Page 122 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

“Oh, Puss!” Molly bolted full speed down the path to the zombie, and all five watched on as she kissed the dusty walking cadaver, every bit as passionately as Joe had kissed Percy when he too was a freshly woken ex-corpse.

“That’s disgusting,” Leo offered.

“I’m going to need bleach,” said Althea. “For my eyes. And for… everywhere.”

Puss pulled back and addressed Molly with more ‘urgs’ and ‘arghs’, and Molly, who seemed to understand every utterance, threw back a defensive, “It’s nothing I can’t fix!”

Puss doubled down, it appeared, groaning more loudly, to which Molly responded, “It’s all still there. All the pieces of them, all in the house. Even their souls. I trapped them there. They haunt the place. But they have each other, you see?”

Percy’s eyes narrowed at the twisted logic regarding the many girls she’d bled and murdered at Barmiston Hall. “That’s fucking dark.”

“I know, but…” She ran supplicating eyes over to him. “I wouldn’t have done it if I couldn’t bring them back. It wasn’t…” Fingers twisting in the tatters of what had once been Degas’s burial suit, “I thought they’d be better off, in the house there, together. Away from things. They were all… They were all so sad. Like Althea. And this world, it takes girls?—”

“You took them!” Althea shouted. “Percy, what the fuck is this?”

Percy gave a stern nod of agreement. “Althea’s right. Althea deserves a big apology and?—”

“An apology?” Althea yelled. “What the fuck is going on? Why are you being nice to her? You should kill her! Where’s Percy? Meanwhile, Murder-Joe-Nosferatu’s over here, looking really fucking scary?—”

“Sorry,” said Joe. He wiped at the blood on his chin with a sleeve. “I’m still me. Want a hug?”

“No!” She visibly reeled back from him. “And… And there are bodies all over the ground. And how does she get to get away with this?”

“I literally can’t kill her!” Percy threw back.

“But that’s your whole thing!” Althea shouted.

“I know!” Percy also shouted. “It’s not the ending I expected either, but there we have it.”

“For fuck’s sake!” Althea spat.

“I’ll make it right,” Molly said, patting down zombie Degas’s mess of a jacket. With that, she slipped away from him, two weak and shaking arms stretching out towards the scene of destruction, and with a touch on the air, the pieces of Waleed and Tareq that Joe had torn apart squelched back together.

It was early daylight now, and the sight was beyond all recorded revulsion. It went on for some time, several minutes, during which Percy sidled up to a horrified Giordano and a bewildered Leo, Althea allowed Joe a bloody arm over her shoulder, and the five of them regrouped.

Last of all, the two former zombies regained consciousness, both harrowed, both deeply confused.

Giordano immediately stepped forward with a supporting arm for Tareq. “You’ve been through a lot. Can I help?”

Tareq, taken aback at the beautiful, bloody man holding out his arm, took it tentatively.

Percy caught Tareq’s eye as he searched his unexpected surroundings. “Remember me?”

It took a moment, but eventually Tareq uttered, “You shot me.”

“You shot him?” Giordano gasped out. “How could you?”

Tareq continued, confused, “I was…” He looked around again, and finally clocked Waleed, who appeared to be just as lost as he was. “How did we get here?”

“We were in the hotel…” Waleed said, tracing over his most recent memories. “Where are we now?”

Percy, delighted that they seemed to remember nothing of their ordeal, supplied only, “Paris.”

“How did we get to Paris?” Tareq whispered.

“I’ll explain everything.” Giordano moved a hand around his waist to help him across the field of bone dust. “First, we should get you to a hospital and make sure you’re okay.”

Tareq acquiesced easily enough, too befuddled to put up an argument, while also somewhat dazzled by the rich brown eyes that took such a concerned interest in him. He brought an arm over Giordano’s fine shoulder, because he did need some support after all.

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