Page 55 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

He dialled for an operator, and sucked in the deepest breath he’d taken in hours. “The Grand Hotel, Euston, London.” At the release of his words, a bone-shattering scream broke from the fridge. Blood curdling beneath his skin, he whispered a hopeless, “No… No…”

Another scream, and on the line a voice said, “Grand Hotel, London.”

Another scream, and Percy was ready to throw himself on his own knife. He whispered desperately, “Hold. Please hold. It’s vitally important.”

Another scream, just as he wrenched the fridge open and fell to his knees. He took the skull in both hands and brought her close to his face, placing a finger over her bare teeth. “Please. Sshhh. Please, please, shh. Please.”

“Eeeeee,” the skull softly wheezed in response.

Cradling Molly in his arms, he jammed the phone back under his ear. “Kathryn Highsmith. I need you to connect me to her room immediately… Yes, of course I know what time it is… If you must know, her mother’s about to take her dying breath in St Mary’s, and she needs to get here immediately. And don’t you dare tell her that. You put the call through right now.”

“Heeeeee,” Molly sighed.

A groggy voice came on the line, but before Althea had time to collect her wits, Percy commenced the urgent message.

“Althea, Joe and I are very close to dying, so do the following things right now, exactly as I tell you. Sit up. Turn on your lamp. Walk to your desk and pick up the pen… Done? Good. I’m going to give you Leo’s number in Paris.” He rattled off the digits and had her read them back. “Tell him to book me and Joe on the next three flights going from Sumburgh to Aberdeen… Yes, all three. And the corresponding second and third, and following three from Aberdeen to London… Got that? And tell him I want a room at the most dangerous and notorious hotel the city has… It doesn’t matter why, just do it… Okay, stop talking and listen… Quiet… Tell him I need a sturdy chair, and a lot of rope… Not for any reason at all… Stop talking, Althea!… Good. Then tell him to be on the first flight from Paris to London. Now here’s your task. You need sleeping pills… No, I don’t care where or how you get them, get them. I want them dissolved in a bottle of water, waiting for me the second I get off that plane. You’ll need enough to knock a man out, but not kill him… Well, do you want to work for me or not?… No, no, it’s only Joe, but you can’t let him see you or we might both die… Calm down… Althea, this is serious. I’m depending on you to not fuck this up… No, it’s nothing to do with Cleo.”

At that, the skull, relatively placid in his warm hold a second earlier, gave a strange squealing sound Percy hadn’t heard before. It drew a touch of his attention, but then so did Althea’s not unreasonably panicked voice on the line.

“Yes,” he continued in his desperate whisper. “Okay, it is somewhat to do with Cleo?—”

That squeal, only louder and more insistent.

“No, you’re perfectly safe. Cleo isn’t?—”

His words were cut off by that squeal. And that third time, something in him clicked. His eyes snapped down to the skull. He lifted her face level with his and repeated the word. “Cleo.”

That squeal. That squeal that suddenly felt extremely deliberate.

No longer hearing Althea’s pleas on the line for more information, he placed the skull on the metal kitchen bench and dropped to her level, studying the inanimate object with extreme scrutiny.

“Cleo?”

That squeal.

It could be considered proof of how very fit, strong, and well-schooled in a horror Percy was that he managed to keep his wits after the sort of day he’d had leading up to that moment. He swallowed hard, and asked, unwillingly, “Cleo… is that you?”

“Heeeeeeee!” she hissed back desperately.

He snatched her off the bench, pulling her up to eye level. “How the hell did you get in there?”

The door clicked, and in one lightning movement, Percy spun around, sweeping the skull behind his back and out of Joe’s sight. Because there Joe stood. Just as lovely, just as loved, with a soft smile, and so much blood all over his beautiful lips—a sea of dry, sticky scarlet smothering his cheeks, his chin, his beautiful throat. “What are you doing?”

Percy’s hand slowly replaced the phone on its receiver. “I had to call my mother. The time difference, you remember?”

Joe eyed the phone for several tense seconds, then his eyes focused back on Percy. “That’s right.”

Percy gave a nod and a tentative smile. “Yes, that’s right, handsome.”

“Handsome…” Joe’s lips tilted up into the soft smile Percy knew so well. “He…” The thing paused, stared hard at Percy,then made Joe smile a little wider. “I love when you call me that. No one else ever called me that. It makes me so happy.”

Inside—deep, deep inside—the first coil came undone. The first of the many parts of Percy that would soon fold and bend and snap and fall apart.

With his stomach like a lump of iron and so little oxygen reaching his fiery lungs that he could barely say the words, he choked back his grief, and uttered the one thing he still knew. “I love you, Joe.”

The thing stepped forward, beautiful warm fingers entangling with Percy’s cold and shaking ones, pulling his chest to Joe’s. Joe’s lips touched Percy’s cheek, Percy closed his eyes against the tears, and his trembling lips were kissed by Joe. By the thing in Joe. But by Joe. And Percy kissed him back, to convince it he had no idea, to convince himself that Joe was still in there somewhere, and in the hope the thing would end his life right then and there, in the arms of the man he loved.

In that kiss he tasted Joe, and he tasted dead meat, and he tasted despair. Utter and complete despair, wrapped up in a warm embrace, and he didn’t believe at all he had the strength, intelligence, or bravery to go through with what he was about to do.

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