First Blood (31 page)

He shook his head violently.

“There must be some other way to escape him. We have to, we have to hide somewhere.”

“You know as well as I that it is impossible,” Madeleine responded. “There’s no hiding for us. He’ll find us wherever we are. We are as bound to him as he is to us. Particularly you.”

An otherworldly smile twisted her face as she said these final words. The gash in her right cheek came open, and a thick fluid oozed out. She wiped it away.

“Do you remember what you said to me the day you forced me to sacrifice that dog? I never forgot.”

Loisel did not say anything. He glanced nervously at the silent building.

“I’m going to remind you,” hissed Madeleine. “You said, ‘We can’t go back. We made an oath.’ You were so furious with me. Do you remember that, Pierre?”

He closed his eyes and nodded.

“We could have stopped everything that day,” she said. “We should have. Nothing would have happened then. We wouldn’t be where we are now.”

“Madeleine, why go back over all of that? What’s done is done.”

“Why?”
she shouted. “We are here now because of what we did. We wanted to be free, to be powerful stars. But look at the trajectories we took, the disasters that it led to. We developed a taste for power. We succumbed. We became addicted. But we could have resisted, Pierre! If we had shown a little bit of that will power we talked about so much, we might have been able to stop.”

Loisel moved back when Madeleine leaned toward him and hissed, “And look at what we got by wanting to get rid of him. All he had to do was wait. He knew he would be able to do that. To stay there, invisible, waiting. Like some damned reptile.”

“I know,” he said. “Dear God, I know. But what does that change? Now we are all going to die.”

There was a terrible flash in Madeleine’s eyes. She wrapped a thick scarf around her neck and put on leather gloves.

She cracked her joints.

“That is where you are wrong, Pierre. We are not dead yet. There is still time to save what we can.”

“Our souls?” Loisel asked. “Do you really think there is something to save?”

“Let’s start with our lives,” Madeleine said, opening the car door. “Now follow me. Let’s go.”

Her boots sank into the snow. A gust of wind caught the edge of her coat. It was now stained with Loisel’s dried blood.

She pressed the scarf up to her face.

They looked at the path that climbed through pine trees and rocks.

The ruins appeared above them.

The facade was plain. Half of the enclosure had crumbled long ago, revealing a puzzle of thick walls and a big stone arch separating the nave from the chancel, which was still intact. The steeple, ornamented with openwork, also still stood in the back, rising above the building and the valley below.

The chapel was just as they remembered it—cold and alone, perched on the mountain, where it blended in with the rocks.

Nobody ever came here.

When they were students, this was the place where their sect met in secret.

It was the place were they had each killed for the first time.

It was the place where they had discovered the taste of blood.

Toulouse

Mirail University

In the southwestern part of the city, a few hundred yards from the subway exit, the university’s main archway interrupted the steel-gray sky.

Eva was seeing this place for the first time. The snow covering the campus seemed very strange and even incongruous.

The snow is not the only reason, and you know it.

Yes, she knew it. She would have to face things someday, but she was not ready yet. For now, she just wanted to get a feel for the place, to allow her natural empathy to take over, to put herself in the shoes of the students who were coming and going, wrapped up in their coats. She blended into their groups and moved with them, as if she, too, were a student, wandering the long covered walkways between the buildings and the hallways leading to the lecture halls, restrooms, and occasional coffee machines.

She encountered a group of noisy shaggy-haired teens who bore the insignias of hard-metal bands. Colorful logos covered their backpacks. A girl with bright-red tattoos reaching up to her neck gave her a suspicious look. She stared at her white hair. Eva gave her a cold smile. The girl walked on.

The age of experimentation.
Most of these young people had just left home for the first time in their lives. They were making discoveries about themselves and others. And they were making foolish choices, just as she had not so long ago, actually.

She listened to them as they talked about having drinks on the Place Saint Pierre and taking in the next Bikini concert. She heard them discuss midterms and their professors’ sex lives. She caught whiffs of cannabis and teenage joie de vivre.

She opened the office door, happy to feel the warmth.

“Can I help you?” said a woman in a beige angora sweater behind the desk, with a pleasant lilt in her voice. She had chocolate-colored skin, Caribbean traits and her hair tied back.

“I’m looking for one of your professors,” Eva said.

“Are you a student?”

Eva smiled.

“I haven’t been for a long time now. Police.”

She pushed her badge across the desk.

“Oh, okay. Sorry,” the secretary said. “Who exactly are you looking for?”

“That’s the problem,” Eva said. “I’m not exactly sure.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you have a list of professors who’ve taught mythology?”

“You don’t need a list for that,” the woman said, breaking out into a smile.

“Mr. Haas teaches mythology. He’s the only one. He took over when his predecessor retired.”

“Who was the former teacher?”

“Mr. Parme. Marc-Henri Parme. He also taught history.”

“Was he teaching twenty-five years ago?”

The receptionist nodded. “Yes, he taught for more than thirty years. He retired three years ago.”

Bingo.
She had not expected it to be so easy. Maybe Lady Luck was finally looking down on her.

“How can I get in touch with him?”

“Unfortunately, you can’t. Mr. Parme died last year.”

Eva just looked at her, hope vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.

“Do you know if he had a family? Or children I could contact? I need to talk to someone who knew him at the time.”

“You mean twenty-five years ago?”

“Yes.”

The woman thought.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask.”

She turned and called out to her colleague, who came out from the back office. The woman was older, with graying hair.

After a quick exchange, the older woman shook her head.

“I don’t think Mr. Parme had any family. But I suggest that you contact Loana Wilson. She was one of Mr. Parme’s students. She teaches here now.”

“How old is Mrs. Wilson?”

The older woman rubbed her chin, then said, “Well, I don’t know. Around fifty, maybe.”

“So she was his student thirty years ago?” Eva asked.

“I suppose so.”

“Do you know if Mrs. Wilson is on the campus now?”

“She’s not here today. I can give you her number and her address, if you’d like.”

Eva wrote down the information and thanked the two women for their help. Her mind was already racing.

Loana Wilson.

She was there when this whole thing began.

Maybe she knows something.

Back outside, Eva zipped up her leather jacket. She wandered, ending up at the cafeteria. An expanse of snow-covered ground spread out in front of the building. Behind the building were steps and a fenced-in park.

Eva breathed in the icy air. Her heart was turning to ice again.

So what exactly happened here?

Thirty years earlier, other students had been here. They were just out of childhood, discovering life, building friendships, searching for their identities. The pictures in Constantin’s case file flashed in her mind. A young man from Niger, a girl from the Aveyron whose name was Madeleine Ferrand at the time. And then Guillaume Alban and Pierre Loisel. Had they met here, in front of this cafeteria, like all these students? Had they smoked cigarettes in the cold of winter as they discussed how to change the world?

And swearing to do what?

Joining what sect?

She was lost in thought as she observed the park and the cheap apartment buildings beyond it. Snowflakes began to fall.

She had already seen photos of this university. But she had never been here in person. Sometimes, she had wanted to come.

Her mother had attended school here for three years, before becoming pregnant with Eva and Justyna.

For some stupid reason, she began to tear up. She looked around, wondering if anyone could see her like this.

But the only person was a little girl, standing in the middle of the snowy lawn. Despite the snowflakes circling around her, the girl was wearing nothing but a pink summer dress. Her white hair hung in braids. Her red eyes burned like flames.

Eva took a deep breath.

“You had to come here someday.”

The inspector closed her eyes.

I know.

Her telephone vibrated in the pocket of her jacket. She brought it to her ear without opening her eyes.

“Svärta.”

“Eva, it’s Rudy. The guys in Rodez exhumed the body this morning, like you asked. There was a baby there. Can you be at the autopsy this afternoon?”

“I’ll be there,” she said in a flat voice.

You had to come here someday.

The wind started blowing up from the valley. The penetrating cold attacked them. Yet neither the man with the bloody shoulder nor the woman with the slashed face seemed concerned about the weather.

“What are you planning to do?” Loisel asked, leaning against the car for support.

The women opened the trunk and took out a wooden-handled instrument.

“Exhume the past. Our past.”

Loisel quivered when he saw the pickaxe. Madeleine set the heavy mining tool against the car. It was primitive, designed to break stone.

“Okay,” Loisel said.

He touched his injured shoulder. Madeleine’s spell had knitted the fracture and cauterized the skin, but he felt his muscle fibers pulsating and trembling, still unstable, ready to tear again with the next wrong movement. If that happened, he feared he would bleed out and die.

Or worse.

He was shaking.

“We don’t even know what we are going to find there,” he said. “Will he still be there? It’s been so long.”

“All the more reason to check.”

She headed toward the path between the trees, steeped in clouds. She dragged the pickaxe behind her.

“Stop complaining and follow me. We have to do this together.”

“Oh, dammit.”

He pulled himself away from the car and walked as best he could, climbing over the snow-covered rocks toward the mountain peak and the chapel ruins perched there.

Doctor Axelle Couplet arrived to give Alexandre Vauvert a lecture.
Once again.
And she did not pull any punches. It was the fourth time he had been in the hospital in less than a year. This time, he had three broken ribs and a dislocated wrist. He would need to take some time off work.

“No, I don’t need any time off,” the giant assured her.

“And I say that you don’t have a choice. I’ve had enough of your childish behavior.”

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his massive torso wrapped in bandages. He stared at the tall, thin woman in a white coat. Her arms were crossed, and she looked exasperated.

“A few scratches have never kept me from working. You know this is not the first time.”

Doctor Couplet rolled her eyes.

“That is one more reason, inspector. This time, I insist that you take a break. You don’t realize how lucky you are. Such luck will not follow you all your life. You understand, don’t you?”

Vauvert grabbed the fresh T-shirt that Blanca had brought him and put it on, scowling.

“I don’t question your skill, Axelle. But please believe me. I have a very important job to finish before I can rest. Give me the medication I need. I swear, you will not see me soon.”

“You made the same promise two months ago.”

“But you did such a good job of getting me back on my feet,” he answered with a challenging smile.

Ten minutes later, the woman in the white coat was furious but resigned. She changed the bandage on his wrist and prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs—enough for a horse. The police inspector’s unusual size would require at least that much. She asked him to be careful and to come back in a week for another scan. Vauvert lied to make her happy, and she seemed to believe it.

Another ten minutes later, the police officer was walking out of the hospital. He felt a childish relief. He
hated
hospitals.

The cold was bitter. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets. He heard a honk just before he crossed the street to the subway entrance. He turned to see an Audi A4 parked on the street.

The driver honked again.

Vauvert walked toward the vehicle. When he was a few feet away, the tinted window rolled down with an electric purr. White hair spilled into the icy cold. He saw his own reflection in the driver’s dark glasses.

“Don’t make such a face. Get in,” Eva said. “We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”

She had not been lying. The drive was long.

The rented Audi sped along a road framed in endless snowy fields. They were heading toward Albi.

Vauvert did not like it.

He was huddled in his seat, his face against the window. The white horizon rolled past. Rabastens. Lisle-sur-Tarn. Gaillac. The long, dark clouds in the sky did not promise anything good. After his adventure the day before, he was in no hurry to return to the mountains.

But for now, something else was bothering him.

His heart was racing.

He clenched and unclenched his fists, not knowing what to say. He was terrified he would put her off and lose her again.

Eva pulled into the left lane to pass a line of cars, only to end up behind a truck. She swerved into the right lane to pass the truck.