Page 21 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

“We won’t ever be,” said Joe, covering Percy’s fingers with his own. “But it’s something we need to figure out. Whatever we find at Barmiston Hall, after all that stress with the painting, when we go back home where horrible things just unaccountably never stop happening… I’m beginning to think things won’t ever stop coming for us. So I need to know. If something takes you, do I bring you back?”

Percy didn’t blink. “Yes. You?”

“No.”

“Joe—”

Shaking salt over his potatoes, “No. Take my head or something.”

“I’m not going to cut your head off.”

“Then have someone else do it.”

“There is no one else. And I’m not convinced that would stop a demon from resurrecting you, anyway.”

“Percy,” Joe squeezed his hand tight, the ghastliness of every haunting memory gathering in the back of his eyes as he fixed Percy with his desperate gaze, “I know you would do the right thing.” He dropped his eyes, pulled his hand away, and took to pushing the food around his plate with a fork. “It’s not like it matters. It was the same demon that took us both. I’ve performed dozens of exorcisms and it’s never been that bad before. It was probably just a one-off. One bad demon.”

There was no point in Percy telling Joe that he would literally go to Hell and slit the devil’s throat with his own hands before he would let a thing touch Joe’s beautiful neck, so he nodded, poured some newly delivered milk into his coffee, and added some sugar. “I’m sorry I said what I said. I didn’t understand.”

“Not many people do,” Joe replied, before he began eating as an end to the discussion.

It was a moot conversation, and they both knew it deep down. Both of them were warded against demon possession. Both, coincidentally, by Anna. She had carved the symbol into Joe’s chest herself (rather brilliantly, Percy thought—Joe disagreed) in a successful attempt to make Joe’s body uninhabitable to the demon that was possessing him at the time. Percy’s… Well, after he murdered her boyfriend, Anna marched right over to his house, the first opportunity she got, shoved him to the floor and pulled a knife on him. Damn sexy it was, too. Not that he’d ever tell Joe that. Joe was salty enough about the situation.

Every time their shirts were off, there the marks were. Percy loved it, that they had that same link that bound them in a way no other couple was bound. Also, that it protected them fromdemons, of course. But for Joe, the mark on Percy’s chest was a daily reminder of the time before him. A time with Anna, whatever that entailed, and more than once, he’d wondered if Percy would let him carve a new one. If he’d consider laser surgery, or a skin graft of some sort to delete all traces of Anna’s hands on his skin. Understandably, he hadn’t suggested it, what with the proposition likely to put him on the wrong side of possessive, but it was a recurring idea.

Either way, everything had been fine between them until the topic of possession came up that morning. If they didn’t talk about it, then they would undoubtedly be fine again. With that interest at heart, Joe asked lightly, “How do we get to the inn?”

“We’ll get a taxi,” said Percy, in a voice equally convivial to Joe’s. “It’s not a long drive. Though it is a bit of a walk on the other side. It’s one of those lonely, windswept inns that sits all alone with only a few houses for miles around.”

Joe chuckled. “One of those?”

“You know the sort. One room above a pub, and even the publicans lock up and go away at night. So it will be you and me, all alone, in the middle of nowhere.”

“No surprise exes this time?” Joe joked.

Christ, I hope not, thought Percy, but he said, “Definitely not.” After all, Lerwick’s population sat below seven thousand, so there were only about… perhaps thirty people who might fit the bill. Give or take a few. Percy lowered his head and ate a little faster. “Should we go soon?”

“We should,” said Joe. “You know, I’m actually kind of excited about this. Not whatever horrors we’re going to find inside Barmiston Hall, obviously, but the two of us, the inn, the countryside. It should be a nice getaway.”

“We’ll make sure it is. The room sounds beautiful, from what Leo told me. All it’s missing is you.”

“And you.” Joe smiled across at him, looking almost as serene as he had some twenty-four hours earlier when they set out from Bruges. “I think that’s all we need. Some time alone together.”

Percy, still silently reeling inside from Joe’s harrowing admissions, forced a wide smile. “It’ll be an absolute dream. You’ll see.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

UNWELCOME TO TWATT

The tiny, windswept hamlet of Twatt is a small and forgettable conglomeration of roughly five farms and their assorted out-buildings. The slight rise the habitations are settled upon looks out over a few gently rolling hills and a deceptively deep and cold lake.

Percy and Joe’s destination was beyond this lake and over one of these hills, and while Percy had mentioned it might be ‘a bit of a walk’, he had not prepared Joe for the likelihood the taxi driver would screech the car to a halt in the centre of Twatt and announce fearfully, “There’s no way in hell I’m going down there.”

Joe scanned the dull yet pleasant landscape and saw nothing worth worrying about. He saw nothing much at all beyond a few lonely sheep and short, windswept grass.

“I’ll double the fare.” Percy pulled his wallet out in readiness.

“I won’t do it,” said the stout taxi driver.

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