Page 63 of The Death Wish

Tiny gasps, grunts and straining, joined the clattering of stone and pouring of soil. And the maddened descent slowed. There were pinches at his arms, at his legs, as though he’d just landed in an ants’ nest.

‘That’s it, you’ve got him.’

‘Careful there, Boyd.’

‘Stop bossin’ me about, Leslie.’

‘Get the fuck off me,’ Pitch shouted, finally finding purchase, lodging his feet into some rock that did not simply just roll with him this time. ‘Let me go.’

Not ants, but gnomes. A veritable battalion of the blasted things, poking from the ground through crevices, and for the luckier ones, bare patches of earth. Each held a handful of Pitch’s clothes.

‘What are you doing?’ he demanded.

‘Saving your bloody arse, you ungrateful sod.’

The strangeness was far from over.

‘Vassago, look out!’ Lucifer and Chollima were at a flatout gallop towards where Pitch had come to rest, down very near the bottom of the slope he and the others had just worked so hard to surmount.

The daemon king had shimmering wings of flame behind him, stunning, but not nearly as vibrant as they should be. Lucifer was injured. Oddly, there was more vibrancy around his body. Silver light.

‘Get up, he’s coming back.’

Lucifer gestured skyward. And rose from Chollima’s back.

Lifting higher. Coming out of the saddle entirely.

Lucifer flew.

But daemons could not fly.

His body glowed silver, and as Pitch followed his skyward drift, the tinkling of silver bells rang out.

‘Gods,’ he whispered.

Lucifer was covered head to toe in a glimmering layer of peri, the tiny creatures of the woodlands, normally frightened of their own shadows. Here, giving a daemon true wings.

Pitch’s gaze shifted higher, and all else was forgotten.

The angel came at them like a comet, a glowing ball of destruction that Lucifer rose to meet.

Pitch staggered to his feet, his flames igniting. Blazing with a crisp intensity that his sire’s did not.

Michael took aim at the King of Daemonkind.

His blast was mighty, every bit intent on ridding the world of the daemon who threatened him.

But Lucifer was not alone this day.

And nor was Pitch. The simurgh brushed a lazy stroke against his insides, and Pitch’s grin was a vicious, greedy lift of his lips.

Sire and spawn counterattacked as one. Pitch’s brighter flame, the very heart of a volcano, engulfed the lesser blast of the king; a unification of power, a joining of Dominion Prince and kingly Majesty.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE RADIANCEof daemonflame met the striking brilliance of angelfire. The collision was catastrophic, and the ensuing shock wave massive enough to shake the moon on its axis and make the mountains tremble.

Lucifer’s scream was not entirely forged from pain. There was victory there, too, triumph and battlelust. The colliding power sent him hurtling back to the earth, whilst Michael shot up into the invisible depths of the night, ever more the comet.