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CHAPTER TWELVE

THE DEMON-SHAPED ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

“ M ilk?” asked the waitress.

“No,” Percy replied. “I like my coffee like I like my men. Bitter and acidic.”

The unfortunate woman quickly disappeared with her little silver jug, leaving Joe and Percy at the small wooden table, staring daggers at one another.

A rough, altogether nauseating thirteen-hour crossing from Aberdeen to Lerwick might put anyone in a bad mood, so, Percy conjectured, perhaps that was why Joe was so foul-spirited that grey and foggy morning in the little cafe on the seaside in the small town at the north of nowhere. After all, Percy had only said that if Joe happened to become possessed by a ghost, demon, or similarly evil entity in the near future—which was unlikely at best—Percy would pull out all the stops to get him back.

All the stops being, Joe knew, a long and brutal exorcism. And that was generally a romantic notion, because Joe and Percy both understood the toll, mental and physical, that befalls an exorcist. It should have been charming that Percy would go through that for Joe without a second thought. And it was, until Joe had said, “I don’t know if I could withstand another exorcism.”

To which Percy had replied, flippantly, “It’s not as though you’d have a choice.”

To which Joe had replied, a little testily, “I’m still traumatised by the last one.”

To which Percy had scoffed, “Fuck your trauma. If your body isn’t yours, then it’s as good as mine, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let some demon take it.”

Joe flared, surprising Percy with a vehement, “I’m not a piece of meat.”

So Percy flared in equal measure, stating bluntly, “In fact, yes, if your body is inhabited by a demon, that’s all you are to me or it or anyone else. You think the Church won’t do worse with you than I would? Do you have any idea what a demon would do to you if it had you for any stretch of time? Hang yourself when I’m done if you like, but I’ve got dibs on that body.”

“Hang myself?” Joe spat.

Percy softened, ever so slightly, with an eye roll. “Only rhetorically.”

That was around the time the bad Scottish coffee was set down on their table. Percy took a sip, glowered out at the grey water, and shuddered.

He should have added milk. Spiteful bastard that he was.

He choked it down and waited for Joe, who was occupied fighting his need to vomit at the harsh smell of bacon and lard so early in the day.

Nevertheless, Joe remained angry, and he leaned across the table to drive the point home. “I have every reason to be bitter. Your brother killed me the last time I was possessed. I wouldn’t even be here if the demon hadn’t resurrected my body. And what Anna did to me?—”

How infuriating it was the way Percy cut him off to jump to her defence. “You know as well as I do, you would have skinned Evelyn alive in front of her if they hadn’t killed you. And it’s not as though she didn’t slit my throat.”

Joe gave a disgusted laugh. “Don’t pretend it’s the same thing.”

“It’s not,” Percy replied darkly. “I murdered my brother.”

“And I murdered a man who was like a father to me,” Joe snapped. He quickly caught himself with a look around the half-empty cafe, returning to a furious whisper. “The difference is that you got Evelyn back. And you weren’t tortured for hours after you did it. Do you know what it’s like being in your body while someone exorcises you? While someone tries to rip a soul out of you? They cling, Percy. Demon souls fight. You can feel them tearing at your insides. When Anna cut me, when she poured salt in my wounds, when she burned my insides?—”

Percy turned his face away, visceral pain at the very thought of it showing in a dark grimace. “Stop it, Joe.”

“That’s nothing,” he seethed. “You feel everything, just as much as you would any other day, but it’s nothing compared to what it does in your head—in your soul. The things you hear, the things you see—it turns you black, just as black and dark as the creature inside because you’re all mixed up together until it’s gone. And then you don’t have the driving force anymore—the evil—you just have the memory of being so, so… wrong. And broken. In every sense of the word. And you try to get better, and be better, because you know how bad you became, but it’s still there. It’s always there. And there’s the memory of what you did—what you really did—what your hands and your body did. And it gets so bad sometimes that you don’t know what you were before.” Shaking fingers reached for his coffee, and he wiped his eyes with the palm of his other hand.

Percy moved to stand, to go to Joe’s side, but was hemmed in by their waitress placing down two metal trays of potatoes and sausages.

“Milk, please,” said Percy.

As she walked away, Joe stared intently at Percy, his right ring finger tapping, tapping on the table. “Is that what it’s been like for you?”

“No,” Percy replied. “No, I have only the memory of beating and murdering Evelyn, of what I did to the others, of what it wanted me to do to them next, but then it was gone. It left by choice, and but for those memories, it left me untouched.”

It was a generous admission. Joe knew from what Percy had told him that his brother’s death, at Percy’s possessed hands, had been cruel and sickening. He knew that what followed that death and resurrection was heinous. Joe wasn’t there to see the fallout, but it lasted months, and drove Anna from the arms of her beloved Evelyn, straight into Percy’s. And she loved Percy’s brother with a dangerous, all-consuming obsession that scared Joe at times, so he knew whatever happened must have been beyond horrifying. Percy didn’t talk about it, and Joe rarely asked, yet he knew Percy’s use of the word ‘untouched’ was kindly meant but misleading.

Percy reached across the table and took Joe’s hand. “We’re not ready to talk about this.”

“We won’t ever be,” said Joe, covering Percy’s fingers with his own. “But it’s something we need to figure out. Whatever we find at Barmiston Hall, after all that stress with the painting, when we go back home where horrible things just unaccountably never stop happening… I’m beginning to think things won’t ever stop coming for us. So I need to know. If something takes you, do I bring you back?”

Percy didn’t blink. “Yes. You?”

“No.”

“Joe—”

Shaking salt over his potatoes, “No. Take my head or something.”

“I’m not going to cut your head off.”

“Then have someone else do it.”

“There is no one else. And I’m not convinced that would stop a demon from resurrecting you, anyway.”

“Percy,” Joe squeezed his hand tight, the ghastliness of every haunting memory gathering in the back of his eyes as he fixed Percy with his desperate gaze, “I know you would do the right thing.” He dropped his eyes, pulled his hand away, and took to pushing the food around his plate with a fork. “It’s not like it matters. It was the same demon that took us both. I’ve performed dozens of exorcisms and it’s never been that bad before. It was probably just a one-off. One bad demon.”

There was no point in Percy telling Joe that he would literally go to Hell and slit the devil’s throat with his own hands before he would let a thing touch Joe’s beautiful neck, so he nodded, poured some newly delivered milk into his coffee, and added some sugar. “I’m sorry I said what I said. I didn’t understand.”

“Not many people do,” Joe replied, before he began eating as an end to the discussion.

It was a moot conversation, and they both knew it deep down. Both of them were warded against demon possession. Both, coincidentally, by Anna. She had carved the symbol into Joe’s chest herself (rather brilliantly, Percy thought—Joe disagreed) in a successful attempt to make Joe’s body uninhabitable to the demon that was possessing him at the time. Percy’s… Well, after he murdered her boyfriend, Anna marched right over to his house, the first opportunity she got, shoved him to the floor and pulled a knife on him. Damn sexy it was, too. Not that he’d ever tell Joe that. Joe was salty enough about the situation.

Every time their shirts were off, there the marks were. Percy loved it, that they had that same link that bound them in a way no other couple was bound. Also, that it protected them from demons, of course. But for Joe, the mark on Percy’s chest was a daily reminder of the time before him. A time with Anna, whatever that entailed, and more than once, he’d wondered if Percy would let him carve a new one. If he’d consider laser surgery, or a skin graft of some sort to delete all traces of Anna’s hands on his skin. Understandably, he hadn’t suggested it, what with the proposition likely to put him on the wrong side of possessive, but it was a recurring idea.

Either way, everything had been fine between them until the topic of possession came up that morning. If they didn’t talk about it, then they would undoubtedly be fine again. With that interest at heart, Joe asked lightly, “How do we get to the inn?”

“We’ll get a taxi,” said Percy, in a voice equally convivial to Joe’s. “It’s not a long drive. Though it is a bit of a walk on the other side. It’s one of those lonely, windswept inns that sits all alone with only a few houses for miles around.”

Joe chuckled. “One of those?”

“You know the sort. One room above a pub, and even the publicans lock up and go away at night. So it will be you and me, all alone, in the middle of nowhere.”

“No surprise exes this time?” Joe joked.

Christ, I hope not , thought Percy, but he said, “Definitely not.” After all, Lerwick’s population sat below seven thousand, so there were only about… perhaps thirty people who might fit the bill. Give or take a few. Percy lowered his head and ate a little faster. “Should we go soon?”

“We should,” said Joe. “You know, I’m actually kind of excited about this. Not whatever horrors we’re going to find inside Barmiston Hall, obviously, but the two of us, the inn, the countryside. It should be a nice getaway.”

“We’ll make sure it is. The room sounds beautiful, from what Leo told me. All it’s missing is you.”

“And you.” Joe smiled across at him, looking almost as serene as he had some twenty-four hours earlier when they set out from Bruges. “I think that’s all we need. Some time alone together.”

Percy, still silently reeling inside from Joe’s harrowing admissions, forced a wide smile. “It’ll be an absolute dream. You’ll see.”