Page 128 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle
Charlie proved he was human by releasing a scream that could have woken all of Silas’s dead. One of the kitsune’s nine tails, weaving about like a furry panlong, snaked around the frightened lad’s waist. Charlie tried to beat it off. And Silas was doing his level best to placate him.
‘It is quite all right, Charlie. Look. Quickly now.’ He lifted his arms to accommodate the curl of a tail about his own bare waist, which was smeared in all the foul residue of the Sanctuary. He fussed his little undead heart out over his lad but spared anxious glances Pitch’s way as he did so.
‘I’m all right…stop worrying.’ Pitch was slurring. His tongue was too tired to work for him, and he’d not spoken nearly loud enough for Silas to hear, what with all the ominous moans still coming from the Sanctuary.
The ankou was a sight, barely clothed, which was not so bad, but grotty beyond measure, battered and very bruised.
Gloriously alive.
Mr Ahari shouted at them to hold on. That the journey would be rough. That it was not over just yet. Gods, the fool had no idea.
The kitsune broke into a run. Pitch spared the very last of his energy to ensure that Edward was among the dangling trophies Mr Ahari held in his tails. Next to Silas, the lieutenant hung, unresponsive, dangling like a bundle of sopping clothes.
Pitch closed his eyes, listening to Silas assure Charlie all would be well, and let a welcome darkness take him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
BEING HAULEDthrough the depths of a maniacal Sanctuary by a kitsune was not an experience Silas would forget in a thousand lifetimes. The fox’s python-like tail was firm around his waist, holding aloft his considerable mass as though he were as feather-light as Charlie. They bounded along in the inky confines, following the narrow trail of altering roseate hues that deepened and lightened as they eddied along.
‘Silas, is it going to eat us?’ Charlie cried. He had his arms and legs wrapped about the tail, clearly convinced that the loop hold would not be enough to stop him plummeting. But there was barely a distance to plummet. The fox was large, but in the way of a grand draught horse, and they were held but a foot or two from the ground. There was no risk of death in a fall.
‘He’s not going to eat us, no. Do try to stay still, Charlie.’
Silas was distracted, noting how limp Pitch’s body was in the grasp of the fox’s outermost tail, a bushy affair that was tipped with white, unlike his own that was coated with black hairs.
Perhaps it was best that Pitch was not conscious, for the prince was bound to be in all manner of pain after that display with the flame. Yet again, the daemon had kept the world from caving in on Silas. Pitch had best be ready for the thanks that were coming his way. Silas would be very thorough. Very robust.
An unnatural moan came from the bowels of the collapsing Sanctuary.
‘Now hold on tight,’ the fox barked. Quite literally so. The creature bunched up its hindquarters. ‘This place is closing in too fast. I’m going to send you ahead. Apologies for the landing. It may hurt, but time and essence and all that.’
Silas looked away from his study of Pitch to find that the sparkling rosiness of the rivulet had altered remarkably.
The thin flow of light abandoned its horizontal path and lifted, spreading out to form a wall of rose and apricot and salmon hues that ran upwards. A waterfall in an upside-down world.
He was so busy marvelling he did not heed Mr Ahari’s instructions too well. Silas let out a startled cry as he was suddenly whipped back, only to be violently thrust forward a second later. The fox’s tail unwrapped from about him, and Silas was flying, soaring like a fledgling sent too early from the nest.
Charlie released a frantic squeal, and the teratisms who had been secured each in their own length of tail bellowed and bayed like herd animals scenting a wolf. Only Edward and Pitch were silent as the entire group was sent catapulting like inelegant scarecrows.
Silas cowered behind raised arms, ready to be smacked senseless as he approached the shimmering barrier. But the light was purely that. Light. No substance.
The same could not be said for what lay upon the other side.
Silas had a blink’s-length of time to make out his surrounds. A room laid out with multiple beds, bedcovers like tangled banks of snow spilling from torn mattresses.
‘Oh bloody hell!’
He balled himself up as best he could and became a living bowling ball. Silas crashed into a bed, the metal frame unforgiving against the back of his shoulder. The momentum kept him racing onwards, pushing the bed into the next, and that one in turn into the next, and so it went. He was the caboose on a freight train of springs and thin mattresses and only drew to a halt when the furthest bed flipped up against the wall.
He leaped to his feet, slightly dizzy and needing to hold fast to the nearest upturned bedframe.
They were returned to the Fulbourn, in one of the bleak wards with its drained white paintwork and dreary furnishings. There was, thankfully, no sign of any patients. Nor though any sign of where they had just crashed through the wall. Aside from a few thin seams that might be cracks in the plaster, the walls were all intact.
A thunderstorm was underway, banging and crashing its way about outside like a wild horde seeking to break in. Silas had landed near a shattered window, curtains dancing madly with the wind that brought in icy-cold rain to spatter his skin. He was a walking suit of gooseflesh, the outside world far chillier than the doomed Sanctuary.
‘Pitch, Charlie,’ he called.
Rich shadows draped the room, lit at intervals by flashes of lightning nearly too bright for the eye to endure. The drum of rain came down with the precision of a military band.