Page 113 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

Christ. The sorceress didn’t know where Pitch was.

It was the very best news he’d heard in a lifetime. The daemon was evading them, here in their very own Sanctuary.

Silas laughed through swollen lips. ‘He’s outdone you, then?’

The Sanctuary shuddered so hard it seemed to startle even the wasps, which paused for a beat in their attack.

‘Hardly, Mr Mercer, for we still have you,’ Macha snarled. ‘Mr Astaroth will show himself soon enough where you are involved.’

The hubbub coming from the souls grew louder. He strained to make some sense of their cries, but they might as well have been talking underwater. Through the squint of his eyes, Silas noted the brilliance of the room, the cobalt shining like rays of a blue sun. Much brighter than before.

Macha was setting off every column in the monopteros. And he feared he knew the reason why.

Not.

Real.

Stop.

Silas frowned. The souls were making no sense. He clapped at his ear, where a wasp was intent on travelling into the canal. Bloody hell, his body felt as though it had been rolled back and forth on a bed of nails. He fell to one knee, groping about in the vain hope he might be near the wall. His hand swept through empty air.

Not quite empty. There was a thick soup of stingers awaiting him.

Illusion.

Not real.

Stop!

Silas froze with one hand halfway through another manic wave. He was puffing like he’d fought Black Annis twice over and not a cloud of tiny insects.

Illusion.

Silas lowered his hands and pressed to his feet. The wasps clouded the air around him, the ache of their strikes filling him. Their buzzing was so loud it was as though they were inside his head.

He breathed in, calmed his racing pulse. And breathed out.

The wasps werenotbloody real.

‘Not real,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Not real.’

He refused to rise to the urge to strike out, to defend himself. The attacks lessened, the sound of the insects fading.

Silas opened his eyes.

The chamber was clear, though still a startling shade of blue. He glanced down at his hands, filthy with the dried remains of the teratisms but unblemished by any nicks and cuts. Not a single red welt.

The sense of having been stung at all evaporated, like a hunger sated. The sorceress had played him well. He searched for her.

Macha stood near the relief she had stepped through earlier. ‘I will say they do seem to like you more than me, Mr Mercer. Can’t imagine why.’ Her grin was lascivious. ‘But it hardly matters now.’ She threw a careless wave towards the monopteros. ‘You are all at our master’s mercy now.’

Every column in the monopteros was aglow. The sigils were all highlighted by the thin rivulets of cobalt that formed them.

‘What have you done?’ he demanded.

‘It is more what I am about to do. Your daemon cannot hide from me forever. And we both know he will not long stay concealed if he thinks harm may come to his ankou.’

The relief behind her shimmered as though it were a reflection atop a pond. A familiar face pressed through the watery image, jet-black lengths of hair framing a sun-touched face, horns parting the silken lengths.