Page 40 of All Hallows Trick

It took me a moment. To realise who she meant bymonster.And then true, endless rage threw a match on the fuel in my blood, lighting it up like a fucking pyre.You dare,I began tosay, my muscles bunching, my legs already shifting into a jump across the last few metres. I’d rip her fucking heart out.

“Monster?” a deep feminine snarl demanded before I could speak. I didn’t recognise the voice, not until it was followed by a rough, rasping growl I’d gotten used to hearing these past few days as my girl lost control of her power. “I must be mistaken, because there’s no way you just called my husbandamonster.”

“Beautiful,” I warned as she edged past me. My body shook, caught between violence and panic, attack and indecision. I needed to keep her safe, but this madwoman needed to die and Death needed care and I—

“He rips lives from the innocent every single day,” Poppy shouted, more passion and life in her voice than even as we tortured her. “How many innocent people have their lives taken too young? How many unjust illnesses were given to humans who deserved a full, long life?”

Cat began to laugh. Low. Dangerous. A laugh that had my last dregs of power humming inside me, rising into my palms. Ready to be used, because Cat’s laugh meant death, and I was a dealer of torment god of death. I was hers to command, a soldier to a general, a worshipper to a goddess.

“Oh,” my beautiful Cat said far too casually. “Like you did? How many are dead because ofyou,Carmilla? How many of these people are screaming inside their heads while you force them to kill?” Cat laughed again, walking far too calmly towards Poppy. I followed her, my heartbeat rapid. Ten steps to the madwoman now. Eight. Seven.

Poppy didn’t answer, didn’t even frown.

“How many?”Cat roared, the force of her fury sending me back a step. No, fuck, that wasn’t her anger—it was herpower.

I felt it a split second before fur, wicked teeth, and sharp-tipped ram’s horns erupted from my girl. Her eyes met mine,and I saw the same emotion I’d felt minutes ago reflected in them. I let my love and obsession and fierce pride show.

“Make her pay, beautiful.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CAT

The screams of dying spirits were unbearable. No one else reacted to the noise but I heard them like the screech of chalk on a board. For a split second, the roar that exploded from my jaws drowned them out as I threw myself at Poppy, but the second my roar died, the screams returned. They clawed at my ears even as I clawed Poppy’s legs, sending her back towards the steps in a stumble.

“Cat?” she breathed, almost sounding hurt. “What are you doing?”

Another scream made me jump, my hackles raised as I flexed my claws and slashed my paw at the monster who did this to us. It wasn’t the animal forms that were the worst thing; it was the violence, the way the blood pouring from her leg made my mouth water as I thought about sinking my teeth all the way into the meat of her thigh, the way I wanted to rip and tear and crunch and… eat.

A haze descended for a moment, Poppy’s words swimming into an unintelligible blur. Blood filled my mouth, exploding like honey and copper across my taste buds. It tastedgood.I gnashed my teeth to draw more into my mouth and…realised I was gnawing on her arm, drinking her blood, and… that shouldn’t have been possible.

She wasdead.Poppy was a spirit as much as any of the ghosts who came at Death’s summoning, as dead as Darya was. I didn’t know who’d killed Poppy or if her death was natural, but I didn’t have room for sympathy when half of me couldn’t forget the look in Virgil’s eyes and the rest of me wanted to devour her until there wasn’t a scrap of lifeordeath left in her. I wanted her opaque-eyed like the ghost who’d floated above Madde’s doorstep, wanted her tortured until her mouth hung open in pain.

“Stop, Cat, please,” Poppy cried. “I’m your creator. Why would you do this to me?”

Another shrill scream made me flinch, this one younger, so young the spirit sounded no older than sixteen, and I heard Death grunt in pain. Red descended over my vision. No horror twisted my stomach when I sank my teeth and claws into Poppy this time. She deserved every moment of agony. I hoped her death had hurt the first time. I hoped this second time wasagony.

“Children!” Poppy rasped as I took her down to the stone steps. “Help your mother!”

Mother. Creator. The words swam through my ears, incensing the wild, merciless part of me until the creature took over, shoving me into the back of my mind until I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t even smell blood on the air. I felt pain, though—a slash on the back of my leg, heat raked across my back.

I saw flashes through the darkness: blood on pale skin; shaking hands and betrayed eyes; a sleek tiger impaled on my horns; the bared teeth of a bear snapping in my face, followed by another flash of pain across my face; and a window with blood smeared across it in messy letters.

TIME IS RUNNING OUT it said, sending a spike of pure ice through me, but then the world went dark again, only the taste of blood and the solid, thumping ache in my body to keep me company. I was lost to the bloodlust and mindless rage of my jaguar. Until Death’s sharp cry of pain broke through the mindlessness.

Death was hurt. The realm was fading away, unmaking itself on the very edges, and the deaths of these spirits were only harming the domain—and Death himself.Time is running out.How long until it all slipped away? What if it took my men with it?

Anxiety grabbed my throat and choked off my air, throttling my beast back into the cage it lived in when I had the reins for our body. I slammed back into myself in time to feel blood drip down my chin.

Poppy’s open, unseeing eyes stared up at me, opaque white but bleeding, like I’d clawed even her eyeballs. I backed up, my stomach twisting, coiling. Her body was shredded, covered in blood as if she’d been alive. It was so much worse than the sailor spirit left on Madde’s doorstep. I remembered him saying the spirit looked that way because he’d been tortured, and I should have been satisfied that Poppy had experienced the same fate, but I just felt sick. Her eyes were milky, her body mangled, covered in a bright spill of blood, and I couldn’t keep her voice out of my head.

You’re something special. Not like the others. Being the Bride of Death has made you… exceptional.

Sickness roiled through me again, and strength left me all at once. I hit the ground on my knees beside the dead professor, my hands shaking, claws and fangs and fur gone.

I couldn’t look away from the mess I’d made of Poppy even if I wanted to search the courtyard, to find Miz, Death, Tor, Virgil, and Madde, to see if any of them had survived. What if I’d killed them, too?Oh, god.My stomach pitched, and I twisted aside, vomit spraying the ground. I hadn’t just killed Poppy. I’dshreddedher, until her body lay in ribbons, even her organs in tatters beneath ghostly skin.

I could taste her blood on my tongue even though ghosts didn’t bleed. How did ghosts die? What kind of monster was I to even kill a spirit? I shook so hard my teeth chattered, a sob forcing its way through when warm hands wrapped around mine. I lifted my head, my eyes dragging reluctantly up a familiar lithe, long-limbed body, tight trousers covered in mud and splashes of blood, the hands that covered mine equally bloody, specks of it mingling with the freckles that lived on his knuckles.

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