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CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CRISPY-FRIED PRIEST

M olly had come prepared, and within minutes, Joe, though he fought valiantly, found himself strapped immobile to an enormous statue of the virgin Mary. His back was pressed against hers, and where she looked out over one half of the cemetery, hands clasped in prayer, his own were tied painfully tight behind him, his last vision of the earth to be a sea of death.

Tareq and Waleed didn’t have much to do now they’d delivered him to his fate. The pyre had been set in advance. The rope that was wrapped around his chest had awaited him. All the long walk to and through the graveyard, his short talk with Molly, all of it had been a meandering, easy, casual line with which she had reeled him in to die.

And how simple he’d made it. Not a thought for himself. Not a thought for anything but Percy.

“It hurts,” Molly called up, careless of his struggles against the unforgiving binds. “A lot. You think you can imagine what it is to burn to death, but you have no idea. When was the last time you maybe… burned the tip of a finger?”

“Let me go. Please. I’m not like them.” To this plea, he added the billionth desperate shout of, “Percy!”

“It’s so painful that all at once, you go a little bit mad. You almost leave your body, in a way. But you don’t. You feel it all, but you feel nothing else. There is nothing but pain. Nothing but the madness of unrelenting, burning horror.”

“Molly, please,” he tried, struggling against the rope. “I can help you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what they did to you. But I didn’t do that. You can’t?—”

“Fire!” she shouted, her voice echoing all throughout the cemetery, bouncing off every stone surface in the vicinity and back into Joe’s ears like a metal skewer.

“Molly, stop! Percy!” The graveyard became a blur, swimming in his panicked vision as he scanned the darkness desperately, tried the blank faces of his captors, couldn’t even capture the attention of Molly, busy rifling through Tareq’s pockets like he was another of Cleo’s expensive handbags. Until she found what she was after…

It was a match. One small match. One tiny movement, one tiny spark, and one tiny flame. But the sticks at his feet were dry and crisp and thirsty.

Molly enjoyed the fear, the way Joe’s eyes latched onto that little match. She took her time. She lit a cigarette with it, took a deep drag, and let the match burn almost all the way to her fingertips. She tilted the small stick, so the flame was just as long and strong as the speck of kindling could make it, then she dropped it.

The flame took hold with terrifying speed, growing bigger with every meagre breath of night air. The tendrils of fire licked Joe’s legs, the soles of his shoes burning molten against his feet within seconds.

“How does it feel, priest?” she yelled, the black of his religious garb glowing orange in the light of the flames, bright in those hazelnut eyes as he refused to look away, even as the fire burned up all but his last shred of hope: that Percy was out there somewhere. That he had escaped from whatever trap she’d put him in. That Joe, who had done everything exactly right this time, had at least been a distraction for long enough. That he hadn’t let him down, and doomed him to an empty half life, living as a mindless zombie.

His head fell back against the statue in defeat, in desperation. The rubber of his shoes melted and bubbled. He could feel the leather warp beneath his feet, pain searing at his ankles, up his calves, as his clothes began to catch. “Percy,” he whispered. “Oh, god, please.”

Molly leaned her head back in cool amusement, took another drag and puffed out a long plume into the night, mingling with the smoke of Joe’s pyre. “God?” She laughed. “Look around, priest. Does it look like anyone’s coming for you?” Molly tapped a tip of ash to the ground, and with a cruel smile and dead eyes asked, “Where’s your Saviour now?”

The glowing tip of that cigarette drifted silently into the air, then extinguished itself into nothing, having been hewn sharply with a soft whistle of movement that was so fast, it was imperceptible to the eye in the semi-darkness. The movement kept on, a ruffle on the wind and nothing more until the rope that held Joe to the virgin Mary snapped, and Percy’s bejewelled dagger clattered to the ground. Joe dropped, shoving off the statue just in time to save himself from falling into the fire, landing instead on the cool stone of a grave, his eyes finding Percy’s, sharp, determined, and more murderous than he’d ever seen them before. “There he is.”

A long rib bone slid into Waleed’s gut and ripped from the base all the way up and across, letting his intestines spill to the ground before he was shoved down onto them. Tareq got it in the throat the second he went for him. The side of his neck gashed open with a ribbon of blood that splashed across Molly’s unmoved face. Molly watched the lot, head high, horribly sure of her body’s place in Percy’s mind. That he wouldn’t raise a hand to her, despite the glint of pure violence that still terrified Joe somewhere deep inside.

Percy never paused. Red-handed, jagged hunk of bone dripping with the blood of her zombies, he was within striking distance in half a second. Joe’s stomach coiled like a snake, and all the venom of it—the still-hot soles of his shoes and the crackling sticks on the ground by his grave—almost stopped him, almost stole that thread of humanity that, in Joe, was irrepressible. But it wasn’t Molly he was thinking about.

The weapon shone white and cruel as Percy raised it, and “Percy, stop!” Joe screamed.

But it was already too late.

The shard sank, so deftly, straight into her chest. Through the skin, blood easing its procession, it pierced her heart all the way through, until that once-pale tip of Degas’s rib burst out the other side.

And then Joe saw what he knew was coming. The deed done, Percy’s hand let go of the makeshift dagger with a tremble. All the malice gone, he stared, horrified, into the eyes of his friend. He said nothing, for what could he say? She was all shock, pain, hurt clearly written in every line of her face. And perhaps it was that. The way Percy could see the crushed expectation there. The sense of betrayal. As though she was actually Cleo.

Scarlet ran full and voluminous over her chest, soaking the black dress, dripping to the ground in a pool that glittered in the moonlight. She stumbled back, one step, two, three and four in quick succession, then caught herself with an unsteady wobble. Her eyes dropped from Percy to the bone still sticking out of her chest. She returned them to him, shocked, but now with a modicum of offence. “Ouch!”

Percy’s face cleared a touch at the unexpected response, taking on a shade of bafflement amongst the horror.

Breathing hard, for the blade was true and did not pierce her lungs, Molly wrapped her hand around the bone and pulled. Her body twitched and trembled with the effort, the pain she must have felt, but she didn’t shed a single tear.

Both Percy and Joe stared in stupefied silence. Now, indeed, would be the time to attack again, but the backs of their minds were alight with the questions—what was this thing? If that didn’t stop her, what on earth would? Exactly how fucked were they both? But at the front, that usually conscious part of both minds simply watched.

Long was the bone she drew forth. Long and curved and scarlet. She tripped a few steps further back with the volition of release, then she raised the rib up, examining its sharp tip.

She dropped it, the crack of the bone hitting the ground finally breaking Percy’s and Joe’s stunned trances.

All three looked at the rib sitting there, then her eyes drew Percy’s back, and she said, “I really didn’t think you’d go through with it. And to think… I didn’t have the heart to kill you myself.”

Percy had no opportunity to make a reply. Molly threw both hands up into the air, and the pavement lifted beneath his feet, cracked in two, and he was thrown to the side and into a jagged row of graves.

The concrete of the grave beneath Joe cracked open. He rolled to his side, falling onto a flowerbed. He shuffled to sitting, hands still tied behind his back, pushing himself against the stone, using it as leverage to try to clamber to his feet. He pulled one foot back, shifted his weight onto it, pulled the other leg for support… But that leg didn’t move.

It was stuck.

Caught.

Held .

Joe looked down in terror to find a white and bony hand reaching up out of the ground, fingers twisting around his ankle, clasping him in a death grip.

“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Joe hissed under his breath. He yanked at his captured leg, fruitlessly, for another skeleton hand stuck up out of the dirt, taking his shin in the same painful hold. A third came up around his other leg, and he heard, with some consternation, a scratching at the top of the broken grave above him. He struggled against the fingers that dug into him, pulled at him with a pressure that spoke of so much more beneath the ground, trying to push through the dirt.

Another hand rose up with a tuft of earth, and this took his thigh. Joe fought against his binds, the rope burning into his wrists, on the verge of tears at the stupid helplessness of it all, when if he’d just had one hand free, one leg free, what he could have done then.

A fifth bony hand settled on his shoulder from above, crept down and down his chest, then around his throat. And that was it. The moment Joe thought he would die, silent and strangled in Montmartre Cemetery.

A crack sounded, that of strong, human flesh meeting a bony skull, and Percy’s fist knocked the head clean off the thing that still had a hold of Joe’s neck. He threw the arm to the ground with a clatter, stomped a foot down on the bone that held Joe’s thigh, wrenched the other from his bent leg. Joe kicked it out, knocking both remaining hands off, and in a second, he was standing, pulled to his feet. His chest hit Percy’s, and Percy’s strong arm slid around his back, holding him tight against him, his eyes searching, scared, then his lips on Joe’s.

Joe’s entire body fell into the kiss, and the sound of graves cracking open, the clack and scratch of bones seeking them out, all the terrors of the night sank away, and Joe didn’t care anymore. If they died, right then and there, he’d do it in Percy’s arms, the two of them together, and none of it would matter. Paris could burn. The world could end. So long as he went down with Percy’s kiss on his lips.

But Percy broke it, turned him, slit the rope that held his hands with his trusty dagger. Around again, dizzy with speed and complete displacement, Percy caught Joe’s cheek with his hand. “Are you all right?”

Joe laughed, smiled, could barely form an answer, but the concern on Percy’s face and in his voice demanded one. “I’m fine. Totally fine. Percy…”

Joe threw his arms over his shoulders and kissed him back, tripping forward over another hand that came for them. Percy crunched another as he braced himself against Joe’s adoration. Percy’s fingers shifted to the back of his neck, fingertips sliding into his hair, where Joe loved them, remembered them, wanted them always.

Breathless, Percy dipped his forehead softly against Joe’s. “When I saw you like that….”

Joe shook his head gently, refusing to break the contact. “Nothing happened. Thanks to you.”

“I love you.” It came out like a plea. A desperately sad, almost broken sound that made Joe take Percy’s face and kiss him even harder, as if to prove that he was still here, flesh and blood and in his hold. Their two bodies pressed together, as though no closeness, no touch, would ever be enough again.

“I love you,” Joe whispered, both hands squeezing his biceps. Still he kissed him, not unaware of the crumbling of stone monuments around them, but eventually he forced himself to draw back just far enough to ask, “Are we going to do this?”

Percy gave a firm nod, and Joe pulled away.

But Percy caught him around the waist, and pulled him straight back, one hand gripping his dagger, one hand holding Joe against him, one thigh sliding against the inside of Joe’s, with such strength, and such a gorgeous love for Joe in his smile. “One more, handsome.”

Joe gave the kiss with all his heart.

Percy released him and said, “I found this.” From his jacket pocket, he produced his own favourite kitchen knife. The one Joe had long since lost somewhere in the cemetery, searching for him, fighting for him.

Joe accepted it, forcing it into the cloth holster on his arm. Then he took Percy’s hand to lead him… he had no idea where.

But it hardly mattered to Joe now. They would fight. They would kill. Maybe they would die. But finally, they were back together.