Page 50 of The Executioners Three

What happened next was a blur of so many things that it was an actual sensory miracle Freddie’s brain could keep up—and with only one contact lens too!

First, Theo released Divya in a hard shove that sent her toppling forward into Freddie. But where Freddie expected to land on Dr. Born and his gun, she instead hit only empty air and fell completely off the stage.

Her left wrist didn’t appreciate the landing.

By the time she was upright again, she saw that Dr. Born had stalked in close to Theo, and that Theo had opened his arms wide.

Dr. Born stabbed.

The knife slid into Theo’s abdomen. No resistance. No reaction.

Blood burst forth.

“No!” Freddie screamed at the same time Divya wrenched Freddie violently away from the stage.

“Freddie, leave him! We’ll get help!”

Freddie didn’t want to leave or get help. In fact, she wanted to attack Dr. Born with all her strength. The man was literally slicing into the guy she was falling for, and he would soon find the intestine. He would soon dig it out and make Theo walk his own bowels around the pole.

Yet before Freddie could push past Divya or shout at Dr. Born or attack, heat pummeled in.

This was no gradual dip out of snow and frozen autumn. This was a sudden wave of summer roast that barreled straight across Freddie.

One pulse, and it felt like searing flames had engulfed her body.

A second pulse, and the flames reached her skull.

And lastly, a third pulse with a voice attached to it. Come, it seemed to say. We have work to do. Our oath is summoning.

Oh no . Freddie pitched sideways. So hot. So lost. There was someone inside her head, and they were talking to her as if they’d always been there. I really did have this all wrong. Theo was the last Allard Fortin.

And I’m the Charretière descendant.

I’m Stabby.

I’m the Disemboweler.

Yet for Born to actually gain control of her body and fully awaken the ghost of her ancestor inside her, he had to first kill someone the correct way… just as he’d had to hang someone to gain control of Bowman. And he’d had to decapitate someone to gain control of Laina.

Now, he had to disembowel Theo.

It was the only way to finish what he’d set out to do.

“Freddie!” Divya’s voice was a million miles away. Another universe. Another lifetime. “Freddie, what’s happening to you?”

A fair question, and one Freddie really couldn’t have answered even if she’d had control of her own body.

She could feel Theo’s life draining into her.

She didn’t want it—she didn’t want to feel his soul feeding these flames, with those gentle blue eyes and his constant, restless need. But she also couldn’t stop the curse.

Yes, said the voice inside her skull. We are bound to the bell. Bound to the Oathmaster that rings it.

“Oh my god, where are they?” Divya was shouting into Freddie’s ear. “What the hell is taking them so long—” Her words snapped off as a new sound carved in. Sharp as the knife now stealing Theo’s life from him.

An engine.

Freddie slogged her head up, and through flames of an old curse that definitely proved miniature Fox Mulder had been right, she saw a black Jeep revving this way.

Kyle and his reckless driving.

Kyle finally getting to embrace his one talent for running things over.

Freddie would have laughed if she’d had any control over her own body.

Instead, she simply watched—as lost in herself as Theo had been.

As lost as Bowman and Laina too. The Jeep launched right through the Village Historique.

It charged into hay bales and smashed over jack-o’-lanterns.

Then it rammed across the schoolhouse benches like a monster truck, only missing Freddie because Divya dragged her out of the way.

The Jeep careened into the stage, a noise so loud it briefly dominated all other sounds. Even the ones inside of Freddie’s brain.

And with that noise came a burst of clarity. The ritual to kill Theo had paused; the Disemboweler’s oath was briefly held at bay; and for a fraction of a heartbeat, she was Freddie Gellar and only Freddie Gellar.

No Stabby. No flames. No commands from an Oathmaster with a bell.

Freddie cranked up her spine. The bell. That was what it had always come back to, in all her investigations. In all her clues and discoveries.

The bell.

“The schoolhouse,” she croaked at Divya in a voice that was all her own—for now. “We need to get into the schoolhouse.”

“No, Freddie.” Divya gawped at her. “We need to go!”

Freddie didn’t listen. Instead, she tore from her best friend’s grip and bounded away from the stage, away from the Jeep wrecked against it and spewing steam into the night.

Away too from Luis bursting out a passenger door with an axe and Cat right behind with the baseball bat. Away from Kyle bellowing for Divya and Freddie to Come on! Get in the Jeep!

Above all, Freddie bounded away from Dr. Born while the ritual was paused and he was distracted.

“Freddie, what are you doing ?” Divya chased hot on Freddie’s heels. “What’s in the schoolhouse?”

“The… bell,” Freddie panted, rounding past splintered and toppled benches. “We have to break the bell, Div. Don’t you see? If we break it, the curse ends.”

It was clear Divya did not see, but that was fine. Freddie didn’t need her best friend to understand. Hell, Freddie herself was still blundering her way toward clarity. All she really had right now was her gut telling her what to do.

And the dreams—they had always ended in the schoolhouse with Theo saying: On n’est jamais si bien servi que par soi-même.

One is never better served than by oneself.

So if Freddie wanted this done right, she had to do it—and the it in question was breaking the bell. That was what dream-Theo had wanted from her—and that was what only Freddie could do.

Because it had never been a replica inside the cupola.

All this time, it had been the bell that Original Fabre had made.

Freddie had no idea when Dr. Born might have switched it out since Mom had gotten the replica made…

but he absolutely had done so. Which was why Freddie had noticed just last week how beaten and weathered the bell was looking.

She’d also noticed how the lights kept getting knocked down—not from the wind, but from Dr. Born right over there on the stage.

And she’d also noticed the bell ringing from the west, where this was the only bell she knew of. Yet it still had never occurred to her that someone might be climbing up there at night, shoving a clapper into the bell, and ringing that tin and copper for all it was worth.

Libérez-nous, Freddie thought.

She sprinted past smashed pumpkins and fallen heaters. Over hay bales and extension cords and puddles of melting snow. Divya was right beside her the whole way.

Red clapboard siding swam into Freddie’s vision. Wet leaves slapped beneath her and Divya’s feet. No wind, nor even the stink of dead things here. Each breath was a harsh boom in Freddie’s skull. A harsh burn inside her lungs.

She and Divya swung around the old schoolhouse, and it was almost like Thursday afternoon all over again. They were here to clean up a mess. They were here to get a special bell ready for a special day.

They punched through the door where Divya had slouched and played Snake. They thwacked over the floorboards where Freddie had swept, but now with no benches to get in their way. Just the ladder ahead.

Libérez-nous.

Freddie reached the ladder first. As she expected, the fairy lights had once more been knocked down. Before she could start to climb, though, Divya barked, “Wait!”

“No time,” Freddie started to say, but then Divya was yanking something out of her pocket.

Something so familiar Freddie actually choked.

It was the heart of iron from her dreams—except now she could see it wasn’t a heart at all. It was a bell clapper.

“Theo gave it to me,” Divya said on rasping breaths. “When he was holding me, he pushed this into my pocket. It must be for you.”

“It is,” Freddie said, and she yanked it from Divya’s palm. “And I hereby take back any mean comments I made last week about your helpfulness. You are officially the most helpful best friend of all time and I love you forever.”

“Duh!” Divya called as Freddie leaped onto the ladder and scrabbled up as fast as her limbs would carry her.

The bell above creak-creak-creaked , not from wind, but from Freddie’s movements in the cupola. There was definitely a clapper inside the bell now—and presumably a clapper that Dr. Born had kept after he first stole the bell in 1975.

Freddie reached the final rung. There was the Village Historique spread before her, now ripped apart like Looney Tunes’ Taz had swept through. (Which, note to self: Taz was a good nickname for Kyle.)

There was Theo, bleeding and statuesque upon the stage. There was Dr. Born, his gun aimed at Kyle while he roared at the Prank Squad to “Stay back!”

A shot cracked into the night. Freddie thought she saw Kyle fall. She definitely saw Bowman and Laina—still wreathed in unmoving flames—burn brighter. Blindingly so. But she couldn’t worry about any of them right now. She knew what she had to do; she knew how she had to save them.

Freddie turned to the old bell, made by Original Fabre three hundred years ago to replace one that had broken in the cold…

From a clapper that was too big for it.

“The ratio of tin to copper,” Freddie whispered, quoting Mom from the night before, “changes the color of the verdigris and the strength of the bell.”

She unhooked the clapper currently inside. It was heavy but noticeably smaller and lighter than the one Theo had somehow gotten ahold of.

Freddie tossed the newer clapper out the cupola window. It struck shingle and slid downward, a sound lost to the growing sense that Freddie was about to lose control of herself. Again.

Because Stabby was starting to wake up once more.

Libérez-nous.