Chapter 46
DEATH
Everything in me wrenched me backward, screaming at me to turn around, to protect my wife, to get to her side. But her father was surrounded by Stalkers, Cruelty had her unsettling eyes fixed on him, and he was unprotected.
With a growl of frustration, I threw myself into shadow-stained air, appearing beside him in time to watch the Stalkers grab his arms, restraining him instead of killing him.
I grabbed the head of one, ripped his head off his neck, and ignored the sharp prick of my conscience.
They were innocents, like Virgil, like my little bride, but I didn’t have time to spare them.
Too much hung in the balance, and we needed to be away from this place as quickly as possible.
I’d make sure they had a pleasant afterlife with everything they could wish for. If they ever arrived in the domain at all. Nightmare’s victims never reached me, instead swallowed down her greedy gullet to transmute into power in her poisonous stomach.
“Fuck,” Tor snarled, joining me in a rush, every muscle on his body bulging, hands curled into fists.
He grabbed two Stalkers and sent them sprawling across the chessboard, reaching for Cat’s dad at the same time Cruelty burst into magic and darkness, appearing close enough that the unhinged gleam of her eyes was all too clear. “She made me leave her side.”
I wanted to search for Cat, needed to check she was okay, but Cruelty stepped forward with a bright smile, a knife of gleaming silver in her hand.
Its hand was a furl of petals, the handle etched all over with thorns as sharp as the blade itself, the cruel price of a beautiful rose.
I snapped my hand out to knock it away, but she was faster, and horror stuck me like a lightning bolt, turning my breaths electric and sharp.
I reached Hugo Wallison, grasping his arm, pouring a wealth of shadow through his skin into his soul and prepared to fight with all my strength to keep him tethered to life.
But he wasn’t bleeding from a mortal wound. He wasn’t injured at all, other than the bruises slowly forming handprints where he’d been grabbed.
“Kill me,” Cruelty said in a breathless rush.
I snapped my stare to her, frowning at the bright shine of her blue eyes, the smile on her face, encouraging, coaxing.
“You can do it. Just one little stab, and it’ll all be okay.
” Her smile widened into a grin. “Then I’ll live happily ever after as a mortal, just like you. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
Cat’s dad didn’t reply, didn’t move at all except to curl his fingers around the knife. Shit. I waved my hand in front of his face, to no reaction. Neglect wouldn’t have done this to him, so this was the work of the siblings.
“Whatever you have done,” I said, forcing my voice into something resembling calm, even as inside I thrashed with rage, “undo it, Cruelty. We’ll find another way to spare you of this role.”
Her stare was rife with hope when she met mine, dimples biting into her cheeks and making her look uncomfortably young.
Unsettlingly mortal. Perhaps that was why she insisted on wearing the lace wedding gown every day; she clung to the mortality she lost eons ago.
Craved it, as if being human again would bandage her tortured soul.
I understood the weight being a death god settled upon shoulders, understood how it could bow a spine until its ache turned to agony. But I would never condone the manipulation and murder she’d resorted to in her quest to ease its crushing heft.
“Kill me,” she breathed, her eyes locked with Cat’s dad. “Go on, you have my permission.”
Hugo’s expression didn’t shift. He was as blank as the students we’d been surrounded by this week, cast under her spell.
How the fuck was she doing that? I was Death and even I couldn’t take control of someone’s mind, turn them into a living ghost, without some residue of magic clinging to them.
But her control was without flaw, without a single sign or trace.
It was more than simple cruelty, more than death magic.
And I couldn’t fight something I’d never seen before.
“Don’t give her what she wants,” Tor snapped, trying to take the rose dagger from Hugo’s hand and failing when the man’s knuckles whitened, his grip unbreakable. “This is impossible,” Tor spat, fighting to pry Hugo’s fingers apart. “This is bullshit. I’m a god. Why can’t I disarm him?”
“Because he was a god, too,” Cruelty said, her smile not slipping. “That’s why you can kill me, isn’t that good? Go on now, do it quickly.”
A solid weight knocked me from behind and I snarled, lashing out with a stream of thrashing darkness.
Tor’s deep, throaty growl told me he’d wrapped himself in the cloak and cowl of death as I had.
The Stalker that had bulldozed me now dropped to the ground as I rained down every bit of rage upon him.
I didn’t have the time to crush his spirit into dust, but I dropped him and the two others who neared to the ground, buying me enough time to turn back to Hugh—
His hand jerked forward, burying the rose dagger’s blade between Cruelty’s ribs. Her beaming grin settled into something softer, mellowed by relief and peace, even as Hugh pulled the sharp blade free, darkened blood dripping from the tip.
“Thank you,” Cruelty breathed, with an almost pious gratitude. She closed her eyes, and Tor and I exchanged an uneasy glance, throwing off any Stalkers that approached until we were surrounded by a half-moon pile of them.
I waited for Cruelty’s body to join them, but she didn’t even waver while she stood. The peace darkened to lethal rage in a second, her eyes flying open, lit by a wrath so severe that I grabbed Tor, Hugh, and pulled them both away.
“Why isn’t it working?” She spun and screeched, “Violence! What have you done to sabotage my second life?”
Violence might have replied, but Orwell Ford took that moment to appear—finally—and every Stalker on the board ground to a halt when he yelled, “Stop. All of you, stop.”
Even the ones splayed across the board or halfway to their feet stopped wriggling, as if his command ran even deeper than Cruelty’s eerie magic.
“Do it again,” Cruelty hissed, ignoring Orwell and the frozen army. “Stab me again. Try harder this time.”
Hugh fought against my hold and obeyed, the blade sinking into her gut this time, but she wasn’t any more dead than she’d been a minute ago.
“Jesus,” Tor breathed, his eyes wide on something over my shoulder.
I twisted my head to see what had caught his attention—and his dread—and my mouth parted when I saw the sky above the giant hedge was full of winged creatures.
Talons and teeth and claws and bodies full of power and strength—and wings.
One of them swooped and grabbed Duncan, tearing him into the sky. More of them grabbed the immobile Stalkers, flying them out of Ford. A rescue mission, I realised. Orwell hadn’t come to help us kill Cruelty’s superpowered army, but to liberate it.
“Well, someone’s been busy,” Tor barked. “Shall we leave now?”
“Back to Bridestones House,” I murmured so Cruelty didn’t hear. She’d given up on Hugh killing her, and now twisted to glower at her brother, her brow knotted with confusion even as her eyes sharpened like broken glass.
“Violence, I want—” she began what was no doubt a list of spoiled demands, but she cut off with a gasp at the same time I threw myself into shadow, leaping across the board.
Cat lunged at Violence, my panic so vast I saw it in slow motion, my pulse thrumming in my throat, dark robe of death whipping frantically at me as I emerged on the other side, caught somewhere between human and death as Violence caught Cat, reached within her jaguar form, and ripped the girl out.
Cat fell panting, shaking, on the ground beneath his throne, clothed in nothing but air and shivers, sparks of shadow tendrils at her fingertips. Not enough to stop Violence grabbing her.
I reached her at the same moment the bastard pulled her up against him, a blade of void-dark metal at her throat, glowing unnaturally in a way black should never.
Tor was beside me in an instant, reaching for Cat as the blade bit threateningly into the pale flesh of her throat.
“Stay where you are,” Violence ordered, his voice a dispassionate rumble, his expression not even flickering. He glanced at Miz and Madde who lunged closer, Pain slumped between them.
“What are you doing?” Cruelty demanded. “I told you Kitty is off limits. Violence, I don’t like your attitude right now. Let her go.”
His attention whisked to her for a moment, then back to me, his stare boring deep. “This is the way we get what we want, Cruelty. You don’t need Cat; I’ve told you before.”
“And I’ve told you,” she snapped, a whining note creeping into her voice.
“I don’t want new friends; I want this one.
Give her to me. Now.” She actually stomped her foot on the ground'; I saw it from the corner of my eye and used her distraction to flow a few inches closer to my little bride. “Why didn’t it work? You told me the old Cruelty could kill me, but it won’t work? ”
Violence didn’t even look her way. A hard knot formed in the base of my stomach as I dropped my stare from him to my wife’s eyes—silver and furious, still alight with her jaguar’s rage.
Ever more livid for the way he’d trapped her still when she wanted to scratch and claw and gnaw her way through flesh and bone into the heart of him.
“What do you want?” I asked, my voice cool but the tremor through my hands giving away how rattled I was.
I could have crushed him under the mass of my power just months ago, but their campaign to weaken me had been too effective.
My magic had replenished, but nowhere near as potent as it was.
While, Violence was every bit as deadly as ever, not a single scrap of death magic surrendered in his attempt to climb to the top.
And I had no doubt that was what he wanted: he wanted the domain, wanted to lord over everyone within it, wanted to rule spirits and mortals alike. He wanted to be Death.
“I know you’ve been to Exile,” Violence replied, nothing even remotely close to the words I expected to come from his mouth.
I let my breath out slowly, eyes fixed on him even as I watched Miz sneak around Violence’s side, cloaked by a veil of darkness, nothing more than a shadow cast on the ground.
“I have,” I admitted. “Let my wife go, and we can talk about my time there.”
Violence didn’t smile, didn’t even blink. “Tell me how to get there myself.”
“Why?” Tor demanded, grabbing Madde when he lunged forward, Pain slung over his shoulders like a backpack. “Why do you give a shit about Exile?”
Violence’s stare took on an exasperated slant. “Because it’s a realm of raw, unlimited power. Obviously. Tell me, and you’ll have your wife back. A simple transaction.”
“We didn’t discuss this,” Cruelty said, edging forward with a frown. “Violence, what are you doing?”
“Don’t,” Cat breathed, her gaze flitting between Tor, Madde, Pain and I. Searching for Miz, I realised. She turned pale when she realised he was gone.
“Do it,” Tor ground out through clenched teeth. “Just tell him. We’ll deal with the fallout later.”
The bleached fear in my bride’s face made the decision for me. I would play Cruelty’s games, but I’d never gamble with Cat’s life.
“You need to break a fundamental rule,” I told Violence, watching his shadow lengthen in the corner of my eye. “The real itself will send you there.”
“Thank you,” Violence said with the closest his empty face came to a smile, throwing Cat at me at the same time Miz leapt up from his shadow and sank punctures of magic into his back, wrenching him away from us. Blood rose on Violence’s clothes, turning the black silk to ink.
“I’ve got you,” I promised Cat, wrapping my arms around her when she slumped, heavy, against my chest. Her warmth soaked into me, her scent of peaches and—decay. Rotting flesh and soul on the edge of festering. And blood, metallic and sharp and damning. No, this—it made no sense. “Cat, look at me.”
I cradled her face and turned it up to face mine, a small, broken sound leaving me when my senses opened, the death magic clinging to her so monumental that no mortal would survive it.
I choked on it, on that rotten scent that shoved up my nose and down my throat, coating my tongue with the unmistakable flavour of death.
A necklace of blood had poured down her throat, soaking her shirt until the fabric was saturated, staining her pale skin in splashes that made no sense.
I saw her seconds ago. Whole and unmarred in Violence’s grasp.
He must have—must have slit her throat and thrown her at me.
But not before he pumped so much death magic into her that she didn’t fade away naturally, rather was ripped from the word in an instant death.
Her life hacked off, a bridge shattered down the middle, severing her from existence.
“Cat,” I whimpered, my knees buckling without warning. The impact never even registered. I slammed my hands over the gash sliced in her throat, as if the sickening scent of decay wasn’t embedded in her skin and—
I couldn’t feel her.
“Lioness?” Madde cried, dropping beside us, his hands joining mine, trying to put the blood back inside her.
“Tell me she’s alive,” Tor barked gutturally. “Death. Tell me she’s alive.”
My hands shook as I searched for a seed, a scrap, even a shadow of life in her, but Violence had pumped her wound full of so much magic, there was nothing left.
I lifted my face, tears cold on my cheeks, and Tor shook his head at what he read there, digging his hands into his skull, shaking his head over and over.
“We can bring her back,” Pain slurred, crawling closer, struggling to hold himself up as Violence’s magic wreaked itself through his system. “We can bring her back. Death—”
“There’s nothing to grasp. No thread of life to hold onto,” I rasped.
“Cat,” Miz croaked, slumping to the floor, brushing the cool skin of her face. “Cat, open your eyes, my universe.” His hair was dipped in blood as he leaned over her, a kiss feathered against her temple. “Open your eyes.”
But there was no life left in her to respond.