Page 110 of The Simurgh

Now was the time. Here lay the crossroads he’d always known himself destined to meet.

Whilst the metal burned his skin and the simurgh pained his heart, Lucifer chose his path.

And prayed to his lord for forgiveness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

‘STAY HERE!’ Silas shouted, and he ran. ‘I’ll have the scythe protect you.’

‘This ring?’ Pitch called, brandishing his hand. ‘Do you intend to kill the Herlequin with jealousy when he learns I am spoken for?’

Silas’s laugh was a little wild. ‘You are impossible.’

‘And you love it.’

‘I do indeed.’

Silas bolted, fast enough to cause his head to snap back. But the sand did not intend to make things easy. Every step went at least ankle-deep, and took a grunt and a curse to pull free of. He tried using his hands to claw himself upwards, but his feet moved faster than his top half, and twice he nearly found himself with his head buried in the sand.

When he could not see the Nephilim a new idea formed. He’d not go straight up, but along, and come at the creature from an unsuspected angle.

Silas narrowed in on that prickle at the back of his neck, that sense of the Herlequin’s temper as he tried, again and again, to hinder Silas’s mind and failed.

As Silas clambered with no elegance whatsoever up the dune, narrowing the gap between him and the Nephilim, he focused upon his scythe, shaping it as he saw fit. He chose a broadsword with a simple basket-hilt, a blade long enough that it would serve him well to dislodge the Nephilim from his horse.

Last time they’d met, the Nephilim carried no weapon but his hands, and his mind. They’d almost been enough to put down Silas’s fight.

Not this time.

Silas’s exertions had him sweating, this blasted dune never ending as every step he took also inched him back, sliding with the loosened grains. He travelled horizontally a short while, then shifted tack. Upward. Straight up.

And it was hell upon the thighs, the knees.

But the prickles at his neck became knife-tips slipping between the bone. And racing along the sand towards him was a great shadow, betraying the Nephilim’s position.

‘There you are.’

Silas flipped the sword upside down, and dug its tip in like a pickaxe. With the new stability, the boots shot him over the crest, and for a moment he felt what it really was to fly. His feet left the ground, and his vision filled with black horseflesh and dulled light as Silas moved into the Herlequin’s shadow.

The Nephilim let out a roar, dragging at his mount’s reins with a vicious tug. The shire horse screamed, rearing, sending a huge spray of sand into the air as it turned towards Silas’s attack.

He struck out blindly–so it was unsurprising to find himself hacking thin air. A lurch sideways, a spin to give himself time to clear his eyes of the grit, and Silas was turning once more. Finding his prey.

The Nephilim had dismounted. He cast a shadow long as an oak was tall.

Christ, Silas knew him to be large, but had he been this gargantuan when last they’d met? This wretched creature towered over him, a decent head and chest so. Shoulders stiff and broad as the yoke that bound two oxen together on the plough. His face, of dragging skin, slashed mouth, and broken nose, leered above Silas.

‘Impressive assault, brother.’

The raspy voice was bad enough, but it was the name that had Silas flinching. ‘I am not your fucking brother.’

‘You are Nephilim.’ The voice was nails upon chalkboard. ‘Denying it does not make it less so.’

The Herlequin’s dark leather coat was so heavy that it didn’t shift as he moved, save for a subtle sway, adding to his illusion of monstrous grandeur. His singular eye locked upon Silas, and he drew forth a weapon, from gods knew where. A flail. A ball with jutting, vicious spikes hung from a short chain of dark links.

‘You should not have come here if you wish to survive.’ He bared blackened teeth, swinging the ball like a pendulum before him.

Silas’s laugh was bitterness personified. ‘We have that in common at least.’