Page 28 of All Hallows Trick (Sick and Twisted #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CAT

E verything Nightmare had done, all the ways she’d tortured me… those were Cruelty’s ideas, her grand master plan. And for what? Why had she done all this?

I swallowed hard, and tasted blood, setting off another round of retching.

“Cat,” a weak voice rasped, making my head snap up, a drop of Nightmare’s blood rolling off my chin.

“Death,” I breathed, and dragged myself across the dirt to his side. It took me a whole minute, but I finally reached him, brushing hair off his sweaty face.

“I’ll be fine,” he said before I could even speak. His instinct to reassure me made tears burn my eyes.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’ll be fine,” he repeated. “I just need to regain my strength. Tomorrow, I’ll be back to normal.”

He was lying, but I just bent down to kiss his forehead, my heart hurting. “Where’s Tor?”

“Cruelty sent him somewhere, I saw him disappear,” Death rasped, his hand weakly clasping mine, clammy and cool when he was usually so warm. “We’ll need Madde’s help to find him.”

“Madde!” I gasped, scanning the garden, my heart beating faster when I couldn’t find him.

Madde? I asked, spearing myself into the darkness, desperately searching for him. Where are you?

Wind whispered through the garden, stirring my hair. The white strands of it were dyed entirely crimson by Nightmare’s blood. I shuddered in revulsion.

A rush of power, potent and sudden, made me jump, and I scrambled to my feet too fast, wavering so hard I almost fell back to the ground. But it wasn’t Cruelty who strode from a storm of rippling darkness—it was seven people, each as different as possible.

“Safe,” Death slurred. “I… called them…”

I trusted him with my life, so I didn’t hesitate to fold my legs and drop back beside him. His eyes had fallen shut, his brown skin lacking colour and life. “Death?” My voice was small, broken. “Daddy, please wake up.”

I put my fingers to his throat to search for a pulse, but he didn’t need a pulse, and I didn’t know how to tell if he was gone, forever gone, or—

I jumped hard when two people crouched beside me, a small, bespectacled woman with a black power bob and a tall man in his twenties with mousy curls both reaching for him.

“Still with us,” the woman said, raising an eyebrow at the throaty warning that left my throat. “But clinging on through sheer stubbornness.”

“He’ll be okay,” the curly-haired man said, his hand falling on my shoulder, that simple touch unravelling all my strength until a sob burst from my lips. I was covered in blood, my mouth smeared with it, and I shook all over. I didn’t know why these strangers were being kind, but Death said I could trust them so I let them close, even if my jaguar wanted to rip into them.

“We lost Tor and Madde,” I rasped, a tremor shaking my hand around Death’s. “I don’t know what happened to them.”

“We’ll find them,” he assured me, a wealth of kindness and sorrow in his voice. “We’ll find them, don’t worry.” He glanced at the others. “Fear, Hunger, can you track Torment and Madness?”

“As you say,” someone replied in a deep rumble. Two others disappeared in a plume of rippling darkness, the sheer power that smacked into me enough to blow my bloody hair off my face.

“Let’s get him inside,” the curly-haired man said, watching me with pretty hazel eyes. “Then we can assess the damage.”

I jumped at the low whistle someone let out, the sound crawling across the back of my neck, too loud, too sharp for the hollow roar of silence inside my head. “Well, well, look at this bloody mess,” a smoky female voice said.

I didn’t bother to look at who’d spoken, all my attention on the short woman with the black bob and canny eyes and the curly-haired, kind-faced man who lifted Death on a stretcher of taut shadow. I didn’t budge from his side as the stretcher floated towards the castle, our apparent rescuers close behind us. I didn’t ask their names, didn’t care about anything except finding my men and—and making sure we were all—that no one was—

“Here.” I startled when a hand thrust into my vision, a butter-yellow handkerchief hanging from long, artist’s fingers.

“For the tears or the blood?” I asked in a dead voice, not taking my eyes off Death’s wan face as the stretcher floated around the corner towards the front steps.

“Uh. Lady’s choice?”

I took the handkerchief in numb hands and dragged it over my face, staining the pretty fabric in an instant.

“Hey, did you do that to Nightmare?” the woman who whistled asked, clearly speaking to me.

“Not now, Wrath,” the curly-haired man said with remarkable softness. His was a voice that never raised, never snapped, never shouted. Must be nice, always being calm. I used to be like that.

“I’m just commending her on a job well done. I’ve been wanting to rip that woman to shreds for years.”

I would have replied, but Death sucked in a ragged breath and I darted closer, squeezing his hand. “Death? Can you hear me?”

His lips parted, but air caught his throat when he tried to speak and he coughed, the painful sound of it grabbing something behind my ribs and squeezing. I was barely upright, my stomach one huge cramp, raw gouges on my ribs, my thigh, and my arm, but that paled in comparison when Death’s coughing grew hoarse and loud.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I promised, brushing dark braids back from his face, letting my touch linger. A tear slid hot down my cheek but I pretended it wasn’t there. “We’re safe now.”

I didn’t mention Tor being missing or Miz being too weak to even join the fight or Madde nowhere to be found. My legs buckled when I attempted the stairs, but a solid weight rammed my side, keeping me upright. I glanced down to find the older woman propping me up despite being well under five feet tall.

“Don’t pass out now, kid,” she huffed, her accent thick and equal parts warmth and bluntness. Yorkshire, maybe?

For no reason at all, she reminded me of my mum even though they couldn’t have been more different. Tears stung my eyes, another slipping down my cheek as I hauled myself up the stairs and into the atrium through sheer will, the hallway passing in a daze until we were in the first room I’d ever seen here, with the painting of Tor, Miz, and Death looking down from above the fireplace. They looked happy in the painting, and now Death was splayed on a stretcher too weak to talk, Tor was missing, and Miz was dying.

I pressed my lips into a line to trap my sob, mastering my emotions with a grit that took serious effort. “Someone needs to go to Madde’s castle. Misery is there and he’s…”

“We can sense it, kid,” the short woman sighed, dumping me unceremoniously in a chair while they moved Death onto the sofa. “He’s not got long left.”

Your husband is dying.

I’ll see you soon, Kitty. Meet me at the gates when you’re ready.

“You got any of that battery acid left?” she asked the curly-haired man hovering by the chair I sat in.

“The reviving tonic? I think so.” He squeezed my shoulder and disappeared in a flurry of dark power. I just stared at Death, a fist squeezing my chest. I was losing them both, losing them all. Nightmare was dead, but at what cost?

“Hey,” the woman from earlier shouted from the hall. Wrath. “Butcher girl. We found Madness.”

I exploded off the sofa in a rush of unsteady limbs—and froze. The opposing need to go to Madde and stay beside Death tore at me until I felt a fracture in my chest. Death’s storm-grey eyes rolled up to look at me, the edges pinched with suffering, his irises darker than usual. He was in pain, weakened by his connection to every spirit in the realm, and I didn’t know what Nightmare had done to him while he was on the ground.

“He’ll be fine, he’s not going anywhere in the next few minutes,” the woman huffed. “Go, check on the madman.”

Her words were the nudge I needed, and I hauled my pained body back through the door into the hallway, grabbing the wall for stability just as a rake-thin woman in her twenties with a shock of pink hair stormed down the corridor. A veritable giant came behind her, eerily reminiscent of Lurch from The Addams Family, and in his tree trunk arms was my darkness.

I stumbled faster, ignoring the way the hallway darkened at the edges of my vision. If Death could hold on and wake up, I could get to the end of this damn hallway.

“He’s knocked out,” the massive man said in a voice so resonant it was inhuman. “Looks like a simple power drain from five puncture marks.”

A snarl curled my upper lip, my jaguar responding to my rage. “The Stalker,” I hissed, reaching them and lifting my hand to touch Madde’s face, the warmth of his skin a blinding relief.

“The what now?” Wrath asked, her eyes bulging.

“Will he wake up?” I asked the giant, because that was more important than answering her questions.

“In a few hours,” he agreed. “It’s not permanent, his body will regain strength.”

I exhaled hard, relief making the blackness creep further across my vision.

“You don’t look so hot, butcher,” Wrath said, peering closer, a blur of hot pink hair and caramel skin.

I clung to consciousness by my claws, and only belatedly realised I’d sunk actual claws into the tapestry hanging on the wall. “Did you find Tor?”

“No,” the man replied at the same moment a dark, thunder-deep voice said, “Yes.”

I squinted my eyes until a tall Native American man with long black hair and an Armani suit came into focus. “He’s at Madness’s castle,” he went on, his voice seeming to shake my rib cage like the low bass of live music. “Cruelty sent him there so he couldn’t help you, knowing it would hurt worse than any wound. He’s fine, just drained of power.”

A weight fell off my shoulders and I slumped against the wall. I owed these strangers everything, and I hadn’t even had the decency to ask their names. I began to do just that when he spoke again.

“Misery is fading. You should go now if you want to say goodbye.”

Everything in me just… stopped. My breathing froze. My heart stuttered. Any sensation I had in my fingers left, any thoughts I had snuffed out.

“Goodbye,” I repeated dully.

“Shit,” Wrath breathed. “Serious? He’s really dying?”

“We’re already dead,” the giant pointed out.

“You know what I mean. Dick.”

“How long?” I spoke over whatever they said next, looking at the long-haired man who stood watching them with heavy solemnity.

“Hours,” he replied, sighing. “Minutes maybe.”

I fell back into the wall like someone had driven their fist into my gut. It felt like clawed hands reached into my chest, grabbed my heart, and ripped it out of my chest. Minutes. That’s how long Miz had left.

Speaking was so close to impossible that my voice was a hollow rasp. “And Death?”

“Dangerously weak,” the same man answered my question, his eyes trailing over me to Madde unconscious in the giant’s arms. “Much like Madness and Tor. But they’ll survive.”

That was all I needed to hear, the words I desperately needed to allow me to push myself off the wall and take a fumbling step. “Take Death and Madde to his castle. It’s not safe here. I’ll be there soon.”

“Where are you going?” Wrath asked, her tone implying I was severely lacking common sense. “We should stick together, safety in numbers you know?”

“I won’t be long. Tell Tor to make sure Miz has my crown ring. He’ll know what I mean.”

“Eh, your funeral,” Wrath said with a shrug, striding away down the hall.

“This is a bad idea,” the tall, long-haired man said, watching me with serious eyes that seemed to know too much.

“There are no good ideas,” I rasped, hugging the wall as I dragged myself away from two men I loved and out into the courtyard.