Page 50 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

But the angel must have been careless, for the prince lived to retaliate.

Vassago drew on all that he despised, all he abhorred about his existence in this place. A world where his masters sought to break him. To stifle him. He took his rage and fed it to the beast at his heart. It always ate greedily. Straining for release. And again there came the vague sense of confusion within the wildness. The power uncertain of its desires. Of whether to kill or subvert. Buthewas master here. And Vassago knew what he wanted. To decimate. To consume.

He opened the cage, unleashed his power, and threw the might of his flame through the vestige. Sending it straight at the angel who dared get in his way.

Beyond that, the only screams Vassago heard were his own.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PITCH’S MUFFLEDscream shattered the peace of the bedroom, pulling Silas from a dreamless sleep with shocking veracity. His arm was draped over the daemon’s backside. They had drifted off to sleep with Pitch lying on his front, Silas beside him, rubbing at his back until at last the daemon slept.

But now the prince’s nightmares had found him.

He kicked his legs, trying to untangle himself from the sheets, which had wrapped about them. Something Silas knew would send him into an even greater frenzy of panic if he awoke fully to find himself trapped.

‘Pitch…’ Silas shook him, seeking to pull him from his nightmare. ‘Pitch, it’s me, it’s Silas. Wake up now.’

The prince was drenched in sweat, his naked body slippery beneath Silas’s hands. He’d been dreaming for some time. Pitch rolled onto his side, facing away from Silas, and kicked back with his legs.

‘Shit,’ Silas grunted at a blow to his knee. ‘Pitch, come on now.’

But whatever the daemon was running from, he had no intention of stopping. He clawed his way to the edge of the bed, and Silas tried to restrain him in a way that would not see him grow more desperately violent in seeking to escape. The bedroom door opened, and Tilly pattered into the room clad in a linen-and-lace sleeping shift, a nightcap upon her head.

‘Tilly, stay there, little one.’

With his attention shifted, Silas lost his hold on the struggling daemon. Pitch slipped off the bed, dragging all the sheets with him, and falling with a solid thump onto the floor.

‘Bump,’ the little girl said, pointing at the fallen daemon. ‘Big fire go bump.’

Or at least that is what Silas thought he heard. He was more concerned with keeping her away from the prince, who was liable to lash out if he woke to a stranger’s face over him. But Christ, if shewastalking about fire, did that mean she’d seen Pitch’s eyes?

‘Tilly, stay there, sweetheart.’ Silas jumped off the bed, grateful he’d fallen asleep in his drawers, and knelt beside Pitch. He was breathing heavily, but at least his manic attempts to escape seemed ended. He was curled up in ball of damp sheets and waft of exertion.

‘Pitch?’ Cautiously Silas hooked his finger into the wavy locks that covered the prince’s face, drawing them back. His eyes were closed but he stirred.

‘Silas…’

‘I’m right here.’ He touched his hand to Pitch’s shoulder and barely stifled a gasp. The daemon was burning up. ‘You are safe, no harm will come to you.’

‘No,’ he whispered. ‘The harm’s already been done.’

A cold prickle brushed the back of Silas’s neck, a chill that contrasted the worrying heat of the daemon. ‘What did you say?’

‘I dreamed of the cliff again…and I saw it all plainly this time…I heard him.’

‘Seraphiel.’ No need to make a question of it. No one plagued Pitch’s nightmare’s like the angel he had felled, and Silas despised the angel more with each passing day. ‘Tell me what you saw. Do not carry this alone.’

He searched for the child. Tilly was sitting at the dresser on the far side of the room. She’d removed her nightcap and was rummaging through a jewellery box, talking softly to herself in the mirror. Paying them no mind.

‘It was different to how I recalled.’ Pitch pushed onto an elbow but kept his head lowered, the tips of his hair glancing at the floor. ‘I could hear him…so clearly…’ He looked up, and Silas did his best not to flinch. The daemon’s eyes flared with all the hues of a furnace. ‘I knew he cast magick that day…that much I recall. I remember wondering how the blazes he’d not obliterated me at such close quarters. I remember thinking him an old decrepit fool who would rue his failure to destroy me.’ Pitch stared hard into his memories. ‘Raph was shouting…screaming at me to stand down…there was so muchnoisethat day, so much rage….it was deafening. But in the dream there was not so much chaos…I heard his voice…his words.’ He turned away, staring down at the rug, his finger tracing the pattern. ‘“Heed your master”, he said. “Destroy the prince, you destroy the life I gave you.”’

Silas frowned. ‘Whose life? Who was he speaking to? Was there someone else with you?’

‘No. We were very much alone. Neither of us were where we should be.’

‘What strange words. Heeding your master, I can understand, but—’

Pitch’s gaze, still fiery, sliced at him. ‘Seraphiel was never my master. Lucifer yes, Enoch certainly. But not him. The Seraphim do not interfere with the Dominion. We belong to the Daemon Kings’…that is how itshouldbe at least.’