Page 93 of All Hallows Game

I scanned the clash of fur and magic, searching for my girl. Where was she? I searched again and again, taking a blind step forward, my heart pounding faster. Where was Cat? She’d been with Tor. Maybe she hid in the trees, too. Maybe she was safe.

Was that what I was doing? Hiding? Since when did Misery hide?

I swallowed my fear, pushed down the vulnerable feeling of having mere scraps of my magic, and drew a sword from a pocket of shadow. I might not have magic, but I could still fight. I could still—

I leapt aside on instinct, sensing the disturbance in the air, and breath strangled in my lungs as I watched the horned, winged creature Death hit just moments ago shake out its fur and clamber back to its feet.

“Impossible…”

Its grey head whipped towards me, green eyes bright and glittering in a wolf-like face. My heart skipped. Death’s power killed anything. It literally extinguished life, like a candle with a snuff. Nothing could survive that, no human or creature or even the rare mortal who made a deal with us and became something more than human. Even gods could be killed by Death. But I’d watched this animal crash to the ground, a direct hit to its chest, and then climb to its feet with no visible wounds.

“Shit,” I whispered, a catch in my breath. I held my sword angled in front of me, ready to move the second I saw the creature shift its weight. No wonder Death and Tor were fighting an endless number of these things; every time they killed one, it returned for round two.

“Where’s Cat?” I yelled, putting my back to a tree so nothing could creep up on me.

“We got separated,” Tor shouted, wrapping his hand in dark power and punching it through the skull of a creature. He ripped out brain matter and gore, blood spilling down his arm. “I’ll come closer. Take my phone; you can use it to find her.”

I flexed my fingers around the sword hilt, my eyes on the grey creature watching me, waiting, assessing. “How?”

“I’ve got a tracker on her phone. Open the app called CAT and follow the GPS marker.”

That sounded easy enough, even for someone so new to technology like me. I turned my head to see where Tor was, and like it was intelligent enough to wait for an opening, the wolven monster leapt at me.

I sucked in a grounding breath, pushing all my panic aside as I watched the open mouth of the creature come closer, closer, parted on a snarl that might have made me nervous if I wasn’t a death god and the semi-living embodiment of misery.

“Bad move,” I informed the beast, driving my sword into its mouth, spearing the back of its throat. Shit. I’d been aiming for its brain. The world seemed to slow as I tore the blade free and drove it up, burying it in my target on the second shot.

Close behind me, Tor grunted loudly. I jumped, my calm shattering at his sound of pain, and I sliced my arm on the razor edge of the wolf creature’s fangs.

“Fuck,” I hissed, bracing my boot on its chest to yank my sword from its brain. It refused to dislodge for long, sticky seconds; I stumbled back when it finally tore free, my chest closing up until I found my balance and lunged through the woods towards Tor.

He spotted me over the shoulder of the brown shaggy-haired creature he circled, dark smoke in one hand and the other fisted around his phone. “Run, and don’t look back until you find our girl. Don’t worry about Death and me; we’ve got this.”

“They won’t die, Tor,” I panted, sweat beading on my temple. How long could they fight? How long until the monsters overwhelmed them?

“We’ve got this,” he bit out, punching dark, coiling magic at the creature that wasn’t quite right to be a bear. The same size and colour, but the shape was awkward, its tread unbalanced, and when it turned its head, massive walrus-like tusks thrust from its mouth, long whiskers on either side of its nose. “Catch.”

I threw my sword into my left hand and caught the phone from the air, hesitating five paces from Tor. He had full power, and I knew what he was capable of, but still I hovered, my eyes going from him to Death.

“Go,” Tor snapped, pulling his palms apart in a powerful motion. The bear collapsed into five different pieces, sliced by blades of dark, humming power. “Cat needs you.”

Fuck, he was right. “I hate this,” I snarled. “Don’t fucking die.”

He had the gall to roll his eyes.

Sickness roiled in my gut, but I forced myself to retreat into the shadows of the treeline, and unlocked his phone with the code I watched him punch in every day. It took little effort to find the little pink square called CAT. It had a cat’s profile in black against the pink; I slammed my finger into it, exhaling in relief when the app opened instantly.

I had to shut out the sounds of growls and snarls, the grunts of my men as they fought, as they were wounded.

Even Death himself can be harmed. You just have to find the right balance between life and death.

She’d been planning this all those years ago, and would have put this plan in motion then if Tor hadn’t arrived and tilted the balance towards us. He’d wrapped me in magic, my hands trapped at my sides so I couldn’t hurt Death again, and in the same motion he’d speared Nightmare with enough torment to take down a god. When she hit her knees, Death fashioned a blade of decay and drove it into her face, burying it in her eye. I’d barely had enough strength to crawl out of the lake.

They’d handled themselves six hundred years ago, and I had to accept they could now, too. But Cat was vulnerable, powerless.

I swallowed my panic at leaving them behind and moved quickly away. Blending into the darkness of the woods named after my sister, I followed the app’s bright yellow arrow through winding paths and up ragged inclines covered in bracken. Sweat beaded on my face, an annoying result of still being somewhat living despite dying hundreds of years ago. It darkened my shirt as I crossed the woods, getting ever-closer to the pin marking Cat’s location.

It didn’t surprise me that Tor had a tracker on her; he was every bit as obsessed with Cat as I was. I was glad for his diligence as I grew close enough to my girl to sense her. I put the phone away, following the tug in my chest, my magic recognising her flow of life. Adrenaline hit and I ran faster, pushing myself to painful exhaustion.

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