The Golem of Paris

Chapter fifty

His neck drawn taut, Jacob felt the edge of the potter’s knife kiss his throat, stopping just shy of incision. Overhead the skylights gaped, black pits mercilessly thumped by fists of rain, then slashed to eye-white by lightning. Molchanov released his grip on Jacob’s hair, the blade in place to prevent Jacob from moving; the giant raised the sprayer wand and began releasing gas, which mingled with the steam, engulfing them in a noxious white column.

Jacob began to sputter and choke as Molchanov took up a chant.

aa ab ag ad

The insane idea flew into Jacob’s mind that the Russian was making a blessing to render the slaughter ritually pure; but the knife remained at his neck and the noises droned on, muffled by the fabric of the scarf, ginning up a rhythm primal and sinister.

af atz ak

He said, “She’s not coming.”

Molchanov continued to chant.

“She knows about you. She won’t come.”

Molchanov chanted, pressed the knife closer. Jacob’s flesh shrank back.

Moving in agonizing increments, he began to torque his wrists in one direction, then the other, trying to loosen the electrical cord knotted hard as iron. Fighting the urge to hurry, the rubber abrading his skin, running sticky hot from humidity and fear, he kept working until his fingertips began losing sensation.

Success: a quarter inch of give.

Chest thudding, he peeked up at Molchanov. The giant was lost in concentration.

Jacob resumed twisting.

Minutes piled up. The drone continued. Jacob heard new excitement in Molchanov’s voice, the blade wanting to have its way.

zu zub

Jacob felt a mild bite, a liquid tickle, as the tip of the knife drew blood.

Molchanov said, “Zug.”

The air changed.

Jacob felt her before he saw her.

Molchanov felt it, too. A tremor ran down his arms. From high above came a faint glassy tinkle, gale winds fluting across the hole in the skylight, and the winged black diamond that was Mai swooped down at a blistering speed toward Molchanov’s face.

Without ceasing to chant, the giant slashed at her with the knife.

He missed. She was a small target, moving quickly; she had pulled up and was now circling back around the room, carving a tunnel through the fog.

Molchanov was trying to do too many things at once, tracking her while maintaining his rhythm while controlling a hostage while preparing for her next sortie. Whatever he was, whatever dark truth reigned within him, he only had one brain and two hands, and in his eagerness to get at Mai he failed to bring the knife back to Jacob’s throat quickly enough, and Jacob reacted without need for thought, pitching his head back as hard as he could, the base of his skull slamming into Molchanov’s crotch.

Whatever he was, the guy had testicles.

He doubled over, reeling, wheezing.

Jacob heaved himself to his feet and ran for the door, glancing back in search of Mai. She had banked sharply and was hurtling across the pool to join him. Halfway there, she flew through a wafting blanket of poison; her path wavered, a horrible scream tore loose, and she reverted to human form, naked and cartwheeling helplessly through the air.

She plummeted toward the edge of the pool, her head cracking loudly against the tile before she slipped underwater.

Molchanov had gotten up. His scarf had come undone and he was staring at the sloshing pool, disarmed by his own success. He glanced at Jacob, at Mai, his features savagely bunched, conflicted about whom to deal with first.

Beneath the muddled surface, her body sank.

Molchanov rounded on Jacob.

He reached for a gun he didn’t have.

The gun was in his greatcoat pocket.

The coat was draped over the chair.

The chair was knocked on its side.

Molchanov took a long step toward it.

The pool erupted in a geyser of foam.

Out of the water rose not a beetle nor a woman, but a tentacle of mud, berserk and swinging, smashing Molchanov backward, tossing him the length of the room.

Jacob crouched in terror as this new thing that was Mai rose completely out of the pool, leaving behind a muddy, dissolving cloud. It was blocky and faceless, melting at the edges as it oozed its way toward him. A tendril developed from where its belly ought to have been, snaked behind him, and snapped the cord binding him, and although it was her, another aspect of her, he couldn’t help but cower, repulsed, as it reshaped itself, a slimy, unstable wall reeking of stagnant waters and decay.

A slit opened.

“Go.”

Across the room, Molchanov was on his feet and charging, the knife out.

The mud shifted and swept to meet him.

They collided, head-on, rocking the room on its foundations, the air splitting, a storm surge overflowing the edge of the pool and picking up branches and leaves and slabs of dirty water, furniture splintering in reverberating disarray. Jacob landed on his back, hearing a loud wet rip, followed by another scream, low and gurgling.

Go.

She was giving him a chance to save himself.

Like some mechanical embryo, Molchanov expanded, unfolding himself, angle by angle, limb by limb, one powerful arm striving toward the sky, lifting the muddy mass off the ground, clods of earth dropping away to reveal its substructure: Mai’s emaciated form.

He was impaling her, the knife hand sunk elbow-deep in her abdomen. Rooting around within her while she wriggled and moaned.

But still her focus was on Jacob.

Go go go

He scrambled toward Molchanov’s coat.

The giant saw what he was doing.

Heaved Mai aside.

Ran at him.

Jacob got there first, his fingers closing around the butt of the pistol. He lined up and pulled the trigger, again and again. The first two shots went wide. He kept pulling. The third hit Molchanov square in the chest and produced no effect. The giant kept coming, knife cocked high, the triangular blade brilliantly alit.

Shot four caught Molchanov in the shoulder, spinning him just enough to expose the knob of scar tissue. Jacob aimed the fifth shot there, not because it was a large or useful target but because it was something he hated and wanted to destroy.

The bullet tore through Molchanov’s neck, blowing out a cone of flesh.

At once he stopped moving. His knees gave way and he slammed into the tiles, blood flooding out of him with unimaginable force, frigid droplets landing far and wide, making pink eddies in the pool water until the tidal force began to slow, and he began to change.

He retained his great height but his width and depth contracted, the walls of his body rushing inward to fill the vacuum left by the outrush of blood. His arms were gristly twigs, his face a prune. His skin, wherever visible, drained from pink to gray and then deepened to a weird azure, cracks webbing like the surface of old porcelain.

Jacob came forward and knelt down. Molchanov’s hands remained at his neck, clutching the potter’s knife between two desiccated fingers, as though he meant to operate on himself.

Jacob took it from him.

He placed the gun in the center of Molchanov’s forehead and shot him, point-blank. The eruption was white, all white and blue and nothing.

Jacob awoke with his cheek adhered to the floor, his torso throbbing as if he’d been run through with a spear, a drilling whine in his right ear. He could taste blood, not fresh but a menacing leak burbling up, the overrich taste tainted by another fluid — bile; stomach acid.

He rolled over and sat up on his elbows.

Molchanov was gone.

His clothes. His boots. His body. His ring.

A mantle of bluish dust lingered overhead. It had begun to sift peacefully down, settling over a wide area, powdering Jacob’s skin, stinging his eyes, burning his sinuses.

He got to his feet, dripping, coughing, besmirched. He staggered free of the toxic cloud, toward Mai’s inert body, calling her name.

She was a tent of skin, folded against a marble step, gnarled hands bracketing a horrific wound that stretched from hipbone to hipbone, bloodless edges ragged, curling. She appeared to have shed half her body weight.

But her lips moved as Jacob fell to his knees at her side, frantically touching her face, her chest, anything but the injury itself.

She murmured, fading. Leaving him.

The night in the greenhouse came back: mud flooding his throat, entering his veins to heal him. He bent over to put his mouth to hers but she shook her head.

She said, “You.”

So quiet. So weak. He’d never thought of her as weak.

“You,” she said again, her fingers closing around his.

She went limp.

He looked down.

She was holding his hand.

He was holding the knife.

He slashed open the front of his pant leg. He grabbed a fold of thigh and, grunting, drew an incision six inches long.

Blood sheeted out.

Jacob dipped his fingers in his blood and painted the jagged corner of her wound, watching as the flesh moistened and revived and grew pliable.

He pinched the corner of the wound together.

It sealed like soft clay.

He milked the incision, squeezing out more blood, continuing to balm her, to close her up. At some points the gap between the edges of the gash was so wide that he had to tug, gently, to encourage the two sides to meet. Where the middle of her womb would have been, a sharp tab jutted partway up from within her — an unnatural object, one that did not belong inside her. He thought to remove it, but hesitated, squinting.

Saw it clearly.

A twisted shred of paper, bearing the name of God in black ink.

It was this that Molchanov had been searching for.

Jacob tucked it back inside.

Mai gasped. Her eyes fluttered open.

He wasn’t bleeding fast enough to save her, though. He drew several more incisions in his leg, shorter but deeper, kept molding her back together, until at last she was whole again, her face still ashen as she croaked, “Thank you.”

He sank back, aching.

He said, “We have to stop meeting like this.”

Mai started to laugh. It cracked, turned to retching. He slid over and put his arms around her, feeling the ridge of her spine.

“Can you fly?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” she mumbled.

“Can you try?”

She said, “I don’t think I can carry both of us.”

“How about just you?”

She looked at him. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll take care of myself.”

The wounds on his leg wept, wept.

He said, “You need to get somewhere safe. That means far away from me.”

He knew what she was thinking then, because he was thinking it, too: forever.

“Don’t say it,” he said.

She smiled tiredly. “I wasn’t going to.”

“You were going to say something.”

“Only that I’ll see you again.”

He kissed her on the forehead. Lifted his arms from her.

He turned and crawled through warm bloody water to Pelletier’s body. By the time he’d found her phone, found Dédé Vallot’s number in the directory, Mai had already disappeared.

Jacob stared at the spot where she’d lain.

He shut his eyes and pressed the button to make the call, breathing in the quiet before the phone began to ring. It lasted a blessedly long time.