Page 75 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

Percy laughed a hollow sort of laugh. “Well, you know how that story ends, handsome. We found him and we exorcised him, and I began to fall in love with you as we did it. But you never knew the first half. I never told you how badly my mother fell apart, but it’s exactly as you would expect. I never explained to you how she forgot to feed me. Couldn’t do the washing or find clothes for me. How she could barely even look at me after that. She simply broke down. I was five, and I did my best, and so did she, but it was never enough… I couldn’t tell her the truth, of course, because what would that have done to her? The damage was already more than enough. I felt so hopeless and alone all those years. And I never told you that…”

He wet his lips, staring out the broken window at the black and mossy brick wall, the purr vibrating up through his hand, the one and only touch of comfort in that isolated, miserable room. “I’m sorry if I’m a little brusque at times. There are things I worry about that I don’t want to trouble you with. But what I’ve always worried about the most is that if I lose control again, if I drop that ball one more time, I’ll find myself right back there in that room. At the mercy of something like that demon. And so I’ve tried to make myself… I’ve tried to be strong…”

The kitten had fallen into a cozy slumber, curled up in Percy’s hand. Percy sat still, chewing on a thumbnail, while the sound of a door thumping into gore reverberated throughout his mind and down his spine. Joe’s body sat just as quietly as Percy’s, captivated successfully by the horrors of Percy’s past.

The thing took a breath, and Percy intercepted with, “And did I ever tell you what I did to that older boy who took advantage of me at boarding school? Prepare to be horrified, darling…”

Percy talked on and on, swimming through his malignant sickness, which he felt crushing him on all sides, growing worse and worse, his own world growing darker and darker, borne on only by the faint flicker of hope that Joe would be waiting for him on the other side. That he would understand, and that he would forgive Percy, because those words and that horror were all the power he had to keep the thing safely away from Joe’s hidden scars, whatever they might be.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

INTENTIONALLY THREATENING A MEDICAL WORKER WITH AN OFFENSIVE WEAPON (AND MORE THEFT)

Leo and Althea rode the train in silence until Althea broke it with, “Sorry I did that.”

Though he was looking away, she saw a flash of his smile, just at the corner of his handsome face. “Thanks for taking it.” He followed that quickly with, “He’s not doing well, you know? He would never ask me to do that. Not usually. He doesn’t even let me drink.”

She knew it probably wasn’t wise, given his apologetic tone, but she said, “He puts you under too much pressure.”

“No.” There was such conviction in the word, such a forbidding frown, that Althea began to think it was a hopeless case. But Leo went on, “I need it. I need to stay busy. He knows that. And he told me. From day one, he said he’d never go easy on me.” The grin returned, almost as wide as the last one. “But he does. Even if he doesn’t realise it.”

Relieved to have him smiling and talking, she asked, “How did you get involved with him?”

Leo glanced across at her, a furtive sort of glance, then he lowered his eyes to the train floor, and closed them, looking a lot like someone about to take a leap from a very great height. His brow drew tight, and on a long breath, he commenced, “So,you’re right. I was—am—a heroin addict. Because, like Percy says, it won’t ever stop. I haven’t touched it in years, but if all the elements were just right, it’s an easy thing to slip back into. And feeling that little plastic bag in my hand, being around people like that, in this city… It’s not a world I can be part of. Not without that temptation. So I live in Paris where I run his office. Sometimes he sends me off to Krakow to hide money and weapons. Sometimes he fills entire days with cigarette and shirt orders. Other days I need to fly last minute to Tunisia to smuggle some girl out of the country.”

“Some girl,” she muttered, adding a blush when he gave her a full dose of his playful smile.

“It’s non-stop. He’s into art theft, forgeries, but then also art preservation. He’s got real work at real universities, and he’s in constant demand there, but then he’s off to deal with some weird supernatural thing, or find some enchanted item. And then there’s the even shadier stuff. He has a lot of enemies. The death threats are constant. And it never gives me a second to stop and get mixed up in anything.”

Althea laughed. “I’d say you’re pretty mixed up.”

“Yeah, but not…” Leo set about fiddling with the sleeve of his sweater as his smile faded. “I need to tell you that I was fifteen when I met Percy. And I was a call boy.”

“Like…” Althea tried not to look shocked, but thought she must have misheard or misunderstood. “Do you mean like… Julia Roberts?”

“Yeah, but without the boots.”

“Leo…” She gave him a shove, taking heart in the shoulder he pressed back against hers.

“I started a few years before that, and um… Home life wasn’t good. So…” He trailed off, running a hand through his hair.

“A few years before? How young?”

“I don’t remember. Twelve or thirteen?”

“That young?”

Leo provided a shrug for an answer and skipped over it. “So I was working this party. This guy who owned the place, he was a regular. I was just meant to look pretty and then wait and see what the host said to do later, with whoever. It was a thing he did. I’d done it before. But anyway, I was high, as usual, and I was looking at this painting on the wall in this guy’s apartment. And then Percy’s just there next to me, out of nowhere, like a ghost. He looked at the painting for a bit, and I was about to walk away, but then he asked me what I thought of it.” Leo fell quiet, conjuring up the image in his mind’s eye. “It was a picture of this… It’s this dead lamb, lying on the snow. And blood’s coming out of its mouth, a stream of red on white. And its mother’s standing over it, protecting her dead baby. But she’s surrounded by crows. Dozens of crows all around, and this blackening sky, like a storm’s coming. And the mother, she’s not ready to say goodbye to her baby, and she knows, the second she moves away, those crows are going to rip the little lamb to pieces and devour it. But she can’t stay there forever.”

“Fuck,” whispered Althea, pulling Leo back to the present.

With a flush of pink about his cheeks, “That probably sounds stupid.”

“It doesn’t sound stupid at all. It sounds beautiful.”

He breathed out the nervous spectre of a laugh. “Percy asked me what I thought of it. And, ‘cause I was high, I guess, and because he was the only person who talked to me, I was honest. I said, ‘I feel like the dead one. Like I don’t care that they’re coming for me, because I can’t feel anything anymore, because I’ve already moved on. But then I feel so sad for her that she doesn’t understand how hopeless it all is. That she hasn’t given up yet. It breaks my heart that she’s mourning for her baby and it’s all so pointless. It breaks my heart that anyone has any fight left in them.’ Percy didn’t say a word. He just looked at me, andI hated the way he looked at me. And I think it was because it had been so long since anyone really looked at me, properly, and so I walked away, and he didn’t come near me again. The night went on, and they gambled at cards while I served drinks, and Percy won some priceless artwork, which is what he’d come for in the first place.” Leo laughed then, heartily, with a wide smile. “The guy who owned it was furious when he realised he’d been played. So Percy, cool as ever, says, ‘I’ll give you one last chance to win it back, then we’ll both walk away, no hard feelings.’ The guy screams at him that he has nothing left to bet. ‘One last game, winner takes all,’ Percy says, ‘but you throw that boy in.’” Leo glanced at Althea, aglow with a mixture of pride and good humour. “You can imagine my face. Percy pointed at me, the host stared at me, I looked over my shoulder like there’d be someone else there. And the deal was done. No one asked me. Not a word. And can you guess what happened next?”

Althea chuckled. “I guess he won, and you both lived happily ever after.”

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