Page 101 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

Joe pulled out anything sharp he could find, wondering if the flimsy paring knife could ever stand up to bone. “No, no, not Percy. He’s smarter than that. He’s got to have a hidden compartment—or, or a trapdoor or something.”

Leo, pacing the floor, carded his fingers through his hair. “Anything he has is across town. In his vault.”

Joe looked up, the first touch of hope easing the taut skin across his cheekbones. “Then you get it. Get it all.” He slammed the drawer closed and wrenched a cupboard door open. “And that must be where he’s keeping the sheath?”

“It’s too far,” Leo cried, the pain in his attempt at a brave voice making it crack just like a teenage boy. “You heard her. We don’t have any time. We need to go get him. Now!”

Joe ripped a dishcloth to shreds and began winding a long string around his biceps. “I’m going to get him. You’ll bring the sheath.”

“Fuck you, Joe, I’m not leaving him.”

Joe spun around, knife in his outstretched hand, and yelled, “You’ll do as I say. Percy is mine, and I’m going to get him, and anyone who stands in my way is going to die tonight.” He shoved the blade into the makeshift holster and strode to the door.

Althea, all this time, had been keeping one ear on the group, and one on the nightmare below. “Did you hear that?”

With his hand on the door, Joe paused, turning dark eyes back. “What is it?”

Althea scrambled for the window, and it took but one look to bring a shake of her head, and, “Joe. No. Don’t go out there. It’s not human. It’s something else.” She raised a hand, and they all waited in silence until a long and low growl cut through the air.

Definitely not human. Not good.

Joe gave a slow nod, then advanced across the room to Giordano. He shoved the gun up against his chest, Giordano’s hand covering it by instinct. “Get them there. Kill anyone or anything that gets in your way.”

Leo took one look at the gun, realising the inevitability of the plan that Giordano readily acquiesced to, that Joe had gone and made without him, and stepped forward. “No?—”

Joe’s two shaking hands pressed against Leo’s face, and Joe spoke vehemently, eyes shining, locked with Leo’s. “He’s going to be fine. I promise you. I’m going to get him, and I’m not going to let anything happen to him. But if something happens to you, he’s not ever going to be okay again. Do you understand?” Leo’s face went blank at the unexpected outpouring, the protective affection. Joe lowered his voice, speaking so deeply into his heart, it was all vulnerability, with a desperate plea. “I can’t do this. I can’t get you both. He thinks the world of you, and youneed to be your top priority now. You do that for him, and for me, and for you. I don’t want a scratch on you, you got it?”

Tears rushed to Leo’s eyes, and in the urgency of the moment, he knew there was no protest to be made. Joe needed the sheath—Percyneeded the sheath. And he was the only one who could get it. Every natural impulse in him to be the one to get Percy—to not walk away from him—raised itself so violently inside and in opposition to logic that he couldn’t form any utterance.

But Joe understood. He pulled Leo’s head against his chest and hugged him tightly. “I promise. I’ll find him.”

Leo gave a small nod, pressed his back with his hands once, then pulled away to the far side of the room

“You can’t go to the cemetery alone,” Althea protested, trying her best to mask the fear in her voice with a deep and practical tone. “And Percy doesn’t want us to give her the sheath. Let’s just stick together. We’ll come with you.”

Joe glanced out the window at the desolate scene, another growl cutting into the night, then another, coming from a different direction. He focused clear eyes on Althea. “I’ll get them out of your way. And I’ll see you there. This is all we can do.” He raised a hand to her cheek. “Stay safe.”

He made for the door, snatching another knife from the kitchen table on his way past.

Althea called after him, “But god knows what she’ll do if she gets a hold of the sheath. You’re playing right into her hands.”

“She can do whatever she likes,” Joe threw over his shoulder on his way out the door. “I don’t care if the whole world burns. So long as I get to Percy first.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

THE CRAWLING HORROR

Joe’s heart thumped out a loud and stifling death knell as he pressed his forehead to the cold wood of the apartment building’s front door. He both heard and felt the bangs and scrapes on the other side.

When he’d looked out the window a few moments earlier, the street was empty of all animated life. What was out there now? How many? How vicious?

It hardly mattered. It wasn’t worth thinking about because he had no choice. He would go through whatever it was and he would survive. And he would get to Percy.

Joe sent a glance up the stairs, to the dark spot on the landing where he’d shut Percy’s apartment door behind him. He could hear voices arguing, and his heart wrung out a thanks at the rich depth of Giordano’s voice that seemed to be smoothing things over. Maybe Giordano couldn’t fight at all—Joe hadn’t asked—but he was tall, and strong, and he loved Percy. Joe could never doubt that, and he trusted it, and so he trusted him to keep Althea and Leo safe.

He faced the entrance, brought his knife up in preparation, took a deep breath, then flicked the latch open. He leapt back from the doors that slammed inwards with a deafening bang.White and damp flesh pressed into him, suffocating him. Claws and teeth and wide, round mouths. He could decipher no more in the mess of hot skin and bad breath and the din of hungry growls. His knife slid into stomachs and necks. Lost in a clamour of legs and arms and sharp, grasping fingers, there wasn’t time to aim. He slit, and he hit, and he kicked, and he was as well satisfied with a broken leg as he was with pierced skin. The beasts let out screeches of agony with every attack. Their blood was warm on his fingers—not like the dead things he’d tangled with in the past.

He fought his way forward, shoving one to the side, cracking a skull on the pavement. His knife ran deep into another’s throat and he slid it free, cracking his elbow into a cheek when one clambered up his back, its nails slitting the skin down his shoulder blade. His boot smacked down piteously on a kneecap, and inch by inch, he made his way into the street, bleeding, gasping for air, denying the pain that already screamed through his body.

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