Page 89 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

A punch to the back of the head laid Silas out, flat on his face, a mouthful of decaying leaf litter burying his tongue, and him unable to do anything about it with the whip in place. Before he could spit, he was grasped by the hair and dragged up and off his feet, lifted high before being driven back into the ground, slammed on his back. All the air was pushed from his lungs, the light wavering as the blow threw him to the edge of consciousness.

He blinked, odd sounds coming from him as he fought for breath. A heavy foot was planted on his chest. Boots of strange whorled leather crushed his hope of inhaling.

The Herlequin leered over him, his hood removed.

Through starlit vision, Silas took in the creature pinning him down and holding him more completely than the whip, still loose enough to allow a small freedom of movement that Silas had enough sagacity to keep hidden.

The Nephilim was only part monster, mostly human, with all the usual limbs.

The humanity of the creature’s mother was evident, but what a terrible babe he would have made. His angelic and purebred blood had not mixed well.

A slashed mouth and blackened teeth lay beneath a solitary, bloodshot eye, which sat centred over the bridge of a nose broken terribly and healed in a grotesque and crooked way. One side of his face looked as though it were melted, hanging longer than the other at the jowls, while on his head, tufts of hair clung to a scalp badly scarred– burns which brought to mind the scarring he’d seen upon Pitch’s back, when the amuletum failed at the greensward.

The comparison and the thought of his daemon brought on fresh resolve, and Silas tore his gaze from the silent Nephilim to seek out the ankou. ‘Your false goddess has not made you’– Silas coughed, gasping– ‘any less of a coward, Crane.’

‘Look at you, all brazen and defiant.’ Crane exaggerated a shiver. ‘Little wonder you have a prince on his knees for you. You are quite the sight when riled.’

Silas bit the inside of his lip, determined not to rise to the bait on offer, sickened to recall it was he who had revealed Pitch’s true identity to this fiend and his miscreants.

The Nephilim shifted, grinding his heel into the shallow valley between Silas’s ribs. Crane removed his glasses and took a moment to polish the glass with a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket.

‘I know it likely a waste of my breath.’ He huffed at the glass, holding the spectacles aloft, squinting as he inspected them. ‘Since I’ve been told you are incorruptible. But as my brother, I’d like to give you one last opportunity nonetheless, for we’d make a formidable team. Join me, Mr Mercer. Devote yourself to the goddess Morrigan, stand with us when the Watcher King rises, and you and I shall be his lords of the dead, together.’

Silas sought to laugh, but with all the pressures upon him, the Dullahan’s viselike whip and the Herlequin’s tonnage, the sound resembled a death rattle. ‘Piss off,’ he wheezed. ‘Never.’

Crane shrugged. ‘I didn’t think so. You are far too settled in the daemon’s bed. And who can blame you? He’s a fine specimen to fuck, by all accounts. But you can’t say I didn’t give you the opportunity to avoid unpleasantness.’ He lowered the hand raised to inspect his glasses. By the time it hung at his side, the spectacles had transformed.

Balthazar Crane flexed his fingers around the handle of his scythe. A dagger, its stiletto blade squared and tapered to a fine point, dull and mottled metal the shade of midnight shadows.

‘You’ll have to move, Herlequin. I must pierce his heart.’ Crane jerked his head at the Nephilim, who’d not yet released any of the pressure he brought to bear upon Silas’s chest. ‘Keep a heel to his head and hold him steady. He’s bound to flinch.’

A black-teeth-baring snarl crossed the Herlequin’s lips as he raised his foot from Silas’s chest. A ripple went through the surrounding riders of the Wild Hunt, who formed a near-perfect circle around them. The only stillness was where the Dullahan sat upon his roan, silent and watchful.

‘Make haste here.’ The Nephilim’s hideous, grating voice forced a grimace from Silas. ‘Iblis will be done with the daemon soon enough.’

‘Harm him, and there will be no world safe for you. I swear.’

With a throaty sound that crudely mimicked laughter, the Herlequin pressed his boot down upon Silas’s head.

‘Your lover is not who should concern you now, Mr Mercer.’ Crane knelt, straddling him at the hips. He held the hilt of his blade with both hands. ‘This is a waste, I’ll not deny it. A pity he has you so beguiled that you cannot see sense. I do hope he was worth it, for that daemon is costing you everything.’

Silas blinked, particles of dirt finding their way from the Herlequin’s boot to his eyes. He was bound and threatened and helpless, but did not resent why. Or for whom. ‘A price I pay gladly.’

The ankou sighed and raised his dagger overhead. Whispers from its blade caught at Silas’s ear. The dark goddess. Her promises glinted like diamonds and were sweet as mead. Morrigan’s lure was viciously strong. She desired what her sister possessed with a hunger that twisted every fibre of Silas’s being. But the ankou was right in one thing. Silas was beguiled. And it would take far, far more than divine promises to sway him from the daemon’s side. Or from Izanami, the goddess who’d put him there.

Crane plunged the dagger into Silas’s chest, shoving it between ribs, sinking it deep to where an unnaturally beating heart lay.

Silas’s cry tore at the air, a cacophony of sound not entirely his own. Izanami laid her echo upon his pain. The goddess thundered in to clash with her sister as the Morrigan’s scythe searched for Silas’s anchor point.

The tether that connected him to his goddess.

And to this wretched world.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

PITCH DUGhis dull, embered nails into the wood.

So he did not have a raging flame– each fingertip glowed with little more strength than that of a glowworm– but so damned what? He was strong, tenacious, and his reputation alone would give the Wild Hunt cause to falter, surely. He should not be here, kept away like a damned princess in her tower.