Page 119 of The Death Wish

Pitch cried out, flailing and falling. Down into the reaching, cavernous maw of a fathomless beast, to be swallowed whole.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

PITCH'S BELLOWheld fear and anger entwined. He passed through a strange assembly of fine fillets, like the gills beneath a mushroom, and tumbled head over heels, his dress an appalling companion as he struggled to keep its copious layers under control. He slid down into a gullet so wide, his hands could not reach the sides.

The smell was atrocious on entry, but as he moved deeper, with his gown dampened and a slipper missing from his foot, the stench abated.

Darkness prevailed, and Pitch summoned his flame to hand.

‘Don’t you dare burn us. Hold your fire, daemon.’

The unexpected, but familiar, voice sent shock hurtling through him. Pitch drew the flame back beneath his skin.

‘Satine? Where the bloody blazes are you?’

He landed on his arse, in a tangle of petticoats and taffeta, upon a surface that had him thinking of marshmallow. When a pinkish light cracked open the oppressive darkness, he saw it was far from a sweet treat he’d landed upon. He was in the beast's belly, amid bulges of innards and unpleasant scatterings of bones.

‘Oh, shit…gods.’ He jumped to his feet, his wet hair falling into his eyes and forgetting he’d lost a shoe until the squelchingbetween his toes reminded him. ‘Fuck, that is disgusting. Satine, is it truly you?’

Or had he just been eaten, by the very first fucking predator he encountered in the lake?

‘Truly me.’

He was gripped by the arm. Pitch dragged the hair from his eyes, revolted by the syrupy wetness there. ‘Shit!’

‘Don’t be afraid, Tobias.’

It was no hand upon his arm, rather something tubular and white, like the tentacle of an octopus. He whirled about, straining against the tight hold. Not an octopus, but a massive serpent lay behind him, curled around a pile of bones. The monster was white as the bodily remains; save for a faint rose gold patterning upon the scales which were each the size of saucers. Huge eyes of faceted, clear quartz regarded him.

‘Satine…you are a…I didn’t expect…’

‘My true form to be so beautiful?’ A long tongue, forked at its tip, shot forth from between lips of pearl white. ‘No, I don’t suppose you did.’ Her voice was perfectly clear, no hissing, no slithering, as one might imagine from a snake, as though her long tongue wrote the words in the air and they took life from there.

‘You are beautiful, it has to be said. And I never imagined describing a serpent so.’

Satine’s diamond head lowered, acknowledging the compliment. ‘And how do you wish to be known, prince of many names? Who stands before me now?’

The Lady Satine had always been rather decent to him. Standing by silently, as he acted out to deal with his pains. Protective, too, though he’d failed to notice it as he struggled. And now, here in the guts of this mammoth creature, the lady offered him what he craved. A choice. However small.

‘Vassago.’ He stumbled with the roiling motion of the sea creature. ‘Those other pitiful sods, Tobias and Pitch, could only ever exist in the world I have left behind.’

‘You are wiser for having known that world, restless prince.’ Satine’s coils twisted and shifted around her mound of bones. Curious bones they were, of shapes and angles he was unfamiliar with. ‘You understand the need to shed those gentler skins and return to your given form. So that this might, at last, be done.’

The beast tilted wildly to the right. Pitch had no hope of keeping his footing and was saved by Satine’s tail at his waist; keeping him mostly vertical, while all else was adrift. The lady could not, though, stop all the loose bones from moving. One glanced against his head, earning it a cursing cry of protest.

‘What damned creature holds us? It shall kill me before I even set eyes upon the halo.’

‘Leviathan. She is the djinn, and the djinn is she.’

‘Whatever it is, it cannot seem to swim in a direct line.’

‘Nor would you, if the waters of Blood Lake boiled with cretins who sought to bring you harm.’

Pitch lowered his hand from his bruised head. ‘This is it, then? I am here…in the lake.’

‘You are here…in the lake. Does the Cultivation not tell you so?’

The beast, the Leviathan, now tilted in the opposite direction, even more drastically this time. Pitch was left dangling in Satine’s hold, like bait at the end of a hook.