Page 108 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

But Waleed was already climbing to his feet with the uncontrolled, grotesque movements of a puppet on a string. Joe slashed again, hitting him in the stomach this time. He barely even bent. Joe raised the knife a little higher now, but that was when he felt the wet slap on his cheekbone.

He knew what it was before he dared to look. But it was look and understand or die, so he forced his head down to where a puddle of brain sat scrunching and squelching, with clear and disturbing intent.

It was the sort of sight that would hold most men in its thrall long enough for a piece of animated brain to get one good leap in. But Joe knew better, and by the time it made the foul flight, it met only his shoulder, then he was gone into the trees.

“Percy!” he screamed. “Percy? Where are you?”

No call came back for him, and he swore furiously at the enormity of the surrounding cemetery. Avenues and avenues, graves and graves, labyrinthine and surreal. Percy could be anywhere. Was he too laid out on a grave like Molly had been? Nearby? Or was he stuck in one of these tombs? Or worse?

“Percy!”

Tareq and Waleed were behind him, recovering fast. He knew it logically and intuitively. His only direct foes until they found him, that he was aware of, were pale crawlers and Molly. He hadn’t heard a growl since he touched down on consecrated ground. She was half his size, no match for him physically should he be able to get her within his grasp, he thought, so he was quite surprised when she stepped lithely from a black parting between two graves, raised a fist, and floored him with one hard punch.

The air was knocked out of him by that well-aimed jab straight to the diaphragm, and his knife clattered to the concrete. Gasping, he pushed himself up on scraped and bruised fingers, pain shooting through his legs and arms, which wasdoubled when merciless hands clenched tight at his biceps and wrenched him to his feet.

Joe struggled against their hold, his lungs howling for a full breath of air, as Molly fronted up to him. “He’s around here somewhere. In fact, I think he could probably hear you if you screamed just a little louder.”

Feeling the uselessness of struggling against his two zombie captors, now fully reformed just as though he’d never touched them at all, Joe let his body relax, concentrating only on getting those desperately needed breaths back into his lungs to clear his dizzy, oxygen-deprived mind.

But his mind did clear, and in record time too, with alarm that set every nerve to horrified attention when Molly said, “Boys, let’s have a cook-up.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

THE RIB BONE’S CONNECTED TO...

Percy had set his lighter upright on the floor, flame at a medium burn. It threw a meagre and flickering light about the tiny space, and blew out frequently with every gust of wind that drifted beneath the tomb’s door. But Percy barely noticed. As quickly as the fire flickered and died, he clacked it back to life, and zeroed in on the task before him with no thought of the likely dire consequences of his actions. He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

He was no expert in human anatomy. Yes, he knew which arteries to strike for the best payout of blood. He knew just how to gash them, long and jagged, so they’d be irreparable. He knew how to aim for pain, to maim, and to disarm with the least impact, rarely as he chose that latter option. But the sorting of broken and dusty bones back into the shape they’d held in life was close to beyond him.

Ribs are easy enough. Smallest to largest, isn’t it? But was that a humerus or a tibia? How tall had the man been? Would any of this hurried arrangement help his cause?

Percy reflected, even if the creature was a malignant demon of the damned, would that have made him so very different from so many artists who came before?

His expectations for Joe were shifting fast. No longer did his partner need to arrive in time to prevent him from suffocation deep beneath the ground in an unmarked grave. Now he only needed to arrive in time for Percy to escape from a newly resurrected zombie Degas until they could figure out what to do with him.

Percy’s mind ticked over the possibilities as he moved what he hoped was a shard of hip into place. This would be the grandest art restoration he’d ever had a hand in. And what knowledge would Degas bring back from the dead? Where had he been? What had he seen? Did a living skeleton need a brain for higher cognitive function, such as art conception, creation, and appreciation? If they could think to kill, why not to paint? And why had this idea never once occurred to him? And just how soon could he talk Joe into a hunt for the lostNecronomiconso he could use it to hone his skills of necromancy to the level that Molly seemed to have honed hers? Would it bother Joe if he started raising the dead for such an altruistic purpose?

A rustling came from outside, calling Percy from his thoughts and task. He cut the light and rushed to the door, ear pressed close, fingertips on cold steel for stability. The rustling approached. Dry leaves disturbed, crunching, and not a breath of sound besides.

It could have been Joe. That would have been Percy’s first conjecture, but there was no call for him. It would have been smart to stay quiet, of course. Molly was out there somewhere, hot zombie and average zombie in tow, and surely Joe would be trying to find Percy on the down-low.

Perhaps he should signal somehow? But what if that only drew attention to Joe, and left him exposed, with no help from Percy, locked up in here? Or what if it wasn’t Joe at all? What if it was Molly, stopping by to listen for his scratching on the casketlid? Or, finding no sound, coming to gloat over his death while she awaited his fiancé?

Percy made the decision to keep quiet. It felt like a lump of obsidian in his chest, but it was safer that way. If not for him, then for Joe.

He waited regretfully by the door, the darkness of the room seeming to settle on his shoulders as the sound of life stilled, dissipated into nothing. Then he dropped back to the floor to carry on with his morbid task.

He’d done most of the reconstruction as correctly as he could. What was left in the bottom of the coffin, he scooped up, hands covered in body dust and scraps of old cloth, and he sifted out the solid material. Which bits were fingertips or toe bones, he knew not. The teeth, at least, that he was ashamed to admit he was responsible for loosening from their frame, were easy enough to pick free, and he’d arranged maybe five, when there came a new sound at the door.

A sniffing, snaffling sound, which blew a spray of fine dust into the air, accompanied by a great shadow cast by the meagre light without. This came with a rasping growl that was amplified tenfold by the architecture of his tomb, swirling on the misty rays.

Percy’s eyes were glued to the door. His heart doubled its pace, and he wrapped his fingers around the sharpest shard of broken bone within his reach.

There was a clank. The screech of metal. Some external latch released.

The door began to move…

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

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