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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

WAKING NIGHTMARE

I t might have been the cold or the absence of warmth that awoke Percy some time around two o’clock that frigid and unforgettable morning. Or it might have been the screech of agony that came from beneath the casement window. Percy was never able to remember too exactly, so great was the horror that intruded on his previously peaceful mind.

Comprehending only two ideas—that Joe was gone, and that someone was hurt—Percy dashed from the bed and to the window in a very few fast strides. There he dropped to the floor on sight of the terrifying exhibition playing out before his eyes.

Mistaken.

He must have been mistaken.

A cold sweat made him grip the ledge twice as tight for stability. His hammering heart allowed no sound but the rush of blood in his ears. The terror… Indescribable terror forced him to turn to every ounce of the cold distance that had carried him through his entire life just to make himself look a second time.

The sheep that had given that howl of a savage death trembled and twitched on the cold, wet grass. Steam rose from the great gash that ran from the creature’s throat to the bottom of its belly, its quivering innards shining as they oozed out into the moonlight. To the shaking of its every dying nerve was added the gouging movement of cruel teeth hard at work, ripping and tearing the raw flesh apart. And there, deep in the blood and gore, was Joe, crouched on the ground like some sort of primitive animal, devouring the still-hot insides.

In his dizzying withdrawal past the windows and to the relative safety of the bed, Percy’s eyes fell on two more of the once-white creatures, red and mutilated, splayed out in the nearby field, the rest of their kindred having fled to the hilltop by the church.

Percy, desolate and broken, had only one surety left in the world, and that was his dagger. Without any ability to plan or think beyond base instinct, he took it from his suitcase and carried it to the bed with him. He assumed the position he’d woken in, and lay down on the cold weapon, gripping the hilt tight, the blade warming beneath his hip, counting his breaths in and out, and willing his body to stop shaking.

So long he lay that way, waiting for more cries of death. He thought he heard the wet sloshing of the heinous meal. He wondered if Joe’s body would return once the thing was done eating…

Then, finally, the door of the pub.

The slow step on the stairs, one after another, approaching…

Approaching…

He relaxed his eyes to closed, trying to block out the bloody vision that replayed itself endlessly before them.

He counted seven seconds of slow breath in, seven seconds of slow breath out.

The door opened. Joe’s hands closed it gently. The soft sweep of bare feet on carpet came closer, closer, until the presence stood over him. Stood there. Watching. Studying. Waiting. He heard the breath in and out of Joe’s lungs, the presence so thick and malicious and watching.

Seven seconds in.

Seven seconds out.

“I know you’re awake.”

Seven seconds in.

Seven seconds out.

A pulse that raced so fast he felt he might faint, because if that thing went for his throat… Would he have the heart to do it? To drench those sheets in the blood of the man he loved? Or would he let it tear him apart?

Seven seconds in.

Seven seconds out.

If only the shaking would stop.

The bed shifted. The depression of a weight on the other side. The heat of Joe’s body.

He dare not open his eyes.

Seven seconds in.

Seven seconds out.

He laid there for hours. What felt like endless hours that stretched on and on as if it were a lifetime. Just as long as he could stand it, too terrified to open his eyes, fully expecting the thing to be quietly watching him the entire time. Waiting.

But some time around five, Percy forced himself to flutter one eyelid, just a little.

The back of Joe. He was turned away.

The first hint of a hope of survival bloomed in Percy’s heart, and softly, softly, he shifted onto his back and listened. Joe’s breath was just as even as he had forced his own to be all those long, desperate hours.

He completed his move to the edge of the bed, and sat up, the blade hidden beneath the sheets, but totally unrestricted, free for him to wrench forth any second.

He barely felt the once-comforting carpet underfoot as he gradually shifted his weight from the mattress.

The springs gave a creak, and he froze.

Joe’s breath hitched—paused… and recommenced just as regularly as before.

In the slow agony of fear, Percy made his way to the door. He traversed the doorway with the same hideous burden of care he’d used to survive thus far, and called on every last gasp of self restraint to not sprint down the stairs.

When he finally made it to the kitchen, he closed that door just as carefully as he’d opened the one above, then dashed for the phone.

He dialled for an operator, and sucked in the deepest breath he’d taken in hours. “The Grand Hotel, Euston, London.” At the release of his words, a bone-shattering scream broke from the fridge. Blood curdling beneath his skin, he whispered a hopeless, “No… No…”

Another scream, and on the line a voice said, “Grand Hotel, London.”

Another scream, and Percy was ready to throw himself on his own knife. He whispered desperately, “Hold. Please hold. It’s vitally important.”

Another scream, just as he wrenched the fridge open and fell to his knees. He took the skull in both hands and brought her close to his face, placing a finger over her bare teeth. “Please. Sshhh. Please, please, shh. Please.”

“Eeeeee,” the skull softly wheezed in response.

Cradling Molly in his arms, he jammed the phone back under his ear. “Kathryn Highsmith. I need you to connect me to her room immediately… Yes, of course I know what time it is… If you must know, her mother’s about to take her dying breath in St Mary’s, and she needs to get here immediately. And don’t you dare tell her that. You put the call through right now.”

“Heeeeee,” Molly sighed.

A groggy voice came on the line, but before Althea had time to collect her wits, Percy commenced the urgent message.

“Althea, Joe and I are very close to dying, so do the following things right now, exactly as I tell you. Sit up. Turn on your lamp. Walk to your desk and pick up the pen… Done? Good. I’m going to give you Leo’s number in Paris.” He rattled off the digits and had her read them back. “Tell him to book me and Joe on the next three flights going from Sumburgh to Aberdeen… Yes, all three. And the corresponding second and third, and following three from Aberdeen to London… Got that? And tell him I want a room at the most dangerous and notorious hotel the city has… It doesn’t matter why, just do it… Okay, stop talking and listen… Quiet… Tell him I need a sturdy chair, and a lot of rope… Not for any reason at all… Stop talking, Althea!… Good. Then tell him to be on the first flight from Paris to London. Now here’s your task. You need sleeping pills… No, I don’t care where or how you get them, get them. I want them dissolved in a bottle of water, waiting for me the second I get off that plane. You’ll need enough to knock a man out, but not kill him… Well, do you want to work for me or not?… No, no, it’s only Joe, but you can’t let him see you or we might both die… Calm down… Althea, this is serious. I’m depending on you to not fuck this up… No, it’s nothing to do with Cleo.”

At that, the skull, relatively placid in his warm hold a second earlier, gave a strange squealing sound Percy hadn’t heard before. It drew a touch of his attention, but then so did Althea’s not unreasonably panicked voice on the line.

“Yes,” he continued in his desperate whisper. “Okay, it is somewhat to do with Cleo?—”

That squeal, only louder and more insistent.

“No, you’re perfectly safe. Cleo isn’t?—”

His words were cut off by that squeal. And that third time, something in him clicked. His eyes snapped down to the skull. He lifted her face level with his and repeated the word. “Cleo.”

That squeal. That squeal that suddenly felt extremely deliberate.

No longer hearing Althea’s pleas on the line for more information, he placed the skull on the metal kitchen bench and dropped to her level, studying the inanimate object with extreme scrutiny.

“Cleo?”

That squeal.

It could be considered proof of how very fit, strong, and well-schooled in a horror Percy was that he managed to keep his wits after the sort of day he’d had leading up to that moment. He swallowed hard, and asked, unwillingly, “Cleo… is that you?”

“Heeeeeeee!” she hissed back desperately.

He snatched her off the bench, pulling her up to eye level. “How the hell did you get in there?”

The door clicked, and in one lightning movement, Percy spun around, sweeping the skull behind his back and out of Joe’s sight. Because there Joe stood. Just as lovely, just as loved, with a soft smile, and so much blood all over his beautiful lips—a sea of dry, sticky scarlet smothering his cheeks, his chin, his beautiful throat. “What are you doing?”

Percy’s hand slowly replaced the phone on its receiver. “I had to call my mother. The time difference, you remember?”

Joe eyed the phone for several tense seconds, then his eyes focused back on Percy. “That’s right.”

Percy gave a nod and a tentative smile. “Yes, that’s right, handsome.”

“Handsome…” Joe’s lips tilted up into the soft smile Percy knew so well. “He…” The thing paused, stared hard at Percy, then made Joe smile a little wider. “I love when you call me that. No one else ever called me that. It makes me so happy.”

Inside—deep, deep inside—the first coil came undone. The first of the many parts of Percy that would soon fold and bend and snap and fall apart.

With his stomach like a lump of iron and so little oxygen reaching his fiery lungs that he could barely say the words, he choked back his grief, and uttered the one thing he still knew. “I love you, Joe.”

The thing stepped forward, beautiful warm fingers entangling with Percy’s cold and shaking ones, pulling his chest to Joe’s. Joe’s lips touched Percy’s cheek, Percy closed his eyes against the tears, and his trembling lips were kissed by Joe. By the thing in Joe. But by Joe. And Percy kissed him back, to convince it he had no idea, to convince himself that Joe was still in there somewhere, and in the hope the thing would end his life right then and there, in the arms of the man he loved.

In that kiss he tasted Joe, and he tasted dead meat, and he tasted despair. Utter and complete despair, wrapped up in a warm embrace, and he didn’t believe at all he had the strength, intelligence, or bravery to go through with what he was about to do.

But what choice did he have?

It was that or slash Joe’s throat right there and let him bleed out on the kitchen floor.

An instinctive reaction took Percy’s hand up and over Joe’s chest, to his precious neck, which Percy touched softly with the tips of his fingers, before he pulled back, cold and calm, resolved.

He looked into the brown eyes he’d gazed into so lovingly weeks earlier, when he’d asked Joe to spend the rest of his life with him. When Joe had promised he would.

With a heart of ice and a voice like sunshine, he said, “Handsome, I have the most wonderful surprise for you.”