In-Between

Fandom: The Crimson Rivers
Author: Ningengirai
Author email: Ningengirai@t-online.de
Pairing: Niemans/Kerkerian
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Gore, violence, disturbing imagery, sex. Fun for the whole family! It helps if you’ve seen the movie.
Disclaimer: The characters and parts of the plot depicted in this story do not belong to me, but Beaumont Pictures and Jean-Christophe Grangé. No money is made from this story. This is fanwork.

In-between

Pierre Niemans wasn’t the kind of man who’d get upset over a little gore, a little violence. He’d seen it all in his twenty-odd years of being a member of the force; he’d seen the unspeakable acts committed by an animal of which he sometimes thought that it would be better if someone took an axe and wiped it off the planet. He was a cop, he was a detective, he’d spent the last twenty years perfecting his skills to track down murderers and wasn’t supposed to overly question the why, but every now and then he stopped what he was doing and took a step back.

Step back. Consider. Think.

He rarely liked the conclusions he came to, and the observations he made now and then would make most police psychologists happy if only they knew of them. It was Niemans’ outstanding talent, his unique way of going at things that had kept these harpies off his back so far.

But for how much longer? How long until someone took a look at his personal file and decided that he was taking the powers granted to him through the state a little too far? How long until they realised that his interrogation methods sometimes turned into personal venting sessions? How long until someone decided that he had outgrown the trenches, that his days should be spent in an office rather than…here?

Protecting the very society from which his murderers sprang was a double-bladed sword, but never had Niemans felt its gentle cut along his throat as distinctly as he did now, cooped up in the remote village at the foot of the mountains. Guernon wasn’t what he would call Paradise, no matter how much everyone insisted on it. Guernon wasn’t Hell either; it lay somewhere in-between, sitting on the fringes like a soul that couldn’t quite decide which way to teeter. Its failing charm, reflected in the once-pretty houses now standing grey and decaying on either side of the wild river driving a natural frontier through the entire village, depressed him more than Paris’ dirty, dangerous streets.

Paris was life, lust and love all rolled into one package threatening to burst at the seams.

Guernon was slow death and the steadily lingering threat of the mountains weighting on his mind like an anvil.

It didn’t help that he was fumbling about in the dark, either.

And irritation personified, Max Kerkerian, poster child of the drug-infested holes Niemans used to unearth during his days as a beat cop, certainly didn’t help. They’d traded names, not birthdates, but Niemans put the lieutenant at roughly twenty years his junior, and those years did make all the difference. With old age comes silence, as the saying goes. Kerkerian talked enough for three people and his constant questioning and moving slowly but surely drove Niemans up the proverbial wall. Niemans had watched the younger man during the previous three days and learned that he simply couldn’t hold still. Kerkerian was always walking, or gesturing, or flitting from one corner of the room to the other.

Kerkerian hadn’t yet acquired that icy calmness that came with the twenty years of experience he lacked, and while Niemans could hardly blame him for that, he blamed him for staying at his goddamn side like a faithful puppy.

Niemans hated dogs, even the young ones.

Then there was Fanny Fereirra, whose fragile but cutting-edge beauty and silence spoke to him in whispers and drew him like a magnet. She was, in all things, Kerkerian’s direct opposite, yet they had one thing in common: they were both young, so young. Next to them, Niemans felt like the old man he was slowly but surely turning into. He had the greying hair and the scars and the crow’s feet while they had the exuberance and the deadly superiority of youth. He had the slight aches in his knees and the fatigue that overcame him late in the day, and though his colleagues in Paris - the few who still spoke to him, at any rate - kept ensuring him that he was in the prime of his years, he felt the end approaching.

---

Later, in Guernon’s only and very much depressing café, Niemans ordered a pitcher of wine and drew his cloak of silence around himself as tightly as possibly. He chose a table in the darkest corner of the smoke-filled room and watched the police officers and the locals trade news over mugs of dark beer. His thoughts moved quickly while his body remained static, circling over and touching down on the gruesome murders that had called him here like a hawk circling over delectable prey.

His moment of peace didn’t last long. Niemans gave a low sigh as he saw the door fly open and Max Kerkerian enter, the younger man’s eyes quickly settling on him. Pouring more wine, Niemans tried to stretch the preciously short minutes that passed between Kerkerian’s entrance and his appearance on the other side of the table, a steaming mug of tea in hand.

“Here you are,” Kerkerian said. “I swear, I thought I had to ask every single person in Guernon if they’d seen you. Do you make it a habit to disappear as though the very earth swallowed you?”

Niemans played with the unlit cigarette he’d held in his hand for the last hour. “Only if I want to.”

“I’m sure your superiors in Paris love you for that.”

“I’m my own superior.” It wasn’t true, but it sounded better than the truth, and Niemans hadn’t been listening to the truth in that regard for a long time. “What do you want?”

“I suppose they love you for that, too.” Kerkerian pulled out a chair and sat down, crossing his arms on top of the table. “What do I want? Perhaps for you to talk to me? Your case and mine are obviously connected. I didn’t drive the entire way from Sarzac to Guernon only to be treated like an idiot.”

“No one asked you to come here.”

Kerkerian leaned back, crossed his legs, uncrossed them again, and glared. “You’re not going to get rid of me that easily, Niemans. What’s your fucking problem?”

“I wish you wouldn’t...move around all that much.” Niemans said through clenched teeth. “You’re driving me crazy. I’m trying to concentrate and you’re bopping from place to place like a rabbit on bad speed.”

Kerkerian gave him a blank stare, but for once he didn’t move. A small victory.

“Look,” Niemans carried on with a deep sigh, “I appreciate that you want to help me, I really do. But you have no information about this case -”

“Because you’re not giving it to me. You hardly talk!”

“- and I don’t have the time to take you by the hand and guide you through it. I don’t have the time to teach.” There, he’d said it. Watching Kerkerian through half-lidded and heavy eyes, Niemans tried to gouge what kind of reaction his words would cause.

“You don’t have to teach me,” Kerkerian said sullenly. “I’m a fast learner, and I’ve been a cop for ten years myself. Don’t treat me like a baby. I don’t need your help at any rate, because I can see from here where this would lead.” He picked at the loose string of his sweater, the very same loose string that had irked Niemans all day with its very presence, and gave a sigh of his own. “You may not believe it, but I’m good. Yeah, not your area of expertise, but I can contribute.”

Niemans raised an eyebrow and said, “You’re suffering from the idealism of youth.”

“Whereas you’re suffering from the cynicism of old age?” Kerkerian shot back. His mouth quirked into that smug, I-know-something-you-don’t-smile he’d been wearing frequently around Niemans lately. “Face it, Niemans, you need me here.”

Familiar territory. Niemans leaned back in his chair and slowly sipped his wine, allowing a grin to stretch his own lips. Kerkerian was younger and he was right about one thing: Niemans was cynical to the core of his very being. But cynicism came on the heels of experience, and that was one thing Niemans had in overabundance. He let the silence stretch between them and gave the younger man the pretence of thinking about his words before he slowly, and deliberately carelessly, asked, “For what?”

If Niemans had hoped to take the wind out of Kerkerian’s sails, he was sorely disappointed. Kerkerian gave him a hard stare and said with utter conviction, “For everything.”

---

The sight of Dr. Bernard Chernezé’s tortured and very much dead body didn’t faze Niemans. He’d been expecting...perhaps not this sight, but the previously discovered corpses had prepared him somewhat.

Kerkerian didn’t fare nearly as well, but Niemans didn’t have the time to hold hands. His mind was racing furiously. There was no doubt about it - it all came back to the university. The dean’s aggressive attitude toward any inquiries about the two dead students’ integrity had only cemented that suspicion. And had not Chernezé himself told him not too long ago that he’d left the university due to ‘differences’ with the dean?

Niemans had to go back to the university and find out more. There was no way around it if he wanted to bring light into the darkness.

His contemplations were interrupted by the crash of shelves and medical cutlery. The dark shape breaking free from the shadows in the corner of the room came as a surprise. Niemans had been so deeply entrenched in his thoughts that he hadn’t spared a single glance for the corners. So deeply entrenched that he’d dragged Kerkerian right along with him into danger.

So deeply fucking gone that he thought his heart was going to stop when Kerkerian sped after the disappearing figure. He nearly fell down the stairs as he ran after them, blind and deaf to all else but the sudden, harsh and raw desire to see Kerkerian whole and unhurt.

Where did that come from? Niemans’ heart thudded and raged in his chest as he made it to the bottom of the stairs, out of breath and nearly out of mind, but then he didn’t have time anymore to figure out this sudden case of protectiveness.

Fumbling around in the dark, only that darkness usually didn’t involve a hailstorm of bullets raining down on him. From his own gun, no less. A gun that had ended up in the shadow’s hand because Niemans was old and aching, and not in the prime of his years anymore no matter what other people told him. Squeezed against the wall, plaster exploding around him as their mysterious enemy pulled the trigger at an abnormally fast rate, Niemans had one thought left: if you shoot me, do it right.

Of course, the shadow didn’t do it right. But then, shadows never did.

---

Back again at Guernon’s only and very much depressing café, Niemans felt better with cops all around him and Kerkerian sitting in front him. They had wine. Niemans very much wanted to smoke a cigarette but found that his hands shook too much. He hid them under the table until the shaking calmed down, and by then the air in the café was thick with smoke from the other patrons.

“So…what is this shit?” Kerkerian sat leaned over the table between them, staring intently at Niemans’ face. He hadn’t said anything about losing the shadow’s trail in the confusing streets of Guernon, hadn’t said anything about the chaos at Bernard Chernezé’s office. “What is going on here?”

“We’re being led around,” Niemans stated. He felt ill at ease under the younger man’s scrutiny. Kerkerian had heard him scream in fear as bullets sieved the wall around him, but then, Kerkerian hadn’t said anything about that, either. “The killer wants to show us something…lead us somewhere.”

“But where?”

“I don’t know. Something in the past. Chernezé, Caillois and Sertys all worked on the campus. It all goes back to the university.” Under the table, one of Kerkerian’s knees bumped against Niemans’ thigh as the young man leaned even closer. He ignored the odd tingle. “Which is why I’m going back there now.”

“And what do I do?” Kerkerian’s knee moved, rubbed against the inside of Niemans’ thigh. “Sit around here?”

“You go back to Sarzac.”

“For what?” Kerkerian’s face said, ‘I want to stay here with you.’ His knee slid along Niemans’ thigh again. There was steel in his voice as he said, “You’re not going to get rid of me that easily.”

“I don’t plan to.”

---

Pity or calculation? With the hallowed halls of wisdom drawn tightly around him and the hushed, spiteful conversation of students and teachers alike aimed at him like poisoned darts, Niemans contemplated life and the universe in general as he strode through the university’s library. There were far less students here now than was usual. Perhaps the dean had sent them to their rooms like the good little pupils they were, to bravely await the end of the nightmare holding Guernon in its tight grip.

Was it pity or calculation that staid the shadow’s hand?

Niemans could live with calculation, but not with pity. Pity made him feel weak and foolish. He was at no one’s mercy save his own, and that was already hard to come by.

Did Kerkerian pity him? Did Kerkerian see the aging but brilliant detective in him, worth listening to every now and then but otherwise useless, because it was the young who determined the future, not the old? A bitter tang in the back of Niemans’ mouth at the taste of what might be truth, but…

…no.

Not yet.

He spied one of Captain Dahmane’s men in a booth not far from the back of the library, and sat down in front of the wooden screen dividing the sections of the study benches. The screen oddly reminded him of a confessional’s screen. What was this place? The more time he spent at the university, the more doubts he had about its functionality, its place in the ageless dip of the mountains. Did the students sit here, face to face, and confessed their hopes and wishes for a future they were meant to shape? Did the screens divide them, boy from girl? Close enough to see but not close enough to touch?

“Tell me what you’ve found,” Niemans told the officer, who looked tired and drawn. Not too happy to have been burdened with the task of reading through Rémy Caillois’ thesis, too. “What did Caillois write about?”

The officer scrubbed both hands over his face and sighed, staring down at the heavy, leather-bound book on the table before him. “If you asked my personal opinion, this is all a bunch of Nazi lies. Caillois describes how the human race can be perfected today…by marrying the children of athletes with the children of intellectuals. It’s called, uh,…”

“Eugenics,” Niemans said, narrowing his eyes. “Selection and careful breeding.”

“Yeah. This is nothing but a manual for right-wing wackos.” The officer gave the thesis, overflowing with photos and pictures and diagrams, a shove. “He’s managed to make it sound real good, though. You’d think he really believed in this crap.”

Niemans rose, licked his lips, and thought about blood. We are the masters of the crimson rivers…. “He did.”

And so did the rest of the university.

He left the officer to his booth and the work of dead Rémy Caillois and wandered along the mahogany shelves, filled with knowledge from all over the world. In the pit of his stomach, Niemans felt sick. He wondered what Kerkerian would find, back at Sarzac’s cemetery, if he found anything at all. He wondered if Kerkerian would return in one piece.

Wondered what Fanny Ferreira would say, if she knew that the campus she called her home was really nothing more but a breeding ground for a superior race, headed by a maniac.

Wondered if she knew already.

Climbing the short stairway up to the elevated seat of the late Rémy Caillois – a pedestal, really, surrounded by filing cabinets – Niemans stood at the desk and looked out over the library. From up here, one had a wonderful view of the rows upon rows of books and the study booths. Caillois must have sat here like a king, at all times aware of what went on around him. Just like his father before him.

The sickness climbed from his stomach into his throat, along with a good portion of burning anger. There were a few students in the library, standing next to the majestic shelves, all of them trying to hide the curious, damning glances Niemans felt like barbs hitting him from all sides. He wanted to scream at them. Wanted to tell them that they were nothing but one big laboratory. Nothing but breeders and seeders.

The dean appeared suddenly, as dusty and dry as the campus around him. “Niemans.”

Niemans realized he’d never learned the man’s name, but what did it matter now? He was the dean, head of the campus, and, Niemans knew in his heart, the man responsible for all this. “What?”

“It might interest you that I’ve notified your superiors in Paris about your constant insubordination.” The dean’s cold, flat eyes studied Niemans like one might look at a pile of dirt on the street. “I’m sick of you going around and over the local police. You are mad and you need to be stopped.”

“You’re not going to get through with your plan, dean.”

“I don’t have any plans. You’re seeing things.”

Niemans didn’t know how and when his hands had ended up around the dean’s fragile neck, but he did know that it felt good to feel the brittle bones there shift under his fingers. The temptation to just keep squeezing until those cold, flat eyes lost their sight, until that rattling breath stopped forever, was palatable like candy. The dean’s fists beat uselessly against Niemans’ front, scrabbling to get the taller, heavier man off of him, but Niemans was gripped by righteous fury and paid no attention to the limp hits to his chest and face.

“Hey, Niemans!”

And just like that, Kerkerian appeared there, too, high up on the librarian pedestal. Wet, strong and smelling of leather and earth, the younger man shoved himself between Niemans and the dean, yanking Niemans’ hands off the dean’s neck and pushing him into a corner of the filing cabinets.

“Are you mad?” Kerkerian’s face showed shock, surprise, rainwater dripping from his dishevelled hair. “Can’t I leave you alone for two minutes?”

Niemans, caught still in his fury, his blinding need to rid the world of the pest now leaned heaving and coughing over the librarian’s desk, heaving himself and shocked at this outbreak, this loss of control, said nothing. He watched Kerkerian help the dean back to his feet, hated Kerkerian for playing peacemaker. He didn’t respond to the dean’s threats, didn’t meet the man’s eyes again as he finally stumbled down the short flight of stairs and disappeared from the library.

Kerkerian wiped rain from his brow, eyes wide and watchful. “What the fuck was that?”

The simplest way to avoid an argument is not having an argument. Niemans stared at the librarian’s desk as he asked, “What did you find at the cemetery?”

Kerkerian handed him a small, framed photograph. It was old and smudged with dirt, but the face of the young girl, smiling at the photographer, was still as angelic as she must have been in life. Dark brown hair, dark eyes. Niemans felt a pit in his stomach open and suck in all feeling.

“That’s from the grave of Judith Herault. There was nothing else in the coffin.”

It couldn’t be her, Niemans’ mind raged furiously. No…not his mind. His heart. His fingers clenched around the photo. His mind knew the truth, now that it was uncovered, and why should it have been otherwise? He thought back to the mountain, to Fanny Ferreira, to their climbing trip into the icy depths of a glacier and the gruesome find they’d made there. How calm she’d seemed, just as calm as the ice around them. And later, at her house, over tea and at the edge of a roaring fire, how her eyes had invited him and pushed him away at the same time.

Niemans heard his own voice, speaking to her: ‘I don’t think you’d be able to strangle someone for ten minutes and watch them die.’

Was it her youth that enthralled him, just as Kerkerian’s youth annoyed him? Was it the knowledge that she’d laugh at him, him, who hadn’t touched anyone in months, who fumbled around in the dark and stood at the crossroads, not old yet but also not young anymore?

He cast these contemplations aside, foolish mind games that they were, and strode out of the library. Kerkerian, of course, followed him.

---

In the car, on the way to Fanny Ferreira’s house just outside of Guernon, Kerkerian leaned into him, briefly, and adjusted his wet shirt. Niemans ignored the sudden closeness, the soft, wet drag of hair against his neck. He thought back to meeting Kerkerian at Sertys’ house and how good it had felt to press against him, the reassuring weight of a gun in his hand, in that moment of tension and brutality. Kerkerian’s hair had been dry but just as soft as now, and that lean, muscled body had been vibrating with energy.

“So you’re saying the entire university is just a bunch of Nazis?” Kerkerian moved away again and settled into the passenger seat. He dabbed at his nose, pressing his fingers against the cut across its bridge, and drew a face. “Damn.”

“It’s more than that. Sertys, Caillois, Chernezé – they all had key positions at the university. Caillois was a librarian, like his father. He was responsible for the seating arrangements of the students.” Niemans stepped on the gas pedal, dark forest flitting past left and right. “They paired athletes with intellectuals that way, making sure these young people would connect one way or other.”

“What about Sertys and Chernezé?”

“Sertys worked at the university’s hospital, in the maternity ward. Chernezé told me that the children of the professors’ have been suffering from genetic birth defects for years. It’s a common occurrence of inbreeding, especially in remote villages like Guernon.” He took a turn, tyres screeching. “So the dean made sure that some of the professors’ children were swapped with healthy children from the villagers.”

“What for?” Kerkerian didn’t seem to be able to grasp the concept. Ah, youth.

“To make sure there was new blood. Fresh blood.”

“So…this Fanny Ferreira of yours and Judith Herault were swapped at birth?”

“Yes. But they made a mistake. Someone fucked up. Fanny and Judith were twins. Fanny was adopted by a professor, Judith was given back to her mother.”

“Sister Andrée.”

“Yes. Someone must have realized they made a mistake, so they tried to kill Judith. I believe that this was when Chernezé refused to cooperate anymore, but instead of making it public he simply stopped working at the university.” And tried to right his wrongs by helping the locals, Niemans thought cynically.

Kerkerian made a disbelieving sound in the back of his throat and shook his head. “She never knew she had twins…”

Niemans grit his teeth, staring at the dark road unrolling before them. He should’ve known better, knew better, but refused to believe that Fanny was capable of murdering three men in cold blood. And if she hadn’t done it, had just stood by and watched, had just helped to hide the bodies - that made it even worse. He was torn between wanting to damn her and yearning to save her, possibly from herself. He was a fool.

“Can’t be her,” he muttered, feeling Kerkerian’s sympathetic glance rest on him, wishing the young man would do anything, everything other than pity him.

Then the car jerked forward, hit by something from behind, and Niemans didn’t have time left to think about much of anything. Headlights in the rear-view mirror blinded him, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard the next hit vibrated up into his shoulders. Kerkerian scrambled around in the seat, gun in hand, yelling. Through the deafening blasts of gunfire, Niemans managed to retain as much control of the car as possible, even as Kerkerian took out the rear windshield.

“Bullet-proof windows!” the young man spat, thrown around the front of the car like a rag doll as Niemans took a corner with alarming speed. “Bastard! What the hell is going on?”

“Aim for the tyres!” Yanking the steering wheel around, Niemans briefly noticed they’d passed the road to Fanny Ferreira’s house and were now on smooth concrete – the same street he’d taken on his way to Guernon. He floored the gas pedal, but the car behind them – something large and bulky made for the steep mountain roads – kept up. “Kerkerian!” And then, “Max! No!”

But Kerkerian didn’t hear him and climbed half out of the speeding car, firing at their pursuer. Just like in a goddamn movie. The sound of bullets ricocheting of glass and metal was nearly as loud as the next impact of car on car.

Out of the corners of his eyes, Niemans saw Kerkerian’s body vanish from the passenger seat.

He thought, I knew this was going to happen, and then didn’t think much more, because the car behind him smashed into his rental BMW with such force that the world turned upside down to the sound of splintering glass, screeching metal, and his own, once again frightened scream.

His stomach revolted. Elbows and knees screamed in agony as they impacted with various pieces of car interior. He thought his ears were going to burst, felt the tiny slices of glass along his cheeks and nose and clenched his eyes shut.

The car came to a halt on its side. For a long moment, breathless silence let Niemans believe he’d made it – then there was the next crash as the other car – and it was a big, fucking truck, he saw in a split moment – ploughed into him once more. Rattled, bleeding and fearing for his life, Niemans managed to wrestle his gun from its holster and fired out of the side window.

Eighteen bullets, all fired with the precision of long experience and the sole, burning desire to come out of this alive. The tenth bullet shattered the front windshield of the truck, and Niemans saw the spray of blood and the jerking of the dim shadow there, but he emptied the entire clip and was shoving a new one into the gun by the time both cars had come to a halt.

Niemans rested his brow against the battered steering wheel and exhaled a breath he didn’t remember holding in. His hands shook. He wanted to puke. Pulling himself from the damaged rental car with some difficulty, he kept his gun ready as he made it over to the truck.

Once again, Kerkerian appeared magically, out of nowhere. Niemans was too shocked to do much else but gape at him.

“Are you all right?” Kerkerian asked, out of breath and looking yet a little more worse for fear.

“Yeah.” You are, so I am, too. He turned to the truck and yanked its driver’s door open, not at all surprised as he saw who’d been trying to kill them.

“Who’s this?” Kerkerian stared at the bloodied, bruised and smashed face of the young man hanging in the seatbelt.

“The dean’s son,” Niemans said.

He couldn’t help thinking: serves you right, bastard. You took so many. Now we’ve taken yours.

---

They made it to Fanny Ferreira’s house. Kerkerian kicked the door in and said, “Niemans style.”

He didn’t know if he should be amused or angry, but he did know that he was really fucking happy Kerkerian hadn’t broken his neck when he sailed out of the car half an hour ago. He still couldn’t believe it. The young man should be dead by all rights, not here, not standing around and making jokes.

Their bodies collided as Kerkerian stepped back, shoulder to chest. Niemans reached up to steady him, his fingers slipping on jacket and shirt and a bit of warm skin just at the nape of Kerkerian’s neck. The look Kerkerian threw him was grateful, paired with a small smile. The young man’s hip brushed against his groin; accidentally, of course, but oh so welcomed.

It went straight to Niemans’ cock. Thank god it was dark.

Fanny wasn’t home. He hadn’t expected her to. She was a student, after all; she was connected to the great, swollen mass of the campus and its news travelling as fast as light. He noticed that the grenades were gone from their usual place on the metal shelves, and thought back to Fanny as she told him what she needed them for.

Kerkerian shone his flashlight around and disappeared toward the back of the house, randomly bumping into furniture. Usually annoyed at these signs of lack of professionalism, Niemans found he didn’t mind now. Signs of life, that’s what it was, this bumping and cursing that reached his ears. Something hard to come by in this desolate place in the mountains. He felt the weight of ageless, aging stone press against the thin membranes of his mind like moth wings beating against glass.

Grenades, packed on shelves now empty, handled expertly by a student glaciologist. Fanny Ferreira and her dark eyes and dark smiles, her biting sarcasm and thinly veiled bitterness lingered here, hiding in the dark corners of her living room.

Niemans listened, stood, and kept staring at the empty shelves. His cock throbbed, chaffing against the zipper of his jeans, telling him in no uncertain terms that the brush from a few minutes ago had rekindled interest Niemans had thought dead and buried until…

…until Guernon happened, really. Guernon, Max Kerkerian and Fanny Ferreira, all sitting smug and pulsing in his loins and giving him a hard-on which felt as though he could drill a hole into the next wall with it. He ignored the feeling, it being painful and reminding him of things he didn’t want to think about, and concentrated on the empty shelves.

It didn’t work. Niemans very much wanted to have a body he could smash his fists into, a face to ruin, a jaw to break. Pent-up anger, pent-up everything ate at him. His usual remedy for those things had been his interrogation sessions, deep in the pits of Parisian police stations. He wasn’t a member of homicide – as Captain Dahmane had put it so nicely, Niemans was ‘on loan’ to homicide – but he had access to all law enforcement institutions down to their lightless, pitiless, gruesome cells. He should’ve listened to Dahmane. Should’ve turned around at the first signs of being unwanted here, an alien, an outsider, someone whose head was too fucked up to function in normal society anymore.

But then, what was normal? The empty shelves laughed at him, mocked him, and showed him Fanny Ferreira’s face in their blank surfaces.

Nothing was normal, if you just looked at it long enough. Niemans had walked his road long enough to know everything was all right with his head – it was everything else that was wrong, skewed and shifted.

Just like his sudden, aching need for touch was skewed and shifted. Ruthlessly, Niemans beat it down.

“Hey, Niemans!” Kerkerian appeared in the moonlit room, gesturing with his flashlight. “I think you better take a look at this.”

No, nothing was normal. He followed Kerkerian into the back of the house, smelling the putrid, ripe fragrance of death as soon as they were within reach of the door the young man had discovered, and knew in his heart of hearts that he’d been right…again.

He had experience. He didn’t get hurt or surprised anymore. Luckily.

Staring at the backroom turned slaughterhouse, Niemans thought, Yeah. Lucky me.

---

The confrontation with Captain Dahmane left Niemans feeling stranded, alone, and determined. He had no eyes for the breathtaking sight of glacial beauty around them as the lift slowly brought him and Kerkerian up toward the weather station. There had been something in Dahmane’s eyes Niemans knew only too well: resignation in the face of a greater evil. Submission to a force greater and stronger than common sense.

He and the captain of Guernon’s local police hadn’t exactly hit it off on the right foot, but Dahmane had his heart in the right spot – only that it would kill him there one day. Niemans begrudged him his easygoing, careless cop life up here, begrudged him the bottomless naïveté with which he went about the case – in the beginning, anyway. It was Niemans who’d slowly but surely dragged Dahmane and his men toward the darker pits of mankind, showing them that there was more to murder than greed or fear. Niemans had strayed from the set path, luring them after him with unintentionally placed titbits of information.

Just as he’d dragged Kerkerian along. Again.

He glanced at the younger man out of the corner of his eyes. Kerkerian, bruised, beaten, but equally determined to see this drama come to an end, stared at the landscape around, under them. There were clotted cuts on his cheeks and nose. His jacket hung off him, limp with sweat and rain. Up here, where breath froze, that water was beginning to crystallize, turn cold and stiff, but Kerkerian didn’t seem mind.

Perhaps some of Niemans’ experience had rubbed off on him, after all. Niemans didn’t know anymore whether or not he should pride himself on that knowledge, only that he knew it was so, and would forever be so. The old forever marked the young. Kerkerian would come out of this stronger and meaner than before.

Leaning against the Plexiglas window, Niemans checked his gun. He didn’t want to need it, knew he would. Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw Kerkerian do the same. The sharp metallic grind of gun sledge and pump gun sledge was the only conversation they’d had up to now.

“Give me that,” Niemans said, reaching for the pump gun. “Let me take her.”

Kerkerian refused to let go of the weapon, but only for a moment. He stared at Niemans, eyes wide again, but didn’t say a word.

Perhaps he knew. Perhaps he’d known all along. Niemans turned, stared out of the lift’s windows, and hoped that’s what it was.

It had still been dark, down at the foot of the mountain, but up here morning sunlight broke over the ragged top of the mountain range, blinding and white like the snow. Had Fanny dragged Sertys’ corpse up here? Had she used the lift? Niemans thought of the jars and the buckets they’d found back at her house, filled with amputated hands and eyeballs, cloudy-grey, floating in their stinking liquids like bizarre fish.

Warm breath struck the back of his neck like a blow, but he retained enough sense of self to not jerk around and deck Kerkerian. The young man stood close enough to him to make their shoulders touch. Just like a goddamn puppy all over again, Niemans thought, needing someone to curl up with. But he didn’t step away, didn’t push, and didn’t even turn around as Kerkerian leaned a little harder into him. He felt it all, acutely, in that moment: the wrinkles around his eyes, the sagging skin over his stomach, the inevitable touch of old age.

His cock stirred. Kerkerian branded him with heat even as there were several layers of wet, stiff clothing between them, and it met with the heat slowly rising from his loins. Breathing new life into aging cells? Niemans didn’t believe in that. He had experience in many fields of life, and certainly in that one.

They stood that way until the lift came to a halt, high up in the mountains, away from Guernon and yet still close enough for Niemans to see the small village as an assembly of matchbox houses in the distance. His lungs burned on the first intake of crisp, cold air. Thirty seconds into navigating around the steel platform, his face was beginning to hurt and his hands felt as though they were going to crack if he so much as bent his fingers.

Kerkerian, still at his side and obviously intent on keeping that place, pointed at a small figure. “There.”

It fucking hurt to see Fanny Ferreira, decked out in thick winter clothes, long brown hair in wisps around her face, moving quickly and with determination through the knee-high snow. Niemans plunked down the stairs of the platform, pump gun in hand, and called her name.

He realized he’d been calling her name ever since he laid eyes on her, but what did it matter now? She was a criminal, a murderer, one of the animals. Still, he wanted to save her.

And arguing with Fanny, Fanny who carried grenades strapped to her body and whose eyes screamed of righteous anger and a need for revenge, Niemans realized that he couldn’t save anyone. Least of all himself. She’d wanted him to understand. He’d wanted to understand. Neither of them wanted to be saved.

---

Judith’s body would never be found. Her grave in Sarzac would remain empty, even now that she was dead. Niemans touched the edge of the photograph still sitting in his pocket. It had miraculously survived the catastrophe. He would keep it.

He watched the medics strap Fanny onto a gurney. Blood, so much blood, and all hers. The crimson rivers had finally caught up with her and swept her away. Staring sightlessly ahead, alive yet but dead already inside, the young woman ignored him, or was past seeing him. Niemans felt empty and tired. He didn’t even have anger left to chew on, and the doubts still waited, biding their time to descend later, when there was nothing else to think about but how he’d failed.

Again.

The medics and avalanche searchers surrounding them, Niemans watched until the helicopter had taken off and disappeared toward the valley. There were some of Dahmane’s men amid the party, but they gave Niemans a wide berth. Someone fussed over Kerkerian’s shoulder wound, applying a field bandage. Having nothing else to stare at anymore, now that Fanny was gone, Niemans stared at that.

Under the snow, protected by the bulk of the snow mobile, he’d wormed his way up to Kerkerian’s side and curled around the younger man, safe in the knowledge that they’d die here, that the avalanche set off by gunshots would be the grave for the both of them. Snow pressing against them, creaking and aching like old stone, Niemans had sought that heat he’d felt before, all but gone now as Kerkerian lay bleeding and wheezing. He’d searched for it, yearned for it, wanting it now that there was nothing left to do, no one left to save. If he died, he wanted to feel it burn him one last time, that fire of youth.

Kerkerian had made soft sounds, moving feebly. In the lasting darkness of the ice and snow around them, Niemans had pressed his lips to Kerkerian’s and tasted what he hated and wanted at the same time: ah, youth.

The rough bark of a dog jerked him from his thoughts, throwing him back into the bleak and cold now. Niemans felt a pang of panic as one of the avalanche dogs, a large, dark-furred German shepherd, snuffed at him. Rough, abrasive tongue, stinking dog breath…where was his gun? Ah, yes: lost in the tons of snow which had nearly buried him alive, too. Niemans leaned away until the person on the other end of the leash got the drift and lead the animal away.

“Hey,” Kerkerian said, obviously pained but hiding it well, as they sat on the snowdrift amid the chaos left behind by the avalanche. He turned his head, winced, and looked after the dog. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth when he turned back to Niemans. “What is it with you and dogs, anyway?”

Niemans looked over at the young man and noticed how close Kerkerian was sitting next to him. He couldn’t help smiling back, even laughed a little. It wasn’t real laughter, but Kerkerian would have to make do with what Niemans was willing to dish out. “It’s a long story.”

---

Morbid curiosity, his best and steadiest friend through the years, kept Niemans anchored to Guernon for four days more. He’d planned to hightail it out of here the minute all paperwork and phone calls had been done, yet something in him refused to go, insisting that there was more that needed doing. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew it would pick at him until he’d laid it to rest. So he waited, watching Captain Dahmane and his men round up what was left of the puzzle and piece it together.

The avalanche had missed the university, but only just barely. A large part of the forest surrounding the campus had been destroyed, and there were a few casualties among villagers and student corps alike, but all in all they’d been lucky. Niemans couldn’t help feeling disappointed. The impressive building with its courtyard of stone pillars would haunt him all the way back to Paris and into his dreams, just like the dogs. He wished the avalanche had hit, razing it to the ground along with all the abominable evil it stood for.

He felt smug when they arrested the dean. News vans from the cities all around Guernon descended on the village like vultures, tearing into the story that would forever brand Guernon. Outraged villagers turned up by the hour, dragging their adolescent sons and daughters, many of the disfigured or ailing, with them. Demanding birth records, demanding names, these simple people and their scared children would never truly grasp what had happened here. Niemans thought it was for the better.

He didn’t see much of Kerkerian during the first two days. The young man faced his own hounds of hell, charged with insubordination, car theft, destruction of public property, and a number of other things Niemans knew he’d have done in a second if the case required it. He thought of Kerkerian, often. In his bleak, cold hotel room, to the sound of his laboured breathing and the sting of the darkness grasping at him, Niemans touched his aching erection and thought of the warmth.

On the third day, Captain Dahmane found him sitting in his by now customary corner in Guernon’s only and very much depressing café. Clad in police garb, Dahmane carried a cup of coffee to Niemans’ table and sat down opposite to him. They didn’t speak for long minutes, each watching the other. Finally, Dahmane took a sip from his cup. After he’d placed it back down, he said, “So you’re going back to Paris tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

“Got everything wrapped up here?”

“That’s your job, not mine.” Niemans very much wanted to spend the last evening in peace, with only his thoughts to annoy him. “Can I help you with anything, Captain?”

“Are you always that much of an asshole, or is that just your way of keeping people at bay?”

Niemans choked on a mouthful of wine. Across the table, Dahmane watched him calmly. He’d expected to see anger in the Captain’s dark eyes, but there was none. There was something Niemans couldn’t quite pinpoint – understanding? Yes. It was understanding. This case had brought Dahmane just a little closer to the heart of darkness, so it couldn’t be pity. Feeling a certain kind of admiration, Niemans wiped his mouth. This was the first mentionable time Dahmane had stood up to him.

“I am always that much of an asshole,” he lied, and they laughed together.

A moment of calm silence passed. Dahmane wasn’t much younger than Niemans – a year or two, at most – and although the Captain of Guernon would forever remain out of his league, Niemans felt a sudden kind of companionship with him. Must be the age, he thought dryly.

“Did…did the dean really call up Paris and complained about you?” Dahmane asked.

“Yes. But taking into account what he’d been doing here, his word means nothing.” Which meant Niemans had gotten off the hook once more, and once more by the skin of his teeth. He thought of Kerkerian, hoped the young man would be equally lucky, and then berated himself. Kerkerian deserved what he had coming, in that regard, at least. Niemans had both the skill and the experience to get away with most of what he did, and the rest could be ignored. Skill and experience – his battle cry, with cynicism and brute force ranging a close second. “I’ll have to attend a hearing to clear up any remaining questions, but that will be the most of it.”

“I see,” Dahmane said, staring at his coffee cup. “What happens to the university now?”

Ah, yes, the pride of Guernon. Tasting bitterness in the back of his mouth again, Niemans drank the rest of his wine and set the glass down hard. “A new dean will move in, I suppose.”

“Let’s hope he’ll be smarter than the last.”

“Smart.” Niemans laughed, but there was no humour in it. “Smart would mean he’d get through with his plans.”

He left Dahmane and didn’t say good bye. There was nothing ‘good’ about Guernon, nothing he wanted to take with him, not even acquaintances. Ignoring the lingering reporters and nosy villagers, Niemans slowly made his way back to his hotel to pack his bags. He’d leave in the morning, after a small breakfast and what he hoped would be a peaceful night’s sleep.

Yet the silence got to him, two hours into fitful tossing and turning on the narrow hotel bed. The silence, and the emptiness lingered between the doorway and the window, creeping into his nose and into the corners of his eyes as he stared at the ceiling and listened to the darkness. As always, it didn’t have much to say.

The LED display of his watch showed half past twelve in the night. Sighing, Niemans rubbed both hands over his face and sat up. It was no use. He’d get no sleep here. He didn’t know if it had been Dahmane he’d been waiting for, to be able to say his internal farewell to Guernon, but he did know nothing kept him here anymore.

“Might as well drive now,” he muttered as he found his way across the dark hotel room to switch on the light. He dressed slowly. When he picked up his jacket, something fell out of a pocket. For a long moment, Niemans stared at the photograph. It lay so that the overhead light hit it just so, making Judith Herault’s face a white mask with holes for eyes and mouth.

He’d only gotten a glimpse at her, up there on the mountain, before Fanny took all of his concentration again. Kerkerian had dealt with Judith, she being the one whose desecrated grave had led him from Sarzac to Guernon. Yet in that one glimpse, Niemans had seen the madness in Judith’s eyes, the burning hate and the glowing anger; all three had been in Fanny too, yet she’d hidden them better.

Had even fooled him, for a while.

Niemans sighed and retrieved the small photograph from the floor, turning it over and over in his hands. He’d meant to keep it as a souvenir, something to stare at when the days and nights in Paris were stretched beyond endurance. Now, it didn’t feel right anymore. It was Judith, not Fanny, who laughed at him. Judith who lay dead and buried under tons of snow, now forever parted from her twin sister.

He put the photograph back into his pocket and grabbed his duffel bag.

---

Fanny Ferreira’s house had been turned upside-down by the local police as they searched for clues and evidence. The backroom – and Niemans couldn’t suppress the shudder as he thought of what he and Kerkerian had found there – had been carefully emptied, its gruesome contents bagged, tagged and shipped off toward the university’s hospital ward. A specialist had been flown in from Paris, to match amputated hand and carved-out eye to corpse. Niemans had spoken to the man but had not expressed interest in the outcome of this little puzzle; his work here was done. His job was to walk the grizzly path, not piece together what was left on the road.

He pulled up in front of the house and frowned at the sight of the beat-up Volvo parked right in front of it. It was well past one o’clock in the night now. Getting out of his car, he automatically reached for his gun and slipped the safety off. The yellow banderol declaring the house and its grounds off-limits was undisturbed, a splash of colour in the grey wash of moonlight. He ducked under it and walked up to the porch, eyes narrowed.

Max Kerkerian stepped out of the front door, hands hanging by his sides, and said, “Hey.”

Niemans lowered his gun. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same.” Shrugging, Kerkerian nodded at the house. “Saying good bye, I guess.”

“Ah.” Shouldering his way past Kerkerian, Niemans moved into the house. For some reason, he felt he had to check that Kerkerian hadn’t touched anything, hadn’t put anything in its wrong place – as if the police hadn’t already done that. Deflating, Niemans turned to face the young man. “You’re on your way out of Guernon, too?”

“Yeah. I gotta make an appearance before my boss in 24 hours.” It was hard to say if Kerkerian thought anything in particular about that, though it could well mean the end of his law enforcement career if someone on the board got too pissy. Kerkerian shut the front door and stepped forward, ending up well in Niemans’ personal space. “Back to Paris?”

“Yes.” Faced with that youthful face, Niemans suddenly didn’t want to. The cuts and bruises on Kerkerian’s face had started to heal but he still looked as though someone had put him through the ringer. Niemans knew he didn’t look much better. “What if they kick you off the force?”

“They won’t,” Kerkerian said with utter confidence. “I helped solve this case. That’s gotta count for something.”

It doesn’t, Niemans thought, but he didn’t say it out loud. God, this conversation was painful. Half of him wanted to simple walk out of the house and never look back. The other half wanted to wrap around Kerkerian again, just as he’d done under the snow, and find that warmth he was beginning to miss sorely.

Kerkerian reached for his face, placed warm, strong hands on his cheeks and temples, and said, “Unwind.”

Fumbling around in the dark again, but this time Niemans didn’t care. There were some things even he couldn’t stand to look at.

In the bleak, cold house where Fanny Fereirra and her twin sister Judith had tortured and dismembered men, Pierre Niemans grappled with Max Kerkerian and did his best to keep in mind that there was more to this, to Guernon, to the last week, than death.

He kept his back to the door - that door, leading to the hidden room where he and Max had made their gruesome discovery, that door he hadn’t seen on his visit, that door he still refused to believe Fanny would have eventually led him through as well – and tumbled them down on the couch. Pillows and down comforters tumbled with them, the heavy weight of two men disturbing the deceptive peace left behind by a woman now lying in a coma, bars in front of the prison hospital windows…

Past. It was in the past. Just like those fucking dogs were in the past. They still chewed on his dreams but his body had healed. Yesterday was as dead as Chernezé’s corpse.

Kerkerian pulled him down for a kiss, stubble-rough chin against stubble-rough cheek, running his hands along Niemans’ shoulders and back, and Niemans couldn’t help wondering if all that eagerness didn’t come from a brush with death a little too close…

Niemans didn’t mind the eagerness now, the inability to hold still, that seemed to be a very part of the younger man’s psyche.

He held him down and slowed the kiss to something a little less frantic, losing himself in the languid drag of tongue over teeth, in the excited beat of Kerkerian’s heart thudding between them. Pulling back, he watched Kerkerian’s face as he slid a hand down between their bodies, cupping the bulge at the front of the younger man’s pants. A firm but gentle squeeze rewarded him with a gasp and a push for more, but Niemans didn’t go any further, just held him, and then leaned down to cover his lips with a kiss once more.

“Want you,” Kerkerian gasped just before their lips met, “Want you to want me…”

It felt good to be wanted, even as he knew it wasn’t going to last. This was nothing, compared to what could have been. But it was something, and Niemans was grasping for straws, anything to keep the last week off his back and out of his dreams. Fanny Ferreira was there, bleeding and dying but not quite dead, as was her sister. The dean was there, in handcuffs, spitting and foaming like a rabid dog.

He wasn’t a fool. He knew what this was.

But it was enough.

Carefully, he peeled Kerkerian out of his clothes. The young man’s shoulder was bandaged, there were dark purple bruises on his chest and ribs along with small cuts, but Niemans didn’t see that. He saw a wide expanse of chest, muscled and pale and nearly hairless except for a few hairs scattered around Kerkerian’s nipples. Taking one of those into his mouth, he suckled slowly, listening to the acceleration of Kerkerian’s breath. The heat was there, waiting for him, vibrating just beneath the smooth skin under his tongue and fingers. Kerkerian wrapped his legs around him, bucked his hips up, and winced when the motion tugged at the wound in his shoulder.

Sitting back, Niemans yanked Kerkerian’s belt and fly open, ignoring the fingers that scrabbled at his collar, his jacket. Heat, he needed the heat, and the taste and the smell, waiting for him to be sampled. Kerkerian’s cock was hard and hot, rising from his body and fitting so perfectly into the palm of Niemans’ hand. He slowly pulled on the hard flesh, rubbed his thumb over the head, and heard Kerkerian moan. He bent down, took the swollen, silky head into his mouth and tasted the first drops.

There was barely enough light to see what they were doing, but Niemans found he didn’t need to see. His front burned, his loins were on fire. Kerkerian’s restless energy, now focused on torching him instead of driving him mad, fuelled him as though he’d been connected to the young man by the flesh that slipped through his lips, by the moans that hung between them. Niemans slipped a finger into his mouth and, sucking on just the head of Kerkerian’s cock now, slowly pushed into him.

With a breathy cry, Kerkerian bucked and came. Clenching around Niemans’ finger, letting him know that there it was hottest, and best, and needed. Niemans swallowed, pulled away and licked his lips, frantic now but still oh so calm. Experience, he told himself, experience makes the difference…

Experience could go to hell.

Kerkerian, pants around his knees, jacket hanging from his arms and shirt pushed up to his neck, hung onto his shoulders when he pulled him up from the couch and half-dragged, half-pushed him through the living room toward the doorway on the other end. Neither of them minded the occasional bump into furniture now. Neither of them was cut out for the cute stuff, the cuddling. Hot and hard and just as gritty as life, just as gritty as Guernon, Niemans thought before he decided to not think anymore.

Just before they reached the doorway, Niemans shoved Kerkerian against the wall, pressing hard against him. Kerkerian yelped, pushed back, growling something about his shoulder than soon went under as Niemans leaned into him just as he’d leaned into him during their first meeting. Mouth to neck, Niemans snatched the tube of hand crème from the sill of the fireplace, undoubtedly left behind by Fanny, whose hands had been rough and red from working with ice, in ice, for so long.

He fumbled with the tube, skimming his teeth along the nape of Kerkerian’s neck, and rubbed against his ass. Kerkerian pushed back against him, aggressive, challenging – wanting. Niemans, breathing hard, blood rushing in his ears, opened his jeans and rubbed his cock into the crack of Kerkerian’s ass, then leaned against him with his full weight, lips to ear, chest to back. Slick fingers quickly found their way, drawing a gasp from the younger man.

Had he done this before? Niemans didn’t care. He was doing it now. Niemans bit into the side of Kerkerian’s neck, adding one more bruise to a collection of fading bruises, and stepped back. His hands found their hold, gripping Kerkerian’s hips, as he slid into him with a hard, even thrust. Tugging on the young man until they’d found an angle that worked for both of them, Niemans closed his eyes, turned his face toward the ceiling, and lost himself in heat.

Somewhere in-between, something tumbled out of his jacket pocket. He heard it fall to the floor but forgot about it as soon as that, hips slapping sharply against Kerkerian’s cheeks. The rough drag of clothing over his skin, the gasped moans and grunts, the heat all dragged him away into oblivion as he shouted and came, jerking frantically, and released a week’s worth of frustration and pent-up everything into Kerkerian with a few last, harsh pumps of hips.

---

They shook hands and walked to their respective car, getting in. Niemans didn’t know if Kerkerian looked at him for one last time; he didn’t. Fastening the seatbelt and starting the car, he looked at the house until Kerkerian’s Volvo had vanished from its grounds. He sat for ten minutes, unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, he didn’t think.

It was a good feeling, though he knew it wouldn’t last. These things never did.

Pulling away from the house, Niemans finally got the car’s cigarette lighter to work. The nicotine – his first cigarette in a week – did nothing to soothe anything, but it tasted good. Drawing the smoke deeply into his lungs, just one more experience he’d made, one more bad habit he’d never get rid off, he drove fast and didn’t look back.

He knew he’d left something at the house. He’d heard it fall.

It belonged there.


END