Page 41 of All Hallows Game

I grabbed the cold iron, swung myself around the gate—another sob left me when I passed through the shield of power—and slammed it shut on the creature’s face.

Gasping a cry, I snatched my fingers back from the gate just as massive teeth snapped around an iron curlicue. Panic drummed in my chest as I waited for the metal to bend, to crumple, but it was the creature that whimpered and tore away. It was close enough that I saw its amber eyes, that I could make out every groove on the black ram’s horns that curved back from its furry skull.

It looked at me, and I couldn’t tear my gaze away. It never growled, never snarled, but that didn’t mean it was harmless—I’d watched it rip into a woman’s chest and eat her organs.

I backed up slowly, scared it would burst through the gates if I looked away, but when I reached the steps of the castle, the creature turned and walked away, loping up the moor road.

I sank onto the bottom step with a ragged breath and dragged my hands down my tearstained face. I was so fucking close to being ground meat stuck between a monster’s huge canines. So fucking close to being dead.

I allowed myself another minute to catch my breath, to dry up the tears, to find my courage, and went inside in search of the death gods.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CAT

It took me less than a minute to realise this wasn’t Death’s castle. The interior of the castle was blood red and vibrant pink, not black and austere, a burst of colour everywhere I looked—the curtains, the carpet rolling away under my feet, the flocked wallpaper, the vases, chandeliers, and even the door I glimpsed ahead.

“Shit,” I whispered. Where the fuck was I?

I tipped my head back, looking past four floors of mezzanine balconies to the glass roof that let in rays of watery sunlight. Instead of the familiar sight and feel of Death’s palace, this place was brighter, livelier, and smelled of old books and honey.

Wherever I’d ended up, it clearly wasn’t where I’d planned to be, and I didn’t want to go wandering around someone else’s castle in case the owners came home. Death might have ruled this domain, but I knew there were others with power, too. Other death gods. The last thing I wanted was to escape death in the form of a monster and find it in a god.

I cast one last look around the castle and hurried out the door, a ripple of unease in my gut when an unfamiliar town spread out before me instead of the moor road. The world had shifted around me between one step and the next, the way it had once when I visited my gods. I had no idea if this was the same town I saw then, but without Tor, Miz, or Death, I wasn’t sure how to get to their castle.

Maybe I could see Death’s home from the other side of the town. I had no other options anyway.

“Please don’t let this get me killed,” I whispered a plea to whoever was listening, unlatching the gate and stepping onto the cobbled road that arced down into the town. The castle was on a slight incline to watch over the thatched rooftops and high church spires, all the buildings made of the same dark stone as Death’s castle. As the smaller but no less intimidating castle behind me.

Paranoia made me scan the sky for crows as I walked, but the skies were clear of birds, filled instead with fluffy grey clouds limned in red. That sanguine light was the only sign I wasn’t in the mortal world, and if I’d been determined I could have convinced myself it was a trick of the sunlight.

I was out of breath by the time I reached the bottom of the steep road, where cobbles flowed around the side of a pub1 and continued along a thoroughfare to a town square.

Fine hairs rose along the back of my neck when multiple voices cracked through the air like a thunderclap, a chant so loud and fierce that I immediately backed up and found a smaller, quieter street lined with quaint thatched-roof houses. Whatever was happening in the town square, I didn’t need to find out. The only death I wanted to meet today was six-foot-three with a muscular body made for hugs and a voice like rich caramel.

I wished I’d brought my knife out with me; I would have felt safer with it in my palm. The little back street I walked was empty, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, and my anxiety assured me, with a hundred percent certainty, it was Alastor Carmichael come to kill me so he could have Honey to himself.

Even though I was in the realm of the dead. Even though Alastor had no way of accessing this place unlike me, the ex-wife of three death gods.2

“It’s just anxiety,” I whispered to myself, but I couldn’t shake the dread closing around my chest, crushing out my air the further I walked into the unfamiliar town. I was glad to run across no one, but less glad when the road curved and it became clear why. Every single spirit in the town was crammed into the square, overlooked by a tall statue of a striking man with a coif of short hair, dressed in the livery and armour I’d expect of a knight of Camelot. The peace sign the statue had thrown up was conspicuous, and brought a puzzled smile to my face.

The smile dropped when I realised what the spirits were chanting, over and over, their voices shockingly loud for a hundred dead people.

Torment! Torment! Torment!

My feet carried me closer even as my stomach swirled with nerves. His name was like a siren call I couldn’t resist, but I ground to a halt on the edge of the crowd. What the hell was I doing? I couldn’t join a crowd of dead people—I was alive. What if they stole my lifeforce the way ghosts did in horror films? What if they sucked all the juice from me until I was a shrivelled raisin of a human? Tension tightened my shoulders, and I jumped hard when someone brushed past me from behind.

My breathing froze entirely when pressure met the top of my head, a kiss lingering long enough to calm my racing heart, to make me slump with relief. Death was here—

I turned, my heart leaping, but I was alone.

“No,” I said, shaking my head over and over. No, I felt that. It was real. Someone touched me, kissed my head. It was real.

But there was no one there.

I rubbed my face with aggressive motions. “I’m going mad.”

Torment! the crowd of spirits chanted. Torment!

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