Page 118 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

Molly tossed the kitten to the ground, and Moxie, in her animal way, seemed also to know that he was gone. She skirted the body, sniffed at his cheek, but she didn’t huddle into himthe way she had before. There was an emptiness in the air, in the cemetery, in all of Paris, it seemed. Everywhere but in Joe’s heart.

“No,” he said, shaking his head, unaware of the tears streaming down his cheeks. “No. He’s fine.”

“Joe…” Giordano started towards him, and Joe flinched away from the approach, holding up a hand to repel him. “No. She didn’t. He’s not…” But he couldn’t say the words. If he didn’t believe it, then why couldn’t he even say it?

A sob broke out of Joe, and the sound of it felt like a betrayal. The sound of mourning someone who wasn’t gone. Not at all. Because Percy would come for him. Just like he would for Percy.

Joe searched over the ground, his friends, the graveyard, trying to put it all together. Trying to find the missing piece of this bizarre puzzle that would finally make it make sense. He searched wildly, desperately, until he settled on Leo. Or more correctly, on what Leo held.

He extended the open palm of his hand. “Give me that spear.”

Leo was shocked to remember that he even had it. He looked at the object with such revulsion, a pure hatred of this thing that Percy had been murdered for—even if it was what he’d lived for. He hated it for existing, for taking Percy’s passion and his body and his mind. All the dangerous adventures, that drive to preserve these lifeless things that he had died for. That he’d let himself be torn away from Leo for.

He looked at the spear, then at Joe with the sheath, and he hated them all. “He’s dead,” Leo wept. “What the fuck are we doing any of this for?”

“For him!” Joe yelled. “He wanted—hewants—heneedsthis! He doesn’t want her having these things, this kind of power?—”

“He’s fucking dead, you fuck!” And Leo might have thrown the spear straight at Joe’s head, had Molly not spoken just then.

“It wouldn’t be smart, Leo. Watch.”

Tareq, sitting on the ground, exactly as a zombie might, staring directly ahead at nothing, suddenly became animated. Really, truly animated. His eyes cleared, his expression took full human affect, and for the first time since the night Percy had met him in the hotel in Libya, he spoke. “What… Who… How am…” He looked down at his shaking hands, then they stilled. His head raised, and he was blank again, and not one of them could fully process the idea of Tareq having been in there the whole time, stabbed, shot, beaten, slashed, broken, and still alive through it all.

“Do you want Percy back?” Molly asked. “Simple. Give me the spear.”

“Percy needs that.” Joe spoke through clenched teeth, angry and scared. “Don’t do it.”

“It’s very easy for me,” she said, eyes never leaving Leo’s broken face. “But I’m getting tired. I’m running out of energy. If you want him back, complete, just like he was before, give me that spear.”

“Give it to me,” Joe insisted, flicking his fingers eagerly. “I’ve got the sheath. I can stop this. I can fix it.”

“Otherwise,” Molly interrupted, moving a little closer to Leo, who held his ground. “I can borrow your girlfriend for a while. Drain her of blood. You can watch. Before I kill you in front of her.”

Joe moved in too, wary gaze shifting between Molly and Leo. “Leo, I know you don’t like me. I know you haven’t ever trusted me. But Percy loves me. You have to know that. He trusts me. He believes in me.”

“A lot of good that did him.” Leo’s words were salt on an open wound.

Molly enjoyed the moment, and she ran with it, flashing Leo a wide and confident smile. “I can put him back exactly as hewas. And I can get rid of this priest for you too, if you’d like. Say the word, and you’ll have Percy all to yourself, as good as new.”

Leo’s head turned down, the reflection of his tears on the spear catching the early rays of dawn. “I don’t want you to kill him. I don’t… Joe, he’s dead. He’s dead. How can I?—”

“Leo,” Joe cut in, clear as the morning light burning up the graveyard fog. “What would Percy do?”

A sad, hopeless ghost of a smile rested in Leo’s gaze when he looked up. “Probably something incredibly stupid.”

“That’s exactly right.”

“Fine.” With the word that came out like venom, but which had a backbone of all the secret fondness he’d always felt for Joe deep down, he flung the spear in Joe’s direction.

Heavy, true, the two-thousand-year-old blade twirled and spun and Joe caught it with the precision of a warrior.

He looked up at Molly, victory written in every beautiful feature, from the vengeful smile on his tear-stained face to the virtuous spark of glory in his eyes. “Prepare to fucking die.”

It felt like triumph in Joe’s hands, the sheath and the spear together at last. It felt so exactly right, the two made for each other, immaculately crafted, the blade ready to return to its home for the first time in millennia. It felt like a promise. Like all his years of service to the Church, all that time he’d spent fighting evil, all the demons and horrible things he and Percy had put their lives on the line to kill through the years, finally, all this would be recognised with this one precious gift from God.

With renewed vigour, the flame of hope—more than hope—beliefalive in his heart, Joe slammed the blade down into its sheath. It slotted in smoothly with a satisfyingshink, and…

Nothing happened.

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