Chapter 21
MISERY
Iwanted Tor. He was my comfort blanket, and I badly needed an extra shot of comfort as I took out the two student guards placed outside Cat’s room, increasing their misery until they sobbed and pleaded and finally passed out.
“They’ll be okay, right?” Cat asked as we stepped over their unconscious bodies. “It’s not their fault Cruelty made them into her puppets.”
“They’ll live,” I replied, trying to warm my voice, to keep my emotions from reaching Cat on the other end of our bond.
I hated even going near the mausoleums, let alone going inside mine.
Even when we passed the row of small stone buildings, I avoided the sight of them, guilt like a knife stabbed into my heart with grief twisting that blade into I oozed blood and regret.
I remembered every moment spent with the Ford family, remembered every detail about them even if I’d blotted out the parts with Nightmare and tried to forget their deaths.
All so Cruelty could break me and use me against Death. For what fucking end? To break the domain? To drown everything in fog? Or to claim the realm for herself?
I jumped when fingers glanced across mine, warm where my skin was chilled. Cat interlaced them and held me tight, and I knew then I’d done a piss poor job of keeping my feelings from her.
“We can do this somewhere else,” she suggested, running her thumb over my knuckles.
I shook my head and focused on the feeling of her touch to chase away the worst memories. “No, it makes sense. And it’ll be easy to defend with a single exit, instead of here or the woods.”
The thought of doing this out in the open made my skin itch with warning. The psycho siblings would find us, even if the woods seemed dark and easy to hide in. My mausoleum was the best bet.
“Shields still intact?” Death asked from where he walked behind us, in the most protected space because we weren’t fucking around with his safety. He bitched and moaned about it, but Cat agreed, and our wife got what she wanted.
“No one can see us,” Madde confirmed, “but that didn’t exactly stop you getting the ol’ razzle dazzle last time, did it?”
I choked on a laugh. That was one way of describing a cardiac arrest. “The shield’s as strong as we can make it. Pain, you’ve got feelers in front of us, right?” I checked.
“I’ve got ten connected to this shield, and Mario and Luigi have already reached the door,” he confirmed as we descended the stairs to the bottom floor.
Lawrence Hall was eerily quiet even as we passed a room where students sat eating.
The loud, vibrant noise I heard the last time I was here was replaced with tentative murmurs and shifty looks, like Cruelty or Violence would swoop down on them for laughing.
Maybe they had, in the days between us fleeing Cruelty’s manor and being summoned here.
They certainly looked like they’d had the fear of god put into them.
“Mario and Luigi,” Cat repeated with a soft rustle of laughter. “You named your shadows?”
“Only my favourite ones,” Pain replied, a grin brightening his face as he held open the door to outside.
For once, rain didn’t lash the ground and drench us to the bone, but a mist hung in the air, obscuring the buildings in the distance and devouring the sight of the woods.
“I would have called one Princess Peach, but it feels like stepping on the toes of an icon.”
My chest tightened further at the reminder I didn’t have Peach with me, but Hunger was babysitting, and I trusted him to take care of her.
It was too risky for her to be here, and she’d been through enough upheaval lately.
It didn’t stop me missing her, making the stab of longing for Tor even worse.
“Quiet now,” Death whispered, walking close behind Cat and I as we stepped outside, gently shutting the door behind us.
Silently, we walked down the back of the building, the lit windows throwing a yellow glow through the mist and lighting our way as we headed into a lightly wooded area. Like last night, we could follow it around to Milton Hall and—
My hackles rose at the droning scrape of stone and stone, and I plunged deep into my magic, ready to inflict the worst kind of misery on whoever had snuck up on us.
“No fucking way,” Madde laughed with a bright crack of excitement.
“What?” I demanded, spinning, edging Cat behind me where she was shielded. “For fuck’s sake,” I grumbled when I saw what that grating stone noise was.
On the edge of Lawrence Hall’s roof crouched three stone gargoyles with ugly little faces, bulbous noses, carved wings, and eerily human hands that gripped the edge of the guttering.
“So cool,” Madde breathed when they leapt off the roof, those wings more functional than any lump of stone had a right to be.
“Run,” I snapped, tightening my grip on Cat’s hand and grabbing Death’s arm, hauling him after us.
A wave of dark smoke left Pain’s hands, and I tried not to falter at the sound of the screams and pleading tangled up in that magic.
True agony, dealt to its most excruciating degree.
It collided with the gargoyles, swept over the rendered details of their faces, their pointed ears, the horns that curved away from their heads… and did absolutely nothing.
“Like I said.” I sent a rush of power into our shield. “Run.”