Chapter 39
PAIN
Ididn’t feel bad about shoving aside the pawn in front of me even when the lanky, bespectacled guy sprawled across the chess board.
Maybe I should have felt bad, but I’d been a death god long enough that my morals were a little wonky.
In seconds, I sprinted across the squares between Cat and I.
Misery and Madness were already crowded onto Cat’s square, pulling her into a hug.
I lifted a foot to join them, but when I put it down, it didn’t land on a shining white square under a crimson sunset, with death gods and med student puppets watching; it fell on a rocky mountain path with rugged fir trees on one side and a rugged mountain on the other.
Something moved in the corner of my awareness, my shadows painting the impression of a glowing streak of light, a spirit, but I couldn’t tell if it was on the chessboard or the forested mountains.
I might have been a little more concerned about that if a chorus of low, rattling snarls didn’t come from behind me, echoing off the rock until I felt surrounded.
I turned slowly, honestly not wanting to see what hunted me.
My stomach flipped when I realised a wolf pack crept up the path, their jaws parted, sharp teeth bared as they snarled.
I ripped my shadows back the moment I had a clear picture, and I wished my magic was a little blurrier around the edges.
I could have lived without knowing how sharp those teeth were, how thick and powerful their claws were.
“Nice wolfies,” I breathed, holding out my hands as I backed up, a zip of warning running down my arms and making me shiver.
I knew I still stood on the chessboard, and this was just a test, a way to torture us, to knock us off balance so we lost the game.
But I really wouldn’t put it past Violence and his twisted sister to make these little tests real. Die in the game and die in real life.
There were very few ways death gods could be killed, and as far I knew being mauled by wolves wasn’t fatal, but it would hurt like the Dickens and I wasn’t too keen on being hung drawn and quartered, wolf style.
“Nice wolfies,” I cooed, backing up another step—and freezing when more growls came. They’d cut me off. Of course they had. I suppressed a growl of my own, plunging into my magic and wrapping myself in a blanket of it, sending out feelers to the trees, the mountains.
The narrow path I stood on, surrounded by predators, snaked in a winding path to the top of the peak, and down to its base, but the pack blocked off both ends. “Well,” I sighed, “there’s only one thing for it.”
I sent up a quick prayer that I didn’t do something stupid and lose another sense, then threw myself sideways off the path, skidding on my ass down the sloped ground and immediately regretting my choice.
I slid too quickly to get a clear impression of anything, but I felt more than enough to know the ground was littered with twigs—they snapped against my arms, grazing my skin—and leaves—didn’t know you could get leaf burn, but the more you know—and peppered with sturdy rocks—each one left a sizeable bruise on my ass.
And that was before I hit a boulder at crazy speeds and twisted, falling head-first onto a lower coil of the path.
For a long, long minute I splayed there, every part of my body pulsing, aching, my head like a watermelon someone had stepped on in a show of strength.
“Not dead,” I croaked, rolling onto my front, pushing my grazed palms against the road, little rocks pressing into my skin. I amended, “I’m not any more dead than I was to begin with.”
Hot breath hit me a moment before the muzzle did, and I went deadly still. Even my shadows froze.
Don’t eat me, don’t eat me.
I could have sworn the wolf heard me, could have sworn it inhaled sharply before it backed away. I listened to paws scuff the path as they padded away and pushed myself up, sending out feelers of magic to make sure I was alone—
“Oh shit, oh shit,” I whispered, scrambling to my feet and locking a shield in place.
Not alone. And the wolves didn’t decide to spare me out of the goodness of their cute little hearts; down the path, coming closer with every step, was Violence in a tailored black suit and shiny shoes, one arm behind his back. The pack didn’t spare me; they fled a greater threat.
I had to get back to the chessboard and to Cat, but I’d like to do that with all my limbs intact and without a new pattern of wolf bites. For now, I pushed aside any thought of getting out of this place and squared up against Violence.
I was unprepared for him to remove his hand from behind his back, for the golden heart that sat in his hand.
My entire body flashed cold with fear, and I staggered forward a step. There was no way. He couldn’t have that. But his smile assured me this was no trickery, and I believed it.
I lunged forward to fight him, to wrestle that heart of his grasp, but his fist closed around it and my knees collapsed.