Page 62 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

Joe watched on, breathing a little harder, a nasty smile marring his beautiful face.

“Telekinesis?” Percy grunted, blood seeping between the fingers he held to his wound.

“Among other things.”

“Then why haven’t you killed me?”

The creature eyed the blood. Joe’s tongue passed hungrily over his lips. “I still might.”

Percy followed the voracious gaze to his scarlet hand. “You want this? Are you hungry?” He shoved himself to standing,leaving bloody handprints on the filthy mattress. Joe watched his approach, until Percy’s legs were between his own, a press of heat against his thighs, Joe’s chest straining against the binds.

Percy glanced down at his bleeding shoulder. With a groan of pain that forced its way from somewhere deep in his gut, he dug his thumb into the great gash. Joe’s breath came out with a rasp, and Percy held his arm out long, above the head of the beast. “Gently.”

He lowered his hand steadily, eyes burning into Joe’s, until his bloody fingers came to caress Joe’s cheek. The thing waited, taking him in with wary eyes, while Percy’s vermillion thumb came to rest at the corner of his lips. Joe’s lips parted softly, and Percy ran a slow, thick trail of blood across his lower lip, to the midpoint, where he felt the warm, wet press of Joe’s tongue. The lips closed and Percy let his thumb slide into the hot, wet mouth.

It could have been Joe, but for the red lips. The closed lashes and the feeling and the innate trust were all there, and Percy was on the verge of leaning over and kissing him. Yet the logical part of his brain pulsed on, behind an odd new hammering—a vague un-wellness that he put down to perma-hangover and tiredness. He said, “How about we get you someone to eat? As a show of good faith.”

The delicious suction released, and Joe’s head fell back. “I’m assuming you didn’t manage to get me here all by yourself. Is that girl here? That little friend of yours? How about you go find her for me, then you slit her throat and let me drink her?”

Percy let out a heavy sigh. “Just when I thought we were getting somewhere.” His next intention was to throw himself despondently into the chair, but a wave of nausea hit him full in the throat, and the room shifted sideways. He doubled over, grasping for the edge of the mattress, then collapsed onto it, heaving air in and out. Joe’s face, surveying all with a knowingness that made Percy a little sicker, moved in and out offocus, while Percy swallowed down a flush of bile. He talked over it. “So either you need me, or you like me. I sincerely doubt it’s the latter, but there must be a reason you didn’t bite my thumb off just then.”

Percy reached across to his bag, ripping the strap free from the tangle of encroaching ivy where it had fallen. Dead brown curling tendrils snapped, and a vague idea flared in the back of Percy’s mind that it was odd the damp environment of the house should produce those barren little tendrils, or turn the edges of those leaves crisp. Had they been that way before? They must have been…

The thought died with the flick of his lighter and the very necessary pull of air through a cigarette.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” the creature replied. “I do want to drink you, though.”

Percy laughed, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back. “Please, Christ, would someone tell me why that’s still sexy when it comes out of Joe’s mouth?”

“Probably because he feels the same way.” The creature seemed to take a risk by adding, “It’s been a long time since I was with a human.” He looked down, and for the first time, Percy noticed the very noticeable bulge in Joe’s pants.

He spoke only to Joe when he responded, “Thank god for that. I thought I was being weird with how hot that was just then. We’ll store it away for another time.”

“He’ll watch you die before you get the chance,” came the deadpan reply.

Percy tapped his ash to the floor. “You know, you flip from pleasant to miserable so fast it’s hard to keep track. There’s my dagger.” He nodded towards the floor. “Why isn’t it in my neck? It’s just you and me here, and pretty soon I’m going to start torturing you. Which is something I’ve gotten pretty good at over the years.”

Joe’s eyes dulled and blinked, and Percy could virtually see the thing checking in with Joe. “He’s very scared you will.”

In perfect honesty, Percy replied, “That’s because he’s smart.”

The creature let out one of Joe’s laughs that rattled down Percy’s back like a skeleton’s finger tapping on each vertebra. “And you think I’ll leave him? Because it hurts a bit?”

Seething over a cold smile, “It will hurt more than ‘a bit’.”

Their eye contact held, but Percy began to get the unpleasant feeling he was being studied more than he was managing to intimidate.

Another lurch of nausea poked at his chest, and he inhaled some smoke to spite it. What the fuck kind of time was this for a bout of food poisoning? He hadn’t eaten a thing—not since the mutton pie.

He glared towards the window in frustration, and just as he did, a little curl of ivy let go of the wall, spurring a great shudder through the entire vine—the whole drooping, tired-looking, dark mass.

The wholedyingplant…

Percy’s eyes snapped back to meet Joe’s, as a full grin broke across his face. Joe said, “Someone will eventually come and untie me. You might last a few more hours, maybe even overnight, but you’ll give in to make the sickness stop, or you’ll leave, or you’ll die. That boy and that girl will do the same. And if none of you let me go, I’ll wait right here with Joe. I’ll wait right here in this little room, staring at that doorway. Maybe for months. Maybe for years. I’ll wait here while he grows thin. While he feels every London winter through that smashed window. While the spiders crawl up his legs and nest in his hair and his skin. I’ll wait and I’ll wait, and one day, someone will come and untie me, and I’ll be on my way.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” was all the reply Percy could manage over the screaming panic in his brain. Was it poison? Dark magic? Was the sweat prickling down his neck due to illness or stress?

“I’ve got him and I’ve got time,” the creature continued. “Two things you don’t have. So, by all means, you can torture him. Let his screams be the last memory you have of him. Let your abuse be all that he remembers of you. Or you can unchain me, and when I’m done with him, you might get him back. Eventually. I don’t need him for too long.”

---