Page 80 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

‘Yes, I’m sorry. I can’t face it now. I need more time.’ He was near to fainting away with just hurrying. He ran one hand along the wall, using the lip where wood met plaster as a brace.

‘Sorry you aren’t going to try and wrestle a teratism with your bare hands, in your current state?’ Pitch’s laugh was brittle. ‘Gods, Sickle, your need to apologise for all and sundry never ceases to amaze me.’

‘Pitch, we need to move faster.’

‘I’m sure we do, but you cannot see your face.’ The daemon glanced up at him, at just the perfect moment for the gaslight to flirt with the colour of his eyes. The brilliant green had returned in full, disguised no more by Lady Satine’s camouflage. A superlative sight that made Silas forget that he was in more pain than he’d thought a body capable. ‘You do not look well, Sickle.’

The daemon’s face grew shadowed. He looked away, taking his brilliance with him. And Silas was as he had been, nearly doubled over with his agonies of body…and of the mind. His fears for Charlie were like nails hammering deep, and they would cripple him if he considered them too much.

‘I just need time, that’s all,’ Silas huffed, his lungs tight. ‘The wounds will heal, but I need time. Damn it, does this corridor go on forever? There are no doors?’

Pitch adjusted himself beneath Silas’s arm. ‘No. No doors nor windows. No clear route to escape. It might as well be a fucking oubliette…or the abaddon.’

Silas moved his hand, which dangled over Pitch’s shoulder, to rest against the daemon’s chest. That small contact was all he could manage by way of comforting gestures. He would have preferred to gather him up in his arms in a hug that Pitch would have viewed as a gesture of pity and despised. But His Royal Highness would need to get over his irrational aversion to affection, for Silas had given up trying to ignore the impulse to touch him, comfort him.

‘I am so sorry you had to endure the abaddon…along with everything else.’

It was a wonderful surprise when Pitch covered his hand with slight, warm fingers. ‘Your coffin can’t have been a wondrous thing either.’

Silas grunted and immediately regretted it for the way it jerked his ribs and sent flashes of hot pain scouring through him. ‘I don’t think of it fondly.’

A wave of dizziness struck, and Silas found himself flailing. The prince hissed his surprise at finding all the ankou’s weight upon him suddenly. They staggered a few steps like a pair of drunkards lost on their way home from the pub.

The calamitous melody roared up the corridor behind them. Tenfold louder than it had been.

‘Shit, Pitch…’ Silas gasped, exhausted by the effort it took to stagger. ‘It is much closer.’ He tried to peer back down the corridor, but his wounds did not like the movement at all. He took a sharp breath, swearing as well as any sailor. ‘We must move faster.’

‘Faster may be an issue. What the…well, fuck…that’s inconvenient.’

Silas lifted his head, and his knees buckled at the sight.

A steep staircase stood just a few paces up ahead, where a moment ago there had been flat, endless corridor.

‘Oh god,’ he whispered.

‘It’s all right, we’ll get you up there.’ Pitch was steely. ‘Come on now.’

Silas faltered, nearly at a stop, and the daemon tugged at him, urging him closer. But just laying eyes upon the narrow steps and sharp incline had his shoulders sagging. He clutched at Pitch, who pulled him along determinedly, but each new footfall jarred at the broken and torn ruin of his back.

‘I don’t think I –’

‘Don’t think. It’s dreary. Just move with me.’ Pitch had a tight hold on Silas’s forearm, but his other arm slipped low across Silas’s back, bracing against the curve of his arse. His fingers hooked over Silas’s hip. ‘Is that low enough? Am I clear of the wounds?’

‘Yes.’ Silas swallowed thickly. He could not take his eyes from the staircase, which disappeared up into shadowy darkness, no landing in sight. He knew what The Atlas had done to him with its stairs, sending him upwards, upwards until he thought his lungs might burst. That day at Mr Ahari’s Sanctuary had left him gasping for breath with its test, and he’d been fit as a fiddle.

The pressure of Pitch’s arm across his buttocks increased as the daemon braced him. It seemed he intended to push Silas up the stairs.

But there was not even a banister to brace upon. The staircase was slotted between walls covered in a ghastly, elaborate wallpaper. Blue waves curled along the base, while above them flouncy pink birds with necks like snakes stood among brilliant green foliage. Silas raised his foot to the first step, knowing exactly where he’d seen such a print. It had been the cause of Baron Faversham’s ill-health, arsenic, if he recalled, being used to create the vivid verdant pattern. A lost soul had shown Silas the way, a young girl who’d begged for the scythe when her life-saving task was done. Silas’s first seance, in this reanimation as ankou at least.

It was where he’d first laid eyes upon Tobias Astaroth.

‘Bloody hell.’ Silas was sufficiently distracted to manage to climb the first few steps. ‘Do you see this? The wallpaper?’

Pitch was strained as he replied, ‘How could I damned well not? It’s an assault on the eyes, terribly garish and vile.’

Silas agreed mostly, but the verdant hue was not so far removed from that of Pitch’s eyes, and he thought them astonishingly beautiful. The jarring melody of the approaching teratism brought him back from his wayward musings. The raucous notes were no closer though; the creature had not gained on them. With their pace so near to a standstill, that hardly seemed possible, unless their hunter was so certain of a kill that it was taking its time to stalk them.

Shit…could he be killed in this state? Silas stifled a cough. ‘I hoped you could see it too. I thought maybe they were toying with my mind somehow. I’m sure it is the same design I saw in Baron Faversham’s residence…where I dealt with my first lost soul.’