Page 111 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

The prophet.

‘Fuck.’ He jumped, darting a gaze over his shoulder.

It was as though Seraphiel had been standing right beside him, speaking against his ear. Gooseflesh marked his skin, the chill accompanying the angel’s voice contrasting the warm trickles of sweat beneath his arms.

‘Where is your bloody pr…’ He stopped himself.

The Morrigan might intend to entomb him down here, but it would be lunacy to go blurting about prophets in a Sanctuary of this kind.

A tremendous thump, like the heel of a titan’s boot coming down upon the Earth, made the entire corridor shudder. The wail of timbers under duress tore the air apart. He could not think too deeply on what those sounds meant, for they held too much of an air of finality.

Pitch dashed across the threshold. The moment he set foot in the barn, the pain at his back and his arm ignited as one.

He released a hollow cry, clamping his hand down upon his arm, squeezing at the watch beneath his skin. By Enoch’s fucking arsehole, it was like a stinging ants’ nest had cracked open beneath his skin and all the blighters were scattering across his body. He could not find a place to itch at that would settle the sense of something crawling inside him. Pitch gouged at his own flesh, leaving red welts down the length of his arm where he was clawing at the watch. He staggered, trying to keep at least a mildly straight path towards the tree, for whatever this bloody thing was, it was a part of finding Edward.

But fuck, could it have been less painful a place to be? The halo wound was nearly as devastating as it had been the day he’d received it.

Flutters of colour fell about him, seesawing movement that marked the descent of leaves. Sunburned yellows and ember flashes. The rowan had swapped its green spring vibrancy for the crisper hues of autumn in an instant. Leaves fell thick and fast, coming down like soft rainfall and covering the hay-pitched ground like pieces of sunset fallen.

A crack of wood, much closer this time. So close in fact Pitch felt the vibration of it through his bare foot.

He stepped back, lifting his arm to worry at his aggravated back. If the amuletum still worked at all, it would not do so for much longer.

The formidable thump came again, like the throwing of an enormous bolt. The groaning of the wood was almost lost beneath the dire sounds echoing around the rest of the Sanctuary.

Almost.

Pitch frowned, certain he recognised what he’d heard. There had been enough felling of trees with Black Annis as the enraged teratism struck down oaks in her fury.

Sure enough, as he stared up, the shivering branches of the rowan tree loomed towards him, dowsing him with a fresh fall of leaves.

‘Gods damn it!’

He dove as the tree moaned and lamented its fall.

Pitch hit the ground at a roll, but not soon enough to avoid the slap of branches against his arse. He yelled his discontent, entirely sick of all the punishment he’d received today, but at least the great weight of the rowan had missed him in favour of smashing to pieces the stored plough.

Pitch cursed every angel he could name as he rolled over the halo’s mark, before he thrust himself to his feet, at the ready to face whatever it was that had brought down the tree.

He was entirely unprepared for what he faced.

Pitch’s throat clenched.

This must be another of the Sanctuary’s cruel illusions.

The tree had not torn its roots from the ground. Rather it was like an enormous axe had made one clean strike through the trunk higher up, cutting it off and leaving the wood smooth. It formed a circular room of sorts, with the entrance being an upside-down V-shape, like the entrance to a tent. And within that enclosure of wood…was one of the glass coffin’s Macha had revealed.

Edward lay within, hands lying over his chest. Still as a corpse.

But draped over him this time, clutching at the coffin like a sailor to flotsam after a ship’s sinking, was Silas’s lad.

Charlie was on his knees, his chest pressed to the flat surface of the coffin’s top, his arms reaching as though he sought in vain to cover the lieutenant. His sleeves were in tatters, the left shredded up to the elbow but the right only torn enough to bare Charlie’s wrist. He wore a wooden bracelet, a crude twisting of rowan wood and holly.

Pitch knew it on sight.

Silas had worn it in the Forest of Dean. An ugly creation woven by the self-proclaimed forest witch, Ottelie. She had offered it to the ankou to stem his violent sickness as they approached Goodrich Castle and its imprisoned spirit of the forest. Ottelie had insisted Silas take the inelegant thing as a parting gift.

A wave of panic blurred the interminable stirrings of the halo and the trinket and all the wounds he carried.