Chapter VI. Dr. Erik Yurkov #4
The car stopped in front of a vast plot located on a hill next to Petrópolis.
There was a farm in the background, a small hut, and a guardhouse outside the gate.
All the other houses were one or more kilometers away, and the only sound came from the orchestra of crickets and frogs hidden in the grass.
The rain had already stopped, but Ariadne couldn’t see much of the place besides the full moon and the distant lights of the farm.
“Come with me, Augusto.” Rafaela unlocked the door. She removed her high heels and walked barefoot on the grass, curls escaping from her low ponytail. “I’m starving and I need to find a guard.”
“Goodness, woman…”
Quaint waited until they were alone to face her. He seemed to have considered his words carefully when he spoke with a grave tone:
“I could have forgiven Erik for the gulification if it was just pettiness, you see.” The light of the car was reflected in his glasses, and the shadow of the leaves wandered across the skin of his face.
“But he knew what the implications meant to me. He said it could help hybrid children, but it was just an exercise in curiosity.”
Ariadne touched the ring with the braid without a word, and he continued:
“I thought Fanny wouldn’t make it. The pregnancy took thirteen months, dangerously short for a gul, tortuously long for a human.” Quaint lowered his head. “My mother and I fed her with our own blood, but Fanny was forty when she delivered, and it took an enormous toll on her health.”
“But your daughter didn’t make it.”
“Mochou lived less than twenty years.” Quaint accepted her arms around him, bringing him closer to her chest to cradle him.
“First, she couldn’t hold things anymore.
She could hardly write as we were teaching her because her little hands trembled.
She couldn’t walk. She cried and laughed at inappropriate times.
Still, the gul in her kept her alive, suffering, struggling, but alive.
And I could do nothing to make it better or release Mochou from the pain. Nothing, my little girl…”
“I’m sorry,” murmured Ariadne. “I’m sorry.”
Quaint remained like that for a moment, breathing in the closeness, clutching her arm around himself. Then, he straightened his back, staring at the window.
“It’s been more than a hundred years, but the love for a child keeps hurting still. Erik…”
A piercing scream interrupted whatever he’d meant to say.
Quaint reacted immediately, reversing their positions to cover her face and ears.
Another scream, and Ariadne shut her eyes, trying to focus on the beating of his heart, on the soothing hum coming from her own throat.
She didn’t even know which song it was, she just needed something—anything—to block the sound.
After a short, unnerving silence, the screams were replaced by an animal roar, like that of a large feline, or the hiss of a threatened snake, and Quaint held her even tighter.
Then there was only silence.
“We should go,” he said gently, and Ariadne nodded in agreement.
Augusto and Rafaela were nowhere to be seen. The gates were open, the air still, and a vague realization crossed her mind: they don’t want me to see the bodies. Quaint left his glasses in the breast pocket of his shirt and removed the eye patch.
“I’m quite sensitive to the light, but I was gifted with exceptional night vision,” said Quaint, bending forward. “Stay behind me, Ariadne.”
Meters ahead, a man opened the front door of the farmhouse.
Quaint stretched his neck and roared, the sound bubbling from his chest upward.
Ariadne hid behind him, feeling his body vibrating, remembering Erik’s old lessons: a larger larynx with lengthened vocal cords, capable of producing a potent roar, with great resonance …
The man shot first. The bullet hit a trunk, far from where they were, and Quaint bared his fangs.
His upper lip curled, propelling his teeth forward, and even his incisors, the most humanlike teeth a gul could have, were a warning sign: teeth that could break bone and capture prey, holding it still for the canines to slice.
Quaint dashed toward the stranger, who threw the gun on the grass, covering his face with his remaining limb.
“I’m unarmed! Please—please!”
The human cowered on the ground. Quaint stepped on the gun, cracking the barrel, and took the phone from the pocket of the man’s jacket, crushing it with his hand, pieces of silicon, plastic, and aluminum running through his fingers like breadcrumbs.
His eyes reflected the light that came from the house, glowing in the dark.
Like tigers, they can move fast, but only in short bursts, Erik had said with a knowing smile.
Quaint kept the human on the ground, his shoe on his back.
Most break the spinal cord by crushing the windpipe before eating.
Their hands are so strong that they can smash a skull with the pressure. Fascinating stuff, right?
“We’re the only ones here…” The man trembled like he had never seen a gul. “Only us and the doctor.”
“Erik Yurkov?” Ariadne placed a hand on Quaint’s sleeve when he lifted the man by the collar of his shirt, a quiet warning that he shouldn’t overdo it. The man nodded frenetically.
“With the president.” He pointed at the stairs, and a high-pitched sob escaped his lips. “The Russian is upstairs with the president.”
Quaint put him back on the ground, and the man fell to his knees.
“Stay quiet and don’t do anything you will regret,” Quaint warned, colder than she had ever heard him sound. “The others are hungry.”
The house was deserted. The lights were all on, and the television in the living room aired a foreign movie, but there was no one on the couches, chairs, or armchairs.
The kitchen was empty except for a whistling kettle, and everything smelled sterile, like the walls had been repeatedly washed with bleach.
Quaint turned off the stove before proceeding to the stairway, and Ariadne followed him upstairs.
The second floor was the same. A long corridor with multiple rooms, made eerie by its unending silence, shadows flickering like creeping ghosts.
Quaint opened the first door—nothing. They had the same result with the second and third doors, until they reached one that was locked.
Stay back, he mouthed, pressing his palm against the door until it fell down.
An emaciated middle-aged woman was sitting in a straw rocking chair. She had crow’s feet all around her eyes; her brown hair was streaked with gray strands in a short, lifeless bob; her hooked nose covered half of her oval face. Ariadne recognized her immediately as Genebra.
“Quaint, dear, we knew you would come.” Genebra tried to maintain a graceful expression, but as soon as she spoke, her voice broke and tears flowed freely down her cheeks.
Quaint pulled her into a hug, brushing her dry hair with his fingers as if she were a frail crystal figurine. “I couldn’t take it any longer.”
There was nothing suspicious in the bedroom, just a bed in disarray, a clothes rack with a few dresses, and a simple vanity with jewelry similar to what Ariadne had seen in Genebra’s house.
Nothing except the thick chain that hung from a hook on the wall and went to Genebra’s right ankle.
Quaint took the iron in his hands, snapping it.
“You look so thin.” Quaint caressed Genebra’s head. “Are they feeding you?”
“Only every two or three months, just an arm and a leg…” She lifted her chin to face him, tears streaking her pale cheeks. Her eyes had sunk into hollow pits with the weight loss. “Soon, there won’t be any more assistants…”
“Did anybody hurt you?”
“No—I’m just the guinea pig. Erik…”
“Did he use you? For the gulification?”
Genebra hurried to speak; her voice slurred like she had been drugged and her eyes looked dilated and unfocused. “It’s not his fault—I swear, Erik only…”
Quaint’s expression shifted to the same coldness she had seen in him outside.
“You’re going home today,” Quaint assured her. Ariadne was already in the corridor, their conversation sounding more and more distant. “I promise.”
A muffled noise could be heard from behind the last door, something wild and anguished, like a long, hollow moan. She touched the doorknob, and the door opened on its own, revealing the last room.
The place was illuminated only by a lamp.
There was an elderly man tied to a stretcher, his body twisted in unnatural angles with an empty blood bag connected to his arm by a catheter, a black blotch spreading on the skin around the tube.
Ariadne was paralyzed by the sight, an invisible hand invading her stomach, piercing organs and pulling entrails.
The man’s mouth was gagged with a cloth, probably to prevent him from screaming as he flailed until he broke both arms, rejecting the gul material.
First, the vision reminded her of herself—wriggling, body bent into uncomfortable angles—then it reminded her of … No, no, she couldn’t think of them. Ariadne forced herself to glance at the man; his face was familiar, like the images repeated on the news …
“Ariadne?” Somebody called her, but it wasn’t Quaint.
His voice was softer, his accent thicker; the pronunciation of her name sounded different coming from his lips.
It wasn’t Quaint, but he held her nonetheless, pulling her to his chest and covering her eyes like she was still the stupid, broken teenager he’d once met.
Ariadne squirmed inside his arms, but he was taller, stronger, unwilling to let go. Erik kept her in a firm hug, tightening his grip when she tried to escape.