Page 108 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle
‘Fucking place,’ he mumbled.
Pitch pinched at the bridge of his nose, seeking to push back concerns that clamoured for attention. Silas could handle himself. He must believe that. Gods, the ankou had taken to ripping teratisms’ heads off. If that were not slightly impressive, then nothing was. Pitch’s thoughts brought him to a standstill. What if that newfound brutality was not enough?
Gods. Fuck the prophet and fuck the halo.
He’d find Silas instead. Take them both to some distant corner of Arcadia. They could live like hermits and fuck like they had in the theatre. Crash into one another until Pitch did not know where Silas ended and he began. He’d fall asleep with thick fingers caressing him gently and awaken with the reassuring bulk of the ankou surrounding him. He’d ache in all the right places, in all the right ways.
A shiver took him, a brief moment of delight in this intolerable place.
The steady beat of footsteps shook Pitch from his thoughts. ‘Silas?’ The stranger’s approach grew louder, and no reply came. ‘Fuck.’
Flame tingled beneath the skin of his palms, and a sharp pang came from the watch, rippling up his arm.
Pitch stared up and down the empty, bland corridor, another of those places that held the air of being incomplete, with patches of the grey stone dotting the plaster like measles on the skin. Hiding was impossible with not even a potted palm to crouch behind nor a doorway in sight.
That was, until a moment later.
The seams of an oak door formed in the wall up ahead, some ways from where he stood. Pitch swore again, flames teasing at his fingertips. His muscles clenched around the hidden watch, a painful contraction that was infuriatingly distracting.
The door handle, a gleaming silver affair, ground like a rusted gate as it turned. Pitch backed up a few cautious steps, stepping over the tree root, only to find it had quite disappeared. It no longer breached the floorboards like the back of a half-concealed serpent.
The door swung open. And Mr Weatherby stepped out. The kitsune was in his purebred form, clad in his chestnut suit, not a fine hair of his severe cut hair out of place. He was busy staring hard at something he held and did not look up as he turned towards where Pitch stood. He marched down the passageway, a hallway that was barely wide enough to have two people pass side by side. Pitch braced, readying for the moment the kitsune would glance up. The little prick would find himself with a face full of daemonic flames.
The beast in Pitch’s belly paced restlessly. The wildness had refused to be subdued from the moment he’d first sent the Dullahan soaring across the ballroom. He filled his palms with light, ribbons of dancing flame that were so eager to bloom into an inferno it was almost more than he could bear. At his arm the pinch of the watch was impossible to ignore, like a dozen woodpeckers were trying to open him up and take the trinket for themselves.
Weatherby nodded down at his hand. ‘Badh has just arrived, yes,’ he said, in that galling high pitch he had. ‘He is eager to set the seal in place, having seen the disturbances, but –’
A voice came, seemingly from the palm of the kitsune’s hand.
‘But Macha is being a petulant menace as per usual.’ Masculine, impatient, raspy and deep. And infinitely recognisable, for Pitch had heard it not so long ago as Dr Severs taunted them with the illusion of Charlie. ‘There is no time to waste here. We’ve had word that Ahari has left The Atlas in rather a rush.’
Weatherby paused, barely three strides now from Pitch. The scrying stone he held was more evident now. This one was the colour of moonstone, swirling like a mist was trapped in the rock. ‘He is coming here?’
Pitch scowled at both the increasing sting of his arm and the kitsune’s apparent blindness, barely taking in the news that perhaps the Order might yet save them. What the blazes was wrong with the kitsune? At the very least he should have sensed the daemon with his fox-sharp sense of smell. Pitch had been told, no end of times, that his natural scent was odoriferous.
‘We must assume so,’ Dr Severs replied.
‘The Fulbourn has deceived the Order for many –’
‘Fetch the sorceress, Weatherby.’ Dr Severs’s voice held an authoritative air that even made Pitch stand to attention, far sterner than anything the good doctor used outside Charlie’s cell. ‘So help me if I must leave here to drag her to the summoning place myself. She’ll not recover quickly from it. She must join her siblings to set the seal at once.’
‘She’s convinced she must recapture the purebreds. That tree protects them. Edward is clearly import–’
‘Not important enough. We have both Horsemen at our mercy. There will not be a better opportunity than this to cut off the Order at the knees. With two of her Horsemen gone, the Lady’s lake is vulnerable. Bury the purebreds and that fucking tree with them. It will not matter a damn who or what they are if they are beyond all help. Macha must not jeopardise everything we can do here because she is a spoiled child who does not like to lose unimportant games. And if she dares refuse my messages again…’ Dr Severs’s anger hung like the weight of a humid summer’s day. He paused, seeming to gather himself. ‘Bring her to me. Tell her it is a direct command. She denies me at her peril.’
‘Of course, yes, sir.’ Weatherby hesitated. ‘Sir, where is the tree’s magick coming from? It is formidable. It feels like this bloody place is going to come down around us.’
‘So let it!’ Dr Severs shouted. ‘We will set the seal and let the Sanctuary crush all of them.’ Weatherby flinched, extending his hand so the stone was not quite so near. ‘Find Macha, now.’
The kitsune nodded sharply. ‘It will be done, Iblis.’
A deep unease ran with the infernal prickling around the watch. Iblis. Silas had spoken of such a man after the greensward. The ankou had told Lady Satine of the Morrigan thanking one named Iblis for protecting them. Satty had said little on it, save for one rather poignant detail.
The only Iblis she knew had been a Watcher angel.
Pitch watched Weatherby slide the scrying stone into his pocket. The fellow muttered under his breath, the harshness of his tone suggesting he had not enjoyed the chitchat with his superior.
A fuckingangel.