Page 31 of Sinful Crimes for the Artistically Inclined
Jorge nodded and the angry man made his way unceremoniously up the aisle, up the stairs, around the altar, and to Percy’s bags of money. He leaned over and unzipped one, shoving his hands deep inside to make sure it was all money, all the way down to the bottom.
Percy didn’t have to do it. He could have just let them leave with the money.
What would Joe say when he didn’t return that day or any other? Beautiful Joe, who’d put up with so much of his bullshit for months.
Although it was the last thing he really wanted, if only he could have stopped himself, in that instant a muscle-memory shot through his arm, and he felt inside exactly what it was to put his own hand into his beloved brother’s hair, push his head forward, and smash his face into a table.
His first instinct was simply to vomit. He felt the heat and the bile and the acid rise inside him. But that was all too internal. What he needed was to get the feeling out of him. To have those sensations where they belonged. All that hatred, all that anger, exactly where it deserved to go.
He watched the man stand, almost in slow motion, because he knew exactly what he was going to do once the man reached his full height, and he knew exactly what the consequences would be, but he hated himself so passionately in that moment that the only sensation he wanted now was to be punched in the face, over and over, until he was dead or choking on his own blood, at which point he hoped someone would kick him in the stomach too, just as he had done to Anna.
Percy saw his own hand reaching out. The man was twice his size, but it all happened too fast for him to understand.
Percy felt the hair in his hand. It wasn’t soft like Eve’s. It wasn’t dark and golden and it didn’t curl ever so slightly at the tips, but yet, every muscle from Percy’s feet, to his thighs, to his abdomen, down his shoulder, his biceps, every finger, worked together in one enormous burst of power and he smashed the face down hard against that altar. The blood burst out of the broken skin and ran pleasingly down the white marble, but before anyone had time to realise what had happened, Percy had tightened another fist full of hair, lifted the head and smashed it down again, harder this time. One of the teeth flew up and hit his cheek. Where the others went, he neither knew nor cared. The man fell to the floor, and Percy’s foot went straight into the side of his head. He heard and felt the neck break, and a welcome shudder went through him as he cricked his own neck to the side in satisfying sympathy.
Now they moved. Now they ran. But Jorge was already sputtering blood onto the floor from the dagger Percy threw across the room and into his chest.
Percy stepped down into the aisle and he let them come. He let all three surround him and prepared to take a hit.
The first was right in the ribs, and he doubled over, the air knocked out of him. That was met with a knee to the chin, which smashed his teeth together painfully. He couldn’t worry whether they were chipped as the taste of blood flooded his mouth, because someone’s fist rammed into his cheek and he dropped to the hard stone floor. Despite the pain in his knees and in his hip as he went down, he didn’t let his head hit, as there was still work to do, but he didn’t protect his stomach either and within seconds he felt a steel-tipped boot deliver one, two hard kicks, then he heard the click of a gun.
Bastards. He should have known.
Percy swung a leg out and dropped Marcus to the floor.Despite the next painful kick in his back, Percy rolled onto his knees and delivered an elbow backwards into Marcus’s face, enjoying the crunch of the cartilage as his nose crumbled beneath the blow.
A spray of blood decorated the floor, only to be disturbed by the legs of the pew that Percy dragged forward, lifted the corner of, then very nearly smashed down on Marcus’s head. He was prevented by the full weight of some Nazi scum tackling him.
Thugs. Of course they fought like thugs.
Percy threw him over and made to stand, receiving an uppercut to his stomach for his effort. He spat blood and perhaps a bit of his breakfast too, then the thug was up again, punching Percy in the face. Marcus stood tall now, the other prick was behind Percy, and Percy decided enough was enough. He kicked his heel back into the shin of the one behind him, lifted a fist into the face of the other, then before Marcus could take aim, Percy took the finger-hold of the grenade’s pin between his bloody teeth, his malevolent smile still painfully handsome, which the vermin present might have noticed had they had any appreciation for beautiful things.
Percy let out a chuckle, then a full laugh at the looks on their stupid faces. Surprise, fear… the realisation that this was it. This was the moment they would meet their end and every shitty life choice had been leading up to nothing more than this: being blown to pieces in an old church over a broken piece of art.
Percy enjoyed the moment, as he always did, then he gripped the grenade a little firmer, tightened his teeth, began to slip the pin loose, and was stilled by the voice from the doorway that said, “Percy, seriously? In a church?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A CHURCH IS AS GOOD A PLACE AS ANY TO DIE
“Achurch is as good a place as any to die,” Percy replied, his fingers already on the pin before Marcus could make a move with his gun.
“Father!” the thug at Percy’s right uttered, falling to the floor in supplication, as well he might.
Joe was wearing his clerical collar, for reasons Percy couldn’t possibly fathom, other than the fact that both had recently discovered it was of particular interest to Percy to see Joe in his collar. In the golden sunshine, not the least bit broken and bleeding like the rest of them, Joe cut quite the sacred-looking figure, and Percy would have been on his knees in a heartbeat had the situation been just a little different.
As it was, Joe frowned slightly at the Catholic neo-Nazi on the floor, then turned his attention back to Percy. “This was your grand plan? Blow yourself up in a Polish church to kill these people?”
“For a good cause.”
“I heard.” Joe rolled his eyes as he spoke, eliciting a stern scowl from Percy.
“How long have youbeen?—”
Percy dropped the grenade, the palm of his hand smacking into Marcus’s arm and redirecting the shot straight into a crucified Jesus hung on the wall, breaking him and the cross in two. Percy punched Marcus in the face then took him by the back of his collar and dragged him forward, throwing him into the other, non-Catholic guy, both smashing painfully into the inverted corner of a brick wall before Percy delivered three hard and swift punches to the other guy’s face, pulled Marcus back to his feet, and submerged his face in the holy-water font.
The Catholic neo-Nazi looked from a drowning Marcus to Percy to the broken Jesus on the floor, then back to Joe. Joe nodded at the broken Jesus disapprovingly and said to the man, “This is the sort of company you keep?”
“Forgive me, Father. I’ve had a hard life?—”
