daughter, try to understand me!”

Fortunately, birds had only rudimentary vocal chords. He could control them, but he could not use them to chant his diabolical spells.

At least Eva hoped he could not.

Louis Canaan tried to get up, further proof that he still had reserves of energy.

“Don’t move!” she yelled.

“No! Help me!”
the birds cried out.
“Please. You still can!”

“There’s no more help for you,” she said. Her voice was as cold as the ice around them. “You have destroyed so many lives. You murdered your own family. Why?”

“For power!” the crows cawed. “You also! You also want the power!”

What he said made her want to throw up.

“Is that all you’ve got in your psychopath head? Power? Your depraved fantasies? Even now, when you’re going to die?”

“You too!”
the crows insisted, circling her.
“You too.”

“THAT’S ENOUGH! SHUT UP!” she screamed.

She could not help herself. She went over to him and kicked him in the chest. He fell back in the snow. He opened his mouth, exposing the teeth filed down to points. They were sticky with his own blood. His eyes lit up with a fragment of something beyond all human feeling. He put his hands on his throat and pressed, staring at her with a murderous look that promised more than just suffering.

“I-diot!”
the crows cawed.
“Too late! Too late! You too!”

Louis Canaan threw his head back, exposing the gaping wound that would have killed any normal person—but this man was anything but ordinary. He exhaled. It was white breath that immediately dissipated in the snow flurry.

Eva felt the spell travel through the air, like a wave flowing toward her.

She moved back quickly.

And what she feared happened.

The crows—guided by Louis’s fierce will—attacked her. They came down on her, pecking at her face, clawing at her hair, crying out in rage. Those were Louis’s cries, amplified dozens of times.

Eva screamed, too, in pain and terror. She protected her eyes with one arm. With her other arm, she tried to wave the crows away. In vain. One of them swooped down on the hand that was holding the gun. The bird caught the barrel in its claws. Eva waved even harder, but then more crows came down. Pecking and clawing, they targeted the hand holding the Beretta.

“No. Leave me!” she yelled. “Get back.”

A shot went off as she struggled with the birds. The bullet ricocheted off the altar, where a film of frost was already covering Loisel’s body.

Seconds later, the birds were carrying away the weapon in a swirl of feathers and cries of victory.

“Shit!”

But they were not done. They returned to attack again. Staggering and trying to protect her face, Eva fought back.

When she tripped over a rock, she bent over to pick it up. She threw it and hit a crow. The others attacked harder. Their claws dug into her scalp, and she felt their beaks pecking everywhere. Stunned by the onslaught and lost in the flurry of snow, she felt her strength ebbing. She looked for another rock or a piece of flagstone, anything she could defend herself with. Under the snow, she felt the handle of the pickaxe. She grabbed it with both hands and twirled it over her head.

The tip caught one of the birds. The crow’s bloody feathers flew everywhere, and Eva cried out with increasing rage. She twirled in one continuous movement, swinging the pickaxe through the clouds of aggressive wings.

After awhile—finally—it seemed that Louis’s control had faded, because the birds abandoned the attack. They flew back into the forest they had come from in a black chattering cloud that seemed to mock her.

Eva fell to her knees in the snow, amid the bird corpses.

“My God.”

She looked at the altar where Loisel’s eviscerated body lay. She searched for Louis. But he had disappeared. His blood splattered the snow. She saw the red path perfectly, as it twisted to the wall at the foot of the steeple.

“No!” she cried out. “NO!”

She sprang to her feet and ran to the crumbling chapel facade. The icy wind lashed at her face. Through the snow, she saw flashing lights in the valley. As always, Alexandre was coming to her rescue.

But she was not sure that he could save her this time.

She searched the snow for traces of blood. If she could follow his tracks...

“You won’t catch up to him now,” a broken, asthmatic voice behind her said. “You know that, right?”

Eva shot around, her heart pounding.

Eva’s mouth dropped open.

Madeleine Reich walked to the middle of the ruins under swirls of white snowflakes. She was visibly weakened, but cold determination shone in her eyes.

“You’re no match against him,” she added. Her voice had changed and had a new other-worldly tone. She coughed, as though something were still in her throat.

“The tree let you go,” Eva said.

“Thanks to you, because you weakened him just enough.”

“I shot him in the throat.”

“You are smart. I expected as much of you.”

“But he isn’t dead,” Eva said with a sigh. “He should have died, right?”

“There’s little that can actually stop him,” Madeleine said. “He will hide. He will wait. He will come back stronger.”

She coughed again. Her breathing was labored.

Eva noted, with some disgust, that long splinters and pine needles were still all over her forehead, like a parody of the crown of thorns. Then she observed that the branches had left other scars. These stigmata were all over her. When Louis’s power had diminished, Madeleine had had enough energy to undo the branches but not enough to remove all the fragments that had attached themselves to her body and her clothes. Tiny pieces of wood were stuck to her coat. And some still seemed to be under the influence of Louis’s spell.

Madeleine picked up the can of gas Louis had left behind.

“What are you doing?” Eva asked.

“There is only one solution.”

“Don’t move! Set that down right now.”

“Or else what?” the woman said, shaking the can in front of her. “He’s the one you want, isn’t he? Not me. So leave me.”

She opened the can of gas, still defying the inspector.

“And what do you want?” Eva asked her. “What do you plan to do?”

“Me?” Madeleine asked. “I’m just going to complete what was started. Do you want to stop the wake of deaths left by your father?”

“Of course I want to!”

“Then we do not have a choice. You don’t, and I don’t.”

The woman went over to Loisel’s body. She brushed the frost off the frozen abyss that had once been his mouth, where his tongue had been removed. Then she tipped the can over him. Gas flowed out. Shimmering streams fell onto his body and the surrounding snow.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Eva cried out.

“I’m purifying, “ Madeleine said. “I’m opening the doors.”

“Is that how you intend to stop him?”

Madeleine looked at her, and her pale metallic eyes were filled with a curious glow. She answered in a honey-coated voice.

“That’s part of it.”

She smiled. It was the same smile that Louis had worn—that of an otherworldly creature preparing to do what no person would.

“Madeleine,” Eva said.

“If I become as powerful as he is, then I could stop him, yes.”

She advanced slowly, with her strange smile glued to her defiled Madonna face. The gas can continued to release a stream of shimmering gas.

“But for that to happen, I have to do what he planned,,” Madeleine said, her voice quaking.

Eva suddenly saw her for what she was: a crazy woman. What this woman had gone through had removed a part of her, light that she would never get back. The torture Louis had subjected her to had chased away any reason that remained in her mind. It had been replaced by morbid avarice.