Page 13 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

Percy pushed himself up regretfully. “It can only be a good thing if they’ve left us alone.”

“I’m not so sure.” With his newfound sense of bravery, Joe silently approached the door, reached up and undid his belt from the knot into which Percy had tied it. He felt Percy close behind him again, a kiss on his neck, a reassuring hand on the small of his back, so he pushed down the handle just as unobtrusively as he could manage.

The door did not move.

A little harder, he pushed it. “Percy, it’s stuck.”

Percy came around to his side and applied a shoulder to the door. The virulent strength of the two made short work, the door refusing at first, as if trying to do them a favour, before eventually giving up in one sharp burst. Percy and Joe trippedand fell over a body, slipped in a puddle of blood, and found themselves in a scene of horror such as neither had experienced before. And that’s saying something.

CHAPTER NINE

THE SCENE OF HORROR

There were more security guards than either of them had expected. Percy had guessed four might be after them. Six, Joe thought, a little more cautiously. But in that room were twelve dead men and women, contorted in a most heinous manner.

The first victim their eyes fell upon was the one whose blood was, primarily, now soaking Percy’s very nice pants. Not Joe’s, what with him wearing sexy Van Helsing leather, which he was finally content with. It is said the human body can hold ten pints of blood, and therefore, it quickly became apparent that the huge and gaping slash in that man’s throat was not the sole source of their scarlet bath.

Joe’s hand flinched away from the head it had inadvertently settled next to, eye sockets steadily leaking crimson, but he was quickly distracted by Percy’s, “That’s not good…” Joe followed his line of sight to the ceiling fan over his shoulder, grinding with a sickly whirring noise, under the weight of entrails. He wanted to say the entrails of one, knowing how long and heavy human entrails are rumoured to be, but he could not in good faith believe that. It hung lopsided and low and with a heft noone person could carry around daily. It still spun, and with that, dropped a pitter-patter of red rain along its path.

Percy and Joe both conjectured that although that mechanism was decorating a significant portion of the room, the stolid movement prevented it from accounting for the colour of the walls. Walls which ran and dripped red, the ghoulish pattern enhanced here and there by a handprint, by the scraping of fingernails clawing in their last-ditch attempt at life, from the very base and all the way to the top, and then out and across the ceiling.

“How is that even possible?” Joe whispered.

“I don’t want to know.” Percy was on his feet, pulling Joe up beside him, with his dagger out long, pointed at the painting.

There it sat, serenely, without a speck of blood even on the frame. Mother and daughter were back in position and, with one quick flip, Percy dropped it face-down on the bed. “Get the box.”

Joe tried to ignore the squelching sound his boots made, the gaping eyes looking up at him from the few faces that still had eyes. When he stepped on a tongue, he very nearly retched, but instead he doubled his pace, and with the kind of brute strength that would have made Percy take him back to the wardrobe had he seen it, Joe lifted the box from under two especially broken corpses, and wrenched it over to the bed. He thrust back the lid to reveal the fake painting, which was a different sort of gut punch on first sight.

He felt it.

Or more precisely, hedidn’tfeel it.

Percy had often talked of the magic of being in the presence of a painting by a true master. That the painting became not just paint on a canvas, but an entity. That the author’s soul remained in the work, and, he said, you would always know by feel—before you examined the paint strokes or the preparation or the style—you would recognise a masterpiece by its soul. And this one had no soul. And for that, Joe was eternally thankful.

Percy’s strong fingers split the real painting from the last poorly installed fastening that held it to its gilt frame while Joe pulled the fake out and lined up the box.

“Now, please be very careful,” Percy began.

“No,” Joe replied tartly. “Get them in the box.”

Percy looked up, an unusual, if still stern, plea in his eyes. “Do me this one favour.”

“What if they slip out the bottom?” said Joe. “Do you see this room? I don’t want to end up smeared down the wall.”

Percy’s voice remained calm. “I see it, and that’s why I’m asking you to be careful.”

Joe narrowed his eyes at him.

“In a roundabout sort of way,” Percy explained. “Don’t upset them. We only need to lift it that little bit higher to avoid bumping it. And please, let’s not scrape the paint if we can help it.”

“We’re going to burn it,” Joe seethed.

The movement of Percy’s delectable lower lip veered dangerously towards a pout. “What if the paint flecks are haunted?”

“What?” Joe snapped.

“I mean…” He tsked as though he simply couldn’t be bothered anymore, and finished with an irritated, “You never know. Just please do this for me.”

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