Page 93 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle
Silas glanced about the room again and grimaced, spotting the hole in the wall to his left. One that would afford anyone in the neighbouring room a fine view of the goings-on in here. He’d not looked hard enough when they first arrived, but he saw where it was the Sanctuary wished them to believe they were.
The Moon Inn.
‘I see it now.’
If the peephole were not enough, the unusual carving of the bedhead, all rough whirls and knots, certainly was. It had been carved as though the maker sought to make the room seem more refined than it could ever be. His room had held one similar. They knew already that the sorcerers had visited the place, asking questions of Mabel that the lass had not hesitated to answer. But this was a well-timed reminder that the Sanctuary was a place of illusion, enjoying every moment of its game with them.
He regarded Edward anew. The last they had seen of him, he’d been sleeping in a glass coffin. There was a chance he’d been revived and brought here to taunt them, but why would they give up their prize so easily? Far more likely this version of the lieutenant, the one bearing Pitch’s wounds, was a very cruel illusion.
‘Pitch, what sense do you have of him?’ Silas kept his words low, for the daemon alone. Hoping perhaps the watch hidden upon him might shed them some light.
The prince opened his mouth to answer.
‘Tobias!’ Edward cried. ‘Why are you just standing there? Don’t leave me here another moment, I beg you.’ The lieutenant’s voice shivered dangerously, his eyes glassy. He clutched at the sheet, pulling it to him but managing not to cover himself any better than before, leaving his wounds and arousal on equal display. ‘She uses me…I am her slave, and I cannot bear it. You know whom I speak of. And she is not so kind to me as she was to you at Gidleigh House.’
Silas took an enraged step forward, and Pitch stopped him with a firm hand. The lieutenant shuffled towards the edge of the mattress.
‘Do you not see how she hurts me?’ He let the sheet fall away, revealing inner thighs running with thin rivulets of scarlet.
Silas gaped, repulsed by the abuse it suggested, caught up in the sheer horror of it before his sense kicked back in. Illusion. His gaze flitted to the sheets. Rumpled but unstained. The deception had not been thorough enough.
‘She says you are to blame, Tobias, for refusing to submit. Now I must endure what was meant for you. It does not stop. She allows me no peace, and I cannot take much more. You know though, don’t you, Tobias? What it is like? To be held down…to be forced against your will. You should have stayed on your back for her, Tobias. You are stronger than I. And now I suffer in your stead.’
Pitch swayed as though he’d been struck. He made a strange, garbled sound, and glints of amber yellow quickened on his palms.
Macha and her Alp daemon were beyond abhorrent with this. Their cruelty was breathtaking. And precisely placed if they wished to see a prince come undone.
Silas thrust himself between Pitch and the lying atrocity upon the bed. ‘Shut your fucking mouth!’ He grabbed the creature, clamping down on thin, bare shoulders. ‘Say another word, you piece of piss, and I’ll break your jaw. It would have served you well to know the true Edward Charters, then perhaps you’d not have failed so miserably to mimic the man.’
Edward would never have brought himself to say such brutal things. Silas had seen the way Edward Charters looked at Tobias Astaroth. It was nothing like this strange, vapid yet fevered stare, which began to subtly alter as Silas’s crushing grip deepened on his shoulders. The smoky grey of the lieutenant’s eyes had once caused Silas to recall a lost memory of smoke curling from an autumn bonfire, laughter and music from company long vanished. But now it leaked away, seeping from the gaze of the impostor and leaving a thin remainder of colour that could not conceal the depths beyond, dark and fathomless. Black as onyx.
What kneeled upon the bed was a reanimated corpse. A revenant.
An ash man.
A guttural growl crawled from the creature, its lips drawing back against gritted teeth, and it was hard to imagine how they had ever mistaken this creature for the lieutenant.
Pitch uttered a soft curse, his hands still aglow with a subtle but unmissable illumination. Christ, what effort it must be costing him not to explode in the face of such heinous taunts. The Morrigan had stooped to a fiendish low. Silas needed to remove the prince from this room, this goddamned asylum, at once.
Silas dragged the revenant off his knees, lifting him up so they were nearly eye to eye. The ash man did not fight him. Rather he dangled there, limp as the puppet that he was, with his eyelids heavy, as though he were nearly falling asleep. Silas gave the creature a violent shake. Its head snapped back and forth with an audible crunch.
Leaning in so he would fill the creature’s black vision, Silas addressed the sorceress watching them. ‘You and your whore daemon should relish the hours left to you, Macha. For I assure you, they are numbered.’ His voice reached a deep timbre, not far removed from a snarl. Silas tightened his grip and felt bone snap.
With the breaking of its collarbones, Macha’s creature came to life. Wriggling about, it was all loose-limbed and frantic, but its smile was still in place. Good god, that lip-splitting grin would haunt Silas’s dreams. The illusion cracked and fell away in places, ruining the pleasantness of Edward’s face to make it a patchwork of deathly horror. The gums were toothless, speckled in places with an odd mossy green, while the grey it mixed with would have matched the tombstone the ash man should be lying beneath.
A gurgle came from Macha’s creature. ‘Come into the fold.’ A cackle rent the air, twisted as a crow’s caw. ‘Samyaza will reward all his children when he returns.’
The words jolted Silas, held him locked for a moment. Oh god. Did the Morrigan know his truth? Silas’s unsteadiness was all the ash man needed.
Needling hands found Silas’s neck and snapped around them like an iron collar. The corpse dug its nails in, and strange, nonsensical words flowed from the creature’s bleeding lips. A chant that made Silas’s flesh crawl.
‘Silas,’ Pitch cried.
‘Stay back,’ Silas coughed. He wrapped his hands around the ash man’s wrists and crushed bone, but the revenant’s hold on his neck was unmoved. ‘I have this.’
No sooner were the words spoken when the ash man’s mouth opened wider than unbroken jaws would allow. A rush of foul, acrid air struck Silas in the face. The onslaught was instant, pure, intense, and devastating.
Good god, the anguish. He was fury, he was resentment and unimaginable loss. And each tangled up against one another so tightly they were a beast unto themselves.