Page 123 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

Andwhere? It wasn’t so dark he shouldn’t be able to see someone right in front of him…and yet…

‘George. Friend. Wait.’ Three little yaps like it were a tiny dog out there in the shadows.

‘Wait for what, gods damn you?’

A chasmal rumble came from the darkness. A potent explosion followed.

A spray of rocks came at him hard and fast.

Pitch threw up his hands, given no option but to spread the flame in an arcing shield. One high and wide enough that there was no chance any of the flying rocks could pass overhead, landing on Charlie and Edward behind him. ‘Get down!’ he shouted.

The debris smashed against the flames, the force of the blows setting him back on his feet. His insides were a maelstrom, the flame gut-wrenching as it poured from him.

This was not a good fucking idea.

The stones hit the firewall, and the impact shattered them, reducing them to coarse ash. It was over as quickly as it had begun.

He snapped off the flame like a nightman capping a gas lamp, and slumped forward, his hands to his thighs, trying to catch his breath and convince himself that his pains would ease.

‘My god, Pitch. I’m sorry. Are you hurt?’

The voice stole the air, made breathing impossible. There was only one person who would apologise at a time like this.

‘Silas?’ Pitch’s pulse thundered.

A figure ran from the gloom and dust, and he’d have known that silhouette in any bleak corner of the world. Pitch bit back the cry that tried to work its way free.

He ran over cutting stone and fallen wood, not seeing either, not caring how they both made cruel marks upon his bare foot. His ankle turned, more than once, and he was so driven in getting to where he sought to go he did not see the rock until his toes clipped it.

Pitch grunted, and he was tumbling headlong into the ankou’s outstretched arms.

Silas swept him up in arms strong as girders on a railroad track. An embarrassing whimper left Pitch’s lips. He clung there, hanging from Silas’s neck, lifting his legs and wrapping them around the ankou’s hips. The broadness of the man made his thighs ache, but an ache he would happily endure.

‘You’re here.’ He whispered it into Silas’s hair, the shortened strands damp, and not nicely so. It was as though the ankou had finally succumbed to having a bath, but in a pond of slime, slippery and viscous.

‘I would be nowhere else.’ Silas’s chest rumbled, sending a hum through Pitch’s body, A lullaby he pressed into, seeking to find a way beneath the ankou’s skin.

Finding wetness instead. Silas’s clothes were soaked. And there was a ripeness to the man that bordered on very unpleasant. But it would not shift Pitch. Not yet.

‘Are you all right?’ Silas ran his hands over Pitch’s back, a touch so damned welcome the tired and beaten daemon might have moaned. The ankou explored him, searching for his pains. His fingers were far nimbler than their size might suggest, finding their way over bruised and troubled skin. The caress of his fingertips was like tiny kisses, taking in as much of Pitch’s body as they could find. Touching at the nape of his neck, caressing the dainty swell of ribs, tracing the boning of the corset. ‘Pitch, tell me you are unharmed. The last I saw, that infernal Dullahan was standing over you.’

‘He knows better now.’ The false bravado suited the moment. Pitch was already too feeble a thing now, coming apart against the ankou. ‘I’ve not seen him in a long while.’ He did not want to lift his head, he wanted to stay here, in the curve of Silas’s shoulder. ‘But what of you?’

‘I am much better now, having found you.’

Pitch first grinned against Silas’s skin, then kissed it. He grimaced. ‘You taste awful.’

‘Christ, Pitch, spit it out. Whatever is in your mouth, I assure you it is far from pleasant.’

Pitch pulled away but did not let go. Now he took in the ankou’s bloodstained face and glowered. ‘What did they do to you?’ By the Archangels’ taints, Silas looked fucking dreadful and was covered in stains that turned the stomach to look upon.

Silas’s gaze dropped. ‘I am to blame for this. This mess was made by my own hand… But there’s not time for that now.’ His fingers caressed Pitch’s arse cheek. ‘We must try to find our way out of here.’

‘How did you find us?’ Pitch’s flustered thoughts moved on before the ankou could answer. ‘Didyousend George?’

‘George?’ Silas’s caresses faltered. ‘Do you mean the ghost? A boy?’

‘I suppose. He tried to stab me with a branch and told me I must wait here.’