Page 88 of All Hallows Game

I ignored the voice, hope swelling in my chest until my heart felt it would burst. I’d done it. I’d finally found Virgil. Maybe Phil had been lying about not knowing where my brother was, because she’d led me right to him. Even if it was a trap, I didn’t care. We’d figure out how to escape it together, because that was all that mattered—finally being together again. He’d never be alone again. I wouldn’t let anyone hurt my brave, kind, stubborn older brother.

“Virgil?” I called, biting back a moan of pain when the pounding in my head thumped louder, pain driving deeper at the volume of my own voice.

“Get out of here, Cat,” he snarled, his voice deeper, gruffer than I remembered. I paused for a second, the memory of how he looked during the video call so sharp in my mind. I wanted to find my brother the way he was a month ago, scowling and amused and healthy, but I had to prepare myself for what Nightmare had made him into.

I followed the sound of Virgil’s voice towards the far wall, scanning for an entrance, a door, a vent—anything. The wall was solid grey brick, bare except for a bookcase cluttered with leather-bound volumes, small marble busts of people I didn’t recognise, a porcelain phrenology head, and old microscopes. I hesitated, a trickle of ice moving through me. There was no way…

“Virgil?” I called, approaching the bookcase, my fingertips tracing the edges even as I scanned the contents of the shelves.

“You can’t be here, Cat. Get out of here!”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I argued, peering around the back of the bookcase. It was flush to the concrete wall, which was no help.

Well, there was nothing else for it. I gritted my teeth against a flare of dizziness and began moving busts to the closest metal gurney, dumping armfuls of books beside them until it was covered in a mountain of mess. I would have thrown them on the ground but I couldn’t bring myself to damage the busts; they looked hundreds of years old.

“It’s not safe for you back here,” Virgil argued, hoarse and raspy but undeniably him. Relief was a weight crushing my chest. “Go find someone else to help.”

If I ran for help, Nightmare would move him and I’d never see my brother again. It wasn’t just paranoia that told me that; it was common sense. She’d led me here using Phil and probably Alastor. She wanted me to find Virgil, but she didn’t actually want me to escape with him. She just wanted to torture me with how close I was to saving him. I knew there was a chance she waited behind this bookcase with my brother. I knew there was a chance she’d planned every action I’d taken tonight, but I couldn’t quit when Virgil was so close.

I kept tearing books and paraphernalia off the shelves, a puff of air leaving me in a sharp burst when I reached for the phrenology head and instead of sliding off the shelf into my hands, the head cocked to the right.

Like something out of an adventure film, the bookcase swung open on a long corridor.

My heart pounded. Virgil was here, somewhere down this dark hallway. Nightmare was here, too. I couldn’t sense her the way I usually could—a shudder of revulsion and fear at the top of my spine, a slow drip of panic in my bloodstream, and the need to run pinching every muscle in my legs—but I knew she was here. Why else lead me to this place? I was under no illusions that Phil had kidnapped me so I could save Virgil; her fear was clearly real, and there’d been no kindness in her motive. She chose herself over me. But Nightmare was the one pulling her strings, through whatever proxy blackmailed Phil.

Which brought me back to why. Why lead me here?

I cast around for a weapon and grabbed a scalpel from a metal dish, holding in front of me as I edged into the darkness, like a scalpel would threaten a goddess.

It took me three steps to realise it wasn’t a hallway or an extension of the building where Phil had brought me; it was a tunnel, hewn of the earth and covered in rough bricks. It pressed on me until I shuddered, pain flashing through my pained shoulder. I didn’t call out to Virgil again, too aware that this was a trap I walked into like a lamb to slaughter. I wouldn’t give Nightmare a chance to place my location before I attacked her. The element of surprise was the only advantage I had.

No, that wasn’t true. I also had Death’s name. But everything Nightmare did was in the name of her feud with Death—everything helped her goal to murder him. There was no comfort in speaking his name. I’d just drag him into danger, too.

I strained my hearing as I took slow, measured steps through the tunnel, hard-packed dirt beneath my shoes. When I became aware of the swish of my arms against my leather jacket, I carefully slid it off my shoulders and left it on the ground, moving soundlessly ahead. My heart beat so hard I felt it against my ribs, and it drummed faster when something caught the light ahead—long, steel bars from floor to ceiling. A cell.

My stomach knotted. Horror made my body so numb that I barely felt the twinge through my ankle or the throb in my shoulder. My dizziness remained, and my head still pounded, but everything dulled like a blurring veil was thrown over my senses. Virgil was behind bars. Caged. I couldn’t see him but I knew he was inside that cell.

I jumped when a howl echoed around the tunnel, and I flattened myself against the wall on instinct, sweat beading on my upper lip. But the howl came from outside; it must have reached the tunnel through an air vent. I struggled to convince my breathing to resume its regular schedule, and even when I took another few steps, I could barely gasp down a breath. What air I did take in tasted of dirt and rotting things and something acidic and chemical. Hairs rose on the back of my neck.

I wanted to call Virgil’s name, but I couldn’t give Nightmare any warning. In silence, I moved cautiously down the tunnel, forgetting to breathe every time the creature howled outside. At least the monster wasn’t trapped in here with me. I didn’t want to even acknowledge it but the monster being caged down here was the first thing I thought when I saw the bars.

You’re fine, you’re fine, I told myself, but it was nowhere near confident enough to slow my heart rate.

Turn back now, my darkness warned.

I sucked down a shuddering breath and forged on, ignoring the warnings of my instincts, hoping their violent encouragements would return when I needed them.

The bars were close enough now that I could see the cell behind it was empty. A breath whooshed out of me in relief and I managed to take a deeper inhale, filling my lungs. Virgil wasn’t here. Maybe he was locked in a room at the end of this tunnel, not in one of the cages. Maybe he was—

I reached the end and my heart sank. There was enough light to see by thanks to emergency lights placed at regular intervals along the tunnel. It wasn’t just one cell; it was a whole row of them, disappearing left and right into the darkness. So many I couldn’t count them.

Why did Nightmare need so many cages?

Run, my darkness growled. Now.

Not without Virgil.

I took a tentative step, my hands shaking at my sides, soft light bouncing off the scalpel in my fingers.

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