The Essence of Darkness Page 12
But he wasn’t fully satisfied. He was still hungry.
Moreover, the pleasant heat he felt in his neck had faded away and given way to an extremely unpleasant electrical tingling that was getting worse. He looked at the torn body of the little animal with pity. No, a hare couldn’t fill that void; neither could any other animal.
What he needed was human flesh.
He suddenly started to run. Where? Toward what? He found himself running toward the lights of Olean glittering below through the trees. Many people were still awake and busy with nighttime activities down there—a multitude of throats filled with the nectar that could quench his thirst.
He stopped abruptly and dropped to the ground to wallow in the dirt.
“What am I becoming?” he shouted as loudly as he could in a burst of clarity.
He rolled around on the carpet of dead leaves still soaked with rain and continued to mourn for several minutes. Then he rose again and started running wildly—more like a madman this time than a beast after its prey. He was no longer running toward the town; he was heading up the valley to his camp. He wanted to escape all of this, to get away from himself. He wanted to stop these thoughts, all these oppressive feelings that pushed him to desire human flesh and blood.
He then felt something shifting in his chest. The movement repeated itself, like a nervous twitch. It was a kind of tenuous, emerging pulse. He had the impression that another heart was forming in his rib cage. Yet he didn’t stop running; instead, he increased his pace, panting until he couldn’t breathe. He wanted someone to rip out his lungs so he wouldn’t have to feel this anymore. The thing was creeping up his throat, to the point of suffocating him. He stopped and fell to his knees, begging the sky, the stars, and all the gods with a silent plea.
His throat suddenly relaxed, and he was finally able to breathe in, just like he had on the day he was born. The air rushed in and filled his chest, which seemed to him to have increased tenfold in volume. The feeling made its way up higher, moving toward his temples, through his veins. He felt it wriggling like a colony of tiny, young vipers. Then there was nothing, at least for a few seconds, because another kind of feeling soon appeared. It now lodged within his skull, a stealthy vibration that gripped him mercilessly. It became more insidious, more and more subtle, until it disappeared.
Then suddenly, a rumble arose, a kind of bestial, cavernous growl, which gradually articulated intelligible consonants and vowels.
“Where . . . do you want . . . to go?”
The voice seemed to have come from behind him. He turned his head toward the woods, terrified. Nothing. The cry from beyond the grave rose again, flowing through him with powerful vibrations that made his guts quiver.
“There’s no point in trying to escape.”
He leaped to his feet, on guard, ready to fight.
Desperate reaction.
Absurd.
It was coming from inside him.
It was him.
The other him.
His blood turned to ice in his veins. Something was now inside him—something alive that was talking to him. He stood paralyzed for a moment before stammering the inconceivable question, “Who are you?”
The answer was not long in coming, accompanied by deep, more distant growling that came from his own entrails.
“Come on . . . Think about it . . . Who do you think we could be?”
He was speechless.
“We are Eliott Cooper,” the cold voice answered for him.
He clenched his teeth and shook his fists with rage.
“No! You’re a fucking spell! None of that’s real!” he screamed.
His shout echoed through the valleys and faded in the distance without changing anything at all.
“Yes, that’s perfect. A little hate,” the voice said coldly.
“What do you want from me?” he bellowed again.
He felt like he was completely losing it. He needed to put a stop to all of this—to find a permanent solution. He grabbed his weapon and, gripping the butt with all his might, put the barrel against his temple.
“Stop fighting. Death will bring you no relief.”
He clenched his teeth with rage, and instead of pulling the trigger, he stifled another howl and then fell to his knees. He dropped his revolver and felt despair wash over him.
“My God, what’s happening to me?” he asked himself, trembling from head to foot.
“God won’t help you either. There isn’t any God.”
“But who are you?” he cried.
“We’re not any different.”
“What do you want from me?” he screamed again.
An icy feeling that seized his innards accompanied the answer.
“That you accomplish our mission.”
“That I accomplish what? What?”
“You belong to us now, Eliott Cooper.”
He shouted one last time and felt his awareness fading, as if a vacuum of darkness were closing in around him until it engulfed him in nothingness. He lost consciousness and collapsed on the dead leaves.
14
Agent Andrews had turned the table in his hotel room into an improvised operational office. He booted up his computer and started his digital investigation in the FBI files.
Cassandra Owens, 21 years old.
Emily Russel, 23 years old.
The first one lived in Detroit, the second in Pittsburgh.
So Cassandra Owens had traveled nearly 350 miles to die during a black mass in the forests of St. Marys. As for Emily Russel, she had gone 120 miles. The two young women weren’t scatterbrained amateurs looking for spiritualist sessions on the internet. Both were part of a very closed circle called the Wiccan Tree, one of the many American branches of Wicca. The neo-Pagan religious movement had seen rapid expansion in Europe since the middle of the twentieth century, but its origins were lost in the mists of time. Essentially, Wicca brought together practitioners of various faiths who had witchcraft in common and celebrated a strong bond with Mother Earth. The goddess of the moon, Hecate, was one of the most important deities in Wicca. Andrews pursued his research to learn that the Wiccan Tree had intimate links to a powerful secret society established in America: the Ordo Templi Orientis.
Andrews’ theory was simple: the three young women were in search of the ultimate experience in their occult practices. To perform sacrificial rituals, they needed subjects, preferably young ones, so they had abducted several children and had proceeded with the act.
Their determination was chilling.
While looking into their past, Andrews discovered that Cassandra Owens and Emily Russel each had a psychiatric history. Emily Russel had even been hospitalized for a full year following her mother’s death. During their youth, both had followed the typical path of the “problem teenager”: dropping out of school, drinking alcohol, using marijuana, and rebelling against the family. Later, they seemed to have found their way, and a certain balance, in the practice of Wicca. Andrews went through the impressive list of items they had ordered regularly on the internet: ritual stones, poisonous snakes imported from Africa, ceremonial dresses, authentic forged silver sacrificial daggers, virgin bone powder, and so on. For the past four years, the two young women had otherwise lived without incident. Both had passed their drivers’ tests and had vehicles: a white BMW roadster for Cassandra and a gleaming red Ford Mustang for Emily. Their rich parents had refused them nothing. Yet they had traveled to St. Marys by bus, no doubt to avoid notice—two evil girls with instinctively murderous consciences. They had been similar in many ways but hadn’t known each other. Their first contact most certainly had been at their meeting to commit the kidnappings.
However, something didn’t fit the facts. Cassandra Owens and Emily Russel had had a serious penchant for harmful activities and seemed to have invested themselves in them, body and soul. Yet the modus operandi of the St. Marys abductions resembled that of a professional or an expert in this kind of crime. The first federal agent
s sent there had noted the incredible meticulousness of the perpetrator(s) of these abductions; they had left no trace at the scenes of the kidnappings—not the slightest clue.
This area of uncertainty led Andrews to investigate another one: the identity of the third young woman. Andrews contacted an acquaintance who worked on international files. By going through Interpol, he was bypassing the FBI’s sluggishness. He had noticed this in the course of the investigation and found it very unusual for the Bureau. Thanks to the biometric identification now widespread in Europe, it only took the Interpol agent about two hours to get back to him.
The third suspect’s name was Isolde Hohenwald.
She was German, from Fischbachau, a small mountain village south of Munich. Everything seemed to fit until that point.
The problem appeared in her personal data.
According to Interpol’s files, Isolde Hohenwald was born on February 12, 1852.
Andrews grumbled and immediately sent an email to the European agent to point out the inconsistency. A few minutes later, the latter sent him the complete identification form. It contained a recent passport photo of Isolde Hohenwald, provided by the German civil registry office. Stunned, Andrews compared this file with the one created in the forensic service. There was no doubt about it. The serious-looking young brunette woman who appeared in the photo was the same one who was now lying in a drawer in the mortuary in St. Marys. So the error could only have come from the German civil registry office. Yet the French agent informed his FBI counterpart of his doubts, noting the precision of the German authorities. In his opinion, this problem needed resolution. The second disturbing fact about Isolde Hohenwald was that there was no record of any women by that name entering the US during the entire year. He extended the research to the last ten years and found, again, that this name did not appear anywhere in the American visa records. So she had traveled to America illegally.
Agent Andrews now had enough evidence to obtain Interpol’s cooperation in having the German police search Isolde Hohenwald’s home. The process would take no more than forty-eight hours.
He turned his attention to Cassandra Owens’ and Emily Russell’s files. He was sure of one thing: these two young women had only played secondary roles in the St. Marys kidnappings.
*
Lyon, France: Twenty-four hours later
Patrick Fournier left Interpol’s offices and climbed into a vehicle in the parking lot. Since he was traveling to Germany, he had opted for a gray BMW, an efficient, discreet, 2 Series. The officer stuffed his broad shoulders into the driver’s seat and pulled his service weapon out of his holster because it bothered him when he was driving. He put his automatic on the passenger seat, a Beretta 92FS he had had since his early days with the police force. He took off his glasses and massaged his sinuses, inhaling deeply. It had been a short night. His salt and pepper beard was scruffy, and his breath reeked. Although the German sedan was spacious, its front seats were narrow. He took off his jacket and grumbled, as if trying to widen the seat he was crammed into. A swirl of unhappy thoughts turned behind his pale gray eyes: first, the six-hour drive he had ahead him to reach Munich, then the investigation. He didn’t have any choice; his superiors had forced him to take part in the investigations into the mysterious young German woman who had died a few days earlier on American soil. And finally, he had to send all the details of the investigation to his American FBI colleague, Agent Colin Andrews, as it unfolded. He also had to provide a full report on Isolde Hohenwald’s personal data, including DNA, fingerprints, and other biometric information to confirm her identity.
After fifteen years of marriage, Special Agent Patrick Fournier, age forty-seven, was in the middle of a divorce. It really wasn’t the time to give him a pain-in-the-ass mission like this. He had tried in vain to avoid it. The gray sedan crossed through the secure gate of Interpol headquarters at 7:15 a.m. He pulled onto the Quai Charles de Gaulle, which a frosty wind was whipping.
Six hours later, under a milky sky where the sun only appeared as a slightly lighter round spot of light, the city of Munich stood out behind the crisscrossing highways. He checked into an affordable hotel in the city center, the first one he found on his GPS. As soon as he reached his room, he dropped onto the bed and fell into a deep sleep. He woke up several hours later in the middle of the night. His watch read 3:00 a.m. When he opened his eyes, he thought the only thing that could help him recover completely would be a one-month sleep treatment, at a minimum. He went down to the coffee machine in the lobby and then back upstairs to the second floor. He held his precious nectar with his fingertips, concentrating, so he wouldn’t spill any of it. He turned on the TV to a news channel with subtitles where a Bavarian anchor was reporting on the weather for the upcoming days. The weather was shaping up to be gloomy. The news that followed reported on attacks by Muslim extremists on Spanish and French soil—coordinated attacks; this was becoming a regular thing. He turned off the sound and opened his official laptop, entered his access codes, and waited for the computer to start. He drank a sip of hot coffee, which was too sweet for his taste. Without the sound, the blonde anchorwoman looked kind of enticing, like an overly made-up hooker, yet fairly sexy. He turned the volume up again and noted how the sadness and horror of the news she was reporting took away any urge to have a hard-on. He turned the TV off for good and returned to his computer. Once he had opened the file called “Hohenwald,” he waited for the documents to appear in their respective windows, ready for analysis, comparison, and dissection. He had received an email from the German team in the afternoon. He added this information to what he already had.
Isolde Hohenwald, who, according to the civil registry office, was 165 years old, had been a real ghost during her lifetime, it seemed. She only paid for her purchases in cash and bought nothing, absolutely nothing, via the internet. She apparently only traveled by foot or bicycle when she was in Germany. She had had a vehicle, but again, the antique black Mercedes-Benz 500K registered in her name in Berlin in 1937 probably couldn’t transport her or anyone else anymore. Isolde Hohenwald’s home, a chalet built of stone and wood, clung to the slopes of the Wendelstein. She had inherited it from her grandmother. The only road leading to it was a forest track nearly twenty kilometers long. In the end, the atypical nature of this case made this mission intriguing enough for Agent Fournier to classify it as one of his “interesting missions.” Of course, he believed the inconsistency of Isolde Hohenwald’s age was due only to an administrative error. It wasn’t his job to determine which department might have been responsible.
At seven in the morning, after going back to sleep for an undetermined amount of time, Fournier got up again. Already dressed, he got back into his car and drove to the Munich Police Headquarters, where he had an appointment with a German Interpol intervention team.
He parked the sedan in the front lot of the monumental, conventional, police headquarters, built on the site of a former thirteenth-century Augustinian monastery. As soon as he got out of the vehicle, a young officer approached him at a brisk pace.
“Hello; you must be Agent Fournier.”
He nodded and took the time to stretch to his full height. “That’s me.”
The young policeman—a typical blond, blue-eyed, square-jawed Bavarian—displayed an energetic smile.
“I’m Norbert. You’re here for the search of Isolde Hohenwald’s house, aren’t you?”
“That’s right, but I—”
“Okay, we’re about to get going. The guys are waiting in the unmarked vehicle, the white VW over there.”
The officer pointed to a four-wheel drive van farther down the parking lot. Its muffler was spewing small clouds of white exhaust, a sign that the engine was idling.
“I would like to have a coffee before we go; is that possible?” Fournier managed to ask.
“Of course,” replied the young wolf, tapping his shoulder. “We brought a thermos. Let’s go; the route isn’t long, but it’s difficult.”
“I suppose you’ve read our report on this Isolde Hohenwald?”
Fournier had trouble pulling himself out of the comatose state that had come over him. He opened one eye, then the other, to look at the young blond man. He looked like an angel with the snow-covered mountains behind him, and the window, like white wings at his shoulders.
“Yes, of course,” he said resolutely pulling himself together. “Isolde Hohenwald . . . 165 years old!”
“We couldn’t find out where the mistake occurred. However, we do know that her great-great-grandmother was also named Isolde. That could explain the confusion.”
Fournier thought carefully about this deduction. Officer Norbert’s reasoning made sense. But the young woman must have consciously tried to impersonate her great-great-grandmother, which was ludicrous, given her apparent youth.
“We just received some new information,” the officer continued. “You must have received it too.”
The French agent hurried to check his cell phone. A message from the head office in Lyon had just arrived in his mailbox. He opened it.
“Sounds like something is happening,” commented the young policeman as he read the email too.
The email reported a request to repatriate Isolde Hohenwald’s body to Germany. This official request had gone to the forensic services of the city of St. Marys. It came from a large German company, and its CEO Hermann Hohenwald had signed it.