Page 54 of All Hallows Masque

I jumped, struggling to breathe when Violence came closer, looming over me like a giant. A seven-foot tall mirror hung on the wall behind him, eerily reflecting his movement until my paranoia told me there were two Violences coming towards me. It distracted me for a flash of a second, and then pain tore across my stomach, ripping a cry from my lips.

Tears rushed to my eyes, and I curved forward, instinctively trying to protect my stomach. My bound arms made that impossible. Sharp spikes of pain accompanied the gasping breath I took, and it hurt to speak but still I blurted, “Please.”

“Where is your father?”

“I don’t know—London? America? He could be anywhere. My parents like to travel.” And even though agony blasted through my stomach again, his fist driving into my gut, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell him where to find my dad. This wasViolence.And his sister wasCruelty.I couldn’t unleash them on my family.

But withholding the truth could kill me. Really, truly kill me. Not that I spoke a lie—I didn’tknowwhere they were. We’dkept in touch for the first few months at Ford, but everything fell apart after the serum, the change, and my jaguar appeared. I hadn’t heard from them, and they probably thought I was busy with schoolwork. Not being tortured by a living emotion shaped into a death god.

“Just—just tell me why,” I sobbed after another punch, something cracking with enough force to turn my whole vision white. The golden skeleton down the back of the dress bit into my back, drawing blood. “Why does my dad matter?”

“You don’t need that information,” Violence replied in a quiet, flat voice. Controlled, like the rest of him. Shivers of warning shot from the back of my neck down my spine. I braced myself, sucking in a painful breath, a tear spilling down my cheek. “You just need to tell me where he is.”

“Maybe—maybe the Bahamas. We have a villa there,” I gasped, choking down breaths, the pain alive in my body. Like I’d been possessed by it. Like it was everything I’d become, and all I’d ever be.

Violence didn’t sigh, didn’t tut, didn’t give any reaction, but he didn’t believe me. The crash of his shadow-wrapped fist into my ribs told me that. I slumped, gasping, choking for air. I’d never known pain like this. I thought I’d become well acquainted with suffering these past months, thought I was used to it, that I could endure anything. But this was sharper and darker and unlike anything I’d endured. Violence wasn’t winded, wasn’t affected at all. He could keep hitting me for hours. Keep torturing me for days on end.

His shadow moved in the mirror behind him, the only warning he gave. I didn’t have the strength left to brace for this punch, couldn’t even clench my teeth. Violence’s fist snapped my rib, carved a scream from deep within my chest, and everything went black.

But I knew it wouldn’t end. I knew when I regained consciousness, there would be more of it. Endless, eternal violence.

33

Madness

Ineeded the hug so badly I ignored the fact Peach was chewing a sizable hole into my grey hoodie. She’d already gnawed a hole in my sweatpants, but I didn’t care about that, either. It was hard to care about anything when my lioness was gone, our link was dissolved, and we had no way to get to her. That was why I wore grey—all the colour had been sucked out of my life, leaving only a blank, aching emptiness. Why should I wear pink and red and gold sparkles when my soul was dead?

“Peach,” Misery snapped in his stern, dad voice. She looked up, assessed him for a second, then went right back to chewing my hoodie. Miz exhaled harshly and stalked closer to the sofa I slouched on, snatching her away. I didn’t bother to hide dismay. My bottom lip quivered and I dropped my head forward. That small, sassy creature was the only thing left holding me together, and to have her taken away—

“Madde,” Misery sighed, making me jump when his arm slung across my shoulders. “Don’t let her destroy your clothes; she won’t stop until you’re naked.”

I shrugged.

“Well, shit, that was supposed to make you laugh.”

“I don’t feel like laughing,” I said miserably. “There’s a void in my head where my lioness’s voice belongs and a hole in my heart.”

“You’re not the only one suffering without her, you know,” he said, sitting on the arm of the sofa. “I’m going fucking insane. The only thing keeping me together is Tor’s promise that he can track Pain.”

I grunted.

Miz sighed and returned Peach to my arms but kept his own arm slung over my shoulder. “It’s easier to not think about it. That’s what I’ve been doing. If I don’t acknowledge that Cat’s separated from me by the veil and a realm and nonexistent gates, she could just walk in through the front door.” His voice grew tighter, raspier the longer he spoke, and my shoulders slumped.

“I just want her to come home.”

“She will.” Misery pinched my shoulder, right where it joined my neck, and I snarled, trying to push him away. “But you moping isn’t helping anyone.”

“Hypocrite,” Tor shouted from across the room where he, Death, Neglect, and Hunger had spread a map of the domain across a table dragged in from the dining room. “You’re a grade A moper, Miz, you have no room to talk.”

Misery fired a glare across the room, vicious enough to spear Tor where he stood. Torment gave him a long look and faced the map again.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and rose, stroking my fingers over Peach’s short fur and letting her warmth and vitalitysink into me as I approached the table. Like everything else in the realm now, it was made of writhing white fog. “Have you found him yet?”

“He’s not in the realm, that’s for damn sure,” Neglect muttered, the small woman barely tall enough to see the map. “That’s not making our job any easier.”

“Here, fuckers,” Wrath strode into the room like a thundercloud. A pink thundercloud with anger issues and a sharp tongue. “This was all I could find. Your kitchen is shit,” she told me, thrusting a flowery porcelain bowl into my hand, then one at Misery that was hand-painted with psychedelic squirrels. She passed out more of them, but my eyes blurred with tears as I saw what was in the bowl. The scent hit me hard. Peaches and cream.

I sniffled, a tear rolling down my nose and into the bowl. Peach, who’d already begun to help herself to my food, didn’t seem to mind.

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