Page 102 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

The creatures pursued him, some down low and agile, ready for attack, others dragging broken limbs, some breathing hard and already dying from the first onslaught, but they all followed.

Joe’s relief was palpable at the sight of the crawling, clawing things coming for him, leaving the entrance. He needed them away from that door. Away from Althea and Leo. He slowed his pace, waiting in the street for them to close in, backing up, backing up, catching his breath.

They were almost white, their flesh anaemic and translucent. They were humanoid of some sort, but they crawled along the ground. Not zombies, not humans under whatever sort of spell Molly seemed able to cast upon those close to her. These things showed no more intelligence than intent. Intent to destroy Joe and only Joe, their drooling teeth set on his flesh alone, ignoring the bodies that were strewn all over the street.

There were maybe seven of them now, some leaving red pools as they went, bleeding heavily from his knife, their elbows clambering high as their misshapen limbs propelled them forward.

A claw grabbed onto his hurt shoulder from behind, and he heard Althea’s shout somewhere above. He doubled over, flipped the crawler to the rough asphalt, kicked a boot to break its rib, and dropped to his knee to slit the throat wide open. He spun away from the carnage, knocked off his feet by another of the beings. He moved with it, fluid, and his other shoulder hit the ground hard, tearing a rip in his shirt and his skin, but he kept going and rolled over onto his back, kicking two legs up into his assailant, which he knocked back into another. Just as he got halfway up, another flung itself upon him, digging claws into his chest, cutting four vermillion streaks deep into his skin. Joe took two hands to the shoulders of the powerful beast in an attempt to restrain it, but its head flicked and its teeth gnashed all the more violently as it lunged for his neck.

A flash exploded to his left, a shot went off, a splatter of hot gristle painted his cheek and his chest, drenching him in the brains of the thing.

Joe scrabbled to his feet and looked up to find Giordano at the window, gun smoking. He let off a shot to Joe’s left, smashing another’s head open before it could complete its vicious pounce. The final crawler jumped, Joe wrenched his paring knife free from his arm holster, and smashed it deep into the mouth that opened to devour him, stabbing the creature through to the brain, killing it instantly.

It splatted to the ground, he heard a sharp “Mew!” and a second later, tiny claws dug into his already-bleeding shoulder, where Moxie landed with an unsteady thump. His aching fingers ran over her coat as he made his way a few steps back up the street, and slammed the apartment door closed.

“Thanks,” he called up to Giordano.

Giordano gave a sharp nod, wary eyes scanning the road for more of the predators.

A fresh growl sounded some way down the street, in the direction of Montmartre Cemetery. “All right, Moxie,” said Joe, wiping the blood from his knife onto his sleeve. “Let’s go get your master.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

PERCY AWAKES—IN THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY

Of all the ways Percy had ever imagined dying, this was by far the worst. After all, there’s hardly a person alive who hasn’t thought, at least once, about what they might do if they ever found themselves in the same predicament. For all of human history, the slim possibility of that fate has hung over almost every member of the species, and Percy had come up with no better solution to the problem than all the rest of us, even if circumstances had given him greater reason to dwell on the idea than most.

As such, when Percy opened his eyes to the dark, when he reached out his hands and felt the smooth satin overhead, when he ventured his arms out to his sides and met more satin, when he breathed in the musty, dusty, dank air, he didn’t shift. He didn’t panic. He stayed still, and let his heart sink, because he knew he had time. Plenty of time. Too much time. Because when you’re buried in a coffin deep beneath a tonne of earth, there is nothing but time. Nothing you can do but wait and try not to go mad.

Percy’s heart smashed so hard in his chest, he felt the shake of it in his shoulders. He was hot. Burning hot, and cold somehow at the same time. His ears were drowned in a rush ofblood and horror, and he tried to listen for some sound outside the coffin, but he couldn’t hear a thing above the emergency signals his body was sending out.

Fight or flight… Neither. Neither. For the first time since he was a child, there was nothing to be done but lie here and die.

He wanted to smash his fist into the lid—tear the satin to shreds, then try to force his way out. But having meditated for bored hours on this very eventuality, he had long since concluded that the slow march to death would be better spent without broken fingers and nails hanging bloody and loose. At least until he lost control. He wondered, would he feel the pain then? Or would it all be a miserable blur, like walking home drunk after missing the last bus?

Joe, he knew, would be cutting his way across the city to him. But where was he and what signs could possibly lead Joe to his… grave?

And if he didn’t come in time, was this it? His final resting place? Where his body would always remain?

He quite liked the idea of ending up in Montmartre Cemetery—which is where he guessed he was, considering Molly’s request for Joe to meet her there—but not like this. Not in someone else’s grave, which it had to have been, because the place was full to the brim, overflowing. Bodies upon bodies and no space for new ones.

So what had Molly done? Was this coffin resting on someone else’s? Had she had the hole prepared before she came to see them? How long had he been interred? How deep? How much oxygen was left?

Percy shifted, aware now of something digging into his back. Something sharp and hard just beneath his shoulder blade. It shifted away with the movement of his body, but he gave it only the spectre of a thought as the idea of his being in someone else’s grave closed in on him. Closed in tight like the walls of his coffin.

It was pitch black. Black and cold. He could have eased his lighter out of his pocket if it was still there. But if the satin caught fire… He shuddered at the thought.

He reached out once more and yes, satin, definitely. But it wasn’t flush with the lid. It sagged, and it came too close to his face and he didn’t like it. Nothing unusual there, for who would like to feel the sagging satin of their own death box on their cheek? But something about the idea struck Percy as disrespectful. Disrespectful beyond the fact of being put to a grisly death via premature burial. It was a sort of… final kick in the teeth. A way of saying, you’re not even worth a new box. Not even the most basic model. Just dig up one of the old ones, damp and mouldering, and throw the bones in a ditch somewhere.

He deserved better.

He deserved his own nice new?—

A sort of crick about the back of his thigh shifted his leg down a notch. That brought a jab into his left hip. He shifted by instinct and a crunch and crumble under his left arm brought his head across, and his cheek brushed something hard. Cold. Rough.

A shudder shot through every inch of Percy. A deep rejection of fact and a revulsion of reality.

No.

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