Page 39 of All Hallows Fate

We had to be careful. Not only were these people now wild animals, they could nullify our power with a scratch or bite.

“I’ve been thinking,” Pain said as we reached the other side of the lake and our shadow shires carried us into a dense cluster of black-leafed trees. “Your list doesn’t just say find the creatures; we need to give them a home, right?”

“We do,” I agreed, half wondering what was so wrong with the home they’d claimed for themselves. But that became apparent when the dense tree path looked out across a wide crack in the ground where moss had covered the earth, and twenty or so wild animals sheltered. There was water nearby with the lake, and they were sheltered with the trees, but this was no home.

“When all this is over, I want to stay with you,” Pain said, snagging my attention again. My heart swelled, ached. “I won’t leave your side unless you force me to. So my estate will be empty. It’s nothing fancy, just a lodge in the heart of the forestlands, but there’s grounds around it. It could be good for these people, especially if we can find Madde’s scientist.”

“I am a mad scientist,” Madde input, clearly eavesdropping.

“Licking rocks and throwing two chemicals into a pot to see if they explode doesn’t make you a scientist,” Pain huffed, batting Madde with a playful shadow.

“Does, too,” Madde argued.

“Children,” Tor drawled, silencing their bickering. “Pain, are you sure you won’t want your own space?”

“Hell no,” Pain replied emphatically, and this time his shadow grazed me, though the magic was velvety and tender instead of striking. “I’m staying with Cat.”

“Then how the fuck are we going to herd these creatures across the wilds to your house without being scratched, gored, bitten, or fucking eaten?”

“Carefully?” I suggested with a shrug, making a valiant effort to cast off the dark memories that had leached like poison into my mind. Curses and murder and taunting, lilting laughter.

“We have no antidotes left,” Death pointed out, wrapped in a cloak of dark magic so thick I could barely see him atop Mort. “There’s nothing we can do to bring back their human selves. If they’re even still salvageable after so long in animal form,” he added with an apologetic glance in my direction.

Visions and snippets of conversation blurred through my mind, quickening my breathing. A dark tunnel, a cell that was so cold the air bit at my hands, a wrathful scream, a bookshelf overflowing with vials of blood—

“Cat,” Miz said gently, easing Verbena closer on my left so he could reach out and cup my face. His hand was warm, so soft against my skin. “What did you see, my universe?”

“Cells,” I rasped, surprised by how raw my voice had been scraped. “Blood and instruments and a table with straps attached to it.”

“The cottage,” he sighed, his thumb sweeping over my cheekbone. “That’s where Poppy made the creatures. It’s where—”

He bit off his words, but I finished his sentence. “It’s where I was made into one, too.”

“You remember?” he murmured, an aching depth of sadness in his eyes even when I shook my head. “Cat, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine.” I cleared my throat. “It made me powerful, right? So it’s fine.”

But even when he let go of me and dropped back onto Verbena’s stately back, that look was still in his eye. Miserable, painful sympathy.

“So how do we convince them to follow us?” I asked, keeping my gaze fixed on the wide, mossy crack in the ground even though my husbands’ stares itched over my skin and I could feel their anguish through the bonds. That had been happening more and more this morning, flickers of their emotions reaching me, along with sensations and visions so clear they felt real.

A lingering hug of reassurance, the heat of a burning sun, the peaceful quiet of a forest, the radiance of pure starlight, and the kiss of a warm rain. One for each of my husbands I couldn’t help but notice.

“Ooh, I have an idea,” Madde said.

“No,” Death, Tor, and Miz said at once.

“We should at least hear him out,” Pain suggested with a frown. If he thought I hadn’t noticed the wisp of magic he was winding around my ankle, he was mistaken.

“Okay, so we find a really big stick,” Madde began.

“On second thought,” Pain said with a laugh. “Maybe not.”

“No, Madde has a point,” I said, smiling when the madman himself made a heart with his hands and beat it against his chest. “What if we use magic—not a big stick—to force them to run. We could make a tunnel of magic so they can only go in one direction. Literally herd them to Pain’s house.”

I peered into the gorge, struck by how strange it was to find so many different species side by side. A wolf licked its paw beside a sprawled out bear, while big cats wrestled playfully like kittens and an antlered stag dozed in the midday sun.

My breath hitched when my eyes fell on the huge, dark creature walking sluggishly across the gorge. It was as big and muscular as a bear but with enormous claws and huge ram’s horns.