Page 8 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

But Percy flung his cape back, locked eyes on an iron flourish overhead, and twirled his whip with a slight sway of his hips that took all Joe’s self-control to not reach for him. The whip was set free, and landed, first try, with a tight grip on its target. Percy wrenched it back sharply.

Joe could control himself no longer. Running a hand over Percy’s shapely calves, “That first bedroom. If you get us in there unscathed, we’ll take a ten-minute break.”

With one hot glance at Joe, “Deal.”

Strong fingers twisted in the whip as it dangled between Percy’s tight legs, and before Joe knew it, Percy was off the boat and scaling the wall.

“You’re incredible,” said Joe.

“Nothing to it, handsome.” Percy raised his leg a little further than he really needed to, posing magnificently, but putting some unexpected strain on his weakening fingers in doing so.

“I can’t believe you’re mine,” Joe marvelled.

“You like that?” Percy subtly flexed his biceps as best he could.

“I do,” Joe sighed.

It was, all things considered, stupid to think he could make it across the expanse of the window unseen, and a more measured man would simply have ascended to the stonework above the window to make the crossing, then enjoyed his filthy, delicious reward. But Percy thrived on Joe’s adoration, and therefore, he took the risk.

With an impressive twist, and a sideways run up, clutching the whip tight, he leapt from one side of the window towards the other. But it was a mansion, after all, and the window was wide. Wider somehow than his slightly drunk, somewhat high, love-addled brain had calculated. And therefore, Percy smashed straight through the old glass window, and slammed down hard on the wooden drugs table to a dramatic puff of white powder and scream of alarm from all those in attendance.

He quickly got his bearings, jumped to his feet and flung the whip back out the window, hoping no one had noticed it. And to further that scheme, Percy announced loudly, “I’ve come to create a diversion!”

“Fuck,” Joe muttered to himself, steadying the whip against the dark wall. He pulled some rope from their bag to strap the painting to his back, and wondered how much easier this job might have been if Percy either didn’t steal the drugs, or just took off his rubies.

“Dracula!” came a shout from inside.

Percy’s sharp eyes shot across to the furious, much-higher-than-he-was, lurid figure of Philippe Dubois, who pointed an angry finger at him. “You owe me six thousand francs worth of cocaine.”

Joe groaned internally as he heard Percy reply, “Fuck you, Dubois. I snorted the lot.”

“Then…” Here Dubois pulled a large knife from god knew where, and levelled it at Percy. “I’ll take one finger for each grand you owe me.”

Joe didn’t need to be inside to know what would happen next.

Percy’s eyes lit, and a wide smile broke across his handsome face, pearlescent fangs and blood-red jewels sparkling keenly. “Let’s dance.”

CHAPTER FIVE

PERCY LEADS

It would take a lot of cocaine for almost anyone to feel confident in their ability to take Percy Ashdown on when he was spoiling for a fight. He was tall, muscular, always with a touch of madness about his compelling eyes, but he was very rarely standing atop the central table of a room towering over everyone else dressed extravagantly in the garb of a well-known killer.

Dubois may have been arrogant to a fault, but he was also rich to the point of moral ruination, therefore he yelled, “Security!”

He needn’t have. The two men in black uniforms, who were already wishing they’d taken that other job, moved from the base of the stairs to either side of Percy. The guests backed up a little to enjoy the drama, hoping they had enough distance to avoid being hurt in the crossfire.

In a very tired voice, one of the guards said, “Kom alsjeblieft daar vandaan.”

“I don’t speak Flemish,” Percy replied. “But ‘no’”.

The men, however, understood his refusal perfectly well. They threw a few pointed glances across at one another, while Percy stood very still, waiting to see who would make a movefirst. It may have been nothing more than a nervous twitch, but whatever it was, the one on the right copped Percy’s shoe on his chin for the offence of a sudden gesture. His head flipped up and back and smashed into the stone wall. Percy twisted around and brought the back of his heel across the other man’s cheek. That man was large, and didn’t move except for a recoverable snap of his neck, so Percy rebalanced himself and gave him a jumping front kick to the nose instead.

Blood. Blood was always good because it unsettled the opponent triple-fold. The guard looked at the red just long enough for Percy to smack a palm into his chin, and he was down.

The first guy had recovered to the point of unsteady standing, but he wasn’t the target any more than the man with blood streaming down his face was, and Percy had no real interest in crippling either of them that night. He jumped down from the table and closed the distance between himself and Dubois in four short steps. Dubois’s face remained defiant, as falsely smug as it could be in that situation, and Percy was determined to correct it.

He snapped Dubois’s wrist back, and his knife clattered to the floor. Percy got one good punch in, his fist striking Dubois’s cheekbone hard enough to break it, but within a half second of contact he was wrenched backwards and thrown to the floor. He felt the boot of a new security guard on his chest and locked an arm around the back of the man’s supporting leg. He rammed hard into it, the leg gave at the knee, Percy twisted over and smashed a hand down on his kneecap, felling him into a screaming mess.

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