Page 110 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

A curse was flung from the fog.

‘From the east she comes,’ Iblis roared. ‘Zaquiel, turn about.’

Pitch saw them then. A squall of company arriving. Not justshebutthey.

Sirin. At least a half dozen of the creatures, with their almost-human female heads, save for the hawkish noses and wide-set eyes, their bodies bedecked in colourful feathers.

The sirin battled against the wind that worked hard to drive them back, while a huge shape loomed at the back of their ranks like a great menacing storm cloud. A winged glory that Pitch watched from his upside-down perch, the blood roaring in his ears, his heart in all manner of disarray. Scarlet perched on his earlobe like a miniature jockey, squealing with unmistakable excitement.

As well it should. A Valkyrie in flight made for a formidable view. Sybilla swept towards them like a piece of night had grown wings. Pitch’s pulse hammered. By the gods, she was magnificent. Even upside down.

A cawing cacophony soured Pitch’s elation.

The whiteness of the fog took on a green tinge as he struggled to find the source of the noise. There was no easy way to move about where he hung, no pleasant twist of his neck to find. Scarlet went mad with chattering and poked at his jawbone, urging his head a certain way.

The way opposite to Sybilla’s grand approach.

A huge unkindness of ravens bore down on them. Their clustered formation was like the warped fin of an ocean predator, slicing through the fog.

The Valkyrie would need all the sirin she had.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

SILAS CAMEaround, nursing a headache that far exceeded any he’d yet endured in this lifetime. Brandy could not hope to accomplish what a horse’s hoof managed. His eyes were tightly closed, and for now he chose to leave them that way.

‘Oh fuck.’ He touched the side of his head where the throb was fiercest. His fingers came away sticky with cooled blood.

What the hell had happened? His thoughts were haphazard, clambering over one another in their haste to be seen. But the loudest of them was simple. A horse’s rump, a flash of silver upon a broad hoof.

His stomach roiled, and he was faintly aware that his arse was damp.

Whispering came from his surrounds, hushed sounds Silas thought at first were only inside his pounding head.

Wake, ankou. You are needed.

He knew without any searching that it was a teratism who spoke to him. Needed?

‘Shit.’ Silas’s eyes flew open, and he whimpered at the brightness that stung him. ‘Where is he?’ The world beyond his lids was blurred with light, his sight taking its sweet time to adjust. Silas needed tosee, damn it. ‘Pitch? Are you there?’

But he knew the answer already. There was an emptiness here that sat heavy as nightfall.

He is taken.

Silas staggered to his feet, trying to focus on the shapes gathered around him. ‘Where, where have they taken him?’

The skies.

A scowl was a terrible idea, almost as bad as trying to stand so quickly after being knocked out cold. Everything tilted, including Silas himself. He threw out his hands, trying to find an anchor, and found a moving roughness he clung to. The teratism had survived. He had one ally here at least.

‘Speak clearly,’ he demanded. ‘He is gone?’

The angels are on the wing–

‘Angels? More than one?’

Three. The daemon with them. Alive.

Silas’s vision cleared enough to reveal he was braced against the hunchbacked creature who had followed him from the Fulbourn.