Page 59 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

Leo took a right into a cul-de-sac, and Percy saw at once he’d picked the perfect location. A man’s scream here would invite no more action than the locking of a deadbolt.

Crumbling, triple-level Victorian era habitations lined both sides of the street, half of them obviously abandoned, the other half in such a miserable state of disrepair that they could only have been the worst sort of squats.

Leo pulled up in front of a house at the end of the street. The right side should have had an identical building flush with its wall, but that had fallen down long ago, leaving nothing but a crumbling shell, augmented with curling wires and burned bricks, cordoned off by an ineffectual rusted metal fence.

At the top of the street was a vast expanse of questionable grass, leading to one of the widest, most densely packed council estates in England. The whole ramshackle conglomerate was covered in a sordid black mould, which also featured on the interiors of many of the windows—those that were not missing.

The house on the left of their temporary abode provoked a little more interest and a little more concern. The car they pulled up in wasn’t luxury, but it was shiny and expensive, and it drew the immediate interest of a watchman who waited on the stairs. A tall, skinny, but wiry lad who looked like he’d given up any hope of a reprieve, and therefore had little to lose by pick-pocketing this lot. Or worse.

Leo’s supposition about that house, Percy decided, was almost certainly correct. Just the fact they had a watchman in that part of London indicated something particularly nefarious. Who would they need to look out for besides other criminals? No police were going to be wandering down that block any time soon.

Percy had no reservations about dealing with him, should he have to, but it was trouble he didn’t need, so although the man’s eyes burned into him when he climbed out of the car,Percy spared him only one long glance, with something of an intimidating raise of his lip, before calling Leo out of the car to take half of Joe’s weight.

Althea then climbed out. She slammed her door, looked up at the dilapidated house, but paused as her attention was drawn to the vacant lot next door. A scruff of ginger fur had caught her eye. That and the gentle step and green eyes of a small, dirty kitten clambering over the ruins.

The watchman ran his eyes over her bright purple track pants, her fluorescent yellow parka, and muttered, “Slut.”

She instantly responded with a canned, “Go fuck yourself.”

But Leo’s eyes blazed and he very nearly dropped Joe’s feet, which he only managed to keep a hold of as some pavlovian survival instinct sparked in the back of his brain. “What the fuck did you just say?”

“Leo!” Percy’s furious tone snapped him back to his task, but his eyes barely left the scrawny redhead, who never stopped smirking back at him until the four had made their way up the uneven concrete stairs and were concealed inside. Althea slammed the door, Percy and Leo mounted the internal staircase at Leo’s direction, and the cold, grim embrace of desolation wrapped around the lot of them.

Percy and Leo kept such addresses as these on file. ‘Safe’ houses in several major cities. It was clear though, by the musty smell and the damp that penetrated their very pores as with sickened fingers of unsavoury dew, no one had lived here for a very long time

Percy pulled Joe backwards over thin and threadbare royal-blue carpet. The stairs creaked and groaned every step of the way, and some part of him wondered just how rotten the wood beneath their feet was. The Victorian staircase was long and narrow, and when he finally mounted the summit, he stumbledback in exhaustion, tearing a hole in the sagging turquoise wallpaper as Joe’s body slumped heavily onto him.

A low groan came from Joe, and, “Fuck!” hissed Percy. “Where?”

“Here.” Leo nodded to Althea, who was, understandably, far, far quieter than usual. She skirted around Joe’s feet to hold a bedroom door open. Leo grasped Joe’s legs again, and both men redoubled their efforts, dragging him into the bedroom.

The carpet was a mean aquamarine-blue, burned and bare in places that revealed scuffed floorboards beneath. The room was one broken window beset with ivy, looking down upon an overgrown courtyard of nothing more than bare bricks and dead tree branches. It was an old bed with an iron frame and a filthy sagging mattress. It was chipped blue paint, cracks in the walls, likely a lot of asbestos leaking out of the gash in the ceiling, and it was fucking miserable.

The sturdy chair Percy had told Althea to tell Leo to buy was an oversized monstrosity from the seventies, but it looked as though it had been carved out of one giant tree trunk. It was thick, lacquered yellow, and padded, also in blue, on the base and the back.

Odd, the way Percy relished that small touch of comfort for Joe, given what he was about to do to him.

The chair had a twin, and, as much as he could manage to feel it, Percy was thankful to Leo for buying a pair, so he would have a place to rest his tired bones.

Leo steadied the first seat, Percy dropped Joe into it, and Althea pulled a black duffel bag out of a dark corner, emptying the contents onto the mattress.

A wide, long, and heavy chain was wrapped around Joe’s body, across his midline twice, then looped over his shoulders, tight. This fastened him to the chair with the help of an enormous, brand-new padlock, the key of which swiftlydisappeared into Percy’s pocket. Leo had chosen the simplicity of packing tape for Joe’s wrists. Around and around they wound it, then around his shins too. This being done, Percy leaned Joe’s drooping head against the back of the chair. He gave a long sigh, echoed by Leo, who, having missed the reveal before and having gone along blindly with Percy’s plans, finally asked, “So what did he do?”

“Possessed,” said Percy.

“Ah, shit,” Leo replied. “Not a demon?”

“No.”

“Because you’ve both got that warding?—”

“Correct.”

Percy remained where he was, watching Joe, and Leo tried, “Ghost?”

“No. Whatever it is, it’s not affected by salt, holy water or the Bible.”

“Fuck.” Leo blew a long, low whistle over his lips. “How about a djinn?”

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