“Were you guys listening?” I said. “Anyone in the Circle could get this virus if they ingested our blood. You wouldn’t even be immune.”
“Nobody lick Avery or Stellan,” Elodie said weakly. I gawked at my bloodied hands, which had suddenly turned into weapons.
Lydia looked at her own hands, too, holding them farther away from her body. “Napoleon said on that scroll that there’s a remedy in the tomb. We can still find it. And if not, we’ll figure it out. Modern medicine has plenty on whatever scientific advances this woman thought she discovered.”
Cole cut her off. “So all we need is to mix their blood and have someone drink it?”
“Not even drink it,” Lydia said. “From the sound of this, it’d take just a drop. We might not even have to infect anyone. Just the fact that we have this . . .” I could see the wheels turning in her head. “I don’t know what we can do with it, but we can do something.”
“Not without our blood, you can’t,” Stellan piped up.
Lydia looked down at her hands again, and at the knife on the ottoman, and I could see in that second what she was thinking.
“We have to wash it off where it’s already mixed,” I said under my breath. “Off of us, and Lydia.”
Jack heard me, and was nodding. We both glanced at Cole, who still had his own gun trained on Luc, and Jack’s on us. If we tried to run . . .
“Get ready,” Jack said.
“For what?” I whispered, but before I could put it together, Jack took a deep breath and vaulted out of his chair.
Cole pointed the gun at him calmly.
“Jack!” I screamed.
Cole pulled the trigger.
The gun clicked hollowly.
Cole frowned and pulled the trigger once more—one more ineffectual click—and then Jack tackled him. Cole’s second gun went off, shooting through a crystal chandelier overhead and into the roof, sending bits of plaster raining down.
“Cole!” Lydia screamed, pointing her own gun in their direction, but obviously afraid to shoot at the writhing mass of arms and legs.
I snatched Lydia’s knife off the ottoman and had it at her side before she could cross the circle of chairs to her brother. “Don’t move.”
She was still for a second, then twisted, trying to knock my knife away. I remembered all my lessons this time. I swung the knife out of her reach and swiped her legs out from under her with one foot. She fell on the ottoman, and I held her down with one knee.
And then Stellan was beside me, wrenching Lydia’s gun out of her hand.
Across from us, Luc had thrown himself into the fray, and together, he and Jack ripped away Cole’s gun. Jack clocked Cole in the temple with the butt of it, and Cole slumped to the ground.
Lydia shrieked.
Then Jack picked up his own gun from where Cole had dropped it on the couch. He crossed to where he’d been sitting earlier, and retrieved the clip of bullets from under the overstuffed chair and clicked them back into the gun. He must have taken it out before he set down the gun in the first place. But if it hadn’t worked, and Cole had pointed the loaded gun at him instead . . .
I let out a shaky breath, my heart still pounding like a bass drum in my ears.
“Cole! Let me see if he’s okay!” Lydia writhed, trying to break free.
“He’ll be fine.” I shoved her back down and turned to Stellan. “We’ll lock them up, but first we have to get the blood off her and us.”
Stellan threw her over his shoulder. “Colette,” he said as we rushed out of the cafe. “Get Elodie to an ambulance.”
My mom was on our heels. “What can I do?” she said.
“Go with Colette and Elodie,” I said. She hesitated, but the farther I could get her away from danger, the better I’d feel. “Please.”
She finally nodded, kissed me on the head, and ran back. We continued away from the cafe.
Lydia was screaming obscenities. “Is there a fountain?” I yelled over her.
“We’d just be contaminating that water.”
I looked around frantically. “The beach. That’d have to dilute it enough.”
We darted out into the sand, and I kicked off my heels. Within seconds, we were plunging into the freezing water, pushing against the waves crashing on the shore, the salt stinging my cuts and my gold dress waterlogged and heavy and dragging on me in a way that made me flash back to Greece. I pushed down the panic and heaved the knife as far as I could out to sea—hopefully it would sink before it cut some unsuspecting tourist, but even that would be less dangerous than having it covered in our blood. Stellan threw Lydia into the surf, and I grabbed her, blinking salt water out of my eyes and rubbing at the traces of our blood on her hands.
“Just stop it,” she spat. We were about the same size, but she was strong, and it was only the crashing waves that put us on equal footing. “You think you’re so good. You think you’re not like us. You are. You just don’t know it yet.”