Page 64 of All Hallows Game

“No one else is going to be murdered,” I calmed myself. “Everything is going to be fine.”

Except when I found where she was keeping Virgil, I had a single knife against Nightmare. What a fucking idiot. I should have bought a gun; there had to be someone at Ford who knew a guy who could get a gun.

“Okay,” I breathed, finding that talking out loud settled the sharpest edge of my panic. “Okay, it’s just around here.” I turned in a circle, scanning the empty stretch of moors. There were no houses, no abandoned cottage to account for pipework, but that didn’t mean something hadn’t stood here and been demolished decades ago.

It also didn’t mean there wasn’t a bunker beneath me. The grass was certainly long enough to hide the entrance to one.

“Think logically,” I told myself, standing right above the pin. “If there’s something here, I’ll find it.”

I just had to make sure I checked every single inch of this place. I could do it. I wouldn’t let a bit of fear and snow stop me from saving my brother. I stowed my phone in my pocket for now and began to walk in a spiralling path, the circle of my footprints in the grass getting wider with each pass, further from the pin’s location. I kept my eyes on the ground, making sure to scuff the ground with the toe of my boot, searching for the clang of metal, the entrance to a bunker. By the time my expanding search reached the edge of the moor where my car waited, my heart sunk. Whatever had needed pipes once, it was gone now, and there was no entrance here.

“No,” I argued, shaking the snow from my hair. “No, I’ll find him. I just have to look hard enough. He’s in another place.”

I climbed back in my car and drove to the next pin, and the next.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CAT

Iwas starting to wonder if someone at Ford had a metal detector I could buy. Walking so many miles in a single morning made my lungs wheeze, my legs throbbing. It had been weeks, maybe months, since I’d gone running in the mornings. Alastor had stolen that early morning peace from me, and my fitness had clearly gone downhill.

I paused halfway up a grassy hill to clutch my side, a stitch flashing through my muscles in a sudden pain.

“Son of a—” I panted, catching my breath. “Motherfucking toad.”

I wasn’t a fan of toads today. One had leapt out at me from the last location—a slight valley where the remnants of an old farmhouse still remained—and scared the shit out of me. It landed on my leg, clung to me, and I’d screamed so loudly I scared a flock of crows from the nearby tree. They’d followed me since. I was trying not to look at them.

In hindsight, I’d overreacted about the toad, but my hindbrain thought it was the monster and there were no convincing instincts that were on high alert.

“You’re fine, everything is fine, you’re going to find Virgil.” I was still talking to myself, though the talking had edged further into denial with every square foot I searched for bunker entrances, manhole covers, hidden grates—anything. I was on pin number three and I’d found nothing except crows and a toad. I was halfway towards being a stereotypical witch; I just needed a broom and a wart on the end of my nose.1

A crow cawed loudly where it perched on a tree above me. I gave it the finger, ignoring the way I wheezed while I scaled the hill. Fuck, I needed to hit Ford’s gym. Not that staying fit was much of a priority with my brother kidnapped and a creature eating people.

“Don’t think about people being eaten,” I hissed at my own mind, shivering when snow whipped my face, the wind more aggressive with every hour I’d spent searching Ford’s End for any sign of a bunker. I didn’t even have proof Virgil was underground, just a hunch I was rapidly beginning to lose faith in.

I swallowed snow when I sucked down air, forced to slow my pace as I trudged up the hill, following the red pin on my phone screen—right at the top of the hill, because of course it was. No roads came up this way, nothing big enough for me to bring my car. Not even a damn footpath worn into the hill. The ground was lumpy and uneven beneath my feet and walking on it was torturous.

“For Virgil,” I wheezed. For my brother, who’d taken care of me all my life, who’d been nothing but supportive.2

“I must be almost there,” I breathed, encouraging myself. When I looked at my phone and saw 0.5km to destination, I let out a very accurate cow impression. God, it couldn’t really be that far, could it?

I jumped, losing my footing when four crows cawed at once, alighting on whatever trees clung to the crooked hill around me.

“Motherfuckers,” I snarled, landing hard on my knees, snow blooming a wet patch through one of my legs. Great, that’d be another bruise. I’d only just healed from that asshole Alastor Carmichael sending me to the floor in Rosalind Woods. “I don’t normally abide violence to animals, but I think I’ll make an exception for you assholes.”

Naughty, naughty, Nightmare said, her voice a slow slide through my mind.

There was something about the warm, teasing tone that made me freeze, uncaring that the wet patches on my knees were spreading.

I wasn’t sure I was breathing.

I see you sneaking around, my terror.

Just exploring Ford, I said quickly, but even my mental voice was breathy and afraid. Would she kill Virgil for this? How could I be so damn stupid? Tears lined my eyes, stinging and hot.

Don’t lie to me! she screeched, and I flinched hard, my head beginning to spin. I dislike when my terrors act up, Cat. I have to punish you to correct the behaviour.

What did you do?

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