Page 117 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

‘No more!’ Silas’s cry echoed, as though he stood in a grand church, the ceilings high and built for lifting the priest’s voice to something nearer to god.

His lips tingled, and he breathed heavily, his nostrils damp. He was hemmed in by twisted limbs and torn pieces. A mountain had grown around him, threatening to bury him more deeply than the Sanctuary ever could.

‘That is enough,’ he breathed. ‘I’ll do no more.’

A handful of teratisms remained standing.

They, like all the others here, were weak vessels, made too fast. They’d not been strengthened by decades of the Blight’s influence, formed with time into dangerous calamities. Macha’s creatures were delicate, coming apart like rain-soaked paper in his hands.

‘Stay back.’ He drew himself up, hand raised, fingers splayed and palm open. No fists this time. ‘No more. Do you understand me?’

The melodies sank low, their tempos hitching, losing their flow.

‘Can you hear me? I need you to hear me now.’ Silas took shallow breaths, too frightened yet to believe the stillness around him might last. ‘Listen to me. Follow my voice, and I will take you out of that darkness. Do not be deceived by the Blight….’ He recalled what the ghosts and spectre of Castle Coombe had told him. ‘The gloaming, you know it as…but it is all the same. It is a lie. It is deception. Listen to me, hearme. For I need your help.’

An off-key note sounded, somewhere in the aria of one of the few who surrounded him. Far too few in a room soaked in catastrophe. But he could not change what he had done, only what he might do next. ‘Do you hear me?’ Silas’s voice cracked.

The stillness was reserved for the teratisms only, for the Sanctuary itself shook like a pot about to boil. He inhaled, his heart at a race in his chest.

The Morrigan were going to seal them in here. He must find Pitch, and Edward and Charlie, before they all learned what a horror it was to be buried alive.

Silas raised his voice. ‘There will be an end to the Blight, I know. Because I know the one who will end it. I have been at his side a long while, and I have seen what he is capable of.’ His eyes stung with the cold hard prick of loss. ‘The prince will not fail us, because he has never once failed me. He is extraordinary. And he is brave. He endures when all have assumed him a lost cause. He is quite remarkable.’ Silas had entirely forgotten where he was going with this. ‘And it will take far more than divine magick and a headless horseman to stop him. I assure you, there is no other like Tobias Astaroth.’

Prince.

Dominion.

Scoundrel.

Lover.

Silas slumped. Filth and remains clung to every nook and cranny on his body. He was knee-deep in strewn organs and broken bones and only realisingnowwhat was undeniably true.

Oh bloody, bloody hell.

He loved the mad prince of Arcadia. Loved the fool so very much it hurt more than any pain he’d suffered here yet.

A strange sound hiccoughed from the ankou. ‘Shit.’ He fought to gather himself and shrug off the ill-timed sensibilities. ‘Do you hear me? I need your help to find him. Do you understand?’ he demanded, forceful now. ‘Listen to me, not the Blight, for it rules you cruelly. Do not succumb to its falsehoods. The Blight is not your saviour.’

Silas’s lover was. Every rambunctious infuriating inch of that glorious creature.

The jostle of conflicting emotions played havoc with Silas’s steadiness. He was joy and brutal unhappiness combined. And he could not stand another moment absent from the daemon’s side. Too much time had been lost here already.

‘Help me, please,’ he begged. ‘Help us stop all this.’

A contorted teratism, with limbs that bent contrary at the joints and a mouth sewn shut with a criss-cross of thick threads, turned so it might lift its crooked arm towards him.

Ankou.

A humpbacked teratism whose chin rested against its chest slithered an awfully long tongue from its slash of a mouth and spoke.Stop. This. Us.

‘Yes, for good. It must end. Will you help me?’

Silasheardthe surrender. The collapse of the Blight’s hold upon these creatures. It was there in their melodies. The grating, restless tunes finding their tempo at last. Silas took a shuddered breath. Their songs were not lovely, but they were resolute and held a beat that could not be denied.

The Sanctuary shifted with a deep, disconcerting rumble. Silas threw out his hands, certain this was the moment the roof would cave on him. And there was no way on god’s green Earth he was going to be ended by damn stalactites.

‘We must go.’