Page 70 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

Christ almighty, it was grievous.

He jerked as whatever pained him was yanked free, the withdrawal as harrowing as the arrival. Shit, it felt as though some ribs had been removed with it. The shock filled his vision with white speckles. He needed to turn around. To face this enemy. But his mangled shoulder would not heed the order.

The next strike followed closely after the first and was no less intense. But with one advantage this time. The punch to his body was so violent it snapped his dislocated shoulder back into its socket.

His scream soared. Silas was thrown forward, his head down, catching a glimpse of feathered hooves studded with rusted nails. And glancing along the ground with them, like a ghost-white snake slithering, was the end of the Dullahan’s whip.

He had a moment to realise what made the weapon. Bone. Spiked pieces of bone. Great rounded chunks like those from a spine, from one or many creatures.

The headless horseman struck again.

The breath Silas had not yet gathered was taken from him. Awful gurgling, heaving sounds came as he fought to take in some air. The pain was stealing it all. Stealing his vision, his hearing too. All was muffled as though he were back beneath the dreaded waters of the greensward’s pond.

But he knew Pitch’s voice. Heard the prince’s enraged cry. Felt a heat beyond that of his own pain coming from where he knew the daemon to be chained.

How mad can we drive you before you are lost?The sorceress’s words.

She sought to launch him into a frenzy from which she knew he may not return. The sorceress was as mad as any of the tormented souls above them, but she was also right.

‘Pitch…’ Silas spat blood. ‘No flame. Stay calm. Do not give –’

The Dullahan raised his whip once more. He heard it claw its way across the floorboards and creak and groan as the fae king’s monstrous servant prepared to strike again.

Silas’s bellow filled the chamber. His eyes watered through the pain, blurring everything around him. The agony was so intense as to be paralysing. He could not breathe, his cry jamming his throat full.

But he heard the sorceress far too clearly.

‘Strike him again.’

He felt the sear of Pitch’s heat.

Silas flung out the words as the whip laid into him. ‘Pitch, I beg you. Hold back the flame.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

PITCH CLENCHEDhis fists so hard his nails broke skin, blood warm and oozing upon his palms. But it was insignificant compared to what Silas was enduring.

Hold the flame. Was Silas mad? Did he expect Pitch to donothing?

The ankou’s back was sliced open, deep ugly gashes that flowed with blood, deepening the hue of his trousers to an unsettling mahogany. Pitch was not sure if the glimpses of white within the ruined flesh were strips of the ankou’s shirt buried deep or hints of ribs.

The cruel tips of the bone weapon made light work of firm muscle and sinew. Silas could not hold back his cries, and each one had the wildness at Pitch’s core crashing itself against the confines of its cage. Gods, he burned to release it. To tear apart this whole miserable fucking place and take the sorceress apart, one vile piece at a time. The Alp would go next. He’d rip out her black heart with his own hands and shove it down her fucking throat.

It would be easy…so, so easy, to let the madness take him, here and now. To release whatever maniacal strength Seraphiel had imbued him with. To give up trying not to lose himself to the maelstrom of it. Pitch’s hands were aglow, flame licking beneath the surface.

But the oaf was telling him to hold back.Begginghim.

And damn him, Silas was right.

The ankou, Charlie, and the lieutenant were all far too close to the Berserker Prince to survive if Pitch let go.

The sorceress chewed at her lip, watching wide-eyed with delight the punishment of the one responsible for killing her grotesque children. The Dullahan’s head dangled from her clenched fist, swinging as she was absorbed by the torment she had ordered. She glanced at Pitch, watching for sign that she’d tipped him over the edge. Onoskolis hovered at her side. The only light in this darkness was the look upon the Alp’s face. She was harried. This was not a part of the plan. Her mistress was playing out of turn.

Pitch fought to tune out Silas’s screams, working up a brittle smile. ‘Dreadful racket he’s making, isn’t it?’ he said. Oh gods, the things he would do to these sorcerers…to the Alp…when the path was clear.

‘It does have a nice ring to it though, don’t you think?’ Macha was a lunatic. It was there in the twist of her mouth, the mania that clung to her voice.

Onoskolis went to whisper something, but Macha elbowed her away. The Dullahan’s head snagged on the Alp’s gown, which, Pitch was most pleased to see, aggrieved the bitch very much.