Page 39 of All Hallows Trick

“Torturing?” Poppy was horrified, a hand pinned to her chest. “I would never—”

“Seven times,” Virgil said in a low, low voice, a well of rage within him as he brushed past us and caught up to Death, his bodyvibrating.“Did you know your wonder serum doesn’t always work the first time? Nightmare injected us over and over and fuckingoveruntil the damn thing took. I heard peoplediein those tunnels, heard their hoarse screams hour after hour until finally they cut out. It took seven fucking injections to turn me intothis,”he yelled, shaking off Death’s hand when he tried to comfort him. “And you don’t call that torture?”

“You’re here now,” Poppy said gently, descending the steps towards him. My heart quickened. She needed to die. Right fucking here. “All’s well that ends well. And you’re perfect, look at you.”

All's well that ends well?She needed a lobotomy.

Virgil bared his teeth, an inhuman snarl leaving him, making some of the other subjects falter. Seven times he’d been injected. God.

“What do we do?” Cat whispered.

I didn’t know. This weak, with so little magic, and facing so many creatures capable of causing true damage… I didn’t know. I slid a glance at the psycho god standing a few feet away from us, his head tilted and light gleaming off the burnished red of his hair as he watched the creatures. His eyes shot to me, light dancing within them.

“If you’ve got a grand plan, now’s the time to announce it,” I muttered, our words covered by the sudden growl Virgil let out as he charged at Poppy.

“I think,” he said with grave seriousness, “we should kill the creatures.”

No fucking shit.

“Don’t even think about it,” Cat snapped, moving so suddenly she escaped my arms. Panic clawed at my chest. I sank into my magic, calling shadow to my palms. It wasn’t enough. It waspitiful, and that made me want to scream. “They can hurt you too, Madness.”

Madde tilted his head like he was contemplating it anyway. I gripped my magic in tight hands. I didn’t need to take out all the creatures. I just needed to command the spirits. That was all. Easy.

“Protect her with your life, Madness,” I commanded, and before Cat could react, I wrapped myself in a thin veil of shadow, helping me run faster as I sprinted across the courtyard.

The biggest gathering of ghosts was at the side of the castle, where the wall met Death’s garden. I ran full-out, not second guessing myself.I’m powerful. I’m a death god. I’m Torment. I’m…feeling like a fucking fool for these desperate affirmations.

Fuck it. Here goes nothing.

“Leave,” I ordered, my voice resonant and full, deepening as I felt my appearance flicker, the true darkness of my soul on display for a moment—bleached bones showing through chasms in my arms and chest, blood spilling over grey skin, my clothes hanging off a skeletal body. My face must have been horrifying, blood smearing the hollows of my cheeks, my eyes now nothing more than black pits. When I raised my hands, they were nothing but bone, sharpened to a point at the tips of my fingers. “Return to your homes.Obey the god Torment or stay and face eternal suffering.”

I didn’t dare release my tentative grip on the power as they began to disperse, didn’t let the gasp of hope leave my throat. Awareness crawled down the back of my neck. Eyes tracing me from head to toe. I tried to ignore the panic it invoked. When twelve spirits had fled, the vulnerability to Death minimised, I turned—slowly, nervous—to meet the stare fixed on me.

Cat’s eyes were so wide the whites swallowed the silver of her iris, her mouth parted as I held her entire attention, not even the subjects or Poppy stealing her eyes from me. When I felt severalmore spirits fade out of the courtyard, I dropped the power and sucked in a rattling breath, warm flesh covering my bones again, the blood and rot vanishing. Cat never looked away. A sick, oily feeling spilled through my stomach. Would she look at my true form and decide she didn’t want me? Would the horror of it turn her away from me? Would I be too hideous to look at now, when she would always see the decay hiding underneath? Would she—

She was smiling. Teeth bared as she grinned fiercely. The world fell away, time stretched out between us. Cat and I were the only people in existence.

“I see you haven’t grown any hair in the last three decades,” Misery remarked.

Breath slammed back into my lungs. I flipped him off, turning to see how many spirits were left, a smile tugging at my lips even though there was still a whole pack full of animals capable of slaughtering us all. I should have learned not to trust moments of true happiness like these; they only made pain hit harder.

But I wasn’t the one who staggered when a shaggy grey wolf leapt onto the spirit of a woman I vaguely knew from the village at the base of the road. She’d worked as a baker in life and always had a loaf in her hands. It was there even now, as the wolf locked its jaws around her throat. It shouldn’t have been possible—she was a ghost and the wolf was living—but impossibility didn’t stop the creature ripping her head off. It hung there by a single flap of skin, a scream of agony etching itself into her round, wrinkled face. The loaf never left her hands even as her eyes turned opaque. I was close enough to see it all, close enough that every bit of the horror was in high definition.

It wasn’t the Stalker who killed the ghost on our doorstep three days ago. It was the creatures. And by locking them in our damned dungeon, we’d unleashed thirteen of them upon the domain of the Dead.

“Get back,” I shouted, backing up, hairs standing on end all down my arms. This was bad, much fucking worse than I thought, and I didn’t know how to get us out of it.

The wolf leapt from the baker to a smartly-dressed black man, and in the space of a blink it had grabbed his arm and ripped it off. Scratches raked his chest, his face, a fatal gash across his throat. His mouth hung open in agony, his eyes clouding over. Two spirits, murdered in the span of a minute. It shouldn’t have been possible—you couldn’t kill what was already dead, let alone this quickly. I backed up, my heart slamming a rapid beat against my ribs as a second creature leapt at the nine remaining spirits, then a third, a fourth. I lost count. Fuck.

“Death!” Cat cried, ripping my attention from the massacre in front of us. My heart fucking stopped when I saw Death on his knees, panting, teeth gritted against clear pain.

“Enough,” I snarled at Poppy, launching myself at where she stood, watching the slaughter with pride. What happened to Virgil? I thought he was attacking her? I couldn’t see him. Shit.“Enough.What do you want? Name it and I’ll give it to you, and you can get the fuck out of here.”

“Oh, you don’t need to give me anything,” Poppy replied, her attention on her creatures as they tore through spirits like rice paper. They were already dead, bodies long decayed in the mortal realm but watching them suffer was a thing of horror. “I can do it myself, thank you.”

“You want us all dead,” I guessed.

“I don’t care about you,” she disagreed, not deigning to look at any of us. “But I care about Nightmare, and she wants that monster dead. Truly, finally dead.” She leaned closer. “Only then can we heal and make a better world.”

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