“I don’t know,” said Siegbert. “She said that there had been several, but she didn’t say how many exactly.” Claudette knew only who the first four victims were. After that, all the Parisian Grafters had tried to barricade themselves in. To Marcel it seemed like the height of foolishness, but his relatives were scholars and scientists, not soldiers. They’d been conditioned by the tales of the Checquy always to retreat and hide from threats.
Unspoken between the brothers was the possibility that their parents had been consumed by the woman.
“We’ll need to ascertain the status of all Broederschap members in Paris,” said Marcel.
“You may need to do that by yourself,” said Claudette from the floor, where she was propped up on cushions and peering carefully into the neck of the woman’s corpse. “Whatever that woman did to us, it’s been very bad for all our implants. I think some of the materials in my joints have actually dissolved, and a lot of my internal connections have been severed.” She held up one of the tendrils that drooped lifelessly from her shoulder blades. “We’re going to have to do some repair work, and it will take several days.” Marcel glanced questioningly toward his brother and then back to her, and she shrugged sadly.
I don’t know if we can save him, she didn’t say.
And so, as morning dawned, Marcel had to venture out by himself into a strangely subdued Paris. There was a tension in the air, and people did not meet each other’s eyes. It was not the gay metropolis he had grown up in. Hitler’s soldiers moved through the city and did not hesitate to question any man of military bearing. Marcel hurried through the streets and was prompt in providing his (forged) identity card when stopped. Tucked into the small of his back were two pistols, one of them carrying normal ammunition, the other with the modified rounds he’d been given.
Against his first impulse, he hadn’t gone straight to his parents’ house, which was the farthest from Siegbert’s, across the Seine. Instead, he was methodical, plotting out routes that would take him to as many homes as possible each day while still permitting him to return to Siegbert’s house before night fell. In addition, he was responsible for obtaining food and supplies for his crippled companions.
The first few houses yielded heartbreaking results. In three of them, Marcel found the drained corpses of his relations. A fourth was empty, although from the wrecked furniture and punched-in doors, it was apparent that the three Grafter residents had been taken by the screaming woman. The fifth house, however, held Richard van Eijden, a distant cousin who had replied to Marcel’s knocking with some shouted threats and a spray of some pungent spores under the door. It had taken Marcel several minutes to persuade Richard who he was, and all the while his skin had been itching madly from the spores. Eventually, however, he was permitted inside and given the antidote before his skin peeled off.
Richard’s relief at seeing Marcel and hearing about the demise of the screaming woman was palpable. When he learned that they would be evacuating to Belgium, he was ecstatic. Upon arriving at Siegbert’s house, he immediately set to work on the injured.
Marcel continued to visit Grafter houses but found only two more survivors: Alphonse, a master, and his apprentice, Pauline. They were both so caught up in their studies that they had barely realized there was a war on, let alone that some supernatural entity had been stalking them. They acceded, with very poor grace, to Marcel’s command that they accompany him back to Siegbert’s but insisted on bringing several suitcases of documents and samples.
“So, to recap, we have ten members of the Broederschap horribly dead, yes?” said Alphonse. All the Grafters had gathered in the library of Siegbert’s house. Those who had been struck down by the woman’s voice were propped up on couches or lying flat on the floor. Upon hearing no disagreements, Alphonse made a little note in a little notebook. “And we have two whose horrific deaths have yet to be established.” He looked up to see everyone else staring at him. “What?”
“Ahem, those two unestablished deaths —” began Claudette.
“Horrific deaths,” interjected Alphonse helpfully.
“Thank you,” said Claudette. “You are talking about the parents of Siegbert and Marcel, and Siegbert and Marcel are sitting right here in the room with you.”
“...Yes?”
“Never mind,” said Marcel. It was clear that Alphonse, while possessing an unparalleled understanding of biochemical interactions, was useless when it came to the human kind.
“I have examined Claudette, Hans, Henk, and Siegbert,” said Richard to Marcel. “We cannot repair them without access to significant facilities and more expertise. I will need help, from either your parents or our brethren in the north.”
“I’ll go to the house tomorrow morning,” said Marcel. It had been the sensible thing to leave them until last, but in his heart, he was afraid to go, afraid of having his fears confirmed. In the past few days, a dozen different scenarios had floated through his imagination. The memories of the drained bodies that he had found in those other houses were always in his mind. He envisioned his parents sprawled lifeless on the floor of their parlor. At night, he had been tortured by nightmares of the house in flames or demolished. In his sleep, he had walked through the ruins, and in every room, his parents had lain dead.
It was raining on the morning that he went to his parents’ home. He had an umbrella, but his legs were soaked from the knees down by the time he reached the house. Still, he stood across the street for several minutes, staring through the downpour at the place where he’d grown up. No lights were on that he could see, no sign of anyone inside.
I’ve gone into battle, he told himself. I’ve watched my friends die around me. I’ve fought and killed a monster. It seems a trifle ridiculous that I should be afraid of knocking on my own front door.
Eventually he mustered up the courage and crossed the road, the wind buffeting his umbrella.
Little seemed to have changed in the years since he’d left. Pots of flowers stood by the door. They were flourishing, but that meant nothing. Thanks to his father’s tinkering, those plants could flourish without human care. They could probably flourish on the surface of the moon. He rang the doorbell several times, but there was no answer.
That doesn’t confirm anything, he told himself. They could be in hiding, afraid to answer the door because of that screaming woman. He moved around to the back of the house and retrieved a hidden door key from within a beehive whose occupants had been engineered by his parents to be deadly poisonous but also to recognize the scent of their family members. But as Marcel climbed the stairs, something caught his eye, and a feeling of doom swept through him. The door was ajar, and, judging by the leaves and dirt that had blown inside, it had been that way for at least several days.
At that moment, Marcel knew in his heart that his parents were dead. Whether they had been killed by the screaming woman or something else, they were gone. Walking into the house would only bring him pain. But he had to do it. The house was not only their home; it contained a myriad of samples and technology. His parents’ work. It couldn’t be left here to be found by anyone, least of all the occupying forces, who had been undertaking some extremely thorough investigations of people’s households.