Page 119 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

But what had he been expecting? A magical fire from heaven to shoot down and smite Molly on the spot? Percy to jump up alive and well?

But there was nothing.

A complete and utterly useless nothing.

There was no power there. He sensed it. He knew it. He realised a complete and vast emptiness, and that chasm of loss threatened to swallow him whole in the instant. Tears flooded fast and hot to his eyes, and that look on Leo’s face… That look of betrayal, pure grief, hatred, all of it mingled together.

And Percy, still limp on the ground. Dirty from battle. Just left on the grass as though he was so much rubbish and rubble, refuse to rot and be gone, as though that whole beautiful life, that beautiful, beautiful being, that precious mind and soul and heart were meaningless.

Molly’s mocking laughter broke into the bereft scene. “Wrong decision.”

Leo had his back to her, held in Althea’s arms, crying. He probably didn’t even hear her, but Althea did. She radiated unalloyed hatred back, but she stayed there, arms around Leo, offering the only morsel of comfort she could in what she knew was a blow Leo would never recover from.

“And you,” Molly said. Joe lifted his eyes from Percy’s body to meet her hateful glare. “It’s over, priest.” She stretched out her fingers, and Tareq’s head began to turn. Waleed’s body began to twitch. Thousands of bones recommenced their macabre dance. Sure of her power, her victory, she surveyed the resurrection of her dead, as she stabbed at Joe with her final thoughts. “You’ve lost your friends. You’ve lost your love. And now, you’ve lost your faith.”

“Oh, no,” Joe said softly. “I’ll never lose my faith.” He took one step towards her, and Joe drove the Spear of Destiny deep into Molly’s neck. A choking gasp of shock gargled in her torn throat, and her wild black eyes begged for escape, but Joe had her by the hair. He ripped her head backwards, and just ashe’d seen her do some twelve hours prior, he put his lips to the gaping, haemorrhaging wound, and he drank.

There was a scream, gasps around him, but he didn’t notice any of it. He drank deep of the blood that gushed free and plentiful, salt and iron and sickening, gut-twisting belief, not in the light, but in the dark. The darkness he had always lived in, fought in, refused to let Percy die in. It was visceral, real, undeniable, and Joe gave his soul over to it—to dark magic—the promise of Hell. Because from there, whenever the time came for him to be condemned, he’d fight his way out. And he’d do it with Percy by his side.

But it wouldn't be today.

He drank until the blood stopped flowing, and he threw Cleo’s pale and drained body down with all the carelessness Molly had let Percy’s fall. Then he turned towards his fiancé’s corpse.

This time, he felt the power. He felt potency in every atom, vibrating the pure energy of life and of death, and he understood it intuitively. He flung a hand out and dashed every just-standing skeleton into powder. In the same move, Waleed and Tareq burst apart into piles of broken skin and organs. Leo, Althea, and Giordano watched on, stunned and nauseated, not sure whether he was good or evil, or something else entirely. And in the centre of it all, surrounded by utter destruction, graves ripped apart, blood and broken bodies, shards of smashed coffins, stood Joe. His priests’ vestments were blacker than black, wet through with blood, the white of his collar red, like his neck and his chin and his hands and his teeth.

Joe staggered forward, to where Percy lay slumped on the ground, and he fell to his knees. He lay on his side, face to face with the only man he would ever love, who made no movement, no sound. He placed a hand on his cheek and he whispered, “Please come back to me.”

He curled closer, Percy’s skin ice-cold beneath his touch, his forehead on Percy’s, and his body shook with the tears, with the racking, desperate pleading of his entire being. “You promised. You promised me. Eternity. Percy, please. Please come back to me.”

Joe’s trembling lips touched Percy’s, once, twice, again, and those lips remained cold and unmoving. “Baby, please. You promised,” Joe wept. He pulled Percy’s limp arm over his shoulder and moved his head down under his chin, shrinking in the way he did whenever he had a nightmare. Whenever he needed Percy. Percy’s protection. Percy’s love. Like no one else in the world could ever give him. Because they two were pieces of one unique puzzle. Nothing would ever fit the way they did.

Joe’s hands scrunched into Percy’s shirt. Joe bathed it with his tears, and he shook so violently, cried so hopelessly, that he didn’t feel Percy’s fingers twitch, then press gently into his back. He didn’t feel the breath return, and it wasn’t until he heard the words, gently murmured, as if they were in bed, just waking, “What’s wrong, handsome?” that the air came into his throat, and he lay perfectly still, not daring to move a muscle.

Percy’s hand drifted to his cheek, and Percy kissed his hair, eyes not yet open.

Joe shoved away from him, crawling several feet back at lightning speed, where he stilled, staring back at Percy.

Percy, bewildered by Joe’s sudden flight, opened his eyes, and began to realise where he was. He pushed himself up on one arm, bleary-eyed, looked around, then, seeing the blood all over Joe, “What happened?”

On a trembling breath, “Percy?”

Percy looked down at himself, back up at Joe, and, “Last I checked?”

“Percy!” Joe very nearly broke Percy’s neck a second time when he leapt on him, knocked him backwards, and pepperedhim with kisses. “Percy! You’re…” Joe pulled back, hands pressed into his surprised but pleased face, examining every inch of him. “Are you all right? Are you evil or anything?”

Percy gave a vague shake of his head, as best he could in the vise-like grip. “No more than usual, I don’t think…”

“Oh, Percy!” Joe kissed him long and hard, pausing only to reassure himself again that those bright blue eyes still sparkled with life, with soul, with everything that was Percy. “Baby, you died. You died, and you came back.” Joe wrapped his arms around him. “I knew you’d never leave me.”

Percy returned the embrace, arms enfolding Joe as tightly as he was held, but his gaze ran anew over his friends, wan, ashen, trails of tears cutting through the bone dust and dirt that covered them. None of them approaching, and Leo, most of all, holding himself back.

Percy reached out an arm for him, and Leo was bundled against his chest in a second, wrapping his arms around Percy’s waist. Percy held them there, Leo and Joe, and surveyed the devastation, trying to put it all together. The sight of what had been Tareq and Waleed, utterly unrecognisable, had he not known it was them, nearly turned his stomach. But he was soon pulled away from that by another vision.

Molly lay gasping at the base of a grave. Her hand covered her throat, and the wound was healing fast. Not that Percy would ever have been able to gauge just how big it once was. All he could see now were red fingers, pink bubbles of froth leaking over them, and Cleo’s body so close to death. And sitting on the ground near her, perfectly unharmed, Moxie. “Please tell me what happened.”

“It was Joe.” Leo spoke proudly, looking at Joe with more love, more admiration than Joe had ever imagined he would see on that face. “He brought you back.”

Percy’s brain ticked the matter over fast. The blood at Molly’s throat. The blood at Joe’s lips. Joe in his arms when he woke, and now his eyes searching Percy’s, waiting. At the alarm that screamed quickly, loudly, Percy said, “That’s dark magic, Joe. That’s blood magic.”

---