Page 1 of All Hallows Trick

PROLOGUE: THE WATCHER IN THE DARKNESS

It wasn’t often that someone could call him from the depths of his castle. The sheer level of brutality required to make even a drop ripple through his ocean of darkness was… unfathomable. He was a death god, but death could be found everywhere. It was pedestrian, as common as breathing. But this kind of death, the kind of violence that sent ripples through him like a shiver down his spine, could never be called common. It was delicious.

He’d felt it three years ago, on the seventeenth of June. It was the crack of insanity that caught his attention first—the break. It always came before a death this dark. A splinter of the mind, or a fracture through a heart, or a crack so severe it divided psyches into before and aftermath. It was the latter that happened with his lioness, a true and total break. She was pushed andpusheduntil she snapped, and the snap was so profound that it severed her into two people—before and after.

He’d watched from the dark where she’d never see him, even if she sensed his presence. That splash of insanity in his darkness gained his full attention, so he’d gone to her, to watch, to witness the glorious death she dealt with his own eyes.

And it had been glorious indeed. His breath quickened even now when he recalled it.

He’d never seen darkness wrap around a woman quite so quickly, never seen so muchragepour out of someone in dark eyes and gritted teeth and ragged, heaving breaths. He’d known the boy threatening her, blackmailing her would diedaysbefore the shadow of Death arrived. He’d lurked in the darkness watching the girl spiral, watching her trip closer and closer to madness’s embrace with every hour that passed, her hands pulling at her hair, stress making her eyes wild. It was a wildness that made him so goddamn hard.

No man can harm you without consequence,he whispered to her mind, stroking her with a tendril of darkness.Shouldn’t he be as afraid of you as you are of him? Shouldn’t he be pushed to breaking too?

Even as she slept, her hands curled into fists, her body restless, beautifully wrathful. The watcher sat at the end of her bed and never took his eyes off her, feeling his heart quicken with thrill and a slow, dark curl of obsession. Something about the violence coiling inside her called to him. It would be a beautiful explosion. He couldn’t wait to taste it.

It was almost worth the horrific death that made him a god, almost worth all the pain and betrayal and trauma. Deep down, she was every bit as dangerous and broken and mad as he was. And while he’d sensed broken mortals before, there was something about this one.

Anyone with a heart of such ugliness has no place in this world. He should be struck down, should die screaming for mercy.

He could picture it, the images so vivid, and his breath caught in his throat. Would she strangle him? Slam the heavy base of her lamp into his skull? Throw him down the solid stone steps at the back of her home?

His blood will spill and he will die screaming.The ripples through his darkness assured him of that. She was fracturing, every little stress piling up until he couldtasteit.

She didn’t disappoint. As two gods watched, one oblivious to the other, the girl, his lioness, his Cat, finally snapped and bludgeoned her blackmailer to death. His head caved in, blood and brains strewn across the dark lawn behind her home. Andstillshe drove the rock into him, until her hands were stained, drops of rich crimson adorning her face with ethereal beauty. Fury and insanity twined into gorgeous gold in her eyes. And his heart thumped faster, the obsession growing.

Beautiful and deadly.And mine.

The ripples she’d made in his darkness became a tidal wave, and he shuddered, a thrill going down his spine as she caved her tormentor’s head in.Mine,his heart decided, her darkness a siren song to his power, her fury never-ending. She would never be a woman to break, never a woman beaten or diminished or small. A force of nature. A wild creature with a wealth of violence in her heart.

He would never expect her to hide that violence or cover it with a harmless mask; he’d never expect a lioness to don the guise of a sheep. He would love her as she was, with blood on her hands, teeth bared, and her whole body shaking with vengeance and justice. And he would be safe in her shadow. No one could hurt him again.

Perfection,he breathed, stroking a hand down her soul, and the light and dark of her, the pitch black and bright sunshine melded into one. Kindness and cruelty lived side by side within her, and at thefeelof her welcoming his darkness instead of rejecting it… his breathing hitched.

I belong to this woman,he decreed, long before Death crept from the shadows and strode to the blood-covered girl in thegrass, long before Nightmare and Halloween and a curse made her their bride.

She was his. And every part of him belonged to her. And it was time they all knew.

CHAPTER ONE

DEATH

The dress looked like blood in the moonlight, pouring over the poisonous goddess like a wound spilling vital fluid. My whole body locked at the sight of Nightmare, awareness that each and every one of us was injured hammering at my chest. Tor had passed out in Misery’s arms, Miz was weak and traumatised by the woman strolling casually closer, Virgil shook uncontrollably, backing up three steps until he was behind us, and Cat, my little bride, was unconscious in my arms. So fucking vulnerable.

Panic cut off my air. I needed to get them to safety, needed to get them as far away from here as possible, but I didn’t know what to do. Going to my domain would kill Virgil. Cat would kill me if we left him, but she was my priority. I’d rather Cat hate me alive than love me dead.

A shield slammed down around us, and I hid my discomfort at how weak it was, the darkness a veil instead of a wall. Shit. Shit!

Nightmare’s laugh grated every nerve in my body. I dragged a slow breath in through my nose, my hands flexing where they held Cat to my chest, fingertips pressing into her thighs, her back. I wouldn’t lose anyone I loved. I refused to.

“Is that the best you can do?” the goddess of nightmares asked, nearing at a casual, unhurried pace. She knew we were fucked.

“Stay back!” Misery snapped, his voice sharp but breathy. I wanted to lock eyes with him and silently promise he’d be okay but I didn’t dare take my eyes off Nightmare. And was it even true? Could I keep him safe when weakness rampaged through me like poison? There was something wrong with those creatures in the woods we left behind, beyond the fact they’d been engineered in a cottage on the grounds of Ford School of Medicine. A wound dealt by them shouldn’t have weakened a death god, let alone two, and they certainly shouldn’t have knocked Tor out.

“Stay back?” Nightmare asked in that harmless voice that did nothing to convince a single one of us she meant no harm. Her eyes widened, one pure white bleeding down her cheek. I looked at that eye in grim satisfaction, but satisfaction wouldn’t get us to safety. My heart slammed harder, faster. “But you have my terror. I can’t stay back when you’ve stolen something from me.” Her gaze went beyond us, her red-painted mouth tilting into a cruel smile, transforming her from a beautiful, ordinary woman to the monster she was.“Twosomethings. Hello, Virgil. I knew you’d escape your cage sooner or later. Shall I pass your love to your creator?”

Virgil had frozen, but her words were a match struck against phosphorus. He exploded into motion, testing the stability of my wards until I felt them tremble. His teeth bared, sharper, longer than any mortal teeth, and the sound that rattled from his throat was nowhere close to human.

I held Cat tighter, exchanging a swift glance with Miz as he backed up. It would be wrong to use Virgil as a distraction so we could escape, but I was far beyond the white morals of right and wrong. My girl had been attacked, hurt, kidnapped by her own friend, and transformed into a creature none of us quite understood the ramifications of.

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