A YOUNG SUCCUBUS NAMED DELICIA by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 21 – A TRAGIC LOSS

09:40 (Paris Time)

Sunday, August 27, 1944

Mille et Une Nuits Cabaret, 34 Rue Saint-André-des-Arts Quartier Latin, 6th Arrondissement Paris, France

Mélanie, returning from a meeting with other local FFI cell leaders, was in a good mood as she walked back in the cabaret via its front door. With thousands of Free French soldiers now inside Paris, the security situation was much less tense than just two days ago, so she had gone to the meeting armed only with her FN GP35 pistol. On her way back, she had the opportunity to see the damage caused by last night’s random aerial bombing of Paris done by the German Luftwaffe, probably done as an act of revenge ordered by Hitler following the liberation of the city. Up to a thousand people had been either killed or wounded in that bombing raid, which had caused substantial damage all over Paris. However, the city was now firmly in the hands of the Allies and any German offensive to retake it was now most unlikely.

Looking for her mother, Mélanie went to the kitchen, finding the cabaret’s cook there.

‘’Hello Sylvie! Do you know where my mother is?’’

The mature woman kept working the bread dough she was shaping while answering her.

‘’Marie got a phone call about one hour ago. She left you a note by the telephone in her office before walking out.’’

‘’Thank you!’’

Mélanie then nearly ran up the stairs with her usual energetic pace and went to her mother’s private office. There, as told by the cook, a small piece of paper had been left beside the telephone. Grabbing it and reading it quickly, Mélanie’s eyes suddenly opened wide with alarm: the note said that Marie had received a call from someone who wanted to give her some information about a Frenchman who had collaborated with the Germans and had given her a rendezvous at the crypt under the church of Saint-Sulpice.

307

The name of the caller was however familiar to Mélanie, who had seen it previously in a captured Gestapo document.

‘’MAURICE BAUDOUIN? THAT BASTARD IS A GESTAPO COLLABORATOR!’’ Throwing away the piece of paper, Mélanie ran back down the stairs at once and shot out of the cabaret at a full run, surprising the passersby walking along the Rue Saint-André-des-Arts. Turning left on Rue de l’Éperon while keeping the speed of an Olympic sprinter, she then crossed the Boulevard Saint-Germain, arriving within sight of the Church of Saint-Sulpice a minute later. As she ran towards a side entrance of the church that led down to the vast crypt under the church, she made a desperate telepathic call to her adoptive mother.

‘’Mother, this is Mélanie! Where are you?’’

She did not get an answer, although she should have been well within telepathic range of Marie by now, with Marie having received and answered such calls in the past. Now deeply worried, Mélanie slowed down only once at the side door, taking out her pistol before opening the old wooden door. All her senses now on alert, she turned invisible once inside and started going quietly down the old stone stairs leading to the crypt. The thoughts of two hostile minds nearby alerted her as she was about to step inside the crypt proper, in the part containing an old well: two men were waiting in ambush inside. Not being sure still about where her mother really was, Mélanie decided to make it as discreetly as possible and holstered back her pistol, then unsheathed her hunting knife before walking quietly into the cave containing the old well. There, she located quickly enough the two men waiting in ambush: they were each hidden behind one side of the stone column enclosing the medieval well. Doing a slow, cautious detour around the man to the right of the well, Mélanie ended up just one pace in behind him, hidden from the other man by the stone column. The man was armed with a German MP40 submachine gun, which he kept pointed at the opened access door of the staircase she had just used. Taking one step forward, she quickly ripped the submachine gun out of the man’s hands while putting the cutting edge of her knife firmly across his throat, whispering in his ear.

‘’One shout and you are dead! Where is Marie Laurent?’’ The man, suddenly sweating with terror, answered in a weak voice.

‘’She…she is at the other end of the crypt, in the old choir section.’’

‘’How many men are there with her?’’

‘’One!’’

308

‘’Only one?’’

‘’Yes! I swear!’’

‘’Thanks!’’ replied Mélanie before burying her blade in the man’s throat and pulling it across, nearly severing the head from the body. The involuntary gurgle from the dying man then attracted the attention of the other gunman, who called up from his position on the opposite side of the well.

‘’Régis, did you say something?’’

Mélanie quickly walked to the second gunman, still invisible, and violently stabbed him in the stomach while deflecting his submachine gun.

‘’Yes! He said ‘I am fucked!’ It’s your turn now.’’

Next, she viciously twisted her blade before pulling it up, ripping wide open the man’s belly while slapping one hand over his mouth, so that he could not scream. The gunman died with his eyes opened wide with horror and pain, sliding down to a sitting position against the encased well while trying to hold his intestines in. Quickly wiping her blade clean against his shirt, Mélanie then walked towards the door giving access to the rest of the crypt. Turning briefly into ethereal form, she floated through that door, emerging in the vast space that had been the old Church of Saint-Sulpice. Her heart accelerated at once on seeing that a naked woman tied to a chair was visible near the opposite end of the crypt, next to a man holding a pistol. The woman seemed to be unconscious and was not moving. Her general shape and head profile was however very familiar to Mélanie: it was Marie alright! Nearly transported with fury, Mélanie floated to the armed man, still invisible and immaterial, going behind him before rematerializing into solid form. She then grabbed the man’s right wrist with one hand and pressed with all her strength while wrapping her left arm around his throat and kneeling him in the small of his back, preventing him from turning around. The man screamed with pain as Mélanie’s inhuman strength crushed the bones in his right wrist. To Mélanie’s despair, that loud scream did not cause her mother to flinch or move. That was when she saw the blood that had come out of a wound in Marie’s chest, where her heart was. Anger and rage filled her instantly and she nearly screamed into the ear of the man.

‘’WHY? WHY DID YOU KILL MY MOTHER?’’

‘’It…it was you I wanted to kill… You cost me a lucrative business deal with the Gestapo and killed most of my associates. I attracted your mother here so that she could be used as a bait for you. Please, don’t kill me!’’

309

‘’You wanted to kill me, then killed my adoptive mother and now you want me to spare your life? Like Hell I am!’’

Grabbing the man’s throat with her left hand, she then turned him around while tightening progressively her grip, asphyxiating him slowly while she stared into the eyes of the suffocating man.

‘’You are now going to go where your crimes richly deserved to be paid, you bastard! SEE YOU IN HELL!’’

The man finally died in her grip after a long minute of agony. She then threw his body away and hurried to her mother. A check of her pulse confirmed to her the worst and she knelt beside her body while breaking in uncontrollable sobs.

‘’Noo! NOO! YOU CAN’T BE GONE, MOTHER!’’

She stayed kneeling in front of her dead mother for a long moment while crying her loss. Finally, with a big lump in her throat and her eyes still red and full of tears, she untied as gently as she could Marie’s body, then laid her down on the dusty floor of the crypt. She contemplated her for long minutes, trying to decide what to do next. Marie had been her adoptive mother for twelve years, but she was also the owner and manager of their cabaret. With her now gone, the fate of the cabaret and of its employees was now up in the air. Mélanie also realized as well that some of her latest actions would attract a lot of questions, many of which she could not answer without making a few eyebrows rise. Taking a deep breath, she then took a fateful decision and went to her mother’s clothes, which lay a few paces away in one corner of the crypt. Returning near Marie’s body, she next undressed herself, then put her clothes on her dead mother’s body, buckling as well her gun belt around her. Next, Mélanie

concentrated and started shifting shape, taking Marie’s physical form before putting on her mother’s dress and shoes. Impersonating her mother was not going to be difficult to Mélanie, who knew Marie intimately and had been closely helping her manage the cabaret. Grabbing her FN GP35 pistol, she then walked back a good thirty paces from her corpse. Facing them again, she gave a last, tearful look at her dead mother before raising her right hand, pointing her index at the dead Marie.

‘’Goodbye, Mother! I will always love you. FIREBALL!’’

A speedy red dot then shot out of her extended index finger, flying to the corpse before bursting into a huge, searing fireball that enveloped Marie’s body and that of her killer. The intense heat blackened and scorched the stones around the blast, while the two

310

corpses were instantly incinerated to near cinders. Those who were going to come here to investigate would now find two bodies burned beyond recognition by a supposed incendiary grenade thrown by Mélanie as her last act before dying. The pistol still in her hand, Delicia, still in the shape of Marie Laurent, slowly walked out of the crypt, going up to the level of the modern church. She then walked out in the open like a zombie and sat on the outer steps of the church’s main entrance, where she started crying again. A few passersby saw her, with some of them hurrying to her side to see what was wrong. A young man was first at her side and gently put one hand on her shoulder.

‘’Madam… Madam, are you okay?’’

‘’N…no! A bastard just killed my daughter down in the old crypt under the church. I then killed that bastard, but I was too late for my daughter.’’ The young man then hesitated, seeing the pistol in her right hand, and looked around him for someone to help him. That was when Lisa Van Houten and Louise Thibault, armed with MP40 submachine guns, arrived at a run, nearly out of breath. Lisa knelt at once beside Marie/Delicia and spoke urgently to her.

‘’Are you alright, Marie? Where is Mélanie? Sylvie told us about the note near the telephone and we came as fast as we could.’’

‘’I am okay: I was just roughed up a bit. However, Mélanie is dead: she was killed while delivering me from a group of collaborators seeking revenge against us. She had time to throw an incendiary grenade before dying, killing the head of these collaborators. She…she is in the old crypt in the choir section.’’ Marie/Delicia then started crying again. She however didn’t need to fake her tears then: her grief was too real and painful for that. Lisa, herself bordering on tears at the news of Mélanie’s death, looked up at Louise Thibault.

‘’Stay with her while I go investigate the crypt, Louise.’’

Lisa then disappeared inside the church, leaving a distraught Louise to sit down beside Marie/Delicia. Lisa returned to the steps of the main entrance fifteen minutes later, as Paul Dujardin, limping, was arriving with Aïsha Rahal, both of them armed with submachine guns.

‘’Thank God you are safe, Marie!’’ said Dujardin on approaching his employer. ‘’Where is Mélanie?’’

‘’Dead!’’ answered Lisa, her voice nearly strangled by grief. ‘’She was killed by a collaborator while freeing Marie. Her body and that of her attacker are in the old crypt, burned beyond recognition by an incendiary grenade she threw before dying. That is

311

what Marie told me anyway. I also found the bodies of two armed men at one entrance to the crypt: they were probably killed by Mélanie before she encountered the last collaborator.’’

The group was left nearly prostrated by this sad news, standing or sitting around Marie/Delicia. Aïsha Rahal, the thirty-year-old Lebanese dancer, finally looked at the others as her tears dried up.

‘’What…what do we do now?’’

Marie/Delicia then surprised them by coming out of her grief long enough to speak in a trembling voice.

‘’First, we recuperate Mélanie’s body, so that she can be properly honored and buried. Then, we will go on, all of us. We still have a cabaret to run and a war to win.’’