Page 116 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

Where the blazes did it think it was going?

Harut quickened the stroke of his wings, rising higher again as Iblis fell back towards the tail end of this strange carriage of raven cloud. Sybilla, if she were still there, did not make herself known again.

A violent cry came from the birds, a unison that only vaguely hinted at their number, being more like the roar of one enraged beast. Harut jumped, the yank on Pitch’s limbs nearly intolerable, and Iblis suddenly plummeted. The wall of ravens parted. The Watcher angel pressed his wings in tight against his body, sliding through the narrow space created by the birds and shooting downwards headfirst. The part in the feathered curtain showed only more thickness of the fog beneath, no hint of the ground now, for which Pitch was foolishly thankful.

Iblis’s translucent wings spread wide, glistening and unsettlingly beautiful. When upon the Hellfield, Pitch had had little interest in angelic flight, commonplace as it was. But here…here it sickened him.

The ravens reorganized, closing in to form a prison once more. Pitch exhaled. It was the strangest sensation to hang there in silence while all around the world erupted, and a will-o’-the-wisp sought to find a hiding place between his shoulder blades. But he could not blame Scarlet for choosing to conceal itself, especially beneath the bunched drape of Silas’s coat. Pitch would have done the same if he could so much as move a finger with ease.

Another raucous cry came from the black-winged mass surrounding him. And there too, faintly visible through the minute gaps, a flicker of yellow light. Zaquiel yelled something Pitch did not catch, something that may have been from one of the wads of languages spoken by the fae, but he was admittedly distracted by Scarlet’s reemergence along his arm. The wisp was somewhere in between shirt and coat, and he could feel its struggle not to pull the sleeve down as it used it as a crude ladder to climb up. It was only the sweat on Pitch’s body holding the material in place at all. Too hard a tug and the wisp would end up back near his armpit.

Pitch craned his unhappy neck and glimpsed a bulge beneath the coat arm. A strangely large bulge, considering how small the wisp was. A sudden blast of wind gave Harut a jolt that Pitch feared would shake him loose. A cry smacked against his gag, and he let his head drop, fingers clenching at air as instinct had him lunging for something to hold on to. The wind surged, hurtling Harut forward, pushing the angel to breathtaking speed. Either they had just flown into a tailwind of astonishing magnitude, or an air elemental was lending their hand to Pitch’s stolen journey.

The ravens moved in a dark whirlwind, a rotation that tightened with each sweep of Harut’s wings. Pitch was lifted by the speed, dragged out behind the angel as Harut leaned forward to level himself with the sky before banking hard right, a violent move that swung Pitch out nearly horizontal for a heart-stopping moment. He whimpered against his gag, the sudden shift cruel against all the injured parts of him.

This helplessness was infuriating. The alone time in his own head repulsive.

Perhaps heart-stopping was exactly what he should aim for. He sniffed, the sound horridly moist.

Iblis had threatened Sybilla with dropping his prisoner, had laughed at the mess it would make of an imperfect Dominion prince. But what if that threat was the solution?

If Prince Vassago were completely broken, then he was no use to SeraphielorAzazel. He may survive his injuries, he may not. Either way he’d be no use to anyone for a long, decent while as his bones knitted themselves back from fragments and his mind was remoulded from mush.

Perhaps it was the chill of wind-sped air freezing his sensibilities, but the idea seemed perfectly logical, so long as he ignored how furious Silas would be. But the ankou would see, in time, that it was for the best. That Pitch had given everyone who fought for him the only thing he could.

Nothing to fight for. A way out of this chaos. They’d all be free.

Silas would be free.

And hurting. He will mourn.Pitch shook off the thought. Better a few tears now than greater horrors later.

His mind set, his purpose fixed, Pitch bucked his hips.

His first attempt to shake off the angel had him nearly screaming his gag off, as pain wracked his entire body. But the angel lurched violently, spitting out an equally violent reprimand.

‘You stupid prick,’ Harut shouted. ‘Stay fucking still.’

This hare-brained idea might just work, if Pitch didn’t black out in the process. He readied for another wild thrash.

And flinched at a sharp pain at his wrist. He tried to lift his head to see what new affliction ailed him. A flash of yellow lit up the air.

The entire flock tilted, as though the sky had suddenly vanished from beneath their wings.

‘Faster, damn you!’ Harut shouted. No, he screamed it.

Another sharp tap came at Pitch’s wrist, as though from beneath the nekhri cuff itself. For fuck’s sake, he was so tired of hurting.

Pitch shouted his discontent into the bind– right as another blast of light, and severe tilt of the shrouding mass, had Harut hollering obscenities at his air elemental and ordering their wind ever faster. Pitch’s neck cricked as Harut too was thrown off kilter by whatever it was rocking his raven-made boat.

A Valkyrie, most likely. Dark and mad and coming for Pitch. Gods, she was insufferable, ruining his plans to extricate them all from this freak show. If he hurled himself clear of Harut now, the Valkyrie would no doubt make some noble plunge to save him. Likely get herself killed in the process.

‘We should kill this bastard and be done with it.’ Zaquiel’s voice, though Pitch could not see him from where he hung.

He’d not been called a bastard in at least a day. He’d rather missed it. Especially when it made the speaker as furious as it did here.

‘You heard Iblis,’ Harut returned.

A nasty burning sensation riddled Pitch’s right wrist. And for a horrifying moment, he thought Zaquiel had decided to cut off his hand, seeing as he could not kill him entirely. A pat at his knuckles let him know Scarlet was there, up at the summit where he was bound.