Page 61 of All Hallows Masque

Death roared as he was thrown back. I lunged across the hall to catch him, but his momentum was too powerful even for the storm of shadows churning around me, and we both slammed into the wall hard enough to daze me.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Neglect spat, blurring past us as fast as a cheetah, dark coils of smoke brimming around her, too. I shuddered when they brushed my shoulder, gritting my teeth against a rush of insecurity. There was no listening to logic that this was magical influence; I was filled with the certainty I would be abandoned and left alone.

“Breathe through it,” Death said, clasping the back of my neck and forcing all my attention to him for a moment. “We’re not going anywhere. None of us.”

The issue with that reassurance was we’d already lost Cat, and despite being in the same damn house as her now, we stillcouldn’t sense her, smell her, or hear her. Even my shadows couldn’t find her. What if we got this far, this close, and still—

Death kissed me hard, startling me enough that Neglect’s power lost its grip on me. It was rare that the two of us came together like this. We hugged and shit all the time, but I’d forgotten how it felt to be kissed by him. Like heat and possession and an addictive sense of safety. The last time I kissed him, he tasted of whiskey and sin, but this time it was spicy and sweet, like honey and aniseed. It was over far too fucking soon, but I was too conscious of Cat being hurt somewhere in this fucked-up manor to complain.

“Could have done without the boner,” I muttered, giving him a dark glance when he moved back, throwing up a wall of darkness to intercept a sudden pulse of death magic from Cruelty.

“Oh, you want to play dirty?” Neglect hissed in a chilling voice.2 “I can play dirtier, Cruelty. You’ve never known neglect and abandonment like this.”

Well. I blinked, watching through the veil of darkness as Neglect jumped off the floor, buoyed by a stream of darkness, and soared at Cruelty with her hands punched forward.

“We’ll buy you time,” Passion offered, reaching out to touch Death and thinking better of the gesture when he caught my dark glare. So I was feeling a little possessive of everyone I loved. Sue me. “Find Cat and Pain.”

I nodded, swallowing back words. He knew there was a chance Cruelty was backed up by Violence, and they’d be at a disadvantage. He didn’t need me to say any of that shit, so I just said, “Be careful.”

“You, too,” he replied, gathering enough power to make the floor tremble, the carpet pulling itself from the wood, nails flying free.

I grabbed Death’s wrist and waited until Cruelty was distracted by a double-ended attack, then wrapped us in darkness and jumped past her. We hit the carpet where it was still attached—for now; Passion’s magic surged down the hall and into the foyer where the shadows had dropped us, rushing ever closer.

I didn’t bother to search the foyer; I strengthened the shield Death already had wrapped around us and headed for the stairs. Death was right behind me, silent and tense. I knew he’d used more magic on that shield than normal, knew he was still weak. I could sense it, gnawing at me.

“Why upstairs?” he asked quietly.

“Well, Passion’s magic isn’t ripping up the flooring up here for one,” I replied in the same tone, scanning the foyer above, sending out feelers to pick up any hint of power. Cat was here; she had to be.

“Can you sense her?”

“No.” And I didn’t fucking like it. “I think something’s blocking me.”

“And me. Violence?”

“He’s certainly capable of it,” I agreed, my upper lip curled back.

We reached the second floor and enough magic slammed into me that my shift came instantly. I hovered over the ground, draped in darkness and death, the world lit in a grey haze. My senses were stronger like this, which made it a little fucking suspicious that I couldn’t get even a glimmer of my wife’s soul.Where the fuck are you, Cat?

“Which way?” Death demanded, his dark hands curled into fists as he eyed the left corridor, then the right.

I angled my head towards the left, the ragged ends of my cloak skimming the floor as I pushed out more power, my wholeawareness searching for even a glint of torment and suffering and—

A deafening blast came from the other side of the landing, and I whipped around to see a door slam into the wall, then disintegrate into ashes. Inky smoke poured from the doorway it had occupied, thick and rapidly condensing, wrapped around a figure.

“That way,” I corrected, and Death and I surged towards the smoke-shrouded figure. I was ready for Violence, ready to match his twisted brand of sadism with my own cold fury. If he’d laid a single fucking finger on my wife, harmed a singlemillimetreof her body, snapped a single damn strand of her hair, I would eviscerate him and leave nothing behind.

I moved as fast as wind in this form. It was a matter of seconds to cross the distance, to surge like lightning at that figure, thrusting skeletal hands through the cloud of smoke like it was nothing and wrapping my hands around his thick, meaty throat—

Um. Scrawny throat, actually.

A fist drove into my solar plexus. A bright eruption of pain sent me sprawling across the wall opposite the dark cloud. That shouldn’t have been possible. No one could punch me in this form; I was barely corporeal. But motherfuckerit hurt.

It hurt…

A rattling laugh filled my chest, and it hurt to laugh, but it felt damn good too.

“Been working on that right hook, I see,” I remarked, reaching for my human form and landing on two feet on the carpeted hallway just as the dark cloud parted enough to reveal a familiar face.

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