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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

INTERVIEW WITH THE BEAST

J oe’s eyes opened slowly, hazily, and the first thing the beast saw was Percy.

Percy had remained there, quietly seated beside his beloved, for two straight hours. He watched intently, curious to see if the drugs had affected the being’s thoughts along with Joe’s body. “Do you know where you are?”

The eyes closed again, and Joe’s body drifted back to sleep. Percy kicked his knee. On the side. Not too hard, but hard enough. The eyelids fluttered open.

“What do you want?” Percy asked in a crisp tone.

“Sleep,” the thing mumbled.

“I’ll tell you what.” Percy leaned forward and gently slapped Joe’s face. “Give my fiancé back, and you can sleep for as long as you like.”

A little laugh crept up Joe’s throat. “That’s right,” the thing said, smiling beneath closed eyes. “You’re in love with him.” Then its eyes opened wide, and it scanned the room. From one wall to another, the gaze ran, alarmed but intelligent, thinking. Focusing back on Percy, the thing said, “You know. How do you know?”

Percy let out his own soft laugh. “Eating sheep while they’re still alive was a bit of a giveaway.”

“Oh.” It thought for a time. “He… ‘Joe’ doesn’t do that?”

“No. Joe doesn’t do that.” Percy’s eyes sharpened with the breadcrumb of information. “But if you can access his thoughts, you should know that already.”

“Hmmm.” The thing made no more response than that.

“What do you want?” Percy asked again, a little more forcefully.

The chains about Joe’s chest clinked as he tried to stretch his arms out. “I’d like you to untie me.”

“Let’s think a bit bigger, shall we? Do you want blood?”

“Yes.”

“I can get that. Do you want to…” Percy pressed his lips in pause. He was going to do whatever it wanted, anyway. Why hold back on the untoward offer? “Do you want to kill a lot of people?”

“Not particularly.” Percy let go a small breath of relief, until it said, “Unless they taste good.”

“Noted,” said Percy. “That’s easily solved. Get out of Joe, and I’ll round you up as big a feast as you like. What do you need first? A new host?”

The thing laughed one of Joe’s bemused, disbelieving laughs. “You’ll kill me the second I’m out of him. Why do you think I haven’t taken anyone else?”

“Bullshit. You could have jumped bodies at the airport and been away. I wouldn’t have had a clue where you were. You need to be invited.” It was a guess, but it was based on a wealth of supernatural knowledge, and the beast’s silence made it as good as fact in Percy’s mind. “I’ll get you a new host once we agree to some terms. Someone willing. How about that?”

Joe’s head shook slowly, side to side, but his eyes remained locked on. “You’re a liar, Percy Ashdown. I know better than to trust you.”

It wasn’t Percy’s first exorcism, if that’s even what this was. He’d spent plenty of time around demons and other foul supernatural beasts, prone to targeted, personal attacks. But this was Joe, and Joe’s lips saying his name—accusing him—and it felt like a belly full of razor wire. “Did Joe tell you that?”

Joe’s head leaned back with as much nonchalance as a man chained to an ugly chair could muster. “I can see it all playing out in his mind. Anyone else I take, you follow them and kill them. He’s thinking of all the methods you’d use to track them down. He’s thinking of all the people he’s seen you kill. He’s thinking of all the secrets you’ve kept from him. He knows, and so I know, that you would never keep your word.”

“Huh.” Percy settled a little deeper into his seat, an oddly whimsical smile drawing across his face. “It’s sweet, really, that Joe thinks I’d chase after you. That he imagines I’ve an ounce of altruism left in me.” Percy’s gaze remained on Joe, fond, distant, then dulling with every passing second as the smile disappeared. “The unfortunate fact is, Joe’s never seen me really pissed off.”

Percy stood, making his way around behind the beast. He took his dagger from beside Cleo, who remained as inarticulate as her skull should always have been. He settled back into the chair, his forearms resting on his thighs, fingers toying with the knife, and he leaned in close to the beast, talking softly. “That’s what I love about him. He has a faith in things, and people—a faith in me —that makes me…” He searched for the word. “A little crazy, truth be told. So Joe doesn’t actually know how far I’d go, because even I don’t know how far I’d go. And that means you don’t either. But I would do a lot of damage before I’d let you take him from me.”

Joe’s expression fell, a little glint of panic sparking sharp in the golden flecks of his irises. Percy was glad to see it there. Was it Joe’s fear? Could the creature feel that?

Percy’s ice-blue eyes stayed trained on Joe’s. “Is he watching now? Can he see me?”

The creature assessed him for a time, then, tentatively, “He can.”

“I’m sorry, darling.” With a flick of his wrist, Percy’s knife slashed clean across Joe’s arm in one fleet, smooth, controlled move. The skin broke wide open, Joe’s pale-blue shirt turned scarlet, and Joe’s lips cried out in pain and shock.

“Aha!” shouted Percy, climbing to his feet. “So you feel pain? I can definitely work with this.”

But he was soon shut up when the blade slipped from his fingers, exactly as though an invisible hand had yanked it clear. With a flash of steel, it twisted around in midair and lodged itself deep in Percy’s shoulder.

“Fuck!” He fell back against the bed, cracking the small of his back on a protruding wooden slat, and he slipped to the floor with a splatter of blood. “Ah, fuck!” He wrapped his fingers around his dagger, took a few deep breaths to prepare himself, then wrenched it free, streaking a ribbon of blood across Joe’s cheek with the volition of the release.

Joe watched on, breathing a little harder, a nasty smile marring his beautiful face.

“Telekinesis?” Percy grunted, blood seeping between the fingers he held to his wound.

“Among other things.”

“Then why haven’t you killed me?”

The creature eyed the blood. Joe’s tongue passed hungrily over his lips. “I still might.”

Percy followed the voracious gaze to his scarlet hand. “You want this? Are you hungry?” He shoved himself to standing, leaving bloody handprints on the filthy mattress. Joe watched his approach, until Percy’s legs were between his own, a press of heat against his thighs, Joe’s chest straining against the binds.

Percy glanced down at his bleeding shoulder. With a groan of pain that forced its way from somewhere deep in his gut, he dug his thumb into the great gash. Joe’s breath came out with a rasp, and Percy held his arm out long, above the head of the beast. “Gently.”

He lowered his hand steadily, eyes burning into Joe’s, until his bloody fingers came to caress Joe’s cheek. The thing waited, taking him in with wary eyes, while Percy’s vermillion thumb came to rest at the corner of his lips. Joe’s lips parted softly, and Percy ran a slow, thick trail of blood across his lower lip, to the midpoint, where he felt the warm, wet press of Joe’s tongue. The lips closed and Percy let his thumb slide into the hot, wet mouth.

It could have been Joe, but for the red lips. The closed lashes and the feeling and the innate trust were all there, and Percy was on the verge of leaning over and kissing him. Yet the logical part of his brain pulsed on, behind an odd new hammering—a vague un-wellness that he put down to perma-hangover and tiredness. He said, “How about we get you someone to eat? As a show of good faith.”

The delicious suction released, and Joe’s head fell back. “I’m assuming you didn’t manage to get me here all by yourself. Is that girl here? That little friend of yours? How about you go find her for me, then you slit her throat and let me drink her?”

Percy let out a heavy sigh. “Just when I thought we were getting somewhere.” His next intention was to throw himself despondently into the chair, but a wave of nausea hit him full in the throat, and the room shifted sideways. He doubled over, grasping for the edge of the mattress, then collapsed onto it, heaving air in and out. Joe’s face, surveying all with a knowingness that made Percy a little sicker, moved in and out of focus, while Percy swallowed down a flush of bile. He talked over it. “So either you need me, or you like me. I sincerely doubt it’s the latter, but there must be a reason you didn’t bite my thumb off just then.”

Percy reached across to his bag, ripping the strap free from the tangle of encroaching ivy where it had fallen. Dead brown curling tendrils snapped, and a vague idea flared in the back of Percy’s mind that it was odd the damp environment of the house should produce those barren little tendrils, or turn the edges of those leaves crisp. Had they been that way before? They must have been…

The thought died with the flick of his lighter and the very necessary pull of air through a cigarette.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” the creature replied. “I do want to drink you, though.”

Percy laughed, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back. “Please, Christ, would someone tell me why that’s still sexy when it comes out of Joe’s mouth?”

“Probably because he feels the same way.” The creature seemed to take a risk by adding, “It’s been a long time since I was with a human.” He looked down, and for the first time, Percy noticed the very noticeable bulge in Joe’s pants.

He spoke only to Joe when he responded, “Thank god for that. I thought I was being weird with how hot that was just then. We’ll store it away for another time.”

“He’ll watch you die before you get the chance,” came the deadpan reply.

Percy tapped his ash to the floor. “You know, you flip from pleasant to miserable so fast it’s hard to keep track. There’s my dagger.” He nodded towards the floor. “Why isn’t it in my neck? It’s just you and me here, and pretty soon I’m going to start torturing you. Which is something I’ve gotten pretty good at over the years.”

Joe’s eyes dulled and blinked, and Percy could virtually see the thing checking in with Joe. “He’s very scared you will.”

In perfect honesty, Percy replied, “That’s because he’s smart.”

The creature let out one of Joe’s laughs that rattled down Percy’s back like a skeleton’s finger tapping on each vertebra. “And you think I’ll leave him? Because it hurts a bit?”

Seething over a cold smile, “It will hurt more than ‘a bit’.”

Their eye contact held, but Percy began to get the unpleasant feeling he was being studied more than he was managing to intimidate.

Another lurch of nausea poked at his chest, and he inhaled some smoke to spite it. What the fuck kind of time was this for a bout of food poisoning? He hadn’t eaten a thing—not since the mutton pie.

He glared towards the window in frustration, and just as he did, a little curl of ivy let go of the wall, spurring a great shudder through the entire vine—the whole drooping, tired-looking, dark mass.

The whole dying plant…

Percy’s eyes snapped back to meet Joe’s, as a full grin broke across his face. Joe said, “Someone will eventually come and untie me. You might last a few more hours, maybe even overnight, but you’ll give in to make the sickness stop, or you’ll leave, or you’ll die. That boy and that girl will do the same. And if none of you let me go, I’ll wait right here with Joe. I’ll wait right here in this little room, staring at that doorway. Maybe for months. Maybe for years. I’ll wait here while he grows thin. While he feels every London winter through that smashed window. While the spiders crawl up his legs and nest in his hair and his skin. I’ll wait and I’ll wait, and one day, someone will come and untie me, and I’ll be on my way.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” was all the reply Percy could manage over the screaming panic in his brain. Was it poison? Dark magic? Was the sweat prickling down his neck due to illness or stress?

“I’ve got him and I’ve got time,” the creature continued. “Two things you don’t have. So, by all means, you can torture him. Let his screams be the last memory you have of him. Let your abuse be all that he remembers of you. Or you can unchain me, and when I’m done with him, you might get him back. Eventually. I don’t need him for too long.”

Percy wasn’t in the habit of believing beasts from the abyss (as presumably this thing was), yet he felt a traitorous spectre of hope at the being’s words. “What do you need him for?”

The creature retreated into silence.

Percy assessed the ivy. It was wilting fast. He knew nothing about plants beyond his enviable culinary skills, but he didn’t imagine he’d long withstand whatever force was so effectively draining the life out of the vine. The same force, he surmised, that must have left the grounds of Barmiston Hall parched, expired, devoid of all earthly life. He dropped the cigarette to the floor and stamped it out. “I think I’ll start with the fingers. A hot wire inserted beneath the nail usually does the trick.”

The thing raised Joe’s eyebrows. “Does it need to be hot?”

“Purely for show,” said Percy. “Something about the sound of the sizzle when the metal hits the moisture of the nail bed. The scent of burning nail and skin, the way the steam rises off it. People tend to do what I want on the first nail. A few make me go two nails deep. But I’ve never had to stretch to three.”

“And you would do this to him? A person you claim to love?” A new chuckle sounded in Joe’s chest, but there was an edge of nervousness to it.

Percy smiled a wan smile. “I’ll break every bone in his body if I have to. You might want him now, but we’ll see how much use he is to you when he can’t walk anymore.” He glanced one last time at the terminal ivy. “I’d say I need an hour to get the job done. Two at the most.”