Page 110 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle
The roots unravelled, like hair brushed free of tangles, and collapsed to the ground.
Pitch set off at a run. The deep groans rose up through the floorboards and seemed to make the entire corridor sway at times. The roots led him up a wide, broad staircase that might have resembled one he’d encountered at Hampton Court a few months back, but Pitch had tired of the games the Sanctuary sought to play.
He wanted to find Edward and get the blasted angel out of his damned head.
He wanted to find Silas. Gods, he wanted that with a longing that was truly abysmal. The ankou’s absence at his side was a void that sucked the air from the room and the strength from Pitch’s reserves.
And what else he wanted, almost as much as the ankou’s return, was a fucking boot to cover his bare heel, which was managing to land upon every trace of grit and stone upon the floors.
‘Shit.’ He hissed, dancing on his booted foot as he rubbed at the ball of the other. The debris was thickening upon the ground, tiny stones intent on hindering his every move. ‘Could you not choose a clear path?’ He told off the tree root with a fervour that, along with his patience, was eroding rapidly. He was a paradox of sensation. At his heart he was calamitous, the beast still baying for release; but outside of that cage, he was leaden, sore, and so very sick and tired of corridors and staircases.
Pitch carried on. And on.
The Sanctuary grumbled and moaned and echoed with disconcerting sounds around him. And all he could think on was mention of the seal. Of being shut in this sodding place. Pitch folded his fingers over the watch, trying to rationalise his panicked thoughts. If it was truly Seraphiel’s voice in his head, if Edward had suddenly been made a bloody prophet, he had to believe there was more in store for him, for Edward…and for Silas…than being locked up forever in a damned labyrinth.
Pitch turned his attention back to the root. Focused all his thoughts that way, refusing to allow them to derail with the creeping terror that came from imagining forever in these hallways.
At times the root cut a path along the walls, right alongside him, at other times he was forced to crane his neck to search for it upon the ceiling, but it was always there, leading him through hallway after hallway, stone passage after stone passage.
‘Fuck this place, with several pustulous wyvern cocks,’ he panted, trying to catch his breath as he entered yet another grey-stoned godsdamned passageway. Another thoroughfare with far too many spiky shards of stone upon the floor. If his foot was not bleeding by now, it would be a miracle.
‘Wonderful.’ He growled. ‘I’m more vagabond than Charlie ever was.’
Silas hated hearing him speak of the lad that way. He’d scowl if he were here. Pitch could picture it clearly. The gesture would make his left cheek push up higher than his right. His brown eyes would glint topaz with unhappiness.
Pitch wiped at his face, blinking as sweat trickled into his eye. He tried to ignore the tremble in his fingers and the dull thump of the watch beneath his skin.
‘Just find the fucking prophet. Stop pining like a fool.’
He cleared the sweat from his eyes, and the way ahead was clear. Pitch came to a halt.
The corridor no longer stretched like a ribbon of deepening darkness. Several feet ahead, a set of mahogany doors had appeared, cutting off the passageway. Their ornate, thick-runged knockers glinted silver, as though a moon shone against them.
Pitch eyed the new addition warily, as he did most things in this place.
The doors burst open, and a trio of harpies spewed forth, wings slapping about, feathers bunched and ruffled, black beaks wide, screeching as though Silas’s blasted skriker were after them.
Pitch came to life, or at least tried very hard to do so. He sought to raise his hands, summoning the flame from where it waited ever so eagerly for his call. A tightness dragged at his wrists, holding him in place. He snapped his gaze downwards. Twin roots were tangled about his arms, rising from the ground like delicate saplings, binding him like a prisoner to the dock. Pitch wrenched his shoulders, struggling to free himself. His right hand was a ball of flame, but at his left there was only the barest glow. And gods, how the thudding beneath his skin there grew. The tick of the watch rattled his bones, sent hot pokers into his skin.
The harpies blustered past him, a wing slicing so close to his ear he was certain some of his hair had been cut. Their screeches were loud enough to make his teeth rattle. But just as it had been with the kitsune, not a one of them showed any sign they’d noticed the daemon standing in the dead centre of the corridor. They swept around, tilting their ragged wings at the very last moment to avoid him. Their stench struck him, shoving its way up his nostrils, coating the back of his mouth, saturating the air even as they left it and continued their manic flight down the passageway.
Pitch spat against the cloying remnants of the harpies’ odour and gave the vine-like tendrils an extraordinarily hard pull. His hands came free easily, and he nearly struck himself in the face with his own momentum.
‘Christ almighty,’ he shouted, echoing the ankou’s preferred curse. He’d have said more far less congenial things if he did not at that moment spot what lay beyond the thrown-open doors.
It was the interior of a small barn, light filtering through uneven slates, bales of hay scattered, and a rusty old shell of a plough hulking in a far corner. A scattering of random pieces were laid about, a wheelbarrow here, several empty apple crates there, placed in a vaguely circular shape. He knew at once where the Sanctuary had placed him. This was the barn where he had boxed with half the township of Bishop’s Castle, and would have killed its constable in a rage if not for the intervention of the Valkyrie. For one very rare time, he would have done anything to see Sybilla come blazing in here now.
Perhaps the angel could explain the one striking difference between the true barn and this illusion.
The enormous bloody tree that stood at its centre.
A rowan tree with dense green foliage and clusters of red berries that spread out against the slats of the barn’s roof. The rowan should not be bearing fruit at this time of year, but then that was hardly the strangest thing about a tree growing underground with no taste of sunlight and soil that looked parched dry of any moisture.
The trunk on this rowan was a great curiosity, up high beneath the branches, it was slender and rather normal in size, but the closer to the ground it went, the broader and less usual the trunk became. The flare of gnarled wood at the base was enormous, like a giant woman’s skirts puffed with air, and bubbled in places, the wood bulging high enough that Pitch could likely crawl into the hollow beneath on his hands and knees.
A hushed scraping sound marked the slow recoil of the roots that had led Pitch here, slipping their way back from whence they had come, leaving furrows in the packed dirt.
A searing pain shot up Pitch’s arm.