Page 52 of The Death Wish

‘The fae? Do you mean the Dullahan?’

The angel took the fae from the glass. Freed him. Wanted answers. The fae gave him lies, to save himself. Told him it was the Daemon King’s doing that trapped him there.

‘What does the angel want?’

To know where the simurgh has gone.

The roar of the crowded ocean of death gathered greater strength. The clamour of anguished voices, of lives lost and spent unwisely, grew louder, goaded on by the Blight. Silas held his eyes closed so tight his cheeks stung with pain. His ears bled. The warmth of it unmistakable. But he did not have enough.

‘He knows of the simurgh?’ Silas hummed with frantic energy, desperation that sputtered useless questions from his mouth.

He knows much, Lord Death.

‘Tell me more. Do you have a name? What was the angel’s name?’

Michael.

The Blight drove in, and deafened him.

Silas was hurled from the depths to which he’d sunk. A bodily throw of the mind that sent him tumbling, only to be caught before he’d had chance to draw a breath.

Pitch held him, Charlie stood over him. The lad clutched his hand to his chest, his worry clear.

‘Are you hurt?’ Silas knew he spoke aloud, but he could barely hear himself. He sounded as though buried beneath snow.

He had to translate Charlie’s reply through the reading of the lad’s lips.I’m fine. What of you?

Not terrible here perhaps, but elsewhere far more dire things stirred. Pitch’s breath against Silas’s hair told him he was being spoken too. He shifted, rocking onto his knees. The fog hung like sheets around them, and the fire in Pitch’s eyes had it glowing.

The daemon touched his fingers to Silas’s ears, and they came away bloody.

What the fuck is happening?Silas read the question on perfect, cupid-bow lips.

But he countered with a question of his own; unsure how loudly he spoke, for his hearing was still as though buried beneath great muffling layers. ‘Who is the angel Michael?

The flames at the heart of Pitch’s eyes flared. Heat flowed from him, making the fog shift and sway.

‘He is one of the Seraph.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

LUCIFER SHOULDhave returned to White Mountain, as he’d told Vassago he intended. He’d not lied to the prince. ArcadiawasLucifer’s destination.

But, by the Celestials, he was spent, and in no mood for the political strife of White Mountain’s halls. The encounter with Azazel’s divine magick had stolen something from him, and the strength it had taken to hold back Wrath so that Silas and Vassago could escape the cockaigne, had pushed him over an edge of exhaustion he’d not encountered before.

So he sat in the stench of humanity, in a tea-house in Slaidburn, a small village north of Newchurch-in-Pendle, little more than an hours ride from the cockaigne, and all its tumult.

The woman who owned the tea rooms had approached him after he’d been staring into a cup of black tea for the better part of two hours. His scones untouched, the clotted cream forming a crust. He slipped the trumpeter endlessly between his fingers, the metal cold, its power extinguished. Now, it truly was no more than it appeared: a slender whistle of silver. The cut on his palm, made from the blade of his own vestige as he’d fought to secure the cage, was really the only evidence of the entire debacle. And it made itself known, the skin bright pink and throbbing around the gash.

‘Do you enjoy a hunt, then?’ the proprietor had asked on the first day, when she’d mistakenly believed herself worthy of being spoken to.

‘Do you have rooms?’ He’d slipped the trumpeter back into his pocket.

She’d smoothed her skirts, unruffled by his brusqueness.

‘Certainly do. There’s one sitting empty. Would you like it?’

‘Do you have a library?’