Page 110 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

Percy had no opportunity to make a reply. Molly threw both hands up into the air, and the pavement lifted beneath his feet, cracked in two, and he was thrown to the side and into a jagged row of graves.

The concrete of the grave beneath Joe cracked open. He rolled to his side, falling onto a flowerbed. He shuffled to sitting, hands still tied behind his back, pushing himself against the stone, using it as leverage to try to clamber to his feet. He pulled one foot back, shifted his weight onto it, pulled the other leg for support… But that leg didn’t move.

It was stuck.

Caught.

Held.

Joe looked down in terror to find a white and bony hand reaching up out of the ground, fingers twisting around his ankle, clasping him in a death grip.

“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Joe hissed under his breath. He yanked at his captured leg, fruitlessly, for another skeleton hand stuck up out of the dirt, taking his shin in the same painful hold. A third came up around his other leg, and he heard, with some consternation, a scratching at the top of the broken grave above him. He struggled against the fingers that dug into him, pulled at him with a pressure that spoke of so much more beneath the ground, trying to push through the dirt.

Another hand rose up with a tuft of earth, and this took his thigh. Joe fought against his binds, the rope burning into his wrists, on the verge of tears at the stupid helplessness of it all, when if he’d just had one hand free, one leg free, what he could have done then.

A fifth bony hand settled on his shoulder from above, crept down and down his chest, then around his throat. And that was it. The moment Joe thought he would die, silent and strangled in Montmartre Cemetery.

A crack sounded, that of strong, human flesh meeting a bony skull, and Percy’s fist knocked the head clean off the thing that still had a hold of Joe’s neck. He threw the arm to the ground with a clatter, stomped a foot down on the bone that held Joe’s thigh, wrenched the other from his bent leg. Joe kicked it out, knocking both remaining hands off, and in a second, he was standing, pulled to his feet. His chest hit Percy’s, and Percy’s strong arm slid around his back, holding him tight against him, his eyes searching, scared, then his lips on Joe’s.

Joe’s entire body fell into the kiss, and the sound of graves cracking open, the clack and scratch of bones seeking them out, all the terrors of the night sank away, and Joe didn’t care anymore. If they died, right then and there, he’d do it in Percy’sarms, the two of them together, and none of it would matter. Paris could burn. The world could end. So long as he went down with Percy’s kiss on his lips.

But Percy broke it, turned him, slit the rope that held his hands with his trusty dagger. Around again, dizzy with speed and complete displacement, Percy caught Joe’s cheek with his hand. “Are you all right?”

Joe laughed, smiled, could barely form an answer, but the concern on Percy’s face and in his voice demanded one. “I’m fine. Totally fine. Percy…”

Joe threw his arms over his shoulders and kissed him back, tripping forward over another hand that came for them. Percy crunched another as he braced himself against Joe’s adoration. Percy’s fingers shifted to the back of his neck, fingertips sliding into his hair, where Joe loved them, remembered them, wanted them always.

Breathless, Percy dipped his forehead softly against Joe’s. “When I saw you like that….”

Joe shook his head gently, refusing to break the contact. “Nothing happened. Thanks to you.”

“I love you.” It came out like a plea. A desperately sad, almost broken sound that made Joe take Percy’s face and kiss him even harder, as if to prove that he was still here, flesh and blood and in his hold. Their two bodies pressed together, as though no closeness, no touch, would ever be enough again.

“I love you,” Joe whispered, both hands squeezing his biceps. Still he kissed him, not unaware of the crumbling of stone monuments around them, but eventually he forced himself to draw back just far enough to ask, “Are we going to do this?”

Percy gave a firm nod, and Joe pulled away.

But Percy caught him around the waist, and pulled him straight back, one hand gripping his dagger, one hand holding Joe against him, one thigh sliding against the inside of Joe’s,with such strength, and such a gorgeous love for Joe in his smile. “One more, handsome.”

Joe gave the kiss with all his heart.

Percy released him and said, “I found this.” From his jacket pocket, he produced his own favourite kitchen knife. The one Joe had long since lost somewhere in the cemetery, searching for him, fighting for him.

Joe accepted it, forcing it into the cloth holster on his arm. Then he took Percy’s hand to lead him… he had no idea where.

But it hardly mattered to Joe now. They would fight. They would kill. Maybe they would die. But finally, they were back together.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

PERCY AND JOE REGROUP

To say Percy was shell-shocked would be an understatement. He’d thought of Joe the whole time he was trapped—been desperate to get to him—but he never once imagined he’d come across the sight he had. The revulsion of knowing what Molly was doing to him, the thought of his screams, the deep-seated hatred he felt for himself that he wasn’t there. As though he could have fought whatever spell put them all to sleep. As though he could have broken down a solid iron door with his bare hands. But that failing sat deep in his gut, regardless.

Then he’d killed Cleo. Maybe she wasn’t dead, and maybe she wasn’t Cleo, but he’d killed her. Sunk a blade into her heart as though she was nothing, and he felt it, the blood still sticky on his fingers, a constant reminder of his coldness. His inhumanity. When even Joe had found it in himself to try to stop him.

“Are you all right?” The hand that tugged at his lifted him, just like it always did, from the muck and filth of his regret, and there he was. Joe. Beautiful, vital, alive.

Percy clasped his hand tighter, escaping with him into a tuft of trees, one of the few spots they could find away from the erupting graves. Rather than worry him even more with his darkthoughts, he said only, “I don’t know how to kill her.” Because even if bile swam in his throat at the idea, he knew he had little choice but to do it again.

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