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CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

YES, YOU READ THAT CORRECTLY. THAT REALLY JUST HAPPENED. SORRY.

J oe heard nothing. Saw nothing but the limp body of the man he loved—the man he was going to marry—lying there on the ground, sharp bones sticking into him, that he did not pull away from. No breath moved his body, and it was over in the blink of an eye. Too fast. Percy was gone, and it wasn’t something Joe had the ability to process.

That thing, that heap on the ground—that wasn’t him. It simply wasn’t. Percy was absent from it, the soul of him, the essence of him, and Joe could not fathom that change, because Percy had promised. He said he would always come for Joe. He said he would do it again and always, and it was eternity, and Percy had promised. And Joe never doubted him.

Althea was screaming, crying, Giordano was pacing somewhere, his head in his hands, and Leo, still clutching that spear, stared at the corpse in much the same way Joe did, but with more anger, more loss even, because Percy had never made him that same promise. Leo didn’t know in his heart the way Joe did that Percy could not possibly be dead.

Molly tossed the kitten to the ground, and Moxie, in her animal way, seemed also to know that he was gone. She skirted the body, sniffed at his cheek, but she didn’t huddle into him the way she had before. There was an emptiness in the air, in the cemetery, in all of Paris, it seemed. Everywhere but in Joe’s heart.

“No,” he said, shaking his head, unaware of the tears streaming down his cheeks. “No. He’s fine.”

“Joe…” Giordano started towards him, and Joe flinched away from the approach, holding up a hand to repel him. “No. She didn’t. He’s not…” But he couldn’t say the words. If he didn’t believe it, then why couldn’t he even say it?

A sob broke out of Joe, and the sound of it felt like a betrayal. The sound of mourning someone who wasn’t gone. Not at all. Because Percy would come for him. Just like he would for Percy.

Joe searched over the ground, his friends, the graveyard, trying to put it all together. Trying to find the missing piece of this bizarre puzzle that would finally make it make sense. He searched wildly, desperately, until he settled on Leo. Or more correctly, on what Leo held.

He extended the open palm of his hand. “Give me that spear.”

Leo was shocked to remember that he even had it. He looked at the object with such revulsion, a pure hatred of this thing that Percy had been murdered for—even if it was what he’d lived for. He hated it for existing, for taking Percy’s passion and his body and his mind. All the dangerous adventures, that drive to preserve these lifeless things that he had died for. That he’d let himself be torn away from Leo for.

He looked at the spear, then at Joe with the sheath, and he hated them all. “He’s dead,” Leo wept. “What the fuck are we doing any of this for?”

“For him!” Joe yelled. “He wanted—he wants —he needs this! He doesn’t want her having these things, this kind of power?—”

“He’s fucking dead, you fuck!” And Leo might have thrown the spear straight at Joe’s head, had Molly not spoken just then.

“It wouldn’t be smart, Leo. Watch.”

Tareq, sitting on the ground, exactly as a zombie might, staring directly ahead at nothing, suddenly became animated. Really, truly animated. His eyes cleared, his expression took full human affect, and for the first time since the night Percy had met him in the hotel in Libya, he spoke. “What… Who… How am…” He looked down at his shaking hands, then they stilled. His head raised, and he was blank again, and not one of them could fully process the idea of Tareq having been in there the whole time, stabbed, shot, beaten, slashed, broken, and still alive through it all.

“Do you want Percy back?” Molly asked. “Simple. Give me the spear.”

“Percy needs that.” Joe spoke through clenched teeth, angry and scared. “Don’t do it.”

“It’s very easy for me,” she said, eyes never leaving Leo’s broken face. “But I’m getting tired. I’m running out of energy. If you want him back, complete, just like he was before, give me that spear.”

“Give it to me,” Joe insisted, flicking his fingers eagerly. “I’ve got the sheath. I can stop this. I can fix it.”

“Otherwise,” Molly interrupted, moving a little closer to Leo, who held his ground. “I can borrow your girlfriend for a while. Drain her of blood. You can watch. Before I kill you in front of her.”

Joe moved in too, wary gaze shifting between Molly and Leo. “Leo, I know you don’t like me. I know you haven’t ever trusted me. But Percy loves me. You have to know that. He trusts me. He believes in me.”

“A lot of good that did him.” Leo’s words were salt on an open wound.

Molly enjoyed the moment, and she ran with it, flashing Leo a wide and confident smile. “I can put him back exactly as he was. And I can get rid of this priest for you too, if you’d like. Say the word, and you’ll have Percy all to yourself, as good as new.”

Leo’s head turned down, the reflection of his tears on the spear catching the early rays of dawn. “I don’t want you to kill him. I don’t… Joe, he’s dead. He’s dead. How can I?—”

“Leo,” Joe cut in, clear as the morning light burning up the graveyard fog. “What would Percy do?”

A sad, hopeless ghost of a smile rested in Leo’s gaze when he looked up. “Probably something incredibly stupid.”

“That’s exactly right.”

“Fine.” With the word that came out like venom, but which had a backbone of all the secret fondness he’d always felt for Joe deep down, he flung the spear in Joe’s direction.

Heavy, true, the two-thousand-year-old blade twirled and spun and Joe caught it with the precision of a warrior.

He looked up at Molly, victory written in every beautiful feature, from the vengeful smile on his tear-stained face to the virtuous spark of glory in his eyes. “Prepare to fucking die.”

It felt like triumph in Joe’s hands, the sheath and the spear together at last. It felt so exactly right, the two made for each other, immaculately crafted, the blade ready to return to its home for the first time in millennia. It felt like a promise. Like all his years of service to the Church, all that time he’d spent fighting evil, all the demons and horrible things he and Percy had put their lives on the line to kill through the years, finally, all this would be recognised with this one precious gift from God.

With renewed vigour, the flame of hope—more than hope— belief alive in his heart, Joe slammed the blade down into its sheath. It slotted in smoothly with a satisfying shink , and…

Nothing happened.

But what had he been expecting? A magical fire from heaven to shoot down and smite Molly on the spot? Percy to jump up alive and well?

But there was nothing.

A complete and utterly useless nothing.

There was no power there. He sensed it. He knew it. He realised a complete and vast emptiness, and that chasm of loss threatened to swallow him whole in the instant. Tears flooded fast and hot to his eyes, and that look on Leo’s face… That look of betrayal, pure grief, hatred, all of it mingled together.

And Percy, still limp on the ground. Dirty from battle. Just left on the grass as though he was so much rubbish and rubble, refuse to rot and be gone, as though that whole beautiful life, that beautiful, beautiful being, that precious mind and soul and heart were meaningless.

Molly’s mocking laughter broke into the bereft scene. “Wrong decision.”

Leo had his back to her, held in Althea’s arms, crying. He probably didn’t even hear her, but Althea did. She radiated unalloyed hatred back, but she stayed there, arms around Leo, offering the only morsel of comfort she could in what she knew was a blow Leo would never recover from.

“And you,” Molly said. Joe lifted his eyes from Percy’s body to meet her hateful glare. “It’s over, priest.” She stretched out her fingers, and Tareq’s head began to turn. Waleed’s body began to twitch. Thousands of bones recommenced their macabre dance. Sure of her power, her victory, she surveyed the resurrection of her dead, as she stabbed at Joe with her final thoughts. “You’ve lost your friends. You’ve lost your love. And now, you’ve lost your faith.”

“Oh, no,” Joe said softly. “I’ll never lose my faith.” He took one step towards her, and Joe drove the Spear of Destiny deep into Molly’s neck. A choking gasp of shock gargled in her torn throat, and her wild black eyes begged for escape, but Joe had her by the hair. He ripped her head backwards, and just as he’d seen her do some twelve hours prior, he put his lips to the gaping, haemorrhaging wound, and he drank.

There was a scream, gasps around him, but he didn’t notice any of it. He drank deep of the blood that gushed free and plentiful, salt and iron and sickening, gut-twisting belief, not in the light, but in the dark. The darkness he had always lived in, fought in, refused to let Percy die in. It was visceral, real, undeniable, and Joe gave his soul over to it—to dark magic—the promise of Hell. Because from there, whenever the time came for him to be condemned, he’d fight his way out. And he’d do it with Percy by his side.

But it wouldn't be today.

He drank until the blood stopped flowing, and he threw Cleo’s pale and drained body down with all the carelessness Molly had let Percy’s fall. Then he turned towards his fiancé’s corpse.

This time, he felt the power. He felt potency in every atom, vibrating the pure energy of life and of death, and he understood it intuitively. He flung a hand out and dashed every just-standing skeleton into powder. In the same move, Waleed and Tareq burst apart into piles of broken skin and organs. Leo, Althea, and Giordano watched on, stunned and nauseated, not sure whether he was good or evil, or something else entirely. And in the centre of it all, surrounded by utter destruction, graves ripped apart, blood and broken bodies, shards of smashed coffins, stood Joe. His priests’ vestments were blacker than black, wet through with blood, the white of his collar red, like his neck and his chin and his hands and his teeth.

Joe staggered forward, to where Percy lay slumped on the ground, and he fell to his knees. He lay on his side, face to face with the only man he would ever love, who made no movement, no sound. He placed a hand on his cheek and he whispered, “Please come back to me.”

He curled closer, Percy’s skin ice-cold beneath his touch, his forehead on Percy’s, and his body shook with the tears, with the racking, desperate pleading of his entire being. “You promised. You promised me. Eternity. Percy, please. Please come back to me.”

Joe’s trembling lips touched Percy’s, once, twice, again, and those lips remained cold and unmoving. “Baby, please. You promised,” Joe wept. He pulled Percy’s limp arm over his shoulder and moved his head down under his chin, shrinking in the way he did whenever he had a nightmare. Whenever he needed Percy. Percy’s protection. Percy’s love. Like no one else in the world could ever give him. Because they two were pieces of one unique puzzle. Nothing would ever fit the way they did.

Joe’s hands scrunched into Percy’s shirt. Joe bathed it with his tears, and he shook so violently, cried so hopelessly, that he didn’t feel Percy’s fingers twitch, then press gently into his back. He didn’t feel the breath return, and it wasn’t until he heard the words, gently murmured, as if they were in bed, just waking, “What’s wrong, handsome?” that the air came into his throat, and he lay perfectly still, not daring to move a muscle.

Percy’s hand drifted to his cheek, and Percy kissed his hair, eyes not yet open.

Joe shoved away from him, crawling several feet back at lightning speed, where he stilled, staring back at Percy.

Percy, bewildered by Joe’s sudden flight, opened his eyes, and began to realise where he was. He pushed himself up on one arm, bleary-eyed, looked around, then, seeing the blood all over Joe, “What happened?”

On a trembling breath, “Percy?”

Percy looked down at himself, back up at Joe, and, “Last I checked?”

“Percy!” Joe very nearly broke Percy’s neck a second time when he leapt on him, knocked him backwards, and peppered him with kisses. “Percy! You’re…” Joe pulled back, hands pressed into his surprised but pleased face, examining every inch of him. “Are you all right? Are you evil or anything?”

Percy gave a vague shake of his head, as best he could in the vise-like grip. “No more than usual, I don’t think…”

“Oh, Percy!” Joe kissed him long and hard, pausing only to reassure himself again that those bright blue eyes still sparkled with life, with soul, with everything that was Percy. “Baby, you died. You died, and you came back.” Joe wrapped his arms around him. “I knew you’d never leave me.”

Percy returned the embrace, arms enfolding Joe as tightly as he was held, but his gaze ran anew over his friends, wan, ashen, trails of tears cutting through the bone dust and dirt that covered them. None of them approaching, and Leo, most of all, holding himself back.

Percy reached out an arm for him, and Leo was bundled against his chest in a second, wrapping his arms around Percy’s waist. Percy held them there, Leo and Joe, and surveyed the devastation, trying to put it all together. The sight of what had been Tareq and Waleed, utterly unrecognisable, had he not known it was them, nearly turned his stomach. But he was soon pulled away from that by another vision.

Molly lay gasping at the base of a grave. Her hand covered her throat, and the wound was healing fast. Not that Percy would ever have been able to gauge just how big it once was. All he could see now were red fingers, pink bubbles of froth leaking over them, and Cleo’s body so close to death. And sitting on the ground near her, perfectly unharmed, Moxie. “Please tell me what happened.”

“It was Joe.” Leo spoke proudly, looking at Joe with more love, more admiration than Joe had ever imagined he would see on that face. “He brought you back.”

Percy’s brain ticked the matter over fast. The blood at Molly’s throat. The blood at Joe’s lips. Joe in his arms when he woke, and now his eyes searching Percy’s, waiting. At the alarm that screamed quickly, loudly, Percy said, “That’s dark magic, Joe. That’s blood magic.”

“I don’t care.”

“I can’t get it out of you.”

“I don’t want you to.” Joe’s fingers slid into Percy’s hair. “I got you back. That’s all I care about. I got you back.”

“You did.” Two small words, but all he could get out to reassure Joe, as the chill fear of what Joe had done to himself, for Percy’s sake, began to overwhelm him.

Molly’s rasping and gargled words cut into his mounting dread. “It’s not what you think it is,” she said, head leaning back on the cold concrete of the grave, sucking in thin breaths. “Someone will find out. They’ll come for you. They’ll cut you down and take him away… Eternity can’t protect you. It’s life that you need to escape. Not death.”

“Are you still here?” Joe pushed himself to his feet, throwing a glare over his shoulder at the tall statue of the virgin Mary peeking over the tops of the trees. The place of the pyre that was meant for him. “Then maybe it’s time we had our own roast.”

Percy let out a half-shocked, half-amused chortle at the unexpected comment, but said, “Slow down there, Darkside.” He held out a hand, and Joe pulled him to his feet, his dagger-like eyes on Molly all the while.

Percy dusted off his expensive suit and straightened himself. He discovered his knife on the ground and took it up before setting his sights on Molly.

They all watched him, all except Molly, wondering just how far Percy would go. Nothing was going to kill her. The only viable option would be to disable her somehow. Would he tear her limb from limb? Take this head and mount it on a new wall in a new bar somewhere? Secret it away in one of the graves, just as she’d entombed Percy?

Joe hated her, violently, but even then, after everything, he was not without empathy, nor would he ever be. The story of the events that had led her to become what she was that day still rang in his ears, and a tired, bruised and bleeding hand reached out and caught Percy’s arm as he walked past.

Percy paused, his eyes met Joe’s eyes, and his heart just about beat out of his chest at the look on his face.

Joe and his saving the sad ghost bullshit.

Even after Bruges. Even after letting himself get possessed at Barmiston Hall. Even after he’d just watched Percy die at Molly’s hands.

Percy brushed gentle fingers over Joe’s, the slightest pressure acknowledging and reassuring. Then he slipped his dagger into the inner pocket of his jacket.

Looking rather like a slightly roughed up gentleman who’d just enjoyed a good ten hours of sleep, he bent down and scooped up his kitten, who purred loudly at his touch, working her way onto his shoulder. He settled down on the grass opposite Molly, and he explained, in a voice much like that of a brand new and not yet embittered university professor, “You’ll come back to my apartment. We’ll find you a new host. You’ll give my friend her body back. After you heal it.”

“I’m not doing shit for you,” she croaked, throat awash with the red that talking forced through the slit.

Percy’s vexed eyes sought Joe’s. Joe gave a little nod, Percy clacked his tongue softly, then pushed forward on a sigh. “Look, I’m really not in the mood to torture you out of there. I’m tired. You killed me, apparently. It looks like Joe’s just about done the same to you. So this is… This feels like a stalemate.” She turned her head a little further away in response. “Unless I take you apart piece by piece. But despite what you might think, I don’t want to do that.”

He thought over what he could say, thought over what he believed Joe wanted him to say or do, but more than that, he searched through his feelings—his true feelings about the whole mess they’d all found themselves in. How they got there. Every action that needed to slide into place for the lot of it to occur, a horror hundreds of years in the making and every person there in the cemetery that day caught in the crossfire of shots launched by cruel and idiotic men long since dead. He thought over all the things he’d seen and done with Joe those last few months, especially those last few weeks, and he said, “The problem is, I agree with you.”

He met her incredulous gaze with one that was sombre and grave, and he spoke softly. “I can relate to you in more ways than you know. I won’t pretend I’ve been through the same things you have, but I’ve wanted to destroy all of it. Every last bit. I’ve wanted to smash the lot apart, and a few months ago, I probably would have joined you willingly, had you asked nicely. But I’ve learned a thing or two since then.”

Allowing a sardonic smile, “What’s that? Play nice?” She looked down at her blood-coated fingers, and Percy felt all the anger simmering just below the weary, barely alive surface. “You’ve seen what happens.”

“No,” said Percy. “This is what happens when you don’t trust people who care about you. When you don’t let anyone in. It’s very hard to make it through this life all alone.”

Her brow narrowed, and she scrunched the bloody hand back down on her wound. She closed her eyes, waiting to heal, waiting for her powers to come back in full, or waiting for Percy to either attack or go away. Whatever might happen first.

But Percy revealed, “I met your familiar.”

Her reserve switched to disbelief, but the idea was clearly turning over in her mind that Percy wouldn’t have known to lie about that had it not happened. Still, she whispered, “You didn’t.”

“I did. And now I know what you did. You locked them in your basement. You promised you’d take them with you, didn’t you? You double crossed them, took the powers they gave you, and then you ran out, leaving them locked away in a demon’s body, starving.”

She shook her head bluntly. “No. I left them safe. If they get out— It’s what happened last time. People found out about us… That’s why they did it. I had to protect them. I had no choice.”

“Your familiar took Joe’s body, then they took my cat. I’ve spent a lot of time around the fucker, and they did a lot of damage. They did that trying to get back to you. Because they’re in love with you. And if what they say is true, you love them just as much.”

She scanned Joe, as though wondering if he still had about him somehow the proof that he’d been touched by her familiar. She found Percy’s eyes, and in a confiding, barely audible voice, shared, “I’m keeping them safe until I fix everything.”

“You can’t lock someone up to keep them safe.” He said it just as gently as though there were no argument or animosity or history of abject horror between them. “I’ve lived it, and I know it.” He brought the kitten down onto an arm, stroking her back as she nuzzled against him. “Listen to me. You have one person—one person who understands you. It’s more than so many people ever get in this life. One person who’d do anything for you. Kill for you, steal for you, tear the world apart for you.” He looked over at Joe, ever-blooming adoration in his eyes. “That’s true love. That’s not something you walk away from.”

Molly leaned forward, and when she spoke, she was more earnest than any of them had ever seen her, as though desperate for Percy’s acceptance of her words. “You can’t understand what happened to me.”

He held her gaze and replied, “I know. I would never claim to. You’ve been through things no one should ever have gone through. It’s unforgivable. It’s a dark cross that’s going to sit over all of us for as long as life goes on. But it’s not the only one.”

He rubbed the kitten’s chin, her head tilting up, her warm purr filling Molly’s silence.

“What’s the end game here?” he asked. “Go through the world smashing things up until there’s nothing left? Until either the anger burns you out or someone finally finds a way to destroy you once and for all? Because Joe and I aren’t going to stop. We won’t back down. And now you’ve seen what he can do.” Percy only caught the smallest flash of Joe’s becoming blush before he was drawn away by Molly’s cry of frustration.

“I want revenge!” She threw her hands up into the air, a rain of blood dripping across the grass. “I don’t know. Some kind of… Something ! Something to make up for it. Something to make up for four hundred years?—”

“Nothing can,” he said bluntly. “And that’s brutal, and it’s life. Nothing can ever atone for a past wrong like that.”

“Yet you expected me to give up and walk away in exchange for a cat?”

“I’m not asking you to give up. And you’re not having my cat either.” She scowled, he scowled, and he continued, as patiently and succinctly as possible, “People want to tell you that anger is dark and that it’s bad. It’s not. It’s energy, and it’s power. When you let go of your anger, that’s when you become complacent. That’s when you become a victim. I would never ask you to do that.”

Percy reached for her hand, which surprised her enough to look up at him, large and frightened eyes meeting those that had known the fathoms of deepest love, and deepest pain. “If I could change it, I would. I’ve wanted to burn this world more times than I can tell you. But I’m glad I couldn’t. Because if I wasn’t here to fight, if Joe wasn’t, what then? Should we just hand this world over to people like that? We can’t choose our pasts or our families or the people we’re surrounded by, any of us. But you can choose the people you love. You can choose to fight for them. They’re worth every bit of it.”

Molly gave a breath of a laugh, so much as to say she felt only the crippling fury, and none of whatever else Percy hinted at.

Without a trace of malice in his tone, Percy said, “Your anger is valid and justified. But you can’t just blindly take your fury out on anything and everything. You need to target it, and I can help you. You’ll get your revenge. And it won’t be through ‘living your best life’ or any of that trite, pacifist horseshit. It will be real, and cold, and viable. Precise. But you can’t give in and throw it all away by making a mistake like this. You can’t do them the favour of taking yourself out of the battle before you take some ground. Even though the odds are stacked against you, you fight, and you never stop. Because unless you fight, nothing changes. Just being here is a fight. Just existing. You stay and you be a thorn in their side until you split them wide open. There’s too much beauty in this world, too much love, to sacrifice it like that. That’s what they want. Don’t, after all this time, don’t let them take that from you.”

Her eyes fluttered closed, and the first tears she’d cried for four hundred years slipped free, down onto Percy’s fingers that still held her hand. She cried, long and piteously, and Percy’s kitten sank her little claws into him over and over, and Percy stayed right where he was, holding onto both of them. Molly yielded to his touch, moving her arms around his neck, pressing herself against his chest, and he ran a hand around her, stroking her hair, much like he would have stroked Cleo’s hair.

He could never have said how he might have reacted, what he might have done, had she looked any other way—had she taken the body of someone who meant nothing to him—but as it stood, Molly had chosen that one step on her path to near-world-destruction wisely. Just as she had when she’d chosen Percy and Joe to be the people to stop her.

Percy pulled back to look at her and said, “I really do believe that sometimes violence is the answer. Often. More often than not, in fact?—”

“Percy!” Joe interrupted.

“But sometimes, the softer way works even better.” Percy raised his eyes to Joe and offered a loving wink in return for his smile. “I never would have gotten here if I didn’t have someone to take my hand and show me the way. And I would have been broken. Hurting. And I didn’t think I was ever going to find my way out of that. I didn’t even know there was a way out.” Taking Molly’s hand again, he said, “That’s why I’m offering it to you.”

Molly tightened her fingers around his, and Percy enclosed hers with his other hand, and she said, “I’m sorry I killed you.”

Percy responded with a grin. “It’s okay. A lot of people want to do that.”

She laughed softly, then found Joe. “Sorry. For everything.”

“Fuck you,” Joe retorted.

Percy stifled a laugh, settling into how much fun Dark Joe already was.

“She’s a murderer,” Althea threw in, having been waiting for the appropriate time to remind them all of that small fact.

Percy gave a harried nod of understanding. “To be fair, a lot of us are murderers.” Her understandably outraged response was cut off when he focused his attention back on Molly and said, “I need to know. Can you bring those girls back? Not bones and ashes—can you bring them all back, full and alive again?”

“I can,” she said. “And Cleo too. Get me to the skull, and I’ll do it.”

Just then, a low and morbid groan echoed up a long avenue. All eyes snapped down to a shady path, where one final skeleton ambled their way along. More than a skeleton. A corpse in remarkably good condition for a body that had lain in its coffin for so very long.

“Oh, shit,” Percy muttered under his breath. He freed himself from Molly with a squeeze of her fingers, jumped to his feet, grasped Joe’s hand and pulled him some small way from the others. “Please don’t be mad.”

“What?” Joe did a double take of both the skeleton and Percy, not sure which one was worrying him more. “What did you do?”

Percy vomited out, “You know we were discussing art and morality, and, and, the philosophy of?—”

Twice as loud, twice as urgent, “What did you do?”

Molly’s head turned, and she cried out, “Puss?”

“Urrrrrrrh!” came the groan in return.

“Oh, Puss!” Molly bolted full speed down the path to the zombie, and all five watched on as she kissed the dusty walking cadaver, every bit as passionately as Joe had kissed Percy when he too was a freshly woken ex-corpse.

“That’s disgusting,” Leo offered.

“I’m going to need bleach,” said Althea. “For my eyes. And for… everywhere.”

Puss pulled back and addressed Molly with more ‘urgs’ and ‘arghs’, and Molly, who seemed to understand every utterance, threw back a defensive, “It’s nothing I can’t fix!”

Puss doubled down, it appeared, groaning more loudly, to which Molly responded, “It’s all still there. All the pieces of them, all in the house. Even their souls. I trapped them there. They haunt the place. But they have each other, you see?”

Percy’s eyes narrowed at the twisted logic regarding the many girls she’d bled and murdered at Barmiston Hall. “That’s fucking dark.”

“I know, but…” She ran supplicating eyes over to him. “I wouldn’t have done it if I couldn’t bring them back. It wasn’t…” Fingers twisting in the tatters of what had once been Degas’s burial suit, “I thought they’d be better off, in the house there, together. Away from things. They were all… They were all so sad. Like Althea. And this world, it takes girls?—”

“You took them!” Althea shouted. “Percy, what the fuck is this?”

Percy gave a stern nod of agreement. “Althea’s right. Althea deserves a big apology and?—”

“An apology?” Althea yelled. “What the fuck is going on? Why are you being nice to her? You should kill her! Where’s Percy? Meanwhile, Murder-Joe-Nosferatu’s over here, looking really fucking scary?—”

“Sorry,” said Joe. He wiped at the blood on his chin with a sleeve. “I’m still me. Want a hug?”

“No!” She visibly reeled back from him. “And… And there are bodies all over the ground. And how does she get to get away with this?”

“I literally can’t kill her!” Percy threw back.

“But that’s your whole thing!” Althea shouted.

“I know!” Percy also shouted. “It’s not the ending I expected either, but there we have it.”

“For fuck’s sake!” Althea spat.

“I’ll make it right,” Molly said, patting down zombie Degas’s mess of a jacket. With that, she slipped away from him, two weak and shaking arms stretching out towards the scene of destruction, and with a touch on the air, the pieces of Waleed and Tareq that Joe had torn apart squelched back together.

It was early daylight now, and the sight was beyond all recorded revulsion. It went on for some time, several minutes, during which Percy sidled up to a horrified Giordano and a bewildered Leo, Althea allowed Joe a bloody arm over her shoulder, and the five of them regrouped.

Last of all, the two former zombies regained consciousness, both harrowed, both deeply confused.

Giordano immediately stepped forward with a supporting arm for Tareq. “You’ve been through a lot. Can I help?”

Tareq, taken aback at the beautiful, bloody man holding out his arm, took it tentatively.

Percy caught Tareq’s eye as he searched his unexpected surroundings. “Remember me?”

It took a moment, but eventually Tareq uttered, “You shot me.”

“You shot him?” Giordano gasped out. “How could you?”

Tareq continued, confused, “I was…” He looked around again, and finally clocked Waleed, who appeared to be just as lost as he was. “How did we get here?”

“We were in the hotel…” Waleed said, tracing over his most recent memories. “Where are we now?”

Percy, delighted that they seemed to remember nothing of their ordeal, supplied only, “Paris.”

“How did we get to Paris?” Tareq whispered.

“I’ll explain everything.” Giordano moved a hand around his waist to help him across the field of bone dust. “First, we should get you to a hospital and make sure you’re okay.”

Tareq acquiesced easily enough, too befuddled to put up an argument, while also somewhat dazzled by the rich brown eyes that took such a concerned interest in him. He brought an arm over Giordano’s fine shoulder, because he did need some support after all.

“Can I come too?” asked Waleed.

Giordano glanced back at him, then to Percy. Percy gave a nod. Giordano’s lips twisted. “All right.”

But any move that might have been made to depart the cemetery was then paused by the grotesque sound of wet kisses on crumbling and putrid, half-rotten skin. The increasingly heated display in front of them eventually forced Percy to call out, “Enough of that! At least until you give Cleo her body back.”

When Molly turned to face them again, she was positively beaming. She led her zombie up the garden path, where Percy stepped forward to take a closer look at him. “Puss?”

“My cat,” said Molly.

“Your familiar,” finished Percy with an exasperated eye roll. “A lot of fucking use, you were.”

“Urrrrrrrh,” Puss protested.

“What the hell is going on?” asked Tareq.

“It’s probably best we just go now,” Giordano said hurriedly. Then to Percy, “We’re good? We’re done here?”

“Cocktails later?”

“I’ll call.” And with that, he led the way out of the cemetery, half carrying the exquisite and uninjured Tareq, Waleed trailing dazed and normal-looking behind.

“Leo,” said Percy, “locate some local morgues. We’ll need to steal a body for Molly. And possibly another for Puss.”

“On it.” He pulled out his notebook to jot a reminder down, and Althea let out a cry of furious exasperation in response, immediately stomping off towards home. “Al, wait!” Leo ran two steps after her, then turned back to Percy and declared, “I’m taking her out for dinner. Somewhere really expensive. And I’m putting it on your card. And you can’t stop me.”

Percy gave a small nod. “All right.”

“Okay.” He made to dash away again, but Percy called him back.

“Leo?”

“Mmm?”

“Thank you. I love you.” Leo almost visibly melted, and his full body smashed back into Percy’s with an enormous burst of love. Percy held him for as long as Leo could stand the thought of Althea getting further away, then Percy, feeling him pull back, whispered, “Run.”

He gave Percy and Joe each one final, thankful glance, and was gone.

“Right,” said Percy, dropping Moxie, his unpossessed and slightly abnormal kitten into his pocket, “Let’s get these two home and body-swapped?—”

“No,” said Joe, reaching in and picking the unwilling kitten back out. “They can meet us there.” He handed the kitten to Puss with a glare at Molly. “She knows where you live. And we’ve got something we need to do.”

Percy, none too pleased to see his kitten back in Molly’s company, glanced around with a lightly annoyed shrug. “The council will clean it up.”

“Not that.” He said to Molly, “Go. Revive anyone you killed on the way, and when you get there, go into one of the bedrooms. Leave Althea alone.”

She gave a guilty tilt of her head and ambled away with her familiar.

As soon as they were out of earshot, Percy turned to an anxious Joe. “What is it? It’s not like you to let an arch villainess and her zombie lover walk the streets of Paris unaccompanied. Certainly not with my cat. Are you all right?”

“I am,” Joe assured him. “Really. But there’s something important we need to do. Right now. It can’t wait another minute.”