Page 99 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

His grief was a quagmire, and he’d not fight its pull. Perhaps, if he was lucky, it would drown him. Finally. Once and for all.

Thick fangs drove into his arse cheek, a crushing bite that even misery could not deny.

Silas bellowed his unhappiness, jolting upright. Clarity rushed in like a dam bursting. Pitch was not dead. The certainty that had consumed Silas was a goddamned lie. Pitch had not been stolen from him. For Christ’s sake, Silas was death’s messenger. A loss of such magnitude would never escape him.

He was utterly, immovably certain.

‘Shit, you are a foolish man,’ Silas cursed himself for falling prey to the Herlequin’s mindplay. ‘Get off your damned knees.’

The hound had already moved on. Forneus was set to the task at hand, as Silas should bloody well be. He pressed to his feet with a cantankerous hiss, his butt cheek throbbing where the hound had made his mark.

A collision of two great bodies shook the ground.

The skriker clung to the Herlequin’s broad back, his jaws locked on the creature’s shoulder, both of them releasing sounds that would sit well in hell, but the sight nearly comical for all the Nephilim’s failed efforts to dislodge his passenger. He stumbled about, huge feet slippery upon the leaf litter which seemed to have turned itself to ice beneath him. The bulk of his massive arms prevented him from reaching easily for the biting, tearing hound upon his back, and the Herlequin became an absurd, maddened ballerina, seeking to dislodge the creature who ate into him.

Silas turned his attentions back to the ankou.

To where Balthazar Crane stepped from the brook. His scythe was in hand, water gleaming on his ridiculous muttonchops, his eyes glinting with a fever not borne entirely of grim purpose. There was fear there too.

Silas drew on all his ample height, looking down on the turncoat. He barely recognised his own voice when he spoke. ‘Your time is done with, Mr Crane.’ Venom impaled every word. ‘You will relinquish that blade to me. Now.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE WHITESof Iblis’s eyes seeped into the dull brown of his irises, tangling there as the brambles had done so valiantly around the clearing. The angel’s body stiffened in the way of one expecting a blow. He was muttering, so low and soft Pitch could not make out the words over his own grunts of discomfort.

A subtle shudder ran through Iblis, before his body relaxed.

‘There you are, little prince.’ The voice that emerged from between the angel’s lips was not his own. ‘Give your secrets to me.’

A ludicrous request. And if Pitch could have moved his lips, he would have sneered. As it was, the best he could manage was a sniff and a roll of his eyes.

Iblis’s smile was wooden, his eyes a horrid blend of his own and…another’s. Pitch’s blood ran cold. Understanding what he was seeing. Scrying. Of an order few could manage. This was intensely powerful divine magick, to scry through another living being, rather then through an innate piece of onyx.

Pitch was not certain who stared out at him– and was not sure he wished to know. If it was one of the sorcerers, their mastery of divine magick was deeply concerning; and if it was not, then it was an angel of the highest ranks, a Cultivator he had not the slightest inclination to meet.

Iblis began to chant. His flat tones could be mistaken for droll mutterings wafting in from a monastery, so close to a hum that it was difficult to discern if words were being spoken at all.

Pitch’s body hummed too, but with instinctual alarm. A dire predicament had become infinitely more so with the hidden observer, and yet he was still abandoned by the blasted wildness. A power that had been nearly uncontrollable only a week ago was now a loafing, lazy passenger. Pitch shifted, working his wrists against the stone-lodged cuffs while trying very hard not to disturb Iblis’s blade. As it was, he was bleeding. The heat spilled beneath the corset, running along the slanted muscle at the inside of his hip and being channelled towards his very unhappy cock. For the first time, he regretted a lack of drawers, which was truly the most farcical thought to have while hanging at the mercy of avenging angels, but at least it was some distraction from the dreary singalong. It pained Pitch’s ears to listen, even though there was a noticeable rhythm now to the odious tones, and a quickening of the pace. One that pulsed in time with his own heart, which in turned raced harder and faster with each word the angel uttered.

Pitch grunted against his gag– feeling altogether very odd.

Which was saying something, considering the wrecked state he was in. Iblis sidled in closer, bringing his mouth level with Pitch’s ear. Gods, he hoped his underarms reeked. It was the very least the Watcher angel deserved. Iblis’s breath stirred the hair hanging around Pitch’s ear, and his monotone uttering sent a thrill of shivers scrambling along Pitch’s spine.

Was that worrisome? Was he afraid? Why could he not decide?

This was the type of moment where a daemon’s foul mouth usually served him well. A vulgar suggestion of what the angel could do with his tongue would normally be flung out to unsettle the occasion. Instead, Pitch was muted, and rather…well, he was feeling peculiar. That hum of alarm beneath his skin, the panic that had plagued him of late, wasn’t gathering strength. It was…lackadaisical. What a fantastical word. He truly must use it more often. He grinned behind lips that could not shape a smile.

Lackadaisical. Lacka…daisi…cal. Imagine trying to teach that word to the ankou? Pitch breathed through his nostrils, exhaling the last shreds of jittery alarm. He wished he could speak. He wanted to ask them when Silas was arriving at the little party. He wanted to tell him about lackadaisical.

‘Be honest with me.’ Iblis’s words, or rather whoever sat at the back of his eyes, found their shape. ‘Be honest with me.’

The words touched at Pitch’s mouth like the tips of a feather. He rolled his head back and forth but wasn’t sure he wanted to avoid them. Something was definitely off-kilter, and yet, at the same time, he could not recall feeling so relaxed in a long while. The angel traced his finger along Pitch’s lips and took up his humming once more. The black of his pupils blew wide, obliterating the brown that was already being strangled by the whites. In the onyx depths, another eye opened.

Pitch flinched, only to find his skull thumping against stone. Where had that wall come from?

‘He played with you, didn’t he?’ That voice. It was familiar. That godsdamned voice. ‘Seraphiel had a purpose for his little mindless prince. Show me what it is. Be honest with me.’

Pitch coughed against the fastening upon his mouth, vaguely aware that he needed to swallow desperately, but it was as though his mind and body could take on only one thought at a time. And all he could think, all he could hear in his head…was Azazel.