Page 64 of The Death Wish

Pitch had less distance to travel.

He slammed against the ground, forming his own crater; the dirt splaying up in a high, scattering wave.

Lucifer’s body hit the ground somewhere nearby, the thud holding a finality that quickened Pitch’s heartbeat, but he could not move a limb; his body rife with the counterflow of the attack, his own flame an inferno within. The simurgh goaded it on, hungry for more.

Pitch rolled himself over, dug his hands into the heated dirt, and began to climb out of the hole he’d created. His clothes were in absolute tatters; it was a miracle he was not emerging naked. Pitch struggled, just shy of the lip of the crate, the simurgh violence throwing him off-kilter.

‘Enough.’ He ground his teeth against the violent stirrings. ‘It is done. Let me be.’

The brush of something against his hair startled him and the jerk of his head made his neck ache.

Chollima stood over him, reins dangling within reach. He grabbed at them and allowed the stallion to haul him fully out of this unsuitable grave. Lucifer lay down at the base of the slope Pitch’s impact had made. The king was alive, though in no fine form, his skin smoking, most of his clothes burned away; some fabric remaining around his waist giving him the appearance of wearing blackened shorts.

Pitch sought to find his bearings. To find the cave, and Silas. The ankou was halfway down the slope, sliding in his haste.

‘Pitch? Thank god. Are you injured?’

‘No. Stay up there.’ Pitch peered past him. The scythe had reshaped to a large panel, like something from the side of an ocean liner; certainly big enough to cover most of the entrance to the caved. ‘Lalassu…did she…where is she?’

But he found the Pale Horse before Silas answered. Pitch’s blood cooled. His flame stuttered, as a surge of something hard and vile and painful overcame him. The simurgh slunk into the depths, as though it too could not bear to witness her state.

Lalassu was down, on her side; a grievous burn consuming her flank and a great portion of her belly. A dark and dangerous scourge across her storm-green coat.

‘Is she…’ He couldn’t finish.

‘She’s alive, but her injuries are severe.’ Silas was reaching for him, but Pitch shrank away.

‘That is my fault.’ He took one step back into the hollow in the earth. ‘I shouldn’t have gone out…I should have stayed.’

‘Give me your hand, Pitch.’ Silas cursed as loosened rock made his footing precarious.

Chollima pulled at the reins that Pitch still held, snorting softly. ‘I didn’t listen…Gods, what have I done?’

‘Michael is the reason she lies there, not you, Pitch. Give me your hand. Let us go.’

But he couldn’t. Silas was lying. With the best of intentions, but lying nonetheless. Michael was not the reason the mare was down. The fault lay with Pitch. With his fool-hardy, ill-planned actions.

‘Go you fool.’ Lucifer’s rasp dragged Pitch from his horror.

The king swayed on his knees, scorched to a mere shadow of himself; his stance giving Pitch full view of an appalling wound upon his thigh. He was a grievous sight to behold; with so many bruises upon his skin that barely any pale flesh remained, and his eyes sunken, no hint of a spark there at all.

And he was missing a crucial finger.

‘Your vestige,’ Pitch gasped. ‘Michael destroyed it?’

‘He took it,’ Lucifer spat. ‘As he took the scar where my flesh was taken for your creation. That is how he found you.’ He lost himself to a violent coughing fit, one that projected dark fluid onto the ground around him. Fluid that blinked out some of the specks of light surrounding him. It was as though diamonds lay there in the dirt and rock, highlighted by the strengthening glow of the moon. Pitch blinked. Not diamonds at all, but rather the fragile, minuscule bodies of the peri. Those who had helped a daemon to soar. ‘Leave…before he recovers enough to return.’

Silas’s shadow was large and encompassing; comforting with its sheltering darkness as the ankou reached him. ‘Pitch, please. We must go.’

A whinny set Pitch’s heart racing, his hopes soaring higher than the bastard angel who’d brought them so low.

‘Lalassu?’ Pitch gasped.

But it was not the Pale Horse who heralded them.

Sanu had emerged from the cave. Silas’s scythes having parted enough for her to emerge where the man-made wall was lowest. The wall that Pitch had so foolishly climbed. Shestood over Lalassu, lowering her head to touch at her downed companion.

Lalassu tilted her nose to find the other mare, and Pitch’s breath hitched to see it was as Silas had promised. She lived.