Saint-Clair’s screams were harrowing. She did not have time to raise her arms to protect herself as the black beasts charged her. One of them seized a leg and took away a foot and part of her calf. The other creatures followed, claiming their body parts in turn. Between their ferocious jaws, the woman’s bones cracked and splintered.
Eva had been right, as always. Those things really were the souls that Saint-Clair had torn out of her victims. Seventy souls in all-seventy beasts mad with rage to whom the powers above had finally given permission to exact revenge. Or maybe to take back what was theirs? Yes, that’s exactly what those monstrous things were doing. They were tearing through Saint-Clair’s flesh, looking for the part of themselves that had wound up in the fibers of this woman.
Vauvert did not want to see any more of this. He let himself drop down the skylight. He landed on a rain-soaked bed, next to Eva.
Still, Saint-Clair’s screams of agony rang out on the roof, louder than the roar of the pack.
103
When Vauvert emerged into the entry of the building, Eva’s inanimate body in his arms, a police cruiser had just arrived. Leroy was on the sidewalk across the street, engaged in a heated conversation with Jean-Luc Deveraux. He stopped talking abruptly when he saw the giant come down the steps, and he ran toward him.
“I couldn’t find you! Oh God, Eva!”
“She’s alive,” Vauvert yelled. “We have to lay her down, quick!”
Deveraux and another officer rushed over too, and the four men joined forces to carry Eva to the car. With extreme caution, they lay her in the back seat, out of the rain.
She gagged in pain. Vauvert, crouching next to her, caressed her hair.
“Hang in there. We made it. Everything’s fine now.”
“The ambulance is going to be here in no time,” Deveraux assured her, his face waxy. “It should have been here already.”
He looked at Vauvert and Leroy in turn before telling them, “I swear I called it in immediately. I did it as quickly as I could, okay? I had to go through the proper channels first. I couldn’t have known.”
A deafening crash interrupted him. Curious onlookers cast their eyes skyward.
Wild arcs of lightning seemed to be raining down on the roofs.
Deveraux whistled between his teeth.
“They must have one hell of an electrical problem up there! Looks like something is attracting the lightning.”
Neither Vauvert nor Leroy tried to contradict him.
Eva moaned.
“Hang in there,” Vauvert said again, his eyes brimming with tears he could not hold back. “Please, Eva, hang in there.”
The lightning raged for a few more moments before calm returned to the sky. Even the rain began to let up.
As though the gods were satisfied, Vauvert could not help thinking.
On the top floor of the apartment building, the windows revealed the red glow of a fire. “Can’t they hurry?” Vauvert pleaded.
“Don’t worry,” Eva managed to utter.
“I’m not worried,” Vauvert lied with a ferocious smile.
“I’ll be… just fine… Remember, I’m a monster… killing monsters.”
He smiled at her tenderly.
“You’re no monster, you idiot.”
Eva smiled too. Then her eyes rolled upward in their sockets.
A fire truck appeared in the street, sirens blaring, and Leroy ran toward it, waving his arms.
The last thing he remembered that night was being placed next to Eva in the ambulance. The medics had put the woman on a respirator and kept telling him that everything was going to be fine, that it was a miracle she had made it through with such a wound, yet her vital signs had stabilized.
Then they had forced him to lie on the second stretcher.
“Inspector, it looks like you have a couple of broken ribs. You have to let us take care of you.”
“I’m fine,” Vauvert said, gritting his teeth.
The world was spinning though. Faster and faster.
He reached out and grabbed Eva’s hand. Her skin was burning with fever.
“Hang in there, big girl,” he mumbled once more.
He felt a third hand resting on theirs.
Turning his head, he saw a little figure, between them.
The little girl was pretty. A radiant smile lit her pure-white face. Unruly curls framed her round cheeks.
Her ruby eyes, stunningly pure, were staring at Vauvert.
“What…”
His mouth fell open in surprise. The medics were busy. They closed the ambulance doors. Obviously, none of them were able to see the little albino girl.
Her resemblance to Eva made it all clear to him. There was no need to ask any questions.
The girl smiled at him again.
“Take care of her,” she said.
She vanished.
Damn right I am going to take care of her, he said to himself.
He squeezed Eva’s hand harder.
He saw that her head was turned his way, offering him her usual impenetrable smile.
He smiled back at her.