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CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

THE MOST GALLING INTERRUPTION YET

I f one tenth of the anger in Percy’s eyes had been physical, the entire apartment would have crumbled to dust, but in the tick of a clock, that anger changed abruptly to trepidation with the nerve-shattering call on the wind from the open window. “Doctor Ashdown?”

That voice—that sing-song lilt in the night—was all too familiar.

Percy, at the window in a few fast steps, closed his fingers around the white linen curtain and pulled it back cautiously. He felt Joe steadfast by his shoulder. Moxie sprang up onto the windowsill with a silent pounce, and Leo, Althea, and Giordano soon surrounded them to take in the scene below.

The formerly busy street lay eerie beneath them. The centre of Parisian nightlife for more than a century had dropped into an uneasy slumber. The scene wasn’t bloody—not particularly—not the kind of bloody Percy and Joe had grown used to dealing with. There were cars stopped, doors open, drivers hanging halfway out or leaning on their steering wheels. There were tables laden with drinks and food, just as they so often were, but with no one to partake of the bounty, because up and down the road, strewn here and there, lay… corpses? The bodies of men, women, and children lying down in the street, utterly motionless, noiseless, harrowing, and in the centre of it all, there stood Molly Tulloch, wearing Cleo’s body. She took a few steps closer, a long and low-cut black dress hugging every magnificent curve all the way to the street, rising marvellously beneath the folds of luxurious black hair all about her shoulders when she lifted two arms and blew a kiss up to Percy.

Percy turned his head, and on a low breath, he whispered urgently, “See, Althea? Now that’s a dress.”

“Percy!” Joe snapped.

“Everything can be a learning opportunity for teenagers,” Percy declared. He slipped his fingers into his pocket and pulled out his apartment keys. “Leo, the place is yours.” He grabbed Leo’s hand and shoved the keys into his unwilling palm, curling his fingers closed over them. “The solicitor’s got my will. I’ve left most of it to you. Take Althea, get on a train, and don’t come back for at least three months, unless you hear from me first.”

Leo shoved the keys at him. “What, no?—”

Percy shoved them straight back. “And don’t argue?—”

A loud clap sounded in the street, and, “Percy,” whispered Joe, still keeping a watch out the window. He grabbed Percy’s wrist and pulled him close in time to see the two figures that responded to the clack of Molly’s palms. They were two figures Percy knew well, and he was a mixture of horrified and relieved to see them, because the one to the right walked tall and handsome with no shirt and no hint of a dislocated shoulder. And the one to the left had no scar where Percy had shot him in the head. Most compellingly, he now also retained two full hands. Waleed raised one of those hands and waved up at Percy.

“That fuck!” Percy growled. “How did it get itself back together? We burned the bastard! We took it to pieces!”

Percy felt a different hand slide around his biceps, a touch of gravity in the firm press. “Who’s that?” Giordano asked.

Percy’s voice was clipped with irritation at the interruption, but he took the time to explain, “That’s Cleo. You remember her, don’t you? You’ve met her several times.”

Joe leaned forward, eyeing the pair, asking desperately, “How has Giordano met Cleo?”

“Not right now, darling,” Percy tried gently. He elucidated the matter for Giordano with, “The thing is, she’s not Cleo. She’s possessed by the spirit of a four-hundred-year-old witch, and she’s after… Well, I don’t know. She was after my nice magical sheath.”

Giordano let out a little gasp. “Cleo’s possessed?”

“Well, obviously,” Percy drawled. “Do try to keep up.”

Giordano was keeping up and ready to move ahead. “No, but, I know Cleo. I want to know, who is that ?”

All eyes dropped back to the shirtless man on the right-hand side of the witch in question. “Oh.” Percy chuckled.

Althea leaned forward eagerly. “That’s Tareq.”

“Who’s Tareq?” asked Leo, none too pleased with the sight.

“That’s what I want to know,” Joe returned, even less pleased.

“He’s very nice,” said Percy.

“ Very nice,” Althea cooed.

“He’s just a little bit…” Percy thought over the predicament. Tareq certainly didn’t appear to be the usual rotting, festering, slobbering, foul sort of zombie he was used to dealing with. “I don’t know. He’s sort of?—”

“Does he… um… Is he evil?” Giordano asked, eyes fast on the beauteous face that stared straight ahead the whole time.

“He might be right now… But there could be a way he’ll come good again.”

“And does he… Uh…” With a casual flick of his hand in Tareq’s direction, “Men? Do you think?”

Percy grinned, wide and knowing. “I got a vibe.” He ignored the way Joe’s mouth fell open, continuing, “We were in Libya, so he could hardly do much about it.”

“There was no vibe!” Althea protested.

“There was a vibe,” Percy insisted. “I just got a sixth sense about him. You know he might not even realise it.”

“Oh, I’d kill to be his awakening,” Giordano breathed.

Percy groaned an agreement. “The two of you together… Could you imagine?”

Joe’s head spun around like a possessed child’s might. “He’s a zombie! Stop talking about him like he’s not a zombie!”

“He doesn’t look like a zombie,” Giordano offered.

“No, he does not,” Althea agreed.

“He looks like a zombie to me,” Leo put in.

“And what are the ethics of that?” Giordano wondered aloud.

“Necrophilia?” Joe hissed.

“Don’t kink shame, handsome,” said Percy. “Plus, he’s walking around. It’s not the same thing at all.”

“If you’re quite done?” Molly called up. The small group shuffled themselves into a more serious-looking formation to listen. “I tried to be nice, Percy. We could have done this the easy way. The pleasant way. You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble. But you are stubborn. Which is why I’ve given up trying to reason with you. Joe?”

Joe said nothing, thrown to hear his name on her lips, such an inconsequential player in the whole game as he’d always thought he was. He watched her walk a few short paces to her left, where she stopped at the body of a woman lying prone on the ground. She kicked it softly, and with that one small indicator, Tareq and Waleed immediately pulled the unconscious woman to her feet.

“Joe,” she continued, “it’s my understanding that you’re not quite so fond of bloodshed as your fiancé is. That you have a little more sense and sensibility. That you understand, whatever I’m going to do with the sheath won’t be half as bad as what I’ll do if you piss me off.”

Molly pulled up the long sleeve of her dress, flicked her wrist back, and released a small dagger. Tareq’s hands wrenched back the head of the woman he held, and as Joe’s eyes flitted to the bare skin, to the flash of the blade, he yelled, “Stop! Stop it! We’ll get the sheath. We’ll get it now. Stop!”

Percy already had his hand on his own dagger. The group parted by instinct to give him space. But all were too intent on the drama below to notice that his movements were a little less fluid than usual. That his reactions were a little slower. Off balance. And none of it paused the sickening show playing out before Joe’s eyes.

Molly’s knife slid across the woman’s throat, and she must have been alive, because the blood spurted free and plentiful from her freshly slit artery. Molly cupped the back of the woman’s neck, and as though nothing in the presence of the harrowed onlookers worried her in the least, she dipped her lips to the scarlet fissure and drank.

“Holy fuck,” Althea whispered, turning to Leo, whose pale face watched on as he ran his arms around her. Joe reeled a step back from the window, dizzy at the spectacle. Percy, who for reasons none of them could understand, still hadn’t thrown the dagger, stumbled. Never off-balance, he staggered against the windowsill. The dagger clattered to the floor, drawing the attention of the entire group. With visible effort, he seemed to get his bearings, grasped the weapon, stood tall, ready to make the attempt again, even as the room swayed away from him.

“Percy!” Joe was in front of him, two hands on his cheeks, trying to look into the eyes that clouded over, unfocused.

“Joe. I need…” A stark confusion overtook him, and he blinked back at Joe, his full weight shifting forward into Joe’s arms.

Joe, holding tight to Percy, yelled down at Molly. “What are you doing to him? Stop. Please!”

All bloody lips and chin sparkling in the street lights, she called up, “If you want him back, you bring me the sheath. Montmartre Cemetery. And be quick. He won’t survive long without you where I’m taking him.”

Percy dropped, Joe’s knees smashing to the floor by his as he tried to brace his fall. “Percy!”

“Joe…” He blinked again, this time long and slow and fading.

“Percy, wake up!” He slapped Percy’s cheeks, but the face he adored fell forward onto his chest, eyes closed, gone. “Baby, no. Don’t do that. Percy, don’t.”

In a slow, strange nightmare, Leo stumbled a step back and fell, Althea’s long hair sliding across his arm as she fell down upon him, followed by Giordano, dropping against the wall, and down to the floor.

Joe, in some desperate act of hopeful defiance, took Percy’s dagger and slid it into the inside pocket of his vest. He wrapped both arms around him, and pulled him with all his strength away from the window, intent on locking him away somewhere, as though the tiny latch on the bathroom door would provide some sort of obstacle to a witch as powerful as Molly Tulloch.

But he wasn’t thinking straight. Because Joe’s world had begun to fade in the same undeniable way an anaesthetic takes the mind. Fight, fight, but there is always the darkness, and it came for Joe callously, no matter how desperately he clung to Percy’s unconscious body, trying to save him.