Page 82 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

Percy broke a tired smile. “You’re the best, Leo. I’d be lost without you. Truly. I’m really sorry.”

A sniffle sounded, but Leo hid the rest of his emotion with a gruff, “I guess we’d better inject him, then.”

“Ah, I might actually go to the hospital for that,” Joe cut in, receiving the usual scowl from Leo. “I can drive myself.”

“You’re not leaving my sight,” said Percy, wrapping his hand a little tighter around Joe’s thigh.

“No, I’m not,” Joe agreed. “You’re coming with me. Come on.”

Joe stood shakily, with Althea supporting him from under one arm. “Did you kill it?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. But it’s gone. Out of me, anyway. And not in Percy.”

“But where to?” Percy wondered, still in a muddle on the grass. The kitten gave another little mew, so he pulled it ontohis shoulder, where it purred against his cheek, then set about licking the blood from his face.

“You’re planning on keeping that?” Joe asked, failing to hide an unaccustomed distaste that, had Percy had an inkling Joe felt for cats in general, would have scarpered any chance of a relationship from the start.

In a quick, defensive manoeuvre, Percy dropped the kitten into his shirt pocket and let Leo help him to his feet. He cut off Joe’s next comment by saying, as he walked towards the ambulance, “I’ll drive us to the hospital. Leo, would you mind terribly burning the house down?”

Leo’s back was erect, head held high, smile returned in full. “Not at all. I’ll make sure the body’s burned first.”

“Good lad. And could you get Cleo out?”

“Of course. I’ll bring her to you right after.”

“And then book us somewhere nice. You and Althea too.”

“Ritz or Savoy? Or—or Claridges?”

“You decide. But could you organise some cat litter or something? And I don’t know, shots or whatever it is Moxie needs?”

Joe and Althea staggered two steps behind in bewildered silence. Joe glanced over at her, managing a smile, despite feeling he was likely to drop dead any second. “Are you okay?”

Althea burst into a nervous bout of laughter. “Me? Yeah, I’m fine. No spiders or anything.”

Joe laughed, and to Althea’s delight, he soon showed he was still very much Joe. “It’s been a day though, hasn’t it? I didn’t see that much, but I know you must have been through a lot.”

She replied, “I saw my first murder, held up two sets of paramedics, stole an ambulance, bought heroin, destroyed some priceless books, and almost watched you die. Yeah, it’s definitely been a day. But not a bad one. Not entirely.”

“So… I’ll see you at whichever expensive hotel we end up at?”

She stole a quick glance over at Leo, who was nodding earnestly to Percy’s every instruction, and said, “Yeah. Yeah, I think you will.”

“I had a feeling I might.”

They embraced, then Joe climbed into the ambulance next to Percy, who hit the siren despite Joe’s protests, and drove them to the closest private hospital with his usual careless grace.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

THE MOXIE IN THE ROOM

There was no force in a private London hospital, or anywhere in all the world, for that matter, that could have kept Percy from Joe’s side, as he was treated for numerous spider bites. Even if, as they were enlightened by the doctor, there were no black widow spiders in London, and they had both been the victims of the trickery of false widows. Joe swore up and down that he had in fact read reports of the deadly Latrodectus spiders invading the city, citing his symptoms as evidence of their presence. He was informed that his panic accounted for just about every physical symptom beyond the pain in his arm, and he and Percy were, therefore, a quiet combination of relief and embarrassment by the time they were left alone for several hours of surveillance, as it is rare one is bitten by fifteen false widows at once.

There, in the small room, Percy kept the same watch over Joe that he had since the appalling incident began, only now, he was by far the weaker of the two. The pain and the nausea had retreated the moment the creature did, but Percy, who hadn’t eaten in two days, not even raw sheep, had also barely drunk a drop of anything, let alone water. He had punched walls, been head-butted, thrown up, kicked things, fallen over, smackedinto walls and doors, dragged Joe’s unconscious body from one place to another, run upstairs and downstairs, expended more energy in worry and cursing and breaking things than was ever advisable, and had very nearly dropped dead from mass haemorrhaging that afternoon. Needless to say, he wasn’t at his best. A drip had been forced into a shrivelled vein, but he still commandeered an uncomfortable chair rather than the bed he had been offered elsewhere in the building, away from Joe. His head leaned back against the wall, long lashes closed over bloodshot eyes, and Joe didn’t move a muscle, in the hope he would fall asleep.

For Joe, the greater part of terror during the entire ordeal, besides the spiders, had come from the uncertainty of what it all meant for Percy. The being inside had swayed over whether to kill him, back and forth, a thousand times. Joe had watched Percy walk the tightrope, sickeningly high, unsteadily, and he’d never once been able to tell which footfalls were strategically placed, and which were blind luck. He knew the being’s intentions regarding his own body, but he couldn’t have gone on without Percy, any more than Percy would have gone on without him.

“Are you going to tell me what it was?” Percy’s eyes remained closed, and he spoke in a thick, almost-asleep voice. “Or is it too terrible for me to know?”

---