Page 115 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

“Ah, fuck!” Althea yelled, trying to shake the pain out of her hand.

“She’s got super-strength,” Joe shouted.

“She’s got what?” Althea ducked the punch that came back for her.

“You’re just mentioning this now?” Percy rounded.

“There are skeletons!” Joe screamed.

“Doesn’t—” Althea doubled Molly over with a sharp elbow to the ribs “—seem that—” she smacked Molly’s face down with two fists, directly into the knee she raised hard and fast bringing a gush of blood from her nose “—that tough—” she wrenched her up by the hair “—to me!” This final phrase she punctuated with a punch to the throat, at which instigation Molly dropped the spear to the concrete below, where it bounced twice, then slipped into darkness down the side of the grave.

“You’re getting a raise!” Percy called.

“Don’t encourage her!” Joe yelled.

Althea was wrenched off the plinth, not by Molly, but by Waleed, who finally got an arm around her waist. She grabbed for Molly to take her down with her, but he was too fast. Even so, she got a solid touch to the concrete beneath her feet and pushed back as hard as she could. Waleed stumbled but would have held, had Leo not tackled him, forcing all three back with acrash that caved Waleed’s head in on a decorative spike, just as effectively as it cushioned the fall of the other two, except Leo’s hip, which came down on the flat side of the Spear of Destiny.

Leo snatched it, reached for Althea, and scrambled to his feet as he pulled her up with him. On solid ground, he took both her hands, searching her over for wounds. “Are you okay?”

Her head snapped up, straight back to her target. “I’m gonna kill her.” She lunged for Molly, and was out of Leo’s reach, halfway back up the plinth, when she felt the crack of Molly’s fist. Althea was knocked into a full spin, Leo jumped and missed, and it was Giordano’s arm that came out just in time to stop her being impaled on the broken bones of the skeleton he’d most recently dispatched.

Giordano couldn’t offer her a second more help than that, and she tripped back into a mass of snapping skulls when Tareq threw all his weight against Giordano. The sheath was knocked into the ever-growing pile of bones at their feet.

Using the full and considerable power of his enviable physique, Giordano rolled, taking Tareq with him, until he was on top. He locked his fine thighs over Tareq’s and reached for the sheath, straining. Tareq’s fist closed around his shirt, and he tried to pull him down, but Giordano had already braced against such an attack and all it did was rip the shirt clean open, exposing his sweaty, muscular chest. Tareq tried again, firm abdominal muscles firming even more as he fought his way upright, wrapping an arm around behind Giordano’s neck. He pumped his pelvis up, forcing Giordano to grab him by the shoulder with one hand to steady himself, bringing the back of the other across his face with a resounding slap. Tareq only wrenched him closer, until their two naked chests were pressed together, Tareq attempting to force Giordano onto his back while Giordano struggled against his grip.

The snapped and sharp arm of a skeleton would have pierced Percy’s head straight through, had it not been thwarted by Joe giving Percy a good shove. “Stop watching them!”

“I’m not!” Percy spared him a glance, then lost it back to Giordano and Tareq. “Can’t you see he’s… he’s struggling? Wrestling him? Like that?”

Joe dodged a plank of coffin-wood that came at his chest. “Are you going to help, then?

With a vague shake of his head, eyes on the hot man and the hot zombie, “No, I don’t think so.” This time, a curled fist of bone got him square in the jaw. “Fuck! When did they learn to punch?”

“Serves you right!”

Joe made for the pair and soon had his fingers sunk into Tareq’s hair. He raised his enormous fist, and was about to break his jaw, or worse, when Percy yelled, “Maybe not the face!”

“You slit his throat!” Joe yelled back, fist frozen in readiness.

“You did what?” Giordano shouted.

“I’ve had more time to think things through now,” Percy called as he threw down a skeleton that had launched its entire body at him from a high gravestone. “Just break an arm or something.”

Joe was only too happy to grab the arm that clamped down on Giordano’s throat that very second and wrench it backward with such volition the shoulder made a loud crack, then hung loose. He was no more sympathetic with the other, soon leaving Giordano relatively unencumbered, whispering, “But his nice shoulders…”

Joe slammed a foot down on a skeletal wrist that guided bony fingers towards the sheath, snapped it upwards, and broke the hand off. He took up the sheath, muttering, “I’ve had enough of this.”

He wrenched his knife free from its holster and began to cut a clear line for Leo, hoping he still had the spear. Percy, anticipating his move, made for the same place.

Leo, having found an enormous rock in a garden bed, had smashed his way to Althea. She was back on her feet with nothing but malice in her eyes and heart, but the revival of Waleed, pieces of brain crawling up his shoulder and back into his broken head, made Leo throw himself in her way before she could launch her next attack, pinning her behind him. And just as well, as that very movement was the only thing that stopped a swath of pale crawlers slamming down on top of her as they poured through a gap in the graves and set upon them both.

Waleed clocked Joe, slicing fast and vicious through the crowd. He waited, as though still capable of thought and strategy, until Joe was within striking range. He raised his fist high, gathered all his strength and brought it down hard and fierce. Joe reacted instinctively. He wielded Percy’s expensive and ritually sharpened kitchen knife with precision, defending himself from the dark shape that he barely caught from the corner of his eye. The blade moved swiftly, cleanly, through Waleed’s wrist, as smoothly as if it were a hock of well-cooked ham.

Percy watched on in abject horror as that hand flew, spinning, flinging drops of blood as it went, around and around, to where it flopped down right by his foot.

He stumbled back so fast he tripped and fell. He was prepared for a dozen skeletons to clamber on top of him. Prepared for the hand to be back at his throat. But not remotely prepared for the timid “Mew” that sounded at his shoulder.

“Moxie!” He scooped her up, took her to his cheek, and kissed her furry face. “All right. Kill them. Use your powers and destroy the lot.”

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