Chapter 50
Cat
Ablur of events happened at once.
Joanna crashed through the treeline, swept her glowing verdant magic in an arc that froze creatures where they stood, rooted them to the ground as if they were trees and not animals.
Violence drove a swell of dark, hungry magic into my god form and ripped it away from me, forcing me back to two hands, two legs. Flesh and blood.
Our death god friends appeared around the lake, power already brimming around them. There were others I didn’t even know, rallied by Hunger and Passion and Wrath. From the corner of my eye, I could make out Neglect’s diminutive form beside my dad.
That was when my hands began to shake. Because he’d already watched me be murdered once; was it my turn to watch him be killed?
Joanna surged at us in a blur of emerald power, so bright I had to squint to make out the shape of my husbands—where were they?
Pain was trapped on the ground beneath my net. But everyone else… I didn’t see them.
“Where are they?” I demanded, shrill. I shook with fury, but terror crept alongside it now and made me cold all the way to my bones. “Where are my husbands?”
Violence’s laugh made me scream, a riot of sound purged from my chest, raking up fistfuls of power with it.
“Let the girl go,” Joanna ordered, halting a few paces away. “She’s new; she’s not an obstacle to your rise to power.”
“She may not be the biggest obstacle, but she’s no less in my way,” was his cool reply, and that voice, that tone, the smugness and cruelty within it…
I was back in that room in Darkmore, ropes chafing my wrists as I fought to get free, the mirror watching over me as Violence fixed the full point of his brutality upon me.
The mirror… was it still leaking magic? Was it still turning Ford residents on each other? Was it still—
Phil. Where was Phil? Had she gone ahead to Milton Hall and the cracked mirror, to sacrifice her eternal afterlife into repairing the cracks? The last time I saw her was when we headed through the woods, but she’d been absent since.
My attention was snagged by Darya as she drifted closer, her rage filling her whole face as she fixed upon Violence and where he held onto me. Then she met my eyes—and rolled her own.
What? I mouthed as Joanna and Violence threatened one another.
You’re a goddess, Darya said soundlessly, followed by another eye roll.
I frowned—and then my expression smoothed. She was right. I was a goddess; why was I behaving like a mortal? I might be weaker than Violence, but I was harder to kill than I’d been when he murdered me. It wasn’t just magic that becoming a goddess had given me; it was immortality.
I gathered a sliver of magic into a spike and cupped it around my elbow, then drove it back into Violence’s ribs, tearing myself free. His magic gnashed through my throat, and the fear was automatic and visceral, the blood sudden. But the area was already tingling, heating. Healing.
I joined Joanna, shoulder to shoulder, my breathing hard, ragged. But I was still here. And the blood only lasted a minute.
“Bitch,” Violence spat.
“Get a new name,” I croaked at the same time Joanna huffed, “Do try being a little more imaginative, Violence.”
“Where are my husbands?” I demanded, not taking my eyes off the wrathful incarnation of violent death.
“Pain’s on the floor like a coward. I haven’t seen the others.”
Fuck. A tremor went through my soul, but I couldn’t think of that yet. Not until Violence was dealt with. Weakened, imprisoned, dead—I didn’t care what it took to take him out of commission.
“You might want to look behind you,” I taunted as Duncan’s flamethrower belched another gust of fire and melted spirits where they stood—and Orwell leapt into the air, into shadow. He reappeared behind Violence.
“Nice try,” Violence drawled. Assuming it was a trick, right until the moment Orwell slammed into him, grabbed his head in two hands as if to snap his neck—
And screamed.
My heart faltered. I’d heard this harrowing scream once before. The night of the Halloween party, when Nightmare drained Orwell’s life to assume her own rise to power. All on the commands of Cruelty and Violence.
“Scales,” Joanna barked. “Now.”
I dove to wrestle them from the mud, my fingers slipping against the warm metal as I poured an explosion of magic into the plates.
The force of their power knocked me back, ripped strands from my head and threw mud into my eyes.
Blinding me for a moment, hazy and long.
When my vision cleared, Orwell was on the floor with Violence’s shiny shoe on his throat and Joanna—
“No,” I breathed, jerking forward but I stumbled in place. Helplessness cinched like a band around my lungs, squeezing when I saw the roots trapping me where I stood. “Joanna,” I argued.
Because she was a goddess with unknowable power, and she might be more powerful than all of us. Because she could fight Violence, because she knew he could be killed and had promised to help us.
Because a woman had appeared from the ether to bury a serrated knife in Joanna’s stomach, and when she dragged it out, it left a gaping hole in Joanna’s gut.
The woman looked exactly like the last time I saw her, splayed on the polished floor of one of Cruelty’s masquerades with fury in her dark eyes and murderous rage in the set of her jaw.
This time, there was a blankness to her expression that sent a chill through me.
Her movements were fluid but robotic as she dropped both hands to her sides, the knife dripping blood. Her own mother’s blood.
So the daughter that Violence had captive was the girl I saw at the masquerade. Moth. And judging by how firmly she was under Violence’s control, by how she’d stabbed her own mother, we could not call her an ally.
“Stay there, Cat,” Joanna barked. “I’m fine. It’s a scratch.”
“I can see your intestines!” I argued, scanning the lake, the gods, desperate for help. “Passion!” I yelled at the man closest to us. “We need help!”
But he was already fighting to get closer to us. They all were, I realised. There was a shield around Violence. Shit, that was what made Orwell scream. Orwell—where was he? I threw a frantic stare towards the lake, fearing he’d fallen in, but found him passed out on the banks.
Kill those pricks.
I imagined throwing a fist through the flimsy paper of my fear, imagined terror ripping, allowing me to throw myself through the gap to where my inner judge lived. To where the death goddess lived.
Violence was protected, standing with his hands in his pockets and satisfaction on his ugly face as Moth surged at Joanna again, graceful and fast but again, mechanical. No passion, no anger, no murder in her expression.
“Stop it,” I spat, and drove a blast of dark magic at Violence, calling on every lesson I remembered from—that place. The blank, empty place. Exile.
Its name rang in my mind, and with it, the last dregs of the black hole cracked.
I had a tutor, a friend, and his name was Ender. I’d walked out of Exile into the blackness between realms, and I’d left him behind. If I died, no one would remember that he existed. The first Judgement.
The scales in my hand erupted without my permission, the metal alive with rage, the gemstone burning brighter than the sun. Violence winced, but showed no other sign he was affected.
Moth, though, screamed and stumbled back.
In agony, I assumed, from the burn of the scales. But it was rage that settled in the lines of her face. It was rage that turned her motions sharp and slicing.
She spun away from Joanna and drove herself at Violence, and my breath caught in surprise, but I didn’t hesitate.
I surged more of my magic through the scales, and slammed light and death magic into Violence at the same time Moth buried the serrated blade in his chest. She twisted, twisted the blade, her fury more violent than anything he’d ever done.
It was personal. Acute. The kind of igneous fury that can only come from having your own choices confiscated from you.
Kill those pricks.
My blood boiled. I shattered the roots holding me in place and climbed free, sliding through the mud to stand beside Moth as I tore into my jaguar form and roared.
More fire blasted across the lake, but I couldn’t look away from Violence as Moth and I attacked him in tandem.
Had Duncan burned up all the spirits? Had he removed that threat, or did they still surround us?
Where was Darya; was she burned up, too?
The creatures were still quiet thanks to Joanna’s initial blow, but they’d never been the true threat.
Deadly, to be certain, but temporary. The threat of Violence was as permanent as true, final death.
And I intended to introduce him to that true, final death. To wipe out any stain and trace of him, exactly like my dad did to Cruelty.
We were gaining strength, the combined force of Moth and I enough to make Violence panic. I saw it in the way his face fell in increments, and the desperate way he flung magic our way.
I sank my teeth into his leg and gnashed right down to the bone, ripping out a chunk of flesh and gore.
I expected him to laugh, so the rusty chuckle that stained the space above my head raised no warning bells.
I sank my teeth into his other leg, determined to rip the bones right out of his body, but a gurgle sounded before I could.
It took a moment for it to register: that sound came from me.
Confusion came first, sticky and slow, but then agony blazed a wildfire across my back and deep into the tissue of my muscles. My legs folded under me, a yowl of pain driving up my throat and into the woods as I collapsed.
Another sharp slice of pain dissected the fur of my back, reached deep into my soul, and made me scream. I’d never heard a scream through a Jaguar’s voice before; it echoed in my head as I dug my claws into the mud, trying to fight my way up.
“Finish it,” Violence urged with vicious delight.
And I saw him from the corner of my eye, standing over me. Expressionless but, oh, those eyes. Tortured. Broken.
Pain.
I reached for his soul with my last bit of strength, but didn’t manage to reach him before the blade came down again—one of my own; pink metal with heart-shaped handles—and ripped my life from me.