Chapter 36
PAIN
This was total fucking lunacy—we were risking all our lives, the balance of life of death, and the realm where we all lived, without proof that Peach was even still alive—but I stepped onto the left rook’s square and let more tendrils of shadow unspool from me, feeling out the space around me. If Cat was playing, so was I.
I knew those cult pricks in their black robes would attack when they claimed us as pieces, but I wasn’t prepared for the first move—a pawn who moved at Cat’s command—to send the brown-haired female student in Ford uniform to the ground.
Her knees collapsed under her, and the empty expression on her face broke with a gasp and eyes that filled with horror.
A shot of pain topped up my power, and I knew Torment and Misery felt the same rush on either side of me.
Whatever was happening to the pawn, it was torture. So the board itself was a trial, not simply the black robes.
“Play us first,” I breathed to Cat, angling myself towards her.
My fierce woman was watching in horror as the pawn twitched on the white square in the middle of the giant board, her suffering so powerful that my hands tingled, my shadows soaking it up.
After another few moments, she went still.
“Cat.” I kept my expression hard, determined.
“Play us first. We’re death gods; we can handle it. ”
I watched her shake her head through a greyscale impression of my shadows. She’d come too close to losing Death and Tor to easily sacrifice us.
“Trust me,” I breathed, aware of Cruelty soaking up the scene with delight, Violence watching impassively, and the robotic crowd sitting in the stands to our right. “Move the pawns and put us into play.”
“He’s right, little bride,” Death said with a wealth of sadness. “You have to play the pawns, open up space for us to move.” He lowered his voice. “Most of their lives were forfeit the moment those two took over the school. Nothing that happens is your choice, or your fault.”
She clenched her jaw, her lips in a flat line. I wanted to reach across Wil and Tor to hold her hand.
“No, it is my choice.” She swallowed as the black set moved a pawn forward two places.
The robed figure didn’t collapse and twitch in death throes.
Typical; those rules only applied to our side.
This was all one big, attempted murder. If the enemy pieces didn’t kill us, the empty squares would, or the guilt would finish us off. “Pawn to C4.”
The black set matched the move, and I narrowed my eyes, running through casual chess lessons I’d had way back in the nineties.
This was no opening manoeuvre I’d have chosen, but we needed to minimise the threat to life.
Death was right; these pawns were marked for death, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t be careful.
“Good girl,” Tor said. “Now—”
Cat walked diagonally to the leftmost column and my heart almost fell out of my chest. Even my shadows hummed with panic, making my vision of the chessboard blurry.
“Cat!” I shouted, at the same time the others called out.
I threw myself down the bond, wrapping myself around her at the same time I sent a surge of shadows to ease her pain.
It erupted like a wildfire, like a burning sun, and made my knees buckle.
Wil twisted to catch me, and I muttered my thanks, but Cat only wavered.
As if she’d grown too used to pain that it didn’t affect her.
“Move. Come on, you motherfucker,” Tor snarled, physically shaking with the restraint of staying on the square.
Only those two psychopaths kept him in place, along with the knowledge that Peach’s life would be sacrificed, but I was one second away from moving when the black queen slid across the board into the square before Cat.
Rookie mistake. Who was controlling this thing?
Unless the capture was so obvious, it could only be a trap.
“Claim the queen, my universe,” Miz called out. “She’s right there.”
She was a stretch—it was a shapeless black cloak with a hood so dark I could see nothing within. Only the crown marked the piece as the queen.
“Cat,” I called, reaching out a mental hand to stroke her soul and flinching at the wealth of panic on the other side. Her heart still beat, but she wasn’t seeing the chessboard.
“Wil, get your ass over here in front of Death,” Tor snapped, and Wil moved into place, protecting the king. But no one was there to protect Cat from being claimed, and fuck that.
I left my square and leapt into a swarm of shadows, punching out the other side with a dagger of shadow. I drove it into the cloak, into the cold body beneath, up past their ribs and into their heart.
“Illegal move!” Cruelty shouted.
“Kiss my ass,” I retorted, dropping the dead robe to the chessboard.
“A piece for a piece,” Violence decreed, and before I could react, he was right behind me, his power choking off my air as he ripped me off the board and into a prison of darkness.