Page 106 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

Edgar Degas.

His eyes latched onto the coffin.

He whispered, “Oh, no. What have I done?”

Percy fell to his knees and wrenched the lid of the casket back open.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

STANDARD ZOMBIE PROTOCOL

Joe felt like he’d been walking for hours. Too long. Far too long, with no sign of Percy.

He began to wonder if the sheath was a red herring, and Percy was Molly’s true goal all along. That she’d only sent him here to distract him, while she took Percy far away, somewhere Joe would never find him. But why bother? Why didn’t she kill him when she had the chance?

Yet another turn, and up on the right of the path, a captivating, gorgeous grave came into view. It was that of a man, his full, life-sized body represented in copper, dead and laid out long with the folds of a sheet covering his legs and feet. His head lay back, lips parted from having taken his final, painful breath. An elegant and heroic figure, the green of the oxidised copper dripped like blood from the effigy of his person, down over the concrete plinth that supported him.

The darkness shifted somehow, and Joe’s eyes fell upon the black and barely visible form that lay out long atop the grave.

As though waking from a nap, Molly rolled onto her side, stuck a hand beneath her head, and sighed out, “You didn’t find him, did you?”

The knife was weighty in Joe’s hand. But what use would it be? She was right. He couldn’t kill her yet. Not in this sea of graves that he’d traversed for so long already, without any sign of his beloved.

“And I guess you don’t have the sheath, either?”

“Where is he?” The words were hollow on his lips, plainly desperate. If he’d hoped to gain an upper hand, a chance at bartering, it went with the pathetic plea in his voice.

She pushed herself up with a weary groan, sounding like someone who’d been interrupted for the dullest of reasons. Her legs dropped over the front of the statue, and she leaned back on two arms, stretching out her spine. “You’ll never find him. And you’re almost out of time.” She glanced around the overcrowded graveyard, at nothing in particular so far as he could see. “Or maybe he’s already dead. Though I probably shouldn’t tell you that.”

Joe’s grip tightened on the blade. He wondered at the way she left herself so completely exposed, but he was thankful for what he took to be her stupidity. “If he’s dead, you’re next.”

Molly laughed, but even in the thick of the unnerving interaction, it struck Joe as a sad sort of laugh, short and lacklustre. “If only you could.”

Joe edged a step closer, foot rolling from heel to toe with practised silence.

Molly paid him scant attention, searching the night sky through wisps of fog, head languid, eyes flat and glazed. “If only anyone could. I think this may be it. And it’s not much. This world of yours, four hundred years of it, and it’s still not much.”

He couldn’t kill her yet, but if he could get closer, get a hand on her, there were other ways. “You don’t think you can die?”

Her head snapped across, darkly focused, as though she’d forgotten for a moment that he was there. “I can’t. Not ever.”

She delivered it in an accusatory, disappointed, provoking sort of way. Almost a challenge. The insinuation in her tone surprised him, and he couldn’t help but ask, “Is that what you want? Youwantto die?”

“No.” She shook her head, just a little, her voice soft. “Yes. Yes and also no. I had a life, a long time ago, and I want that back. And I can’t have that back. Because I don’t remember it. Does that make any sort of sense to you?”

Joe, unsure, wanted her talking, so he gave a slight sound of understanding while he closed the distance.

She stared at the ground, brow contracted in thought as she explained, “I have memories of memories. I remember remembering things, you understand? Because I’ve thought about those things over and over. And when they took my head, and they hung me up… my hair fell out, strand by strand. My skin flaked off my skull. I didn’t feel it, but I knew it was happening. And I thought…” Joe froze as her eyes slid back to him. “Why was I a dead thing to them? Why did they watch it? Why did they listen to my screams, and drink their drinks, and go home to their beds? And my hair would fall on the floor. And I would scream, and my skin would flake, and they would drink. Then they would go home. And my hair would fall… It was long and black, just like Cleo’s.”

The tale of Molly’s death, the horrors of her torture and demise, the feeling of her skull in his hands, while he was surrounded by people who saw her as nothing more than an entertaining ghost story, were all still with Joe. He’d felt her history viscerally. And even in his anger, his desperation, her past conjured the same note of sorrow and sympathy in him. He said, “Cleo’s trapped in there now. In your skull. Just like you were.” It was an appeal to humanity in something that he wasn’t certain was human at all. In any form anymore. But his soul had latched onto her sadness. Her loneliness. The hurt. All theemotions that ran in parallel with his own from long ago, that he’d discovered so recently still hadn’t left him.

Joe thought he felt a common thread running between them, just for a moment, therefore he was surprised when she replied, “And why shouldn’t she be? She’s better off in there.”

A chill sank over Joe with the statement, given with clear eyes, like it was an obvious truth. “Better off like you were?”

Molly spoke indulgently, much as a mother might when explaining a simple concept that her child had failed to grasp. “She loved him, your Percy. She does love him. Adores him. And so she never told him so many things. All the things her husband did to her. A prince. So powerful. But I remember.” She raised a hand some small way into the night air, as though listening to the memories trailing on the faint breeze. “Four hundred years. And nothing changes. She’s trapped safe, or she’s trapped unsafe. But she’s always trapped.”

Joe gave the words straight from his chest. “Percy can stop it. He can do anything. He’s…”

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