HellCat Unleashed (Conjuring Worlds #3)

1. Tabitha

Tabitha

“Hello, Tabby cat. Good to see you again, sweetheart.”

The word lands like a slap. Sweetheart. Six years he called me that.

Six years of Sunday mornings and shared toothpaste and me thinking, this is it, this is my person.

And here he is, sitting across a candlelit table in the arse-end of a hell dimension, wearing a face I cried myself sick over three weeks and one lifetime ago.

“Alex,” I say again, because my mouth has decided to keep saying it whether my brain likes it or not.

“There she is.” He smiles. It’s the same smile. That’s the part that guts me, that it’s exactly the same, the little crook at the corner, the one I used to kiss. “I wondered how long it would take you to see me.”

“I’m not seeing you,” I snap. “I’m looking at a demon wearing my ex like a Halloween costume.”

He tilts his head, and for a horrible second the horns are gone and it’s just Alex, just a man in a grey jumper who forgot to text me back. My heart does something pathetic and treacherous in my ribs before I stamp on it. Hard.

Down, girl. This thing kidnapped you. This thing stole your book. This thing is not, and never was, the bloke you thought you loved.

“You’re upset,” he says, like I’m being unreasonable about a dinner reservation. “That’s fair.”

“Don’t.” I plant both hands on the table.

My palms are still tender from juicing Valerian earlier, and the cold stone stings.

“Don’t you dare ‘that’s fair’ me, you absolute wanker.

You’ve been dead to me for weeks. I have grieved you.

And now you’re telling me the whole thing was, what? A long game?”

“Not the whole thing.”

“Every bit of it.”

“No.” Something moves behind his eyes, something I can’t read, which is new, because I could always read Alex, or thought I could. “Not every bit, Tabby. But we’ll get to that.”

I hate that. I hate the “we’ll get to that.” I hate that he’s calm and I’m shaking, and I hate most of all that a small, cowardly part of me wants to know what the “not every bit” means.

I shove that part in a box and sit on the lid.

The room is a cave dressed up to look like somewhere important.

Candles everywhere, a table set for two like this is a date, walls carved with those circle-and-line symbols the men were so twitchy about.

My HellCat prowls under my skin, wanting out, wanting to set the whole passé lair on fire.

But I can feel the shadows in the walls, alive, watching, and something tells me if I flame up in here I lose.

I do the maths, because I always do the maths, that’s who I am.

I’ve got no idea where I am, the portal-snatch dumped me God knows how far from the men.

The walls are made of living shadow that answers to him.

He’s stronger than anything we’ve faced, stronger than Azazel, and I watched Azazel very nearly end all of us.

My fire, my one reliable weapon, feels wrong in here, muffled, like trying to strike a match underwater.

And the one card I’ve got that he doesn’t know about, that the men are right now trying to punch through his front door, only helps me if I keep him talking long enough for them to arrive.

So the maths comes out the way it always does with me. Outgunned, outnumbered, out of my depth. Same as the day I fell through a book into hell. And I survived that, so.

I do the only thing I’m good at. I stall, and I gob off.

“Nice place,” I say. “Very evil-lair-starter-pack. Did you get the horns in a job lot?”

“You’ve got sharper.”

“I’ve had a rough couple of months. My boyfriend turned out to be Satan’s middle management.”

He laughs. Actually laughs, warm and real, and my stomach turns over because I know that laugh, I’ve fallen asleep to that laugh. Get out of my head, Alex. Get out.

“I’ve missed this,” he says.

“Well, I’ve missed my book, so we’re even. Where is it?”

His gaze flicks, just once, to the far shadows, and then back. But I catch it. Tabby Wittstock, cat shifter, bookseller, and apparently now a person who notices where demons look when you mention the thing they’ve nicked.

“Straight to business.” He leans back. “You really don’t know why you’re here, do you?”

“Enlighten me. You’ve clearly rehearsed.”

“You’re not the one I’ve been waiting for.” He says it gently, which somehow makes it worse. “You’re the one carrying her.”

The cold that goes through me has nothing to do with the temperature, and in this place that’s saying something. Tabeitha stirs, deep down, like a cat lifting its head at a can opener. Interested. Pleased, even, which is the most frightening part.

“Her,” I repeat, flat.

“You know exactly who I mean.” His eyes are on me, hungry in a way that has nothing to do with wanting me, and everything to do with wanting through me. “I can feel her from here, Tabby. She’s so close to the surface. You’ve been letting her win.”

“I have not.”

“You’ve died twice.” He nods at my arm, where two claw-mark tattoos sit black against my skin, keeping score. “Each time she gets a little more of you. It won’t take much more.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m not saying it to be cruel.”

“You’re a demon in hell who’s holding me prisoner. Cruel’s kind of your whole thing.”

“Is it?” He leans forward, and the candlelight does something to his face, softens it into the Alex I knew, the one who used to make me tea exactly how I liked it, and my stupid heart lurches before I can stop it.

“Tell me something, Tabby. All those years. The flat in Westlake. The holidays. The Sunday mornings. Did I ever, once, raise my voice to you? Did I ever hurt you?”

“You broke up with me over the phone and moved to a different continent that didn’t exist.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“No,” I admit, because I won’t lie even to score a point off him.

“No. You never hurt me. Not once. Right up until you did the worst thing anyone’s ever done to me, which was be exactly what I needed for six years and then turn out to be a lie.

” My voice cracks and I hate it. “You want a gold star for not shouting? You played a longer game than that. Don’t sit there and act wounded because I’ve noticed the con. ”

Something moves behind his eyes, and for one second it looks like grief, real grief, and then it’s gone, folded back behind three centuries of control.

“You’ll understand,” he says quietly. “When you know what you’re carrying. When you understand what I’ve been waiting for. You’ll understand it was never as simple as a con.”

“It never is, with liars. That’s how they sleep at night.”

He’s quiet for a moment. Outside the walls, far off, something thuds. Then again. My heart leaps, because I know that rhythm, I know it in my blood. Someone is hitting this place very hard from the outside, over and over, and I would put my last life on it being a panther the size of a transit van.

Alex hears it too. His jaw does nothing, no clench, no tick, he’s too old and too controlled for that, but his fingers go still on the stem of a glass I hadn’t noticed him holding.

“They came for you,” he says.

“They always do.” I let myself smile now, sharp and real, the first true thing I’ve felt since I sat down. “That’s the difference between you and them, sweetheart. You left. They kick the door in.”

The thudding comes again, closer, and the shadow-walls flex like something breathing, and Alex looks at me with an expression I can’t box up fast enough, because it isn’t anger.

It’s fear.

Not of the men.

Of me.