Chapter 35

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CAT

I was starting to wonder if someone at Ford had a metal detector I could buy. Walking so many miles in a single morning made my lungs wheeze, my legs throbbing. It had been weeks, maybe months, since I'd gone running in the mornings. Alastor had stolen that early morning peace from me, and my fitness had clearly gone downhill.

I paused halfway up a grassy hill to clutch my side, a stitch flashing through my muscles in a sudden pain.

"Son of a—" I panted, catching my breath. "Motherfucking toad."

I wasn't a fan of toads today. One had leapt out at me from the last location—a slight valley where the remnants of an old farmhouse still remained—and scared the shit out of me. It landed on my leg, clung to me, and I'd screamed so loudly I scared a flock of crows from the nearby tree. They'd followed me since. I was trying not to look at them.

In hindsight, I'd overreacted about the toad, but my hindbrain thought it was the monster and there were no convincing instincts that were on high alert.

"You're fine, everything is fine, you're going to find Virgil." I was still talking to myself, though the talking had edged further into denial with every square foot I searched for bunker entrances, manhole covers, hidden grates—anything. I was on pin number three and I'd found nothing except crows and a toad. I was halfway towards being a stereotypical witch; I just needed a broom and a wart on the end of my nose. 1

A crow cawed loudly where it perched on a tree above me. I gave it the finger, ignoring the way I wheezed while I scaled the hill. Fuck, I needed to hit Ford's gym. Not that staying fit was much of a priority with my brother kidnapped and a creature eating people.

"Don't think about people being eaten," I hissed at my own mind, shivering when snow whipped my face, the wind more aggressive with every hour I'd spent searching Ford's End for any sign of a bunker. I didn't even have proof Virgil was underground, just a hunch I was rapidly beginning to lose faith in.

I swallowed snow when I sucked down air, forced to slow my pace as I trudged up the hill, following the red pin on my phone screen—right at the top of the hill, because of course it was. No roads came up this way, nothing big enough for me to bring my car. Not even a damn footpath worn into the hill. The ground was lumpy and uneven beneath my feet and walking on it was torturous.

"For Virgil," I wheezed. For my brother, who'd taken care of me all my life, who'd been nothing but supportive. 2

"I must be almost there," I breathed, encouraging myself. When I looked at my phone and saw 0.5km to destination, I let out a very accurate cow impression. God, it couldn't really be that far, could it?

I jumped, losing my footing when four crows cawed at once, alighting on whatever trees clung to the crooked hill around me.

"Motherfuckers," I snarled, landing hard on my knees, snow blooming a wet patch through one of my legs. Great, that'd be another bruise. I'd only just healed from that asshole Alastor Carmichael sending me to the floor in Rosalind Woods. "I don't normally abide violence to animals, but I think I'll make an exception for you assholes."

Naughty, naughty, Nightmare said, her voice a slow slide through my mind.

There was something about the warm, teasing tone that made me freeze, uncaring that the wet patches on my knees were spreading.

I wasn't sure I was breathing.

I see you sneaking around, my terror.

Just exploring Ford, I said quickly, but even my mental voice was breathy and afraid. Would she kill Virgil for this? How could I be so damn stupid? Tears lined my eyes, stinging and hot.

Don't lie to me! she screeched, and I flinched hard, my head beginning to spin. I dislike when my terrors act up, Cat. I have to punish you to correct the behaviour.

What did you do?

When she said nothing, I shook, cold spreading through my chest, spiked with panic.

"What did you do?" I shouted, my voice snapping across the hills, spooking the crows into the air.

Check your car, she replied. And know if I find you acting against me again, the consequences will be worse.

Check my car? What had she done to my car?

On the heels of that remark was relief so profound I sobbed. She'd damaged my car, but only my car. I could cope with slashed tyres, scratched paintwork, and even smashed windows. It was only a car. No one I loved, no one I—

A heartbeat thumped in my ears, out of sync with my own, strangely slow. I brushed the tears off my cheeks and scanned the hill for Nightmare, jumping when that ba-bump came again, undeniably a heartbeat. Was it hers? Would she drive me mad by forcing me to hear her heartbeat? It was too human to belong to the crows watching with beady eyes, unmoving from their perch like watchers doomed to never intervene.

I swallowed, pushing back to my feet and eyeing the top of the hill. I needed to search it, to be sure Virgil wasn't here, but the heartbeat grew louder, driving through me, scraping against my nerves.

If I kept searching, Nightmare would do far worse than wreck my car.

"Fuck!" I snapped, ripping myself away, forcing myself to turn, to descend instead of climbing the hill. Virgil could be up there, but if I took a single step closer, I knew Nightmare would make him pay for my insolence.

The beating grew louder, taunting me, until chills began to crawl down my arms. Check your car, Nightmare said. She didn't say she'd done anything to my car. What if the heartbeat I could hear belonged to my brother? What if he was dying in my backseat?

I broke into a perilous run, my feet slipping on the snow-slick grass, my thighs protesting as I swerved and slid over the uneven ground, faster and faster as momentum pulled me down the hill I just worked my ass off to climb.

What if it wasn't Virgil? What if she'd taken my mum, too? Or what if I got there and it was Dad bleeding on the Urus's leather? I blinked back tears and saw Tannie's rainbow fingernails digging into the seat, clawing on for dear life as he bled out, the life slowly bleeding from both his body and his eyes.

"No," I gasped, a tremor in my knees as I ran faster. I hit the hard ground twice but pulled myself back up and ignored the sharp throb through my ass and knees, not daring to stop. The heartbeat echoed around me, a sick reminder of the noise I heard when Nightmare killed at the Halloween party, absorbing their lives so she could return from wherever she'd been locked up. Wherever my death gods had imprisoned her.

Ba-bump, the heartbeat went, louder, drumming through my skull, my body, until I felt the vibrations of it. Nightmare wanted me mad, wanted to break me, but I couldn't let her. If I broke, she won. She wouldn't stop her crusade against Death whether I was alive or not, but all this fighting would have been for nothing. I wanted to watch her pay, wanted to see her suffer, wanted to rip out her bleeding eye and crush it beneath my boot, and that wasn't even the darkness talking.

Ba-bump. Every throb of that heart was a taunt, a reminder that I didn't know whose heartbeat I heard, didn't know who Nightmare had hurt. Oh god, what if it was Honey? What if I'd be forced to watch both my best friends die only weeks apart?

Hot tears bled down my cheeks, my throat so tight it closed up, but I ran faster, picking myself up every time I hit the ground. My jeans were soaked by this point, my whole body aching in protest.

Almost there, almost there…

Ba-bump, ba-bump.

"Shut up," I rasped, trying to block the noise from my ears. But it was everywhere, all around me, inside my head. I started to wonder if it was even real, or if this was just another of Nightmare's tricks.

I finally skidded down the last slope and hit the road. My legs nearly gave out again as I stumbled to my car, the lime green paint standing out against the jade and ivory of grass and snow, the worn tarmac of the winding road. Somewhere close, the ocean battered the cliffs, never ceasing its desperation to drag me down.

"Not today," I rasped, staggering across the road to where the boot of my car had been propped open. "Not today, not today."

The sea wouldn't take me. Nightmare wouldn't break me.

I frowned when I saw an open box sitting in my boot beside my spare tyre, just big enough to hold a book. My feet dragged, my body weary but also reluctant, dreading what was inside that box. I knew without a doubt it wasn't merely a book.

Ba-bump, the heartbeat thudded in my ears, and I stopped dead as an icy suspicion went through me. The polished mahogany was big enough to hold a heart. My hand flew to my mouth, fingertips shaking against my cheeks as fear took control.

I didn't know how I made it the last three steps to my car, where a single glance through tear-stained eyes showed a smear of dark, dark red. One blink was all it took to clear my vision, to show the heart that sat inside the box, surrounded by blood splashed on the wood, arteries and veins hacked off by a serrated blade.

"God," I choked out, the only word I had, horror and dark icy fear paralysing my mind.

I stared at the heart, gory and violent, and wrenched back with a scream when it beat. Ba-bump. Oh god, oh god. The heart was beating. Cut out of someone's chest, left in a box for me to find, and still beating.

Whose?

I needed to know, needed to find whose body was bleeding out without a heart, needed to reach my gods so they could use their powers over life and death to put this heart back and—

In the act of reaching for the box, to take it to the domain, to save whoever Nightmare had taken from me this time, I caught the edge and the box snapped shut with a bang. I flinched hard. The low-level trembling in my body exploded into vicious convulsions of fear, my teeth knocking together.

No. No, no, no.

I blinked the tears from my eyes and prayed I'd been wrong. But there, carved into the lid of the box that contained a beating heart, was one word.

Misery.