Page 16 of All Hallows Trick (Sick and Twisted #3)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

TORMENT

E yeballs bursting. Bones snapping. Flesh peeled meticulously from muscle and ligaments. In the few seconds it took Madness to sweep us away to Death’s castle, I indulged every gruesome fantasy of what I’d do to the bastard who’d broken into my home.

Nothing prepared me for what we found when the hot-cold rush of Madde’s shadows ripped away, leaving us just inside the gates. The rage that had built in me stuttered at the sight of a dozen creatures lined up before the front step like soldiers under a general, their horns and claws and talons a clear threat. My leg throbbed in memory of the weakness that still gripped me, my magic nowhere near recovered. The last thing I needed was another fucking wound. I didn’t even want to think about what being wounded would do to Miz. Something felt off with him, and no amount of telling myself he was weak from being scratched soothed the paranoia.

But then I’d been paranoid about losing him since Nightmare hurt him the first time around; this was nothing new.

“Go back to Madde’s castle,” I said, catching his good arm when he darted forward a step.

“What?” Misery’s brows slammed down over vivid gold eyes. “Fuck off. I’m not leaving you here.”

“Will you go if Cat comes with you?”

“No.” His jaw set. “There are wild animals blocking the way into our damn home. I’m going nowhere.”

Stubborn, protective man. I released his arm and cast a look at Death. “What’s the plan?”

“We can’t afford to get wounded again,” he replied, clever grey eyes assessing the rows of creatures. There were bear-like animals, a sandy-furred lion, tigers, jaguars like my Cat, and even a bear. Why were they each different? There was one serum, not a different one for each person. Poppy mentioned a single serum, and so did her lab tech and—

“How the fuck?” Misery demanded, lunging forward a step before I wrangled him back. Death would come up with a plan. Something better than my attack first, ask questions later approach. “We locked you up, you psycho bitch!” he snarled, spotting her before the rest of us.

“That’s impossible,” I spat, watching Poppy stroll casually out of the front door of our home. She was locked in the dungeon under Madde’s castle. She’d been there for days, secured inside the shields of his home.

Madde laughed, low and rolling. Knowing. Furious. “She baited us into leaving her alone by telling you about the tech. Sneaky little scientist.”

“Madde!” Cat yelled when he leapt into a flutter of darkness, cutting across the courtyard.

“He’s the strongest of us right now,” Death said, stepping in front of Cat when she made to run. He caught her shoulders. “He’s got more magic than all of us put together. He needs to be the front line right now.”

“He needs back up,” Cat argued, her eyes sharp as she peered around his arm at the row of horned, winged, clawed subjects. “He can’t go up against thirteen subjects and Poppy alone. We don’t know what she’s capable of.”

“Maybe nothing,” I pointed out. “She’s not a creature, and she has no magic.”

Cat’s mouth pressed thin. “She’s Nightmare’s lackey. Who knows what she can do?”

That was a cheery thought. “Any chance I can convince you to leave now, and hole up somewhere safe?”

Cat didn’t take her eyes off the castle steps as Madde’s spiralling of darkness collided with a sleek lioness with the tusks of a walrus. “You know the answer to that.”

The coldness in her voice sent a chill down my arms. I knew Cat, knew she was dangerous and strong as fuck, but with the serum and antidote running through her veins, I realised I didn’t quite know what she was capable of. Her nostrils flared, nothing but icy rage in her eyes. An illicit cocktail of pride, fear, and arousal sent a rush of fire up my cock.

Now was not the fucking time to get a semi.

Madness grunted, the sound either of anger or pain, but I watched it strike Cat’s whole body like a whip.

“Cat,” I said, my hard voice drawing her attention. “You don’t take unnecessary risks. If you see an injury coming, you get out of the fucking way, even if it means one of us getting hurt. We’re tough, dead bastards; we can handle it. Even scratches, even bites, even weakness,” I said when she began to argue. “We can handle it. You fight like hell, give them everything you’ve got, but don’t you dare risk yourself. You hear me?”

Her throat bobbed, her expression cold, threatening. “I hear you.”

“Good girl.” I pulled her out of Death’s hold, brushing my lips over her ear. “Go save your man.”

Her breath hitched, a little flicker in her inhale that drove me mad. It physically hurt to let go of her, but it would hurt worse when Death realised I’d given her the green light.

“On a scale of one to ten, how okay are you feeling?” I asked Death and Miz. “And be fucking honest. Overplaying it does none of us any good.”

Misery dragged his teeth over his bottom lip. “Seven.”

“I’m a six. Death?”

His jaw clenched, and I saw the lie form in the first flicker of darkness in his eyes.

“I’ll put you at a three,” I cut in, and ignored his low growl of complaint.

He began to argue, but realised all at once that Cat was gone. I grabbed his shoulder before he could run after her and shoved him firmly behind myself.

“Oh shit,” I breathed, blinking at Virgil when I glanced back.

“Yep. I’m here, too.” I felt kinda bad for forgetting about him, but in my defence, there were a dozen animals on my doorstep along with the madwoman who created them. “You three hang back. We’re probably less susceptible to weakness.”

“Probably,” Death echoed, grit in his voice. “Forgive me if I don’t want to risk—”

“Madde!” Cat shouted, ripping all our focus to her, every one of us lunging across the sunset-warm stone of the courtyard in answer to the panic in her voice. It tugged at my chest until it was hard to breathe, until my gut cramped with every millisecond it took to find her in the plume of dark magic. Where is she, where is she? All I could see were the creatures who’d encircled Madness as he fought with streams of darkness, but where was my fucking wife—

I exhaled so hard it hurt my throat. “No fucking heroics,” I growled at Miz, Death, and Virgil. “No one dies today. Yeah?”

They agreed, but we were already running towards the dozen creatures who’d been designed to kill us, and there was no guarantee we’d all make it out. What if Death took another injury? What if he was so weak he couldn’t defend himself? What if Miz stumbled and couldn’t recover?

“I need a weapon,” Virgil said urgently.

“No, you don’t,” Death replied in a voice that always chilled my soul. I shot him a warning look the stubborn bastard ignored. The temperature dropped, the dead of this realm suddenly restless. I felt it; their icy rage crept down my spine like a spider. The dead were usually placid but could be called to violence given the right inclination and power.

Power Death didn’t fucking have.

“You’re not strong enough, you fucking idiot,” I snarled. He ignored that, too, pulling on the magic that saturated the air of this domain, exerting himself too much. Sweat beaded on his dark forehead, his hands curling into fists, but he didn’t stop moving towards Cat, towards the creatures that could kill him far too fucking easily.

I snapped my arm out at my side, ignoring how difficult it was to summon my power. A curl of darkness wrapped around Death, tugging him back, and I ran faster, determined to meet the creatures before the weak idiot could.

The dead arrived just as I threw out my hand and knocked aside the moose-antlered creature inching towards Cat. She had no weapons, no magic, and on reflection I shouldn’t have sent her into the fray, but something strange began to happen—the subjects kept their distance, eyeing her warily. And when I skidded beside her, I realised she didn’t need weapons when claws tipped her fingers. She slashed them through the air in warning, driving back a winged jaguar who’d slunk closer. The others kept their distance.

Were these other students from Ford? Innocent civilians? A tangle of guilt formed behind my ribs, but I ignored it. They were threats, and that’s all I could allow them to be.

“Madness!” Cat yelled, trying to get through the ring of subjects to reach him. Some backed up at the sight of her—at the sight of her black eyes, I realised—but others turned to her with teeth bared on snarls, claws flexing from paws. I lashed them away from her with shadows, trying to be as stringent as possible. It would help no one if I burned out too quickly.

“Oh hey, cavalry’s arrived!” Madde said cheerfully from within the circle of creatures, only darkness and shadow keeping them from mauling him to death.

I pulled up a swath of magic right as I realised the subjects weren’t actually attacking. They had Madde surrounded, and they were creeping closer to Cat, wary and focused, but no wounds had been dealt, no blood drawn. And I realised far too fucking late we’d been baited into a trap and walked ourselves quite agreeably into it. Fucker!

“Death,” I yelled, spinning, scanning the courtyard until my eyes fell on him. He stood tall as he strode closer, outwardly strong, but I knew he was running on empty. “Call them off. The spirits—call them off!”

I could command them myself on a good day, but we were so far from a good day I couldn’t even see a mirage of it, and my mastery over the dead was a mere drop compared to Death’s ocean. He could rally a whole community of spirits in minutes, could command them to kneel, could create an army of them in seconds. He was death, was linked so intrinsically to the spirits upon their deaths that it was instinct for them to respond to him. And more than that, the ones who lived in the towns and villages around our home knew him. Anyone could spend mere minutes with him and be willing to walk into war to defend him; his goodness was palpable. It was partly why I’d become a semi-decent guy in this second life.

But none of that stopped me from throwing out my arm, casting a weak net of power over the spirits as they swarmed through the walls, the gates, and the castle into the courtyard to answer Death’s call. Go, I snarled at them through that dark net, get the hell out of here.

But Death’s sway was more potent than mine. Only one of them flitted away, at least forty ghosts remaining. This is going to get ugly.

“This was never about us,” I yelled to Death, giving Miz a hard look at his side. Protect him. Keep the stupid bastard alive. Miz nodded, his eyes livid and harsh. So fucking beautiful, both of them. If anything happened to them, I’d resurrect the bastards just to kill them all over again for breaking my heart.

“The spirits,” Cat gasped, figuring it out. “Oh god, there’s so many of them. Tor—”

I faced her, a growl revving up my chest, protectiveness like a red haze over my vision as I reached for my wife. I caught her, pulling her into my arms just as the jaguar that had been stalking her leapt into motion… and raced past us.

“Hey, quick question,” Madde asked when the circle of subjects broke up around him. “What the fuck?”

“You must think the world revolves around you.”

The words were rough from days of torture and screaming. They dropped the temperature of my blood and had Cat bristling against my side. I felt Death and Miz reach us, my senses on high alert. My hands flexed around Cat, pulling her tighter against me.

“This was never about you, Madness,” Poppy said, shaking her head with an amused smile. She was a fucking psycho, more deserving of the name Madness than Madde and that was really saying something.

“Stop it,” Cat snapped, testing my arms around her; they didn’t budge. She flinched back into me when a lion joined the jaguar racing across the courtyard, followed by a winged leopard, a bear, and a deer with vicious fangs. “This is crazy. Stop.”

Poppy’s eyes softened, and for a sick second I genuinely believed her affection was true. Hell, maybe it was; people could just as easily cause harm with love as with hatred. “There are bigger things in play right now, Cat. None of this will hurt you, though.” She gasped, catching sight of something behind me, past Death and Miz, her eyes filling with awe. “Another of my children.”

Virgil’s laugh was a dark, unsettling thing; it sent a shiver down my back, instinct demanding I put him in my line of sight. “You’re the crazy bitch who did this to me.”

“Don’t use those words,” Poppy chided, as if the courtyard wasn’t rapidly filling with snarls and growls from animal bodies primed to attack. I pulled Cat out of the path of a huge, black-furred wolf trailing wings it didn’t seem to know how to work. “Women have been called crazy and bitches for centuries, especially women like me, innovators who want to change the world.”

“Change the world?” Death asked calmly, ignoring the warning look I shot him when he strode past me and Cat. Fuck. I couldn’t protect them all at once and it was fucking killing me. I flicked my stare between the ghosts and the mad scientist, weighing our options. “And how does conducting experiments on innocent children achieve that? How does locking them in cells and torturing them achieve that?”

“Torturing?” Poppy was horrified, a hand pinned to her chest. “I would never—”

“Seven times,” Virgil said in a low, low voice, a well of rage within him as he brushed past us and caught up to Death, his body vibrating. “Did you know your wonder serum doesn’t always work the first time? Nightmare injected us over and over and fucking over until the damn thing took. I heard people die in those tunnels, heard their hoarse screams hour after hour until finally they cut out. It took seven fucking injections to turn me into this,” he yelled, shaking off Death’s hand when he tried to comfort him. “And you don’t call that torture?”

“You’re here now,” Poppy said gently, descending the steps towards him. My heart quickened. She needed to die. Right fucking here. “All’s well that ends well. And you’re perfect, look at you.”

All's well that ends well? She needed a lobotomy.

Virgil bared his teeth, an inhuman snarl leaving him, making some of the other subjects falter. Seven times he’d been injected. God.

“What do we do?” Cat whispered.

I didn’t know. This weak, with so little magic, and facing so many creatures capable of causing true damage… I didn’t know. I slid a glance at the psycho god standing a few feet away from us, his head tilted and light gleaming off the burnished red of his hair as he watched the creatures. His eyes shot to me, light dancing within them.

“If you’ve got a grand plan, now’s the time to announce it,” I muttered, our words covered by the sudden growl Virgil let out as he charged at Poppy.

“I think,” he said with grave seriousness, “we should kill the creatures.”

No fucking shit.

“Don’t even think about it,” Cat snapped, moving so suddenly she escaped my arms. Panic clawed at my chest. I sank into my magic, calling shadow to my palms. It wasn’t enough. It was pitiful, and that made me want to scream. “They can hurt you too, Madness.”

Madde tilted his head like he was contemplating it anyway. I gripped my magic in tight hands. I didn’t need to take out all the creatures. I just needed to command the spirits. That was all. Easy.

“Protect her with your life, Madness,” I commanded, and before Cat could react, I wrapped myself in a thin veil of shadow, helping me run faster as I sprinted across the courtyard.

The biggest gathering of ghosts was at the side of the castle, where the wall met Death’s garden. I ran full-out, not second guessing myself. I’m powerful. I’m a death god. I’m Torment. I’m …feeling like a fucking fool for these desperate affirmations.

Fuck it. Here goes nothing.

“Leave,” I ordered, my voice resonant and full, deepening as I felt my appearance flicker, the true darkness of my soul on display for a moment—bleached bones showing through chasms in my arms and chest, blood spilling over grey skin, my clothes hanging off a skeletal body. My face must have been horrifying, blood smearing the hollows of my cheeks, my eyes now nothing more than black pits. When I raised my hands, they were nothing but bone, sharpened to a point at the tips of my fingers. “Return to your homes. Obey the god Torment or stay and face eternal suffering.”

I didn’t dare release my tentative grip on the power as they began to disperse, didn’t let the gasp of hope leave my throat. Awareness crawled down the back of my neck. Eyes tracing me from head to toe. I tried to ignore the panic it invoked. When twelve spirits had fled, the vulnerability to Death minimised, I turned—slowly, nervous—to meet the stare fixed on me.

Cat’s eyes were so wide the whites swallowed the silver of her iris, her mouth parted as I held her entire attention, not even the subjects or Poppy stealing her eyes from me. When I felt several more spirits fade out of the courtyard, I dropped the power and sucked in a rattling breath, warm flesh covering my bones again, the blood and rot vanishing. Cat never looked away. A sick, oily feeling spilled through my stomach. Would she look at my true form and decide she didn’t want me? Would the horror of it turn her away from me? Would I be too hideous to look at now, when she would always see the decay hiding underneath? Would she—

She was smiling. Teeth bared as she grinned fiercely. The world fell away, time stretched out between us. Cat and I were the only people in existence.

“I see you haven’t grown any hair in the last three decades,” Misery remarked.

Breath slammed back into my lungs. I flipped him off, turning to see how many spirits were left, a smile tugging at my lips even though there was still a whole pack full of animals capable of slaughtering us all. I should have learned not to trust moments of true happiness like these; they only made pain hit harder.

But I wasn’t the one who staggered when a shaggy grey wolf leapt onto the spirit of a woman I vaguely knew from the village at the base of the road. She’d worked as a baker in life and always had a loaf in her hands. It was there even now, as the wolf locked its jaws around her throat. It shouldn’t have been possible—she was a ghost and the wolf was living—but impossibility didn’t stop the creature ripping her head off. It hung there by a single flap of skin, a scream of agony etching itself into her round, wrinkled face. The loaf never left her hands even as her eyes turned opaque. I was close enough to see it all, close enough that every bit of the horror was in high definition.

It wasn’t the Stalker who killed the ghost on our doorstep three days ago. It was the creatures. And by locking them in our damned dungeon, we’d unleashed thirteen of them upon the domain of the Dead.

“Get back,” I shouted, backing up, hairs standing on end all down my arms. This was bad, much fucking worse than I thought, and I didn’t know how to get us out of it.

The wolf leapt from the baker to a smartly-dressed black man, and in the space of a blink it had grabbed his arm and ripped it off. Scratches raked his chest, his face, a fatal gash across his throat. His mouth hung open in agony, his eyes clouding over. Two spirits, murdered in the span of a minute. It shouldn’t have been possible—you couldn’t kill what was already dead, let alone this quickly. I backed up, my heart slamming a rapid beat against my ribs as a second creature leapt at the nine remaining spirits, then a third, a fourth. I lost count. Fuck.

“Death!” Cat cried, ripping my attention from the massacre in front of us. My heart fucking stopped when I saw Death on his knees, panting, teeth gritted against clear pain.

“Enough,” I snarled at Poppy, launching myself at where she stood, watching the slaughter with pride. What happened to Virgil? I thought he was attacking her? I couldn’t see him. Shit. “Enough. What do you want? Name it and I’ll give it to you, and you can get the fuck out of here.”

“Oh, you don’t need to give me anything,” Poppy replied, her attention on her creatures as they tore through spirits like rice paper. They were already dead, bodies long decayed in the mortal realm but watching them suffer was a thing of horror. “I can do it myself, thank you.”

“You want us all dead,” I guessed.

“I don’t care about you,” she disagreed, not deigning to look at any of us. “But I care about Nightmare, and she wants that monster dead. Truly, finally dead.” She leaned closer. “Only then can we heal and make a better world.”

It took me a moment. To realise who she meant by monster. And then true, endless rage threw a match on the fuel in my blood, lighting it up like a fucking pyre. You dare, I began to say, my muscles bunching, my legs already shifting into a jump across the last few metres. I’d rip her fucking heart out.

“Monster?” a deep feminine snarl demanded before I could speak. I didn’t recognise the voice, not until it was followed by a rough, rasping growl I’d gotten used to hearing these past few days as my girl lost control of her power. “I must be mistaken, because there’s no way you just called my husband a monster.”

“Beautiful,” I warned as she edged past me. My body shook, caught between violence and panic, attack and indecision. I needed to keep her safe, but this madwoman needed to die and Death needed care and I—

“He rips lives from the innocent every single day,” Poppy shouted, more passion and life in her voice than even as we tortured her. “How many innocent people have their lives taken too young? How many unjust illnesses were given to humans who deserved a full, long life?”

Cat began to laugh. Low. Dangerous. A laugh that had my last dregs of power humming inside me, rising into my palms. Ready to be used, because Cat’s laugh meant death, and I was a dealer of torment god of death. I was hers to command, a soldier to a general, a worshipper to a goddess.

“Oh,” my beautiful Cat said far too casually. “Like you did? How many are dead because of you, Carmilla? How many of these people are screaming inside their heads while you force them to kill?” Cat laughed again, walking far too calmly towards Poppy. I followed her, my heartbeat rapid. Ten steps to the madwoman now. Eight. Seven.

Poppy didn’t answer, didn’t even frown.

“How many?” Cat roared, the force of her fury sending me back a step. No, fuck, that wasn’t her anger—it was her power.

I felt it a split second before fur, wicked teeth, and sharp-tipped ram’s horns erupted from my girl. Her eyes met mine, and I saw the same emotion I’d felt minutes ago reflected in them. I let my love and obsession and fierce pride show.

“Make her pay, beautiful.”