Page 83 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

A pity it was not more pleasant.

The world was a blur and came with the unpleasant sensation of tiny insects upon the skin, crawling all over him, up his nostrils, skittering across his eyeballs. The toe-curling sensation was momentary, thank the gods. Their surrounds rushed back in, frigid and gloomy. Their momentum sent them staggering across a narrow, compact room, towards a looming wall of grey stone.

Instinct had Pitch shrinking in on himself, raising his arms to protect his face from striking the rough surface. But Silas stole any need for that when he angled himself at the last minute and took the brunt, his shoulder and hip taking the impact that loosened stones and dust from the wall. They rebounded, and Silas’s knees went from under him. Pitch grabbed his arm – he’d not risk touching anywhere else again – and tried to ensure the ankou’s fall was steady and measured.

‘Are you all right?’ Silas didn’t even give the daemon a chance to fuss before he himself was at it.

‘Yes, yes.’ Pitch could still feel the odd sensation of movement beneath his skin. Even the beast at his core seemed to dislike it, hunkering down deep in its pit, seeking distance. A boon. One less discomfort for a body that was filled with them. ‘I’m fine. And you? Let me look at you.’

The only illumination came through cracks in a wooden door behind them, the peachy hue of distant candlelight. He took Silas’s chin, tilting his head up until he could catch the light. The ankou’s face wrinkled with a grimace.

‘I just need a moment to gather myself, that’s all.’ He gave Pitch a weak smile. ‘Are you sure you have no ill effects?’

‘I’m quite sure.’ He’d not mention the crawling skin nor that the watch pin was doing all manner of unpleasant things, and the halo wound was mumbling through the weakening of the amuletum.

Silas studied him a long moment before he turned his attention to the room, apparently satisfied the daemon was not cracked nor chipped any worse than before. He seemed to be searching for something. Pitch could see the exact moment when Silas realised it was not here to be found, for he shrank a little, deflated by what he was missing.

‘What is it?’ Pitch asked.

The silence in the compact space hung like a shroud. Every breath they took was evident.

Silas shrugged, planting one of his wide hands upon the stonework, readying to stand. ‘I just…I thought maybe…Charlie might be here.’

‘Why would you think that?’ The question was said too curtly. There was something between Silas and Charlie that left Pitch feeling…well, damn it…not so front and centre as the ankou normally made him feel. Pitch had developed a taste for Silas’s silly fond looks, and he did not like sharing them with others.

‘I thought I needed something to focus on…like I did at Harvington Hall when I searched for you.’ Silas used Pitch’s shoulder to brace himself, and together they got him to his feet. ‘So, I thought of Charlie. And I had hoped…maybe I might –’

‘Find him.’

‘Yes.’

Pitch breathed through a wave of guilt. Silas was bereft, and here he was lamenting not being at the centre of the ankou’s world for a brief moment. Gods. ‘Well, did you find me straightaway? At the hall?’

He almost applauded himself when he saw a little brightness return to Silas’s face. ‘No. No, I didn’t. It took quite a few attempts to reach you.’

‘Then we just do it again… Well,youdo it again, whatever the blazes it was that you did. How is it you can walk us through walls?’

Silas cleared his throat. ‘I don’t understand the how entirely, but I know why.’ He paused and did not seem happy, despite his marvellous talent. ‘When I am as I am now, in between lives, I am neither here nor there. I am neither corporeal nor ethereal. I rest somewhere in between. I have no idea how I brought you along with me. I wasn’t sure it would work. All I knew was that I had to have you there, that I wasn’t leaving you behind.’

A new warmth slid beneath Pitch’s skin to hear it. ‘Well, shall we do it again?’

Silas picked at a hangnail. ‘I don’t think I can. It takes energy…like being out in the sun too long on a summer’s day. I feel weak now…well, weaker than before. I don’t want to risk us ending stuck in a wall because I’ve run out of puff.’

‘Not high on my agenda either, I assure you. I’m more than happy to walk.’

Silas turned, dragging his hand over the wall’s uneven stone. The room was barely bigger than Pitch’s water closet at Holly Lodge. And even though Lady Satine’s builder had been uncommonly generous with dimensions there, it was not a place one would choose to linger.

‘Walk to where?’ Silas exhaled. ‘Tunnelling through a wall is one thing. Finding where they have Edward held is entirely another.’

‘And Charlie,’ Pitch said forcefully. ‘Charlie can be saved yet, Silas.’

A muscle fluttered in the ankou’s jaw. ‘We must hope so.’

Pitch stood just enough behind him to see the utter disrepair of his back. There was slight improvement, if one squinted. Not so much hint of deeper muscle, perhaps bone, on display. But the strips of skin were still far too loose, the wetness of the blood too evident. And some deeper gouges trembled like tiny jellies when he moved. The shreds of Silas’s shirt hung at his sides like a woman’s used rags.

Pitch was struck by an uncommon desire to find his way to Silas’s side, to tend to him. But he held still. What he was looking at was the result of becoming too close to begin with. Silas might have escaped the lashing if the Alp had not informed her masters the ankou was the way to piercing a daemon’s heart.

And what riled him most? The three-penny-upright whore had known it first.