Page 95 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

‘This pissy Mary had them trembling on the Hellfield?’

‘Less Berserker Prince, more fucking Imbecile Prince, I’d say,’ said the other, so smug Pitch wanted to scratch his eyes out. ‘You sure we’ve got the right daemon, Captain? This one doesn’t seem much of anything to worry about. Crying over a fucking dead man.’

Not crying. Not dead. Not crying. Not dead.Pitch’s addled brain worked the thoughts over and over.

‘Secure him to the tree. Let’s have this done with.’ Dr Severs was direct, gruff, brooking no nonsense, and the angels in his service worked quickly to heed him.

Pitch was shoved against the broad stone girth of the oak, and they landed him so all his weight pressed upon the fresh wound. There was no holding back a scream. A horde of stars appeared before his eyes, and it took all his focus not to land himself in the darkness of unconsciousness. Good gods, he was pathetic.

It was through blinked tears that Pitch had his first glimpse of Iblis.

The angel was just as he recalled, wearing the unimpressive face of Dr Severs, a dull face with a square jaw and sagging jowls beneath, his eyes set slightly too close together to be pleasant. The only change of note was the absence of bristling muttonchops, the angel now clean-shaven. He was clad in those dreary black cloaks the Morrigan favoured, his bulky shape not flattered by the drape of material. All in all, Iblis was every bit as unimpressive as he’d been at the Fulbourn.

Odd he’d not used his halo at the asylum, but then, the Morrigan had been ill-prepared for the arrival of an idiot daemon and his ankou. And perhaps it would not have served a purpose against a daemon with all his faculties. Iblis had just been held off for a good long while by a haphazard cluster of forest dwellers. Embarrassing, really, considering what a decent halo was capable of.

The cold cinch of fear caught at him. Did Iblis’s strength falter because he’d already been busy with dispatching an ankou in the woods?

Pitch forced a shallow breath between his teeth. There was no place for paralysing fear here. He could not imagine the ankou gone for a moment. He yearned to touch the bandalore, find some reassurance there, but he was not about to betray the scythe.

‘Hold him steady, very steady.’ Iblis raised his arm and pointed towards Pitch. He spoke in hushed tones, uttering the language of the angels.

A flash of heat seared Pitch’s lips.

‘Fu…’ was all he managed before he could not utter another word. His lips refused to part, sealed with invisible thread he could feel pinning the swells of flesh together. Magick, of course. Divine. But of a level so low that it should have been easily repulsed, not nearly enough to silence him…were Pitch still the powerful Dominion he’d been created.

‘It seems I owe an apology to the blood witch. The Berserker Prince truly did wound himself in a simple trap.’ Iblis’s gaze fell to Pitch’s ankle. ‘And is having trouble healing. I thought all that blood around the trap a ruse, that you had realised the use of blood magick and sought to divert us. But that was the plan of that stupid horse, seeking to lead us astray, forgetting the djinn are hardly the only masters of illusion. Macha has developed a useful aptitude for it, knows how to sniff it out when it’s being used.’ He reached beneath his cloak and withdrew a handful of pure white, or rather, mostly white, strands. Crimson stained the fine lengths he held.

Pitch spewed maddened curses against the backs of his lips, as powerless to stop his gagging as he was to prevent tight shackles being snapped over his wrists, a short thick length of metal between them forcing his hands almost palm to palm. His arms were lifted with brutish disregard, and his hands shoved against the tree. Every second of the rearrangement was a torment for his wound. His cries felt as though they might shatter his clenched teeth. But gods…Hastings…these cunts had killed Sybilla’s mare. They had brought down one of the Lady’s horses.

‘Make sure he can’t move about, Zaquiel.’ Iblis tossed away the clump of Hastings’s mane as though discarding rotten fruit. Pitch’s hatred blazed hot and pure. ‘I’d like a word with the prince before he is dealt with, and I want his full attention.’

‘But, sir, should we not–’

‘There is time. He is alone. Now do as you are told.’

Pitch stiffened. Not from pain now or fear and anger, but at mention of being alone. He struggled against the tide of possibilities that came at him. If they had dispatched Hastings…could they do worse? Pitch shook himself. Refusing to listen to his fears. He wasnotalone.

‘Yes, Captain.’

Zaquiel, another impossible survivor of the Day of Ruination and the Flood, complied with a sharp half bow. How many of these pricks had survived along with their captain? This angel was nearly as dull as Iblis in appearance, with uninteresting brown hair cut suitably for a banking clerk, eyebrows too bushy by half, and a figure notable for neither litheness nor overindulgence, falling plainly in the realm of unremarkable. A purposeful disguise perhaps? They were all so very average that few would give them a second glance. Their humdrum brown auras were the most interesting thing about them.

Zaquiel stretched to tamper with the cuffs that bound Pitch. He leaned in so close that Pitch’s nostrils filled with the ripe tang of sweat and leather. Next came a solid clunk, a click and clack, as though a lock were being assembled. The angel shoved at the metal that connected the cuffs, a violent jolt that knocked Pitch’s head back against the tree. He struggled as best he could, but his best was far, far from good enough of late, and he could not risk fainting with the pain. Within moments he was locked fast to the remnants of the Major as though the ancient oak were a giant magnet and not wood-made-stone at all. Pitch groaned and dug his bare heels against the tree, trying to ease the pressure at his shoulders. With his toes barely able to touch the ground, he was like a sack of heavy grain, his wrists taking all the weight of his body.

‘Stand back now.’

Zaquiel and the other angel, the only thing making him less dull than his fellow soldier the hint of auburn in his hair, did as they were told, and Iblis stepped forward. He drew the halo from beneath the folds of his cloak.

Well, the semblance of a halo. What a miserable piece of weaponry. A knife of sorts, though one created from an assembly of parts, the joins in the claret-red metal running like black horizontal veins along a blade that had a crooked left lean. Little wonder Iblis had not seen fit to flash it about before now.

The angel stuck its pointed tip against Pitch’s belly, down low near where the corset flared a little over his hip bone. Measly in appearance as it was, the halo was bitingly sharp, cutting through the corset’s boning, and into his flesh. The angel barely appeared to exert himself.

Pitch’s anger burned. It was a damned fine corset, one that was holding him together, and the fucking angel dared put his blasted blade through it.

With the penetration of the blade into his body came a stirring. At long, long last, the faint restlessness of the wildness. The beast murmuring like a hibernating bear disturbed. Reaching out to where Pitch was impaled, circling the wound, as a predator around an injured beast. Pitch moaned against his gag, a sound the angels mistook for pain.

‘We shall put you out of your misery soon enough,’ Iblis said, though thankfully he did not punctuate the statement with any cringe-worthy villainous grin. He spoke as though stating a simple truth and dug the knife in an inch further. ‘But my master would like to know your secrets, angel-slayer.’

Iblis turned the blade, and searing pain followed. The wildness slunk around the halo’s invasion, but kept its distance, no bloody help at all. Pitch tried to pull his belly in, alleviate the burn, but the tree he was pinned against gave him nowhere to go.