Page 77 of The Simurgh

Silas raised the card, turning the gilded picture to face him. His pulse was at a gallop, his mouth dry. He darted his gaze between the illustration of the chalk-white tower with its toppling blue and gold crown, and those that stood real, undamaged, and impossibly identical before him.

Almostidentical.

Silas went still. There. A tower towards the back of the cluster. Unremarkable in height, and with a feature he’d not have noticed if it weren’t for how the defect gleamed at him from the tarot card.

The tower had a gold coronet at the base of its cap like all the others, but, just as it was on the tarot card, one of the pearls of the simple crown was not gleaming golden, but a dull copper hue.

‘Tyvain, you wonderful hag.’

Silas laughed, a wild burst that startled a small winged creature admiring itself in the shiny diamond tips of the pine-like trees.

He had found his prince.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

IBLIS DREWout his pitiful halo. Certainly it had inflicted some injury, Pitch had the belly wounds to prove it, but to see it now instilled more derision than fear. The patchworked device was an embarrassment to Angelics everywhere: a short, claret-hued blade with its sections so clearly fastened together, dark veins giving away the places where the metal had been melded.

‘Get it over with.’ Pitch bared his teeth. ‘Or are you afraid,littleangel?’

Harut stepped in and delivered a remarkably powerful punch to the guts, one Pitch was not quite ready for, but on the advantageous side, it made the playacting far more realistic. It was not quite so difficult to exaggerate his broken, at-wits-end daemon act when he was so winded it was several heartbeats before he could take a full breath. And by that time his eyes were streaming, drool mixed with blood on his lips, and he was, it had to be said, rather pissed off.

‘Step aside, Harut.’ Iblis sounded as drained as his flock of maleficium-wielding children. ‘I need no protection from his vitriol.’

The angel bobbed his head, sent Pitch one last smirk, and stepped away.

‘Good riddance to you, Prince Vassago. I cannot say I’ll miss you,’ Iblis said, raising the knife, the angelfire bright in the seams. The glint it gave to the angel’s eye made him appear slightly mad. ‘But I shall enjoy telling the ankou of the noise of agony you made when I killed you, before we do the same to him, and all those of the Order who strive to keep Samyaza’s halo from us.’ His grin was crooked. ‘You were quite taken with the ankou, weren’t you? A pity he is another loss you can add to your tally.’

Pitch lifted his head, feeling calmer than he’d ever done before in his long life.

‘I am very taken with him, Dr Severs. You are right.’ Pitch smiled, warm with the dancing specks of flame that built and built in his blood, filling his core where the great open space gave them room to move once more. ‘But you are wrong about what I have lost. And even more mistaken if you think that this is the end.’

Macha must have heard something in his words for the sorcerer cried out, ‘Father, beware!’

Pitch set his flames free.

They tore from him, poured from him, erupted from that place between his shoulder blades where they suffered no hindrance, coming in great currents that shuddered through him. Wild lashes of fire burned with a sharp shade of orange, white-hot edges shimmering.

Harut was far too slow, and was the first to die, going up with a deafening whoosh, his wings only half-manifested by the time he was turned to a statue of fragile ash by the lash of a firey ribbon.

Iblis let out a cry to the sorcerers. ‘Take cover, take cover.’

But the exit was behind Pitch, and the room had been made purposely empty so a surly daemon had no tools to turn into weapons. A pity they were all so intent on the simurgh, and Vassago’s perceived weakness, that they seemed to have overlooked the fact that the Beserker Prince existed long before the Cultivation. And he was born a weapon.

Iblis released a spray of angelfire, searing white light. Pitch used his dangled position to his advantage, jerking his body into a swing, angling just so and glancing the blast off a lowered wing of pure fire.

The screams were glorious, the terror he heard around him better than a master’s symphony.

The Berserker Prince had been restrained, one way or another, for far too long. But that mad creature of the Hellfield broke the surface now, and what a fucking glorious feeling it was to know again that insatiable need to destroy. To have a sole purpose.

To bring down his enemies.

It was perfect. All those he despised in one room like this. And as soon as this party was finished, he’d be free at last to find that doltish great man and stop him before he set foot in this insipid place.

I will find you.

And Silas Mercer did not lie about such things.

Another blast of angelfire came, and Pitch’s flame swatted it away like it were a fly on rotted fruit. His day had gone from horseshit to sublime in an instant. The simurgh had been a leech sucking him dry. These fools had granted him freedom, with the breaking of Edward’s seal, and the ruining of the amuletum. And with that freedom came bliss.