“Can’t you smell it?” she asked, her voice low.
“What is it that I’m supposed to smell?”
“Blood.”
Vauvert breathed in. There was a hint of decay in the air, but the woods were always rife with that kind of organic scent.
“I don’t know. I…”
He stopped. He thought he had seen a shadow pass again.
Like the shadow of a dog?
He absolutely hated dogs.
A dog?
Or was it a wolf?
He turned back to his colleague to chase away these absurd thoughts.
“All right, this place is freaking me out, and I trust your instincts. What do we do now?”
Svarta pointed her chin toward the door.
“We’ve wasted enough time already, don’t you think?
She gave the door a hard kick.
It didn’t budge.
She took a step back and threw herself at the door again.
Some dust fell from the frame, but the door held up.
Vauvert realized that they both used the same methods, all things considered.
“All right. Move aside.” He took three steps back and then, stone-faced, charged the door. As his shoulder hit the wood, the planks cracked and then split like twigs. The door crashed to the floor. “There. For the record, the door was like that when we got here.”
The woman nodded, unable to hold back a grin.
“We’re on the same page, inspector.”
Vauvert drew his gun and stood in the doorway. In front of him was a kind of great hall, where he could make out a huge wooden sideboard in one corner but nothing else. The rest was engulfed in darkness.
“Okay, follow me.”
He stepped in.
Everything happened very quickly.
Eva Svarta cried out.
He understood too late what she meant-to take cover, quick.
He saw the figure at the far end of the hallway.
At the same time, his brain recognized the familiar sound of a shotgun being cocked.
Vauvertfelt every muscle react as the sensation of impending death seized him. He threw himself back, even though he knew he would never be quick enough to get entirely out of the way.
The detonation rang out in the hallway. The glare of the gunshot blinded him, like a burst of sun in pitch dark. He felt the buckshot hit him full blast, pushing the air out of his chest and tossing him back in a spray of red, prickling pain.
Everything went black before he hit the ground.
5
His blackout lasted for just a split second. The moment he hit the ground, the stabbing pain made Vauvert come to.
The man in the house fired once again. Vauvert felt the buckshot whiz by inches above him.
The next moment, Inspector Svarta was retaliating, firing her Beretta multiple times.
Vauvert felt like he was in the middle of a street-gang shootout. He shut his eyes until the flashes of light in his retina began to fade.
The exchange of gunfire didn’t last long. A door slammed inside the house. Their attacker had retreated.
For a few seconds, Vauvert remained on his back, wracked in pain.
Then he cautiously opened his eyes and saw the leather-clad figure of Eva Svarta crouching next to him. She leaned over him, her white hair a silky curtain.
“Good thing I forced you to wear the bullet-proof vest, huh?”
Vauvert didn’t reply. He put his hand on his chest. The vest had saved his life, indeed, but it was rather damaged now, and Vauvert felt blood oozing under his clothes-and razor blade-like sensations all over his chest.
“Holy fucking shit. It tickles.”
“You hurt?”
“Scratches.” He meant it. He had seen worse. “But it always feels weird to get shot,” he added, feeling under his clothes. When he pulled his hand out, it was wet with blood. “Shit.”
The woman rose up like a flame, noiselessly, except for the creak of her leather jacket. She lifted her Beretta and pointed it at the wide open door.
“I’m going in. You go around the house. See if we can catch them in the rear before they get organized.”
“No way we’re splitting up,” Vauvert objected.
The woman had already slipped into the blackness of the house.
He frowned. The damned Parisian. He massaged the back of his left shoulder and tried out his arm. He could move it, and he wasn’t oozing blood anymore. He’d be okay.
He pulled himself to his feet.
6
While some of the things people said about Eva Svarta were untrue, some things were entirely correct. She never bothered denying any of the nonsense people spread about her. Neither did she go to lengths to explain herself. Her status in the Homicide Unit was complicated enough already.
Crouching in the pitch-black hallway, she took off her sunglasses. Her vision was precise in the dark. That’s why her colleagues called her “Terminator.” It wasn’t the only nickname she’d been given. She preferred to ignore the other ones.
She crept forward. The smell she’d detected from outside was unbearable here. Blood had been shed in this house, yes. And it had been left to rot. The stench of carrion made her stomach churn.
She began to dread what she might discover.
At the end of the hallway was the door their attacker had slammed shut. The inspector pushed it open ever so slowly with the tip of her boot. The man was nowhere around. She slipped into this new room as silently as possible. It was a large dining room, cluttered with a tremendous mess of beer cans and garbage bags piled on top of each other. A massive wooden table stood in the middle of the room. On the walls were deer trophies, their glass eyes gleaming in the dark. Two huge gilt-framed mirrors rested on the floor in a corner-both of them smashed.
Filling the rest of the wall space were symbolic inscriptions. And there were the names of demons taken from every religion, from Isis to Belial, including Sekhmet and Thor. It was chilling.
Eva Svarta slid along the wall and kept moving. The leather of her jacket brushed the wallpaper with an almost inaudible shhh.
There was nobody in here.
Where were the Salaville brothers? In what part of this house?
Cautiously, she stepped into a hallway that led to a living room, where the darkness was even thicker. Only a few streaks of golden light filtered through the shutter slats, allowing her to make out a sofa.
A figure was waiting for her, immobile.
Eva Svarta raised her handgun.
The shape on the sofa didn’t move.
“Police!” she screamed. “Let me see your hands!”
Still no movement. Only that horrendous smell.
Eva Svarta took another step forward, her eyes searching the darkness.
She recognized the characteristic stench of human meat.
The girl lying on the sofa, legs wide apart, was in an advanced stage of decay.
Where her face should have been, there was only a red mask with grimacing teeth and empty sockets.
Eva put a hand to her mouth, gagging.
Drawing closer to the corpse, she was able to take in the full extent of the abuse the girl had taken. They not only had ripped the skin off her face, but also had thrust a knife between her thighs.
The entire length of the blade was sunk in the girl’s vagina.
The inspector realized her hand was shaking.
Get hold of yourself.
Yes, get hold. You’re a cop. Think like a cop, dammit.
She had come here on a mission, to put an end to this horror. That’s what she was going to do.
She wasn’t going to break down. Not now.
She lifted her head.
That’s when she saw the symbol on the wall across from the sofa. She took a few steps toward it. The yellow wallpaper was entirely covered with the cabalistic names, but in the middle of the wall someone had painted a huge brown circle with three horizontal bars.