Page 73 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

Now the ankou was a fucking mind reader apparently. But likely it was all in the eyes. Pitch could feel the heat behind his lids.

‘Ah there you are. Excellent, thank you, Weatherby,’ Macha said.

The black fox padded up onto the dais, its teeth bared as it clutched its piece of daemonic flesh between them. Pitch frowned at the roundabout delivery. Weatherby could have crossed the dance floor and been done with it.

‘Good boy.’ Macha patted his head, laying out her other hand to take the bloodied prize. Though Pitch’s neck blazed with pain, the portion that was stolen was small, a penny size at most. She knelt beside the chair and placed her lips close to the ear of the Dullahan. She raised the crimson flesh to his mouth and whispered. The dark scratches that passed for lips opened. Onoskolis watched on with a smirk as Macha pressed Pitch’s flesh into the widened mouth.

‘Christ, that’s vile.’ Silas coughed, sending a fresh speckling of blood onto the floor.

‘Rather.’ Pitch was silently pleased the ankou could find the strength to comment at all. ‘How are you faring?’

‘I’ve had better days,’ he grunted.

‘There we are, then.’ Macha clapped her bloodstained hands. ‘When you are ready, Palatyne. Dullahan, perhaps one more strike for the journey, seeing as our ankou seems fit enough to speak again.’

She wiggled her fingers, not any great move of maleficent magick, but a condescending wave.

The Dullahan raised his whip, curling it in the air in a lazy circle. Silas muttered something beneath his breath, his body shaking, curling in against the oncoming blow.

The bony protrusions struck the ankou’s back. Pitch was sure he heard the chandeliers shudder with the weight of the blow.

Silas did not bellow or scream or cry. He sobbed.

Pitch’s vision went white with fury. He lurched against his binds, determined to break his fucking hands if need be to free himself. But he didn’t get the chance.

The manacles fell away. He barely managed to plant his hands down before he copped a mouthful of floorboard. Pitch leapt to his feet. His flame roared up through his middle, searing his ribs, the prickling at his arm and back vanishing beneath the onslaught.

The beast stepped one foot out of its cage. The twisted distortion Seraphiel had made of his flame sought freedom. Pitch inhaled the calamity. This may be the very worst of ideas if the wildness slipped him, but for now it was the only idea that would stop the ankou’s torture.

Pitch turned on his heels, hands ablaze. The Dullahan readied another strike.

‘Enough!’ He thrust his hands forward. Twin torrents of crackling rage burned towards the Dullahan. They struck the fae king’s minion, and the creature burst alight. Headless or no, the creature managed to sound off screams that were unholy. The whip was a snaking ribbon of fire that twisted and corkscrewed through the air in a desperate but vain attempt to rid itself of the flames consuming it. The Dullahan’s mount reared, legs thrashing, its mane and tail burning with a white-hot fire, its squeals joining that of its rider.

Silas lay beneath them, trying desperately to move himself, but the wounded ankou was too close.

Furious, Pitch struck out again. He cared so much less how violent the flames became or how much of his skin they consumed. He sent the torrents of heat and destruction outward and used them like a lasso. The moment they struck the Dullahan, wrapping like ribbon around an unwanted gift, sparks of white set off amongst the blaze of autumn colours. The fae’s magick sought to repel the force of a Dominion and angel’s monster both.

Pitch sneered and raised horse and rider off the ground. Fuck. The arsehole and his mount were near as heavy as Goodrich Castle. Jaw clenched, veins bulging with the duress of flame and burden both, Pitch caught sight of the dais.

Macha and Onoskolis had not moved an inch. The sorceress’s expression was hard to read, but he did not see any fear there, and he despised her for it. The Alp…that bitch of a creature was smiling. By Enoch’s taint, he wanted to gouge her eyes from her skull, burn her lips clear off her face. His fury sent fresh licks of heat racing through him. The beast was reaching through the bars, lunging at the collapsing resolve of the daemon prince who kept it chained.

He was dangerously furious, more so than when he’d feared Silas dead at the greensward. Because here the ankou suffered because ofhim.

The dark shadows at the edge of Pitch’s vision were creeping in, narrowing his view down to pinholes.

A tiny part of him still spouted caution, still tried to call on him to hold back. This was madness, his sensibility whispered.

He wouldbecomemadness, if he did not calm down.

But he was tired of this place. Of the need to be here to begin with.

Seraphiel’s quest be damned. Let the Blight make monsters of all humankind.

So long as the ankou still existed to deal with them.

A dull throb came from Pitch’s back, along the length of the spine. The amuletum pushed to its limits. But fuck the damned enchanted ink. He manipulated the flames to raise the Dullahan, horse and all, up into the air. The blue roan’s legs scrambled madly, but the rider made no move to leave the saddle.

Pitch released a cry that ripped at the flesh of his throat, and he hurled the Dullahan across the room. Straight towards his tormentors.