Page 74 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

The creature flew like a blazing comet, illuminating everything in its path.

Which was…nothing…

The Dullahan careened across the width of the room.

Theemptywidth of the room.

No dais. No sorceress or odious daemon. Not even a pestiferous harpy in sight.

‘Bastards.’

Through his sputtering, cooling fury, Pitch understood why the kitsune had left the room to deliver the flesh to his mistress.

Macha had never been here with them.

Nor had the Alp.

They were as much an illusion as the glass coffins and Charlie pinned in his straitjacket.

The Dullahan took an inordinate amount of time to collide with the far wall, as though the entire room had stretched while Pitch was busy losing his temper. The shape of the creature became less distinct, as did the flames that were seeking to consume it. The sparks of white coming from the fae grew more pronounced as the long path of the Dullahan stretched longer. The wall was right there, Pitch could see the blasted thing, but the Dullahan was yet to strike it.

‘Pitch.’ Silas’s voice was the groan of a rusted gate.

Pitch spun about. The ankou’s chains were gone. He was on his feet, but barely so. The back of his shirt had been destroyed entirely, the rags draping at his sides like limp, broken wings. Blood ran from his mouth in a drizzly line to the floor, and he wobbled about like a child who’d not yet learned how to work his legs.

‘Careful, you fool.’ Pitch struggled against the flame, which bucked and scrambled still to escape him. He was merciless with pressing it down, punching in into submission, so he might reach for Silas.

He so very nearly had a hold of him, was so very tantalisingly close, when the first of the cracks formed. There in the floor where Silas stood. As though it were not wood he stood upon but ice.

‘Silas, don’t move.’

The cracks snapped and popped, their veins spreading further. One raced out from beneath the ankou to serpentine across to Pitch’s boots.

‘Pitch?’ Silas raised his head, his eyes reddened, his pain holding a vice grip on his face. ‘I don’t think I can…’

He toppled forward.

And there was no fucking way Pitch was going to watch him fall. He ran for the ankou.

The ground shattered, like a struck mirror, and nothingness opened beneath them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THEY FELL. Pitch shouted his fright and irritation and bare horror into the darkness. Silas, somewhere nearby in the pall, did the same.

And they kept falling.

The descent dragged on. And on.

Pitch ceased his cries, and their echoes were swallowed by an inky gloom so thick it seemed to caress his skin. His fury had been whipped away with the shock of the sudden fall. But he was still aglow, a falling star of light, the blackness a thick curtain that doused even his truculent flame, for only the immediate area around him was brightened.

‘Silas?’ he called.

‘Here.’ Though where exactlyherewas, Pitch could not tell. The darkness took their voices and bounced the sounds about like balls on a court. ‘Do you think…they were dead?’

Pitch blinked against the weight of the blackness. ‘Who?’

‘Charlie…and Edward…’