The Grafters, not unreasonably, took this as a sign that violence was the order of the day and so moved forward. Hans’s muscles appeared to grow as he walked, and the flesh of his neck and shoulders plumped out, lending him an arresting pyramidal appearance. With an audible tchok, curving blades erupted from Henk’s wrists. They projected forward and around his hands, so that his fists were surrounded by cages of sharp bone. Whipping tendrils burst out of Claudette’s shoulder blades and punched through the back of her dress. They flailed around, cracking in the air. Compared to these figures of biological violence, Marcel’s unholstering of his (admittedly rather small) pistol was a trifle anticlimactic, so the woman could be forgiven for focusing on his companions.
Still growling, the woman took a cautious step back, and her jaw unhinged itself like a snake’s. Her snarl rose in pitch, shivering up through the scale until it could no longer be heard, only felt. The sound hit Marcel like a cudgel, and he staggered back and clutched his head (although he did not drop the gun). It felt as if his skull were being beaten briskly with some very small hammers. He looked around, and saw that it seemed to have affected his comrades very differently.
The other three Grafters gasped as they felt strange lurchings in their bodies. Then, as one, they screamed as their implants flared in agony. Marcel watched in astonishment as his compatriots’ legs buckled and they keeled over. They lay there, twisted like puppets whose strings had been cut.
Henk and Hans, who during their journey to Paris had each shrugged off several bullets to the chest and head without complaint, were wailing like infants as the sound rippled through their bodies. Claudette lay curled in the fetal position, her face contorted in agony. On the table, Siegbert was whimpering weakly, arching his back and fighting helplessly against the stakes that impaled him. The woman kept screaming, her breath seemingly inexhaustible.
As Marcel watched, his companions’ implants began to break down. Several of the blades surrounding Henk’s hands fell away, trailing little strands of flesh. Alarming black blotches expanded across Hans’s augmented muscles. Claudette’s tendrils lay limp, with occasional shivers rippling through them. All three of them were incapacitated.
The mysterious woman seemed to be smiling as she regarded the three people lying on the floor. Then she took in Marcel’s failure to collapse in agony. He was in pain, there was no doubt, reeling, barely on his feet, but he was on his feet, and he still had the pistol in his hand. She began to move toward him, and he raised his gun.
She couldn’t smirk contemptuously, because her mouth had to stay open, but she gave a little shrug and stood still with her arms spread out. The message was clear: Go ahead. Try and shoot me. As Marcel shakily aimed his weapon, she actually rolled her eyes. His arm wavered, weaving back and forth in a figure eight as he tried to focus. He took a deep breath and then fired two rounds square into her torso. Her eyes opened wide. I didn’t think you would actually do it.
She gave him a slow round of applause. Not that it makes a blind bit of difference.
She moved forward.
And then she halted.
An expression of confusion washed over her face. Then, mercifully, she stopped screaming. The horrible throbbing pressure in Marcel’s head faded away, and he could see the woman clearly as she clapped her hands to her chest. A black liquid began to trickle out around her fingers. Bewildered, she looked up at Marcel, who remained impassive. Then she collapsed, and a pool of the black liquid washed out of her.
18
Marcel fell to his knees beside his wife and tried to help her sit up. “I’m here, mijn lief, I’m here,” he said to her frantically. “It’s all right.”
“Oh, thank God,” said Claudette weakly. “That was... horrible... like being torn apart... from the inside.” She turned her head and spat out an alarming mixture of blood and slime. “I think... that thing... has done some serious... damage.”
“Can you move?” Marcel asked gently.
“I don’t know,” said Claudette with some irritation. “Make sure... that fucking thing is dead... and then... check the boys.”
Upon examination, the fucking thing in question seemed to be dead, but by that point Marcel was taking no chances, and so he used a carving knife to carefully remove its head, which he then placed several feet away. Henk and Hans were clutching their stomachs and seemed to be having trouble making their limbs do what they wanted, but they didn’t appear to be in any danger of expiring immediately. Siegbert, however, smiled weakly at the sight of Marcel, and then a little blood foamed at his mouth.
“Siegbert!” exclaimed Marcel. He hurried to his twin and cradled his head gently. He was in extremely bad shape and could barely move. Marcel did not dare to remove the stakes that pinned him to the table.
“Siegbert, where is Aimée?” asked Claudette urgently.
“Dead,” said Siegbert. “She’s dead.”
“No!” whispered Marcel.
“That thing killed her when it entered the kitchen. It simply broke her neck.” He closed his eyes, and tears trickled from the corners.
“I am so sorry, Siegbert,” said Marcel. “Your wife and baby.”
“The baby is fine,” said Siegbert through labored breaths. “We felt that now was not the time to bring a child into the world, so a few weeks ago I removed him from the womb and placed him in stasis. He is in a thermos upstairs in a locked cupboard in our bedroom. Please, mon frère, you must promise to take care of him.” Before Marcel could answer, Siegbert lapsed into unconsciousness.
“Can you help him?” Marcel asked his wife frantically. It had been years since he had utilized his Grafter training, and Claudette was the only proper fleshwright there.
“Well, I can’t sit up,” said Claudette, who had regained some of her color. “But we’ll see what we can do. I know he has some spare blood in the wine cellar. Go get that, beertje, and we’ll replace some. Also, while you’re down there, get some wine. And don’t get them mixed up. And then go and find the thermos with our nephew in it.”
The rest of the night was spent with all of them lying about sipping wine while blood dripped back into Siegbert’s body. Marcel brought the woman’s head over to Claudette, and she carefully examined it, exclaiming over the bizarre growths that lined the woman’s throat.
Meanwhile, Siegbert slowly regained a bit of his strength. In addition to having lost all that blood, and his wife, he had been exposed to the woman’s anatomy-shredding scream twice, since she had struck him down with it earlier. Once he could speak properly, he demanded to know how Marcel had killed the woman. “I emptied my gun into the bitch, and she shrugged it off,” Siegbert said weakly.
“Plague bullets,” said Marcel, cracking open his revolver to reveal chambers holding some extremely odd-looking cartridges. They were made of a transparent chitin, and strange squirming organisms were just visible inside. “Aunt Coralie whipped them up. So, who is the bitch?”
“I have no idea,” said Siegbert feebly. “She walked into the house, broke Aimée’s neck; I shot her, she ignored it, and then she screamed. I woke up staked to the table.”
“So who fabricated her?” Marcel eyed the head carefully — she didn’t look familiar.
“No one fabricated her, Marcel. Those weren’t modifications. She was born with those powers, like something out of the Checquy.”
“Mon dieu! Do you think that’s what she was?” asked Marcel, eyeing the corpse with a newfound wariness. “Have the Gruwels tracked us down?”
“She never mentioned them,” said Siegbert. “And she was quite chatty. Although I am certain the Checquy would have loved to have her. None of the stories I ever heard involved someone who could do this to Broederschap implants.”
“And not a Nazi, or even the French government?”
Siegbert shook his head.
“So, nothing to do with the war?” said Marcel.
“No. In fact, she said all the fighting had proven very inconvenient for her,” said Siegbert. “She complained that she couldn’t transport me back to her place. Apparently she has some sort of juicing press there.” He shuddered.
“Who else has she taken?” asked Marcel.