Page 67 of All Hallows Trick

I would have replied, but Death sucked in a ragged breath and I darted closer, squeezing his hand. “Death? Can you hear me?”

His lips parted, but air caught his throat when he tried to speak and he coughed, the painful sound of it grabbing something behind my ribs and squeezing. I was barely upright, my stomach one huge cramp, raw gouges on my ribs, my thigh, and my arm, but that paled in comparison when Death’s coughing grew hoarse and loud.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I promised, brushing dark braids back from his face, letting my touch linger. A tear slid hot down my cheek but I pretended it wasn’t there. “We’re safe now.”

I didn’t mention Tor being missing or Miz being too weak to even join the fight or Madde nowhere to be found. My legs buckled when I attempted the stairs, but a solid weight rammed my side, keeping me upright. I glanced down to find the older woman propping me up despite being well under five feet tall.

“Don’t pass out now, kid,” she huffed, her accent thick and equal parts warmth and bluntness. Yorkshire, maybe?

For no reason at all, she reminded me of my mum even though they couldn’t have been more different. Tears stung my eyes, another slipping down my cheek as I hauled myself up the stairs and into the atrium through sheer will, the hallway passing in a daze until we were in the first room I’d ever seen here, with the painting of Tor, Miz, and Death looking downfrom above the fireplace. They looked happy in the painting, and now Death was splayed on a stretcher too weak to talk, Tor was missing, and Miz was dying.

I pressed my lips into a line to trap my sob, mastering my emotions with a grit that took serious effort. “Someone needs to go to Madde’s castle. Misery is there and he’s…”

“We can sense it, kid,” the short woman sighed, dumping me unceremoniously in a chair while they moved Death onto the sofa. “He’s not got long left.”

Your husband is dying.

I’ll see you soon, Kitty. Meet me at the gates when you’re ready.

“You got any of that battery acid left?” she asked the curly-haired man hovering by the chair I sat in.

“The reviving tonic? I think so.” He squeezed my shoulder and disappeared in a flurry of dark power. I just stared at Death, a fist squeezing my chest. I was losing them both, losing them all. Nightmare was dead, but at what cost?

“Hey,” the woman from earlier shouted from the hall. Wrath. “Butcher girl. We found Madness.”

I exploded off the sofa in a rush of unsteady limbs—and froze. The opposing need to go to Madde and stay beside Death tore at me until I felt a fracture in my chest. Death’s storm-grey eyes rolled up to look at me, the edges pinched with suffering, his irises darker than usual. He was in pain, weakened by his connection to every spirit in the realm, and I didn’t know what Nightmare had done to him while he was on the ground.

“He’ll be fine, he’s not going anywhere in the next few minutes,” the woman huffed. “Go, check on the madman.”

Her words were the nudge I needed, and I hauled my pained body back through the door into the hallway, grabbing the wall for stability just as a rake-thin woman in her twenties with a shock of pink hair stormed down the corridor. A veritable giantcame behind her, eerily reminiscent of Lurch from The Addams Family, and in his tree trunk arms was my darkness.

I stumbled faster, ignoring the way the hallway darkened at the edges of my vision. If Death could hold on and wake up, I could get to the end of this damn hallway.

“He’s knocked out,” the massive man said in a voice so resonant it was inhuman. “Looks like a simple power drain from five puncture marks.”

A snarl curled my upper lip, my jaguar responding to my rage. “The Stalker,” I hissed, reaching them and lifting my hand to touch Madde’s face, the warmth of his skin a blinding relief.

“The what now?” Wrath asked, her eyes bulging.

“Will he wake up?” I asked the giant, because that was more important than answering her questions.

“In a few hours,” he agreed. “It’s not permanent, his body will regain strength.”

I exhaled hard, relief making the blackness creep further across my vision.

“You don’t look so hot, butcher,” Wrath said, peering closer, a blur of hot pink hair and caramel skin.

I clung to consciousness by my claws, and only belatedly realised I’d sunk actual claws into the tapestry hanging on the wall. “Did you find Tor?”

“No,” the man replied at the same moment a dark, thunder-deep voice said, “Yes.”

I squinted my eyes until a tall Native American man with long black hair and an Armani suit came into focus. “He’s at Madness’s castle,” he went on, his voice seeming to shake my rib cage like the low bass of live music. “Cruelty sent him there so he couldn’t help you, knowing it would hurt worse than any wound. He’s fine, just drained of power.”

A weight fell off my shoulders and I slumped against the wall. I owed these strangers everything, and I hadn’t even hadthe decency to ask their names. I began to do just that when he spoke again.

“Misery is fading. You should go now if you want to say goodbye.”

Everything in me just… stopped. My breathing froze. My heart stuttered. Any sensation I had in my fingers left, any thoughts I had snuffed out.

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