The strange, little woman appeared as if from nowhere in the alley where they were hiding. She and Hova spoke. Something was decided. Laperte did not care. She held her child, her precious baby girl, so light, so wrong, so dead in her arms and wept. She could not stop. She could not see where she was going. The little waif that came with the woman led her by the sleeve. They would go, they would stop, they would wait, they would run, they would skulk. All the while, Laperte carried her baby and wept to herself. If only her tears could swell the child’s husk back to life. If only she could give her own blood to revive her heart’s treasure. At last they stopped. They told her to sit. She sat. She cradled her child’s body and sang a lullaby. Hova came to her then.
“Cherie,” he worked his mouth. It had nothing to say.
“What did this?” she asked.
“We will wait here, a friend of mine is preparing passage for us. We must leave the city.”
“What did this?” she asked again.
“Cherie, it is no use. Perhaps we should..”
“Do not! Do not try and manage me! Do not shush me! What did this?”
He hung his head, “Les Consommateurs.”
“Les Vampires? They are myths! Myths do not suck children dry!” She stood up. She glared about and found the strange little woman. “You! You know! What did this? What .. ate my child?”
The woman met her gaze, “The answer is complex.”
“Simplify it!”
“There is a greater evil imminent. It chose to deny its master the youngling. It thought this a kindness.”
“It. Thought.” Laperte stood over the little woman. She loomed over her. She thrust her dead baby at her and held it inches from her face. “This! This is a kindness??”
“It is what it thought.” The woman did not blink. Did not shrink back. Did not show any emotion that Laperte could see.
“What did this?”
“Laperte,” Hova tried to step in, “this is peu serviable. Please. Please.”
“She knows.”
“Of course she knows. Now please, sit down.”
“Not until she tells me what she knows.”
“Laperte..”
“Not until she tells me!” Laperte stepped around Hova and faced off again with the alien woman whose face beheld her dead baby without tears, without anguish, without care! “What did this?”
“One’s kin.”
“One’s? Whose? Whose kin?”
The woman finally blinked. She slowly raised one hand which still wore a broken manacle. She touched her own breastbone. “One.”
