Page 75 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

‘Fuck…we are falling into an abyss, you are in pieces, and that’s what you are thinking?’

‘Were they sleeping as she said…or were they dead, Pitch?’ Silas shed his usual endless patience. ‘The question is simple. Alive or dead.’

‘Alive.’ He’d not explain why he believed that. He did not wish to say aloud how the prickling at his back and at his arm where he’d buried the pendant watch beneath his skin was more akin now to someone rubbing him down with an exotic cactus that had been soaked in acid. Not pleasant at all. But sign, he was sure, that Edward at least was still alive and well. ‘Edward is alive.’

‘And Charlie?’ Silas sounded so small in the darkness.

And gods damn it, Pitch hesitated too long.

A sob danced against the blackness.

‘I’m sure he’s…fine…’ Pitch rushed out the unconvincing consolation, but the truth was he had no clue. The truth was if he were in Macha’s place, he would kill the purebred now. Charlie had served his purpose. Drawn in the targets. ‘He was likely sleeping.’ Gods. He’d always thought himself a masterful liar, but he was failing abysmally here. But, in fairness, hewasrather distracted about the never-ending fucking fall.

Utter silence came from the night around him.

‘Silas?’

‘Can you not throw out your light further, damn you?’ the ankou snapped. ‘I can’t see my hand before my face.’

There was no trace of his usual impeccable tolerance of a daemon prince who could be, they both knew, a monumental pain in the arse. Silas was hurting. This was the precise moment Pitch should find soothing words, offer some gentleness, as the ankou had done so often in reverse.

Pitch wanted to, he truly did, but he was talentless in such things, and his bloody tongue had a life of its own. It had defied a curse, after all. ‘I am not a living torch, you prick,’ he spat.

‘You have fire in your veins,’ Silas shot back. ‘It is exactly what you bloody are, but you are very poor at it right now.’ His voice boomed around whatever strange place this was.

In the past, perhaps Pitch would have beaten a man to a pulp for such insolence. But not now. Never with this man.

He smiled, pleased to hear the vigour in Silas’s tone. ‘I suppose you are right.’ The ankou was pissed off, very much so, but that meant he was not fading away, torn into pieces by imagined loss and the Dullahan’s whip.

‘And why the fuck are we still falling?’ Silas hollered.

His rare ribald language pushed strained laughter up Pitch’s throat. Gods, Silas never ceased to surprise him, delight him. And if the Morrigan tried to touch him again, he’d not bother trying to hold back the Berserker Prince at all. Never mind the consequences.

‘I have no idea,’ Pitch replied. ‘I’m beginning to think they are sending us to the centre of the Earth. I shall need to take a piss soon… That will be interesting. I hope you’re not above me.’

A mangled version of laughter came from the surrounds. Then a hiss of discomfort.

‘Shit.’

‘Are you all right?’ Foreign words for Pitch. More foreign still, the need for an answer.

‘No.’ Silas paused. ‘That whip made a mess of me, I fear… I’ll be quite useless till these marks heal. If we ever bloody stop falling, it might be best if you –’

The blackness gave way to low yellow light, and the nothingness gave way to the solid press of ground at last. Pitch’s feet hit the slight cushioning of a rug a second after he caught sight of it. The landing was not so terrible as it might have been, as though he had actually dangled only a few inches above the floor all along, the sense of falling one of pure illusion.

Gods damn it. Illusion, indeed.

Between the sorceress’s skills with deceiving the eye, and the talents of the Children of Melusine who built the Sanctuaries, Pitch was wary that anything at all here was entirely real.

Sanctuaries were built with a unique vein of magick wrought from an ancient purebred and fae union, and were inherently unpredictable. Unstable if firm foundations were not set. The more reliable Children of Melusine could be counted on to bridle the magick adequately and ensure Sanctuary residents didn’t wake to find themselves bricked into a wall or lying beneath the foundations. Old Bess built into his mansions and castles an innate desire within the bricks and wood and mortar to protect the inhabitants.

But the reverse could also be designed.

Silas’s halt was not as elegant as Pitch’s. The ankou’s thump upon the ground was weighty. He staggered. A wall rose up behind him, and he landed against it, squarely against his ruined back. His scream filtered between hard-clenched teeth, and he was toppling forward in his haste to be away.

Pitch was at his side in two strides, searching for somewhere to lay his hands that would keep Silas upright but go nowhere near the ghastly wounds. The ankou’s blood made a garish design upon the white wall.

‘I have you. Steady now.’