Page 13 of All Hallows Trick (Sick and Twisted #3)

CHAPTER TWELVE

CAT

I didn’t even want to think about how Alastor vanished so completely that two death gods couldn’t find him. It was a little too coincidental that Madde couldn’t trace him less than twenty-four hours after he’d failed to track the Stalker who watched us in Death’s domain. But Alastor was living. Only the dead could enter the domain.

Honey and Virgil could, a reluctant voice pointed out.

Maybe someone had allowed Alastor to enter, too.

Without protections like the ones around my home, he’d wither and die, Madde interrupted my thoughts, earning himself a swift glare. They were my private ruminations, dammit. Virgil and Honey can only stay because I linked the shields keeping them alive to the castle. The Stalker was out in the city. Only the dead could do that.

I shook my head, walking close to Tor, his arm around my shoulders, keeping me in the bubble of his warmth even as my thoughts made everything frozen with fear inside.

It’s too big a coincidence. Alastor’s the Stalker, I know it.

I felt Madde’s eyes on the side of my face and turned to look at him, my stomach lurching at the harrowing sadness in his eyes, carved into his handsome face, pulling his features down.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, my hand itching with the urge to reach for him. But he wasn’t mine, and I had three husbands, and everything was too strange, too complicated.

He tore his gaze away, staring straight ahead, so much emotion in those electric blue eyes. His throat bobbed in a swallow. “I vowed to kill all your enemies, but the bully got away. I failed you.”

I waited, but… that was it.

“Madde, you didn’t fail me. Alastor’s a crafty bastard. He’s a fucking snake, although that’s unfair to snakes. He’ll turn up again, and… and when he does, you can kill him.”

It was weird to give someone permission to kill another person. Beyond morally grey and all the way into morally black. But I didn’t care. Every hurtful word Alastor had said, every bruise the bastard gave me, it had condemned him. He’d fucked with a girl loved by death gods, and worse, he brought my best friend into it. I wouldn’t cry at his funeral. I wouldn’t even go. And if that made me a bad person, so be it.

“You’re right,” Madde said, straightening his shoulders, a smile brightening his face. For a moment the man looking back at me had been forlorn and tortured and unfamiliar. There was a deep well of sadness inside Madde, and that made my heart hurt. “I’ll kill him next time.”

Silence stretched between the four of us, Miz glaring at the woods as we walked back to the gate and the moors road where Madde could carry us back to the castle.

“We’ll be fine,” Tor promised quietly, pressing a hard kiss to my temple.

“I know,” I replied automatically, but there was too much going through my head, and even though we were going to find the scientist working for Nightmare, we still didn’t have any antidotes right now and—

“Did you see that?” I asked urgently, raising my hand to point at a flash of red I’d seen slipping between the trees ahead of us. I’d never seen anyone else out here except us—and Phil. “There’s someone out here.”

“Could be anyone, beautiful,” Tor tried to soothe me. “The woods aren’t private property; any student can access them. And the gates don’t even lock to Ford.”

I knew that. But paranoia surged, along with a wild cocktail of suspicion, alarm, threat, and hope. If someone was out here, maybe they’d seen the scientist and— “Isn’t that the direction of the cottage?”

“It is,” Miz confirmed grimly, following me the second I set off running. Tor and Madde quickly caught up to us, a frazzled air of nerves and excitement around us. It was only a glint of hope, barely anything in the dark, but I’d take anything. So I ran, faster and faster, my shoes flying over the uneven ground, leaping the roots of tall trees.

“I see them,” Miz called to me as we ran, his white hair flying behind him like a banner. “There. It’s a woman!”

My hope swelled so much it knocked against my breastbone. Could it be her, Nightmare’s mad scientist, the monster who made the serum? Violence muddied the light of my hope, but there was a flash of excitement in the violence, too. She would pay for everything she’d done. And I’d enjoy meting out that justice.

Miz grunted, loudly enough that it reached me even over my rough breaths, and I slowed when he grabbed his ribs, his breaths wheezing. I stared in horror as he doubled over, gasping in clear pain, light glinting off my crown ring on his middle finger.

“Miz?” I demanded, my voice stripped of any determination, replaced with horror. He was hurt, weakened by a scratch to his arm, and we had no idea what that was doing to any of my husbands. Let alone the dangerous way he’d bound his magic—

“Fine, my universe,” he wheezed, straightening when Tor reached us, the latter instantly grabbing Miz’s shoulders, scanning his face, his body. “Just a little too much exertion,” he laughed, strained.

“Where does it hurt?” Tor demanded, squeezing his shoulders.

“Just my ribs. It’s a stitch, stop overreacting you madman.”

“No, that’s me,” Madde said, but without the giddy way he usually spoke. “Madde. And a man.”

I searched Miz’s face. “Look me in the eye and say it’s just muscle strain.”

Miz’s eyes gentled into liquid gold. “It’s just muscle strain. We need to keep moving; our quarry is getting away.”

I chewed my lip. He was right and I hated it. “As soon as we get home, you’re having a hot bath and you’re letting us pamper you. Do not argue with me, on pain of death,” I warned when he began to speak.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said instead, his eyes still soft. He kissed me, far too quickly to soothe the panic gripping my chest, and began walking again, slower. I watched him like a hawk but he moved normally, the pain passed. I had to focus on this woman in red, not just for me but for Virgil. He needed the antidotes as much as I did.

Maybe the woman could engineer a permanent antidote. Maybe she could cure us.

I ran faster, pushing my body to its limits, the woods whipping past me in a blur of dark green and black, the sky blotted out by their branches. The fresh, comforting scent of trees and living things filled my lungs, but out here that comfort was a lie. I remembered the sharp scent of chemicals, the putrid, haunting smell of the cells at the end of the tunnel. That was the truth of Ford, not this calm, quiet woodland around me.

I skidded to a stop, kicking up dirt, when the small building came into view. My heart tripped faster at the sight of it, the back of my neck tingling, my hackles rising. A low, threatening sound formed in my throat; I cut it off before it could linger, but the reminder was there. I wasn’t the same person I’d been when Phil dragged me into this shack. It had been twenty-four hours but everything had changed. I had changed.

“The door’s open,” Madde pointed out, nudging me with his shoulder. “Want me to check it out lioness?”

If I was really a lioness I would have scoffed and taken the first steps inside the innocuous looking cottage. I’d been here just hours ago. Ghosts tangled in my head, the memory of Phil’s terrified voice, of hitting her over the head with the test tube rack, of finding Virgil in the tunnels, then being attacked by Elaina. My stomach wrapped and coiled and cinched until I felt sick, my hands shaking at my sides.

Fingers slid into mine, dry and warm and soft, squeezing with reassurance. I lifted my stare from the muddy ground to Misery, a lump in my throat.

“What if I can’t go inside?” I asked, my voice too quiet, too weak. Tor squeezed my shoulder as he moved past, following Madde inside. I couldn’t make my legs work, couldn’t pick up my feet.

“You don’t have to go anywhere,” Miz promised, a fire of protectiveness in his voice. I knew the feeling; I felt it towards him, too. “You never have to step foot inside this place ever again.”

“They kept Virgil here for weeks. My experiences are nothing compared to that. I should be able to go inside. I was here four hours ago.” But I stared at the old walls, the lovely door, the cute chimney and I felt sick.

“You knew we were alone an hour ago.” Miz pulled me close, tucking my head under his chin. “Now it’s different.”

I wanted to stay in his arms forever, but I detangled myself, and forced a step, then two.

“You don’t have to do this. You just nagged me for pushing myself and needing rest. Do I need to nag you about the same?”

I narrowed my eyes at him, taking the distraction, desperate for it. The weight of golden eyes on mine settled the ragged panic in my chest but fear still whipped around like a live wire out of control. “I did not nag.”

“You did, and it was very sweet. It made me feel loved.”

“Miz,” I sighed, squeezing his hand. “You are loved. And you’re right, I’ll take care of myself later. But now… I don’t know if I can do this but I have to.”

“We’ve got her!” Tor called from inside, his voice close enough to tell me they were in the first room the hallway led to. Not the tunnels, not the cells. Okay. I could do that. It was one short hallway. Easy.

I shut out Phil’s voice in my memory, shut out the roar of Elaina in her subject form, shut out the tremor of my own voice when I spoke. I took one step, and another, and another. Right foot on the front step. Left foot on the second step. Right, inside. Another step. Another—

My gasp was loud, bouncing off the stone walls when I saw who Tor and Madde were wrestling with, glimpses visible through the doorway at the end. I stepped forward in a daze this time, confused and hurt, shaking my head as I tried to make sense of it. There was no way this was Nightmare’s genius scientist; she must have come out here looking for me and Honey. Maybe she’d noticed us missing after Byron’s memorial. That made sense; she was always looking out for me.

She caught sight of me and stopped struggling, her eyes gentle behind bright red glasses, her smile genuine and deep. Professor Poppy, or Carmilla as she’d told me to call her. The black poppy she always wore was pinned to the lapel of her peach blazer, more familiar than most things at Ford.

My shoulders slumped, a sick sort of relief filling my chest even as guilt tangled through me. I was glad we hadn’t found Nightmare’s scientist, glad it was only Poppy. Deep down, I hadn’t wanted to face the woman whose serum made me into a monster.

“Were you looking for me and Honey?” I asked, relaxing.

“Just you,” she replied with that warm smile. “Look at you, my beautiful creature, my darling child.”

I jerked to a stop, flinched. Everything inside me ground to a halt, scrambling to understand. “What…?”

“We never planned for you, but you turned out beautifully. Look at you, in complete control of yourself only a day after genesis.”

“You don’t get to speak a single fucking word to her,” Tor growled, bristling with fury and protectiveness.

I didn’t…

Her…?

Hurt crept into my voice when I asked Carmilla, “You were the one who did this? You made the subjects?”

There was nothing but kindness in her eyes. “No.” I began to exhale, but it choked off when she added, “Only Nightmare calls them that. You’re not subjects. You’re nothing so ordinary. You’re my children.”