Chapter 12
CAT
Ibarely noticed the journey from Bridestones Moor to Ford.
Mist engulfed the rock-strewn hill around the house and from that plume emerged five enormous shadow shire horses.
Their eyes shone crimson, casting a bloodied glow through the fog, and shadows scattered around their hooves with every step.
They stood far taller than me, taller even than Death, and it should have been impossible to mount them, but like everything else with my death gods, magic made it possible.
The scent of blood and brimstone thickened when I was mounted, the horse beneath me both solid and insubstantial. A gift from my husbands, my mates.
After hours of nightmares—Madde’s plan to knock me out with orgasms only worked for an hour—the gesture made me weepy.
So did the way the sweet girl bumped her nose against my hand, instantly accepting me as her rider.
Even though I was human, mortal, and a mess, she didn’t hesitate to nibble my palm or butt her head against my side.
I named her Fuzzball, to the complaints of every one of my men.
But I’d tossed and turned all night, my head full of everything that happened in Cruelty’s manor, and everything that had happened at Ford before it.
I spent hours thinking about Honey and Byron and the gory wound their loss had left in my chest, so it was only natural to name this new friend something that made me remember my old friends.
Woven among the memories of their fear, their secrets, and their lies were countless sleepovers watching the Cornetto Trilogy, making god-awful smoothies in the blender, and daring each other to drink them.
A Hot Fuzz related name was necessary. And anyway, she seemed to like it.
Numbness had set in again by the time Fuzzball rode out of the grey mist—so dense I could only see my husbands on either side of me—and the nightmares threatened to drag me into even worse daydreams. I felt it in an abstract way when Death reached across to cover my cold hand with his, and when Madde almost fell off Sana in order to kiss my cheek.
Cold bit through the numbness when I saw the moors road where I’d first met Death, Tor, and Miz on the back of these same horses.
When I thought they’d come to kill me, before I learned about Nightmare, her cult, and all the evil she had planned for us.
Cruelty’s evil. Rage and hatred attempted to emerge, but it was sucked down into the cold well of my emotions, drowned.
Until we reached the top of the road. Until the gates swung open on a ghostly wind to coax us inside.
Until we rode down the snaking, tree-lined road with Rosalind Woods watchful beside us, its skeletal branches clacking together like finger bones.
Until we reached the end of the road and found Cruelty and Violence waiting for us.
The slashes on my body erupted with remembered pain.
The bruises hurt worse than they had all night.
I didn’t look at Violence, didn’t dare to.
But also because Cruelty stood before the backdrop of Ford’s imposing campus with a beaming grin on her face, bright blue eyes glittering like stars.
She clapped her hands together, setting the butter-yellow broderie anglaise of her dress dancing.
A ray of warm sunlight broke through the grey clouds above us like she’d planned it, setting her golden hair aglow.
And my numbness finally shattered when I bared my teeth at the bitch who dared to wear Honey’s face.