Chapter 22
Cat
“That’s where we’ll find a coil of iron?
” I demanded in a quiet hiss, flattening my stomach to the cliff we peered over.
The mountain opposite us was a solid sheet of black stone with drips of fog like everything else in the domain, the surface broken only for the gaping mouth of a mine.
Within it was total darkness, and I had no desire whatsoever to go inside.
“That’s the only place left,” Death confirmed, his voice a gentle rumble that soothed the anxiety spiking my chest. Something had settled in me now, my uncertainty burned away on that hillside clutching Death as Pain made me see explosions of stars. “Everything else fell into the fog.”
“This mine is where evil spirits are sent to toil as punishment for their sins,” I said, because it bore repeating. “And you want us to go inside.”
“If you want iron, we have to,” Tor input, his shoulder brushing mine as he angled towards me. “Or we could forget all about it, find a lovely glade to settle for the rest of our undead lives, and just have amazing, endless sex—”
“I need the iron,” I interrupted with a sigh, glancing at the list in my hand. “If we don’t get it, the gates can’t be fixed. If the gates aren’t fixed, he keeps all the power. This is how we weaken him, and reclaim power for Death.”
It had become a more personal goal than it was days ago. Then, I knew he was my husband, but now he felt like my husband. And that memory of him holding me, comforting me, making me feel safe when I was terrified. It made everything real.
So we were going inside the dark, scary mine.
I slowed my breathing and reached within, cupping a handful of death magic and encouraging it to flow out of me, to drape me in a shadowy cloak. I didn’t have a death god form like the guys, or at least I hadn’t yet found it, but this would do as a shield.
“Remember, if we’re not spotted they won’t react,” Misery said with a furrow between his brows. “So keep quiet, and don’t touch anything.”
“Why are you looking at me?” Madde huffed, offended. “This isn’t my first rodeo, bucko.”
Pain snickered. “How do you come up with these things?”
“I’m a genius,” Madde replied. “You couldn’t possibly understand to true depths of my inspirational insani—”
“Miz is right,” Tor interrupted, an eyebrow lifted at Madde. “You’re gonna touch something or make a noise. Repeat the rules back to me.”
Madde sighed heavily. “I don’t need a lecture, dad.
” But he caved under the weight of Tor’s interrogational silence.
“Fine. Don’t speak, don’t touch anything, don’t giggle even though some of the spirits sentenced here were evil nudists and their balls will be swinging around like a Newton’s cradle. ”
Tor tried to keep a straight face and failed.
“We’ll be fine,” I said, faking confidence because I saw worry in the flat line of Tor’s mouth. “We have more power than a few spirits, right?”
Nevermind that they were vengeful spirits who’d been so evil in life that the wickedness spilled into their undead soul. We’d be fine.
We were not fine. I could feel it on the back of my neck, a prickling sensation that made me shiver.
One of the spirits must have noticed us as we picked a slow, careful path down the steep slope into the mine, the clamour of metal tools on stone rising to us the further down we went. The air sat heavy and dry in my chest.
I wanted to ask if the guys felt it too, but that would break the first and most important rule—do not talk.
If the spirits heard us, they’d converge.
I suspected I could take them, with my magic and my hunger for judgement.
I’d sensed a dangerous wealth of magic in Madde, too, and a heady prickle of it in Miz, Pain, and Tor.
But Death was weak. No one acknowledged it, but I remembered my tutor explaining about the imbalance of life and death.
It was what had allowed Violence to grasp enough power to invade that blank, quiet place I’d been before.
It would allow him to control this domain, too.
And like fuck would I let him get even more power, when he’d used the power he already had to murder me.
So I kept my mouth in a flat line, and fixed my gaze on the dark tunnel that seemed to go on forever, the air growing even denser, the rock pressing around us on all sides.
The presence watching us crawled like fire ants down my spine, but when I looked around, I saw no one but my husbands and the three ghost dachshunds that trailed Madde like ducklings after their mother.
The others had returned to wait for the next call to battle, but those three wouldn’t be parted from the death god.
The clang of metal and stone grew louder until it pierced my heartbeat and made my breathing hitch with every brutal strike. It grew so noisy that I felt each clash in my bones, shuddering like nerves down my arms, scattering drops of magic along the floor.
At the front of our formation, Tor held up a hand, an intent look in his eye.
The tunnel ahead bent, the noise now so close that the spirits must have been on the other side of that bend.
I readjusted my grip on my scales, making sure they were concealed in the shadows, and ignored the knot in my stomach.
I was a death god; I was Judgement. A few spirits couldn’t threaten me.
It wasn’t until Tor flicked his fingers in a come hither gesture that I realised I was afraid for them. Either I’d come to trust these bonds as the note told me to, or some of my old feelings had broken free, because both steely protectiveness and spiky panic sat in my chest.
What if they were hurt? What if these spirits did more damage than they could heal? What if they stripped the last bit of power Death clung to?
A hand brushed the small of my back and I jumped, looking up into Miz’s face.
Worry creased his brow, but when he tucked me into his side in a silent hug, offering comfort without me having to ask for it, I wondered just how strong these bonds were.
I’d thought before that they knew when I was stressed or murderous or irritated, almost in an offhand, unserious way, but it struck me now.
What if they could feel my emotions? What if Miz comforted me now because he could feel the cold drip of my fear?
I glanced up at him, holding eye contact, probing his warm stare for answers, but without speaking there was no way to know for sure. But if they could feel my emotions, maybe sense my needs, could I do the same in reverse?
When we reached the mouth of the tunnel, I had to throw my hand over my mouth to muffle my gasp. I’d been expecting a mine, not an entire underground city.
Holy shit, Pain mouthed, his eyes wide with awe as he stared at the cavernous space before us.
It was hewn from the same grey-speckled black stone that made up the mountain, taller than Death’s castle, and so wide we couldn’t see either end of the underground chamber from our vantage point halfway up.
Caves had been hollowed in the stone face across from us, fifty different rows of rounded chambers spreading out as far as we could see.
I tried to count them in my head, but gave up after five hundred.
We had this many evil spirits? There were this many wicked people in the world?
The thought horrified me, and then made me angry.
Furious. The need to uncover each crime of every spirit here drummed against my chest, my inner vengeance frothing at the mouth to deal out Judgement.
But that would have to wait until the domain was stable and Death was no longer weak.
When Violence was just a bad memory and a smear of blood on the ground.
In the rounded caves up and down the opposite wall, spirits could be glimpsed toiling with pickaxes, regular axes, and hefty swords, some even pulling at the walls with their own hands.
Drilling through the wall, I realised. What are they mining, I wanted to ask, but I didn’t dare to.
There were so many wicked spirits here that I couldn’t count them.
How long would it take them to overpower us? Not long, I realised now.
My confidence that I could take them out withered.
Tor pointed to the right, and I squinted through the gloom to see a tiny walkway that clung to the steep wall beside us, barely wide enough for me to fit, let alone Death’s broad shoulders.
I shook my head emphatically, my fear a sword-sharp glacier that pierced my chest and dropped my temperature.
Magic writhed around me, not soothed even by Miz’s touch or Madde throwing his arms around me and squeezing.
No, I mouthed to Tor. Shook my head over and over. No.
Pain seemed to be on my side. He’d gone as white as a sheet, his eyes bulging and terrified.
He stepped close to me in a show of solidarity, clasping my hand.
Tor pinched the bridge of his nose. Before he could come up with a solution, or before Death could silently communicate whatever idea had sparked in his eyes, Madde knocked my legs out from under me and swept me into his arms.
I shrieked in shock and pure, unbridled panic. I was falling. I was going to splatter on the ground that was so far below I couldn’t even see it. My skull would shatter, my brains would spill onto the black stone, and it wouldn’t matter that I was a death god with hungry magic. I would be dead.
The fear was abrupt and primal, and there was nothing I could do to reel the loud cry back in once it echoed off the high walls.
I froze when every spirit in the mine turned, their eyes seeking us without fail, not even the hammer and thud of pickaxes covering my shriek. But that wasn’t what made my heart stop. It was the piercing, dragon-like scream that came from deeper in the mine.
“What the fuck is that?” Pain demanded, wrapping his arms in magic, so many wisps searching the space around us.
Tor groaned. “The overseers.”