Chapter 15
Cat
I’d never met anyone so accurately named as Madness.
He’d made an army of deceased dachshunds, with long sausage bodies glowing spectrally in the fading light, tiny legs eating up the distance, floating even as they threatened to disappear in the grass.
Their mouths were parted with a feral, bottomless hunger I’d only ever seen for a pup cup, but instead of devouring cream, they sank teeth into the antlered vauns who’d turned their attention to us, throats glowing with fire.
“Admit it,” Madde said, nudging Pain. “You’re impressed, all of you.”
“They’re amazing,” I said, and meant it. I would never have thought to search the entire domain of the dead to find a single species, let alone one so cute. “But I thought all the spirits had gone. We haven’t seen any…” Until the tower, the Wake, with its three rings of pearly guards.
“Ways and means, my pretty lioness,” Madde said with a wink.
I stiffened when a silken filament of magic stroked my mind, far beyond any wall and shield I had up, as if it bypassed every ring of security he helped me build. The friend whose name I couldn’t remember.
Ways and means, a dark purr filled the chambers of my mind. A sensual threat. A declaration that no shield I had would keep him out. Nothing I did could keep him out of the most inner part of me.
I snapped.
Magic pressed through the pores in my skin, encircling my arms in serpentine coils, draping down my body like a shroud, tangling with my hair until it was threaded with pink and black.
“Get,” I snarled, my voice deep, loud, sonorous, “out!”
Madde stumbled back from me, clutching his chest, his eyes big and hurt. His breath rasped from him as if I’d pierced a lung, and panic crammed itself in my chest, but when Death grabbed Madde’s shoulders he rasped, “I’m fine. Just a bit winded. Lioness?”
I trembled, the power, the ferocious thing pacing, snarling inside me—it had grown too much power, slipped its collar and plunged head-first into the pool of new death magic.
Bathed in that power. Soaked it up and became a thing of untamed strength, bucking the control I’d wrapped it in under his tutelage.
When my lips parted, teeth bared, the snarl that came free was pure animal. Claws sliced my fingertips as they grew from my nail beds, as sharp as razors. My canine teeth, too, sharpened to a deadly point, the kind that could rip through flesh and muscle.
“Back off,” I growled at Madness, startled to find my hand around his throat, claws poised to sink into skin.
He shuddered hard, his groan less of pain and more of… arousal. “Make me bleed, my lioness,” he moaned. “Every drop of blood is yours.”
My new power flared, judging the heart of him, and I prised my hand free of his neck when it found a loyal, family-driven man who craved love and acceptance, not power, not the suffering of others.
I lingered only long enough to see the freckled expanse of his throat was free of blood—I hadn’t drawn a single bead—and then I raced over the grassy hill and down into the prairie to unleash myself on those who stood between me and my quarry.
There was a set of scales in that tower, and I needed them. I couldn’t get revenge without them, couldn’t make the one who killed me scream for mercy.
So I stalked into the prairie, aware of the men, my husbands, following me into the eerily circular field around the Wake.
The shadow shires followed, smoke trailing in the edges of my vision.
A tiny voice in the back of my mind urged me to check on Madde, but the rest of me was honed on the spirits and vauns between me and the Wake.
Someone had placed them here. They wanted to keep me from my vengeance, from my justice.
Violence. The name seethed in my mind like a hot poker thrust in cold water.
He’d done this. He must have known I’d come for the Scales of Judgement, that I couldn’t restore balance without them.
Did he know what else was on my list, tucked in a pouch of shadow beneath the shirt that smelled of lilacs and a fresh fall of snow.
It tethered me, stopped me from succumbing entirely to the snapping, slabbering beast. Or to the bottomless hunger for vengeance.
But it didn’t stop me succumbing most of the way, sinking into the thrill as a vaun’s deadly horn came my way and I swung my hand up, claws clashing with the spike poised to gore my stomach.
“Sorry,” I murmured and punched a shard of dark smoke through its neck, ripping away the magic that animated it. The vauns weren’t alive, I quickly realised. They were here the same way I was here—through magic and grit and a higher power’s influence.
It made them easy to collapse, at least until the first glob of fire spit from the throat of a creature to my right. I roared, spinning away from the second crackling ball of fire the vaun spewed at me, the cry catching in my throat when Death caught me up against him.
His enrobed arms were so disarming, so warm, that the claws left my fingertips and a tremor went through me, that cello string humming louder than ever.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured, a layer of his magic covering the burn that scorched my side, just above my hip. The pain went away immediately, and my brow furrowed.
“Have you always been able to take my pain away?” I asked, feeling for a sense of familiarity and coming up empty.
“No,” he replied, choked up enough that I peered up at him. “As much as I wanted to, there’s only so much I can do for the living. I can ease your pain and heal you now that you’re—”
“Dead?” I finished softly, a lump swelling in my throat again. I didn’t like it when he was upset; didn’t like seeing any of their grief. It was like a knife driven into my chest, making each breath painful. I knew these men. Loved them. I hated that I was hurting them.
“Pain!” Tor yelled across the prairie, and the bloodlust crashed back into me.
I was out of Death’s robed arms and launching into a run in seconds, a growl shaking the back of my throat.
Pain lay on the ground, clutching his chest where fire had scorched an angry red mark into his skin.
The sight of that rippled, burned skin made my head quiet.
In an opposite reaction, it filled my chest with a riot of death and fury.
When my magic erupted this time, a wave blast all the way to the tower and through to the other side. The grass thrashed in a dark wind, the world silent for a split second, until the spirits guarding the Wake clutched their heads and screamed.
“Wow,” Madde breathed, coming closer with hearts in his eyes.
Unaffected by the explosion like my other husbands, the magic intelligent enough to know if they were hurt, I would unleash myself upon this domain until nothing remained.
I couldn’t remember my life with them, but that did nothing to erase the protectiveness crushing my chest. “That solves the ghost problem.”
I scanned him for injuries, did the same to Death, Miz, and Tor before dropping beside Pain.
“I’m fine,” he murmured, as if his brow wasn’t dappled with sweat, his eyes rimmed with redness. A tendril of his magic brushed my knee, my chin. “Cat, I’m fine. I’m already healing.”
“You’re crying,” I hissed, finding my hand already moulded to his cheek, my thumb sweeping away a tear.
“Ah.” He winced. “That’s not because of the burn.”
My eyes must have flashed because he hurriedly added, “I have allergies, okay? Even as a god, even dead as I am. Allergies are my sworn enemy, and this damn field is full of pollen.”
I allowed a trace of a breath out of my lips, relief ripping a sudden weight off my chest. “Allergies?”
“Vicious allergies,” Pain confirmed, reaching up to cover my hand on his cheek. “Birch, oak, grass, you name it, I’ve got it. Just don’t tell the others; I don’t want them to think I’m lame.”
More of that relief pulled lead weights off my chest, one by one making me lighter. “Your secret’s safe with me,” I promised, trying to pull my hand away. Pain clutched it, pressed my palm to his cheek as he scanned my eyes, scoured my expression for… something.
“Are you okay, Cat?” he asked, his voice pitched low, just for us. “Ignoring all the stuff that happened mortal-side, you just woke up here with no memory, alone except for people who are strangers to you, with a quest I’m not sure you fully understand.”
“I have to do these things, or I can’t wreak vengeance on Violence,” I disagreed. “I know exactly why I’m doing it.”
His thumb stroked the back of my hand, sending a flutter of movement through my belly. “Who gave you the list, darling woe?”
Another name? How many did these men have for me? “A friend,” I answered after a beat. “I can’t remember him, it’s like someone forced their way into my head and ripped out my memories of him, too. But I can remember the things he taught me.”
“Huh.” Pain blinked, long lashes sweeping over green-hazel eyes that glittered in the fading sun. “Yeah, we all have that feeling when we first become gods. We can remember learning how to be a god, but not who taught us, or where that happened.”
“Oh.” So the mysterious man taught everyone who passed from life to death god…? “Is he your friend, too?”
Pain shrugged and reluctantly lifted his hand off mine. My skin tingled where we’d touched, my awareness of the area so acute I almost chased his fingers to clasp them again. Instead, I tucked my hand against my side. “If we were friends, I forgot that.”
“I think I have to go back for him,” I murmured. “But I don’t even know where he is. And I can’t do that until I’ve ticked off everything on the list.”
Pain rose to his feet and held out a hand to help me up, the flutters growing in strength when he pulled me to my feet.1 “What does the list say anyway?”
“Step one,” I replied, turning to eye the Wake, the circular tower built of a dark grey stone except for the glass inlaid in its conical roof. “Get my scales from that tower.”
I could feel them, like a thread wrapped around my ribs, tugging me towards it. Similarly, threads tugged me to each of the gods around me, that cello string vibrating deeper, louder. Trust your bonds. I was trying to, starting to.
Kill those pricks.
I intended to.
“Cat,” Misery called from across the long prairie grasses.
He knelt beside one of the spirits I’d taken out with my magic, not entirely on purpose.
I needed to control my inner beast, to master my emotions or my magic would erupt at any moment, and that would be disastrous around people who could be killed.
But I couldn’t help feeling proud at the spirits knocked to the floor, clutching their heads or staring dazed into the distance. They’d stopped screaming, at least.
“What is it?” Death asked as we all converged on the place Misery knelt, sixty spirits scattered over the ground, some groaning, some speaking something I couldn’t decipher.
“They keep saying—” Miz began.
“Queen,” several ghosts spoke at once, a haunting murmur.
“That,” Misery finished, peering up at me. “They’re unharmed. If anything, your magic knocked them out of Violence’s control.”
That brought a smile to my face, even if the “queen” comment unsettled me. I didn’t want to rule anything, I just wanted Violence to face his judgement.
But when I took a step closer, my eyes on the arched doorway to the Wake, the spirits moved as one, kneeling where they’d fallen, their heads bowed.
“Queen,” they said again.
I exchanged a wide-eyed glance with Death, then Misery.
Tor broke the silence, shrugging. “Fine by me. If they want our wife to be their queen, I’ll crown Cat myself.”
“I don’t want a crown,” I complained, walking past them and unable to fight a chill when the spirits parted, creating a path for me to reach the door.
“But if Violence wants to be king, I’ll happily rip it off his cooling corpse.
” I glanced over my shoulder to Death. “You’re the highest ranked god, right? You can have the crown.”
Death blinked, then smiled, a full, gorgeous smile that made my heart skip. I opened the door to the Wake and hurried inside before I could acknowledge the wild frenzy my butterflies burst into.