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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

DESCENT

I t’s never until a person really sits down to think about it that the myriad dangers of a short flight become apparent. At least, that was the case for Percy.

He was prepared for all the obvious. A smashed window depressurising the cabin. A cockpit stormed, a pilot murdered, and a plane downed. The nearest passenger’s eyes gouged out by strong, statuesque thumbs before the victim ever saw it coming. All the usual sorts of airborne brutality. But knowing the beautiful man by his side could kill him easily and efficiently with barely a quickening of his pulse kept Percy especially wary.

He didn’t know if the beast possessing Joe could tap into Joe’s admirable intelligence. He didn’t know how hungry it was—how many of those on board it might need to slay to slake its thirst for blood. Because Percy believed that’s what it was out for. The rare steak, the rarer sheep’s insides…

These facts put together with the details of the séance, which Percy had been over and over in his mind, had sparked in him a harrowing hypothesis: that the very thing possessing Joe now was the same thing that had been desperately licking the floor of Cleo’s basement the day before.

He’d heard the bookcase being shoved away from the hole in the wall, he’d seen the flash of a shadow, something moving down that dreary hallway, and ghosts did not cast shadows. But then it had stopped. The very moment he knew Joe was possessed, all noise from that hallway had stopped. And whatever was down there never did come after them.

But what the hell was it?

Percy’s leg tapped in his tailored woollen trousers, and the long and frenetic release of adrenaline never let up. The newly boiled water for tea—would that be thrown in his face? Those little plastic forks; seemingly harmless, but not nice when the long, thin side is rammed deep into an ear canal. Strings on life jackets that were so handy for strangulation. The strong plastic of a life-saving oxygen mask tube, the perfect tool to garrote a man. And did the beast have supernatural powers? Percy hadn’t seen any sign of them other than its uncanny ability to access Joe’s memories and use them to crush Percy’s spirit one word at a time.

The thing knew he was in love with Joe. It knew. How a creature with a forked tongue who drank children for snacks might know what love was, Percy couldn’t begin to understand. But it understood, and it played him like a harp.

It was a little smile here. The press of Joe’s hand there. That touch on his back when he walked past, and the off-beat jokes like Joe would make. Chip, chip, chip again, it scraped away at Percy’s obsidian heart, breaking his resolve, breaking him, yet, unwittingly, giving him a slight advantage.

It was so painfully simple for Percy to react to each and every touch, look, and word with a natural expression of love. Tinged with sadness now, perhaps, but easy enough to be convincing. If the creature knew that Percy knew it had Joe’s body, it didn’t let on, and neither did Percy, and so the long, exacting, nerve-rattling game continued.

He shifted a brown leather Oxford against the bag between his feet, feeling the hard, reassuring press of Cleo in the silent skull. She hadn’t made a sound since he’d asked her not to, and Joe was no wiser than Maisie and George that he’d made away with her at first light.

He couldn’t be sure, but Percy had a sneaking suspicion that should the creature in Joe discover Cleo, it would smash the skull in a heartbeat. And then what would happen to whatever was left of her?

He glanced across at Joe, still, and for the last hour, poring over a world map in the back of an in-flight magazine. He seemed to be thoroughly engrossed tracing the thin red flight lines, resting his fingertip on some country or other, then starting again. It was odd, but whatever kept him occupied and not thinking about murder was good enough for Percy.

But then, why would the thing kill a plane full of people? That would hardly aid its survival.

An airport full of people, on the other hand…

He hoped Heathrow security, putting on a better display in London than the regional airports they’d just come through, would be some sort of deterrent, assuming the thing had any violent intentions beyond the destruction of several sheep.

Throughout the long taxi ride to Sumburgh, the creature had looked out the window and watched the scenery. It had boarded the first flight and sat patiently. It didn’t complain at the sharp turnaround time at Aberdeen. It simply boarded the next plane to London as though it was a normal thing to do. As though it was Joe.

And now it sat there in Percy’s partner’s body, biding its time.

Until what?

The hope that it wanted something, anything at all—even blood—was enough to keep Percy going. He could work with whatever it was. He’d feed it every virgin child in the country if it meant getting Joe back. He’d bring back his powerful sheath and hand it over. He’d find the Necronomicon for it if it asked. He’d do whatever it took, just so long as it wanted anything that wasn’t Joe.

Descent into London was announced, and Percy’s pulse reached the sort of fast where he felt the icy calm begin to descend. That cold and lonely place he would always go, where he didn’t have to think twice about what atrocities he might commit, because there he could access no regret, no mercy, in just the same way nothing could touch him.