Page 61 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

The eyes closed again, and Joe’s body drifted back to sleep. Percy kicked his knee. On the side. Not too hard, but hard enough. The eyelids fluttered open.

“What do you want?” Percy asked in a crisp tone.

“Sleep,” the thing mumbled.

“I’ll tell you what.” Percy leaned forward and gently slapped Joe’s face. “Give my fiancé back, and you can sleep for as long as you like.”

A little laugh crept up Joe’s throat. “That’s right,” the thing said, smiling beneath closed eyes. “You’re in love with him.” Then its eyes opened wide, and it scanned the room. From one wall to another, the gaze ran, alarmed but intelligent, thinking. Focusing back on Percy, the thing said, “You know. How do you know?”

Percy let out his own soft laugh. “Eating sheep while they’re still alive was a bit of a giveaway.”

“Oh.” It thought for a time. “He… ‘Joe’ doesn’t do that?”

“No. Joe doesn’t do that.” Percy’s eyes sharpened with the breadcrumb of information. “But if you can access his thoughts, you should know that already.”

“Hmmm.” The thing made no more response than that.

“What do you want?” Percy asked again, a little more forcefully.

The chains about Joe’s chest clinked as he tried to stretch his arms out. “I’d like you to untie me.”

“Let’s think a bit bigger, shall we? Do you want blood?”

“Yes.”

“I can get that. Do you want to…” Percy pressed his lips in pause. He was going to do whatever it wanted, anyway. Why hold back on the untoward offer? “Do you want to kill a lot of people?”

“Not particularly.” Percy let go a small breath of relief, until it said, “Unless they taste good.”

“Noted,” said Percy. “That’s easily solved. Get out of Joe, and I’ll round you up as big a feast as you like. What do you need first? A new host?”

The thing laughed one of Joe’s bemused, disbelieving laughs. “You’ll kill me the second I’m out of him. Why do you think I haven’t taken anyone else?”

“Bullshit. You could have jumped bodies at the airport and been away. I wouldn’t have had a clue where you were. You need to be invited.” It was a guess, but it was based on a wealth of supernatural knowledge, and the beast’s silence made it as good as fact in Percy’s mind. “I’ll get you a new host once we agree to some terms. Someone willing. How about that?”

Joe’s head shook slowly, side to side, but his eyes remained locked on. “You’re a liar, Percy Ashdown. I know better than to trust you.”

It wasn’t Percy’s first exorcism, if that’s even what this was. He’d spent plenty of time around demons and other foul supernatural beasts, prone to targeted, personal attacks. But this was Joe, and Joe’s lips saying his name—accusing him—and it felt like a belly full of razor wire. “Did Joe tell you that?”

Joe’s head leaned back with as much nonchalance as a man chained to an ugly chair could muster. “I can see it all playing out in his mind. Anyone else I take, you follow them and kill them. He’s thinking of all the methods you’d use to track them down. He’s thinking of all the people he’s seen you kill. He’s thinking of all the secrets you’ve kept from him. He knows, and so I know, that you would never keep your word.”

“Huh.” Percy settled a little deeper into his seat, an oddly whimsical smile drawing across his face. “It’s sweet, really, that Joe thinks I’d chase after you. That he imagines I’ve an ounce of altruism left in me.” Percy’s gaze remained on Joe, fond, distant, then dulling with every passing second as the smile disappeared. “The unfortunate fact is, Joe’s never seen me really pissed off.”

Percy stood, making his way around behind the beast. He took his dagger from beside Cleo, who remained as inarticulate as her skull should always have been. He settled back into the chair, his forearms resting on his thighs, fingers toying with the knife, and he leaned in close to the beast, talking softly. “That’s what I love about him. He has a faith in things, and people—a faith inme—that makes me…” He searched for the word. “A little crazy, truth be told. So Joe doesn’t actually know how far I’d go, because even I don’t know how far I’d go. And that means you don’t either. But I would do a lot of damage before I’d let you take him from me.”

Joe’s expression fell, a little glint of panic sparking sharp in the golden flecks of his irises. Percy was glad to see it there. Was it Joe’s fear? Could the creature feel that?

Percy’s ice-blue eyes stayed trained on Joe’s. “Is he watching now? Can he see me?”

The creature assessed him for a time, then, tentatively, “He can.”

“I’m sorry, darling.” With a flick of his wrist, Percy’s knife slashed clean across Joe’s arm in one fleet, smooth, controlled move. The skin broke wide open, Joe’s pale-blue shirt turned scarlet, and Joe’s lips cried out in pain and shock.

“Aha!” shouted Percy, climbing to his feet. “So you feel pain? I can definitely work with this.”

But he was soon shut up when the blade slipped from his fingers, exactly as though an invisible hand had yanked it clear. With a flash of steel, it twisted around in midair and lodged itself deep in Percy’s shoulder.

“Fuck!” He fell back against the bed, cracking the small of his back on a protruding wooden slat, and he slipped to the floor with a splatter of blood. “Ah, fuck!” He wrapped his fingers around his dagger, took a few deep breaths to prepare himself, then wrenched it free, streaking a ribbon of blood across Joe’s cheek with the volition of the release.

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