Page 9 of All Hallows Fate

A knot formed between his eyes. “She feels… different. But still Cat.”

“What are we waiting for?” Hope grabbed my throat and strangled me. “Our lioness is waiting. Let’s go!”

I didn’t care that the domain was a mess, there were no ways in or out, or the whole thing was falling apart. Cat was there, and I would find a way to be with her.

8

Cat

Ilived in the dark. I’d exchanged eternal light and white space for a true, infinite void, and my eyes refused to adjust to the drastic change. Or there was simply nothing to see in this place. It was like being under the fog again, but without the peace. No sound, no movement except my own, no scent, only still, cold air.

No choice but to listen to my own thoughts.

I put one foot in front of the other, moving forward even if I wanted to go back to Exile. I’d tried that, but there was no glimpse of the veil, not even a glimmer of light to guide my way. I knew I needed to get back there, knew someone needed me, but the further I travelled through the darkness, the more that sense faded. I couldn’t remember who was back there. Could no longer remember the name of the white realm. And after a while, the white realm became indistinct in my mind.

There were six words that repeated in my head, the only things I carried with me from wherever I’d come from. Six words and the paper crumpled in my fist. Trust your bonds. Kill those pricks.

The people who murdered me. I needed them to pay, needed them to suffer. I needed—

I stopped dead, my head cocked. Was that… a horse?

When the whinny came again, echoing strangely, distorted and ghostly, I stumbled forward a step, then rushed into a run. Maybe the horse had come to kill me, to take me to my final resting place, but after an endless stretch of silence with only my thoughts for company, I’d take anything.

“Hello?” I called, running blindly through the dark, my pulse a quickened thrum in my throat. “Is someone there?”

Would the horse’s rider know what I’d left behind? Would they be able to fill the vast chasm in my head where my memories ought to be. Who was I? I knew I was Cat, but who was Cat? Was I wicked and cruel? Was I weak and afraid? Neither of those felt true. Afraid, certainly, but not weak. Angry.

Or maybe that was just who I was now I’d died. A being driven by rage with a thirst for justice. That hunger, that inner beast pressed against the inside of my rib cage, desperate to crack its way free, to bleed through slits in my skin and take on a life of its own. I knew I couldn’t let that happen, remembered an exasperated male voice telling me to grasp control or the power would overwhelm me and I’d pass out again. I didn’t remember passing out the first time, and that gnawed at me.

Who was the man who’d told me that? Was he back there… the place I’d left? Or was he from before, when I’d been alive? I had been alive. I knew it with a sharp ring of certainty. I’d been alive, and then I’d been murdered. Now I must make those who killed me pay, lest they harm anyone else.

The horse’s cry came again, closer, a soft call this time.

“Trust your bonds,” I whispered, clinging to the words that had drilled themselves so deep into my empty mind that they refused to be dislodged. “Kill those pricks.”

The pricks had to be my murderers. But what if there were more? What if there were others who needed to face their judgement? A thrill went down the back of my neck, thrummed like vibrations inside me. Yes, there were others. The magic hungered for them, salivated at the thought of their comeuppance. I scrambled to throw a lid on the power as it swelled, seeking a way out. Trapped, it hissed like a displeased cat, but settled to wait, patiently, for an opening.

“Oh!” I jumped back at the press of a nose to my arm. Tentatively, I lifted my hand, brushing the soft velvet of a horse’s noses. Its warm breath puffed over my knuckles, sending a shudder through me. “Hello.”

I waited for a response from the rider. And waited.

“Do you know the way out?” I asked, casting a glance around the pitch darkness as if more riders would appear, as if they might bear lanterns to help guide my way.

The horse nibbled my arm. “Hey!” When it did it again, I jumped out of the way with a low hiss. It was a sibilant breath that rattled, emerging from deep in my throat. The horse hissed back. “I am not food,” I insisted, despite the nudge the horse gave me, forcing me to stumble backwards.

It nudged me again, almost as if it was herding me towards its flank, and I stopped dead with a frown. “Uh. Do you want me to ride you?”

The horse groaned as if to say finally.

“You’ll take me out of here?”

Another grumbled noise.

“You’re not taking me into the bowels of the underworld, where I’ll be forced into eternal toil and suffering. Right?”

A nudge was my only answer, which was hardly comforting, but I sighed. Heavily. I was stumbling around in the dark, no closer to the way out than I was to the way back to the white place I could just barely remember. So I stepped closer to the bossy horse, surprised to find reins, stirrups, and a saddle ready.

“You came prepared, I see,” I murmured, not liking this one bit. But I thrust my foot into the stirrup and hauled myself onto her back. Wait—her? “Are you, by any chance, a girl?” I took the bob of her head to be a nod, but it could just as easily have been a hint at me to hurry up. “I don’t know how I know that. But I’m pretty sure you’re a girl. And I’ve ridden you before.”