Page 60 of All Hallows Trick

I shook my head, words deserting me, my breathing too loud in the silence that followed.

There was no sign of his movement this time. In an instant he looked over me, ripping Tor from my arms and throwing him aside like he was nothing. I cried out, fear and anger clashing until I could only tremble, but fear was winning. The Stalker grabbed my coat and wrenched me so close I smelled the rot and death on his breath.

“Did you kill her?”

“She wanted to kill me,” I blurted, struggling against him, trying to find my jaguar, my anger. I needed strength right now, not shivery fear. “She made me into a monster.”

The Stalker sucked in a hissed breath through his teeth. “She made you exceptional and you don’t even know it. You don’t know the gift you were given. Pathetic.”

Gift? A laugh bubbled up my throat, utterly twisted when it erupted. “Was it agiftto make my husband bleed? Is it agiftto be terrified to kill someone at the slightest little slip, to know that when the antidotes run out, I’ll murder anyone and everyone in sight? Is that a fuckinggift?”I was screaming now, anger beating through my blood.

The Stalker shook me and let go, pushing me off balance. I fell at his feet. The impact went up my tailbone, making me cry out, tears springing to my ears.

“Yes,” he spat, and warning bleated through my instincts when he leaned over me, menace like a wave rippling from him. I couldn’t see his face and that only made him scarier. “Thatisa gift, you ungrateful wretch. I suggest you learn to appreciate it or you’ll never survive in the palace.”

There was something about the way he spoke, the entitlement, the crispness of his accent. He came from money, and a serious amount of it. He sounded like the bastards I went to Ford with.

I tried to get up, but his boot drove into my chest, pushing me back into the dirt. “What palace?” I panted, heaving against his foot, gritting my teeth at the force it took to remove it. My rage was growing, my jaguar baying for blood, and I didn’t shy from it, letting that lethal force sink my claws into the meat of the Stalker’s calf. He’d made my Tor bleed, so he too would bleed.

I should have known he wouldn’t cry out in pain, wouldn’t stumble. He just ripped his leg from my claws and scoffed, low and rasping, as he shook his head.

“It’s too late to escape,” he told me, sneering. “Can’t you feel it?”

I scrambled to my feet, scanning the darkness around my legs for Tor, a sickly sensation in my belly when I couldn’t find his unconscious body anywhere. “Feelwhat?”

I lifted my hands in a rush when the Stalker moved forward, but he wasn’t looking at me. His attention was on something outside the cloud of darkness. I remembered Nightmare and Madde all at once, and panic made me spin so fast I went dizzy, staring out at the garden cast in shades of grey, plants and flowers and the castle all draped in a desaturated haze.

My breathing came quicker, a tight knot in my chest when the garden swam at the edges. I couldn’t afford to be weak. I needed to find Tor before the Stalker hurt him. I needed to find a way to save Miz. I needed to—

“Honey?” I breathed, panicked eyes stalling on the sight of my best friend rushing through the gates to Death’s castle, the shotgun she’d used to wound Nightmare propped on her shoulder as she aimed it into the courtyard where the goddess and Madde—

“Stop,”I growled, my voice deeper and richer than I expected. My heartbeat jumped, beats clattering together. The goddess of nightmares had her hand around my Madde’s throat, and while he was smirking like it was all a huge game, there was a gash in his shirt, his ribs spilling blood. His left side was grazed, his arm raw. But her hand on his throat made it hard to breathe.“Don’t you touch him.”

“Yeah,” Honey agreed, cocking the gun. “What she said.”

It was baffling to see my best friend, daughter of a vicar, habitual good girl, pointing a gun at someone, but the relief that smacked me in the gut was enough for me to pull myself together. And I guess after everything that had happened since Halloween, neither of us were good girls anymore. We were what Nightmare had made us.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Nightmare said, tilting her head, crimson hair tumbling over her shoulder like a spill of blood.

“I got bored, and this looks fun.” Honey shrugged, lining up the shotgun with Nightmare’s torso. I glanced around myself for the Stalker, not sure whether to be relieved or terrified that I couldn’t find him. I had to hope Tor was still in the shadow, that he was safe, because right now my best friend was pointing a gun at a psychotic goddess and I couldn’t let her die because she came to help us. I crept out of the bubble of Madde’s darkness.

“Let him go, Nightmare,” I ordered, edging closer, the sight of her hand around his throat spiking my blood with ice. The fact that Honey was pointing a gun dangerously close to him didn’t help, but I knew she’d never shoot him. But Nightmare? There was nothing she wouldn’t do. And I couldn’t forget the wayMadde looked at me, the softness of his voice when he said I’d keep him safe.

Can you use your shadows?I asked, approaching steadily, stepping over broken flowerpots and trees ripped out, roots and all—signs of their fight. I’d missed it all inside the darkness with the Stalker.

I don’t feel too good, my lion.His reply was slurred and slow.

Lioness,I correctly gently.

He didn’t reply.

I was going to be sick. But I drew myself taller, the responsibility of keeping him and Tor safe settling over me like a cloak of iron.

“Why are you wasting your time with him?” I asked Nightmare, approaching swifter, trampling grass and plants, not taking my eyes off her as she turned to face me. “It’s me you really want. All this has been about using me to hurt Death.”

“Oh, I’m just stalling until the man himself arrives. But you’re right,” she said with an eerily genuine smile. “Thisisabout hurting Death, and Madness is useless.”

I lunged forward on legs like jelly, her sly tone making sweat prick the back of my neck, panic a live wire inside me. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t be the only person to keep them alive. I was just Cat, no matter what serums ran in my blood, and I was afraid.

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