Chapter Nineteen

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE RADIANCE of daemonflame met the striking brilliance of angelfire. The collision was catastrophic, and the ensuing shock wave massive enough to shake the moon on its axis and make the mountains tremble.

Lucifer's scream was not entirely forged from pain. There was victory there, too, triumph and battlelust. The colliding power sent him hurtling back to the earth, whilst Michael shot up into the invisible depths of the night, ever more the comet.

Pitch had less distance to travel.

He slammed against the ground, forming his own crater; the dirt splaying up in a high, scattering wave.

Lucifer's body hit the ground somewhere nearby, the thud holding a finality that quickened Pitch's heartbeat, but he could not move a limb; his body rife with the counterflow of the attack, his own flame an inferno within. The simurgh goaded it on, hungry for more.

Pitch rolled himself over, dug his hands into the heated dirt, and began to climb out of the hole he'd created. His clothes were in absolute tatters; it was a miracle he was not emerging naked. Pitch struggled, just shy of the lip of the crate, the simurgh violence throwing him off-kilter.

‘Enough.' He ground his teeth against the violent stirrings. ‘It is done. Let me be.'

The brush of something against his hair startled him and the jerk of his head made his neck ache.

Chollima stood over him, reins dangling within reach. He grabbed at them and allowed the stallion to haul him fully out of this unsuitable grave. Lucifer lay down at the base of the slope Pitch's impact had made. The king was alive, though in no fine form, his skin smoking, most of his clothes burned away; some fabric remaining around his waist giving him the appearance of wearing blackened shorts.

Pitch sought to find his bearings. To find the cave, and Silas. The ankou was halfway down the slope, sliding in his haste.

‘Pitch? Thank god. Are you injured?'

‘No. Stay up there.' Pitch peered past him. The scythe had reshaped to a large panel, like something from the side of an ocean liner; certainly big enough to cover most of the entrance to the caved. ‘Lalassu…did she…where is she?'

But he found the Pale Horse before Silas answered. Pitch's blood cooled. His flame stuttered, as a surge of something hard and vile and painful overcame him. The simurgh slunk into the depths, as though it too could not bear to witness her state.

Lalassu was down, on her side; a grievous burn consuming her flank and a great portion of her belly. A dark and dangerous scourge across her storm-green coat.

‘Is she…' He couldn't finish.

‘She's alive, but her injuries are severe.' Silas was reaching for him, but Pitch shrank away.

‘That is my fault.' He took one step back into the hollow in the earth. ‘I shouldn't have gone out…I should have stayed.'

‘Give me your hand, Pitch.' Silas cursed as loosened rock made his footing precarious.

Chollima pulled at the reins that Pitch still held, snorting softly. ‘I didn't listen…Gods, what have I done?'

‘Michael is the reason she lies there, not you, Pitch. Give me your hand. Let us go.'

But he couldn't. Silas was lying. With the best of intentions, but lying nonetheless. Michael was not the reason the mare was down. The fault lay with Pitch. With his fool-hardy, ill-planned actions.

‘Go you fool.' Lucifer's rasp dragged Pitch from his horror.

The king swayed on his knees, scorched to a mere shadow of himself; his stance giving Pitch full view of an appalling wound upon his thigh. He was a grievous sight to behold; with so many bruises upon his skin that barely any pale flesh remained, and his eyes sunken, no hint of a spark there at all.

And he was missing a crucial finger.

‘Your vestige,' Pitch gasped. ‘Michael destroyed it?'

‘He took it,' Lucifer spat. ‘As he took the scar where my flesh was taken for your creation. That is how he found you.' He lost himself to a violent coughing fit, one that projected dark fluid onto the ground around him. Fluid that blinked out some of the specks of light surrounding him. It was as though diamonds lay there in the dirt and rock, highlighted by the strengthening glow of the moon. Pitch blinked. Not diamonds at all, but rather the fragile, minuscule bodies of the peri. Those who had helped a daemon to soar. ‘Leave…before he recovers enough to return.'

Silas's shadow was large and encompassing; comforting with its sheltering darkness as the ankou reached him. ‘Pitch, please. We must go.'

A whinny set Pitch's heart racing, his hopes soaring higher than the bastard angel who'd brought them so low.

‘Lalassu?' Pitch gasped.

But it was not the Pale Horse who heralded them.

Sanu had emerged from the cave. Silas's scythes having parted enough for her to emerge where the man-made wall was lowest. The wall that Pitch had so foolishly climbed. She stood over Lalassu, lowering her head to touch at her downed companion.

Lalassu tilted her nose to find the other mare, and Pitch's breath hitched to see it was as Silas had promised. She lived.

Chollima answered the Red Horse's call, and pushed at Pitch's arm, urging him forward. Silas waited with arms half-lifted, treating Pitch in that way he sometimes did, as though he were a skittish horse himself, ready to bolt.

But they had long ago run out of places to run. And Lucifer was right, Pitch was a bloody fool if he lingered.

He'd brought about the downfall of the djinn horse, and now he stood here in the open, lit by moonlight, in a landscape where a seraph licked his wounds, and those who travelled with him were vulnerable.

Where a daemon king lay stripped and wounded and hardly recognisable.

Lucifer would not survive, if Michael did.

‘We can't leave him here,' he said.

Silas nodded. ‘Shall I carry him?'

‘Don't you dare,' Lucifer hissed. ‘You will leave me. Do not disgrace me with your pity.'

But Silas understood. He always did. The ankou turned his attention from Pitch, albeit with a reluctance he made no effort to hide, and crouched beside Lucifer.

‘Can you stand at all? Or shall we have Sanu –'

‘Are you deaf? Get on with you. Don't touch me. I warn you,' the daemon hissed, and grimaced, and spat more of the dark spittle. But the fact that he did not get to his feet, nor even try, told Pitch enough. Lucifer's wounds were nefarious.

With his own back still aching from his meeting with the ground, Pitch took one arm, whilst Silas took Lucifer's other, and together they began the laborious climb carrying the king between them. Chollima followed behind, picking his way carefully, supporting Lucifer when the shale slipped beneath Silas's feet, or Pitch stumbled against a rock he'd not had the foresight to notice.

As they struggled along, Lucifer berated them, and insisted they release him at once.

Pitch gave his sire a withering look. ‘I'm blamed for one seraph's death, perhaps now another. I'll be fucked if I'll add a daemon king to my tally. Now shut your fucking mouth.'

After a few more feeble attempts at protest, Lucifer fell quiet, his chin bobbing at his chest, his body weight suddenly more cumbersome.

‘Is he still conscious?' Silas asked at one point.

‘No, thank the gods.'

‘He's a grumpy one to be sure.' A hobgoblin with swollen cheeks and a red-tipped nose was seated upon Chollima's saddle, appearing from apparently nowhere. ‘But to be fair, that other angel gave him a right seeing too, and I don' t mean in the pleasurable way.'

‘Gods, how did the daemon build such a following of miscreants?'' Pitch's thighs strained with the load and steepness. Each step drew them ever nearer to where Lalassu lay, with Sanu standing guard. The red horse watched him, he felt keenly the sharpness of her gaze.

‘We found him, not the other way around. Though truth be told, the altercation was hard to miss. And when we heard it involved Silas Mercer, well, we couldn't just stand by. Such a good fellow you are, putting up with troublesome company and all.'

‘Stop with that.' Silas scowled at the ground; most of Lucifer's weight rested on him. ‘Pitch is as decent and brave as I. More so. And you'd do well to hold your tongue if you are going to say anything else to the contrary. He has endured more than you or I could ever hope to survive.'

Pitch flinched, thankful for the bulk of Lucifer between them, so he could avoid the look he knew Silas directed at him. The one that said he believed every word he'd just spoken.

‘That's what Billy's cousin Gilmore is always saying. He works down in that Holly Village he does, and says he's never seen a fellow in more pain and yet still standing. Says you're a right prick, Mr Astaroth, but one who has a heart he tries to hide. They've seen it, mind you, down in the Forest of Dean, and in Sherwood. Your heart that is. But we aren't sure why you need to be so darn wild and frightening and bloodthirsty.'

‘Another word,' Silas growled. ‘And you'll find there are two such creatures in your midst. Help us, or leave us.'

The hobgoblin said not another word. Who would dare after such a command? Pitch allowed himself to thrill, just a little, at being the object of the ankou's formidable defence.

Sanu sent aid, in the last few feet, by way of the threads of her mane. She wove them about Lucifer's middle, and took most of his weight, doing a decent job of keeping him somewhat upright. Pitch stepped away as the horse and ankou took over Lucifer's care.

Then, there was no more time to avoid Lalassu, and her frightful, sickening injury. The halo's burn was not so different to that which marked Sybilla's skin. The curious green-grey of Lalassu's coat replaced with vile black tightness that still smoked. Her eyes, usually the colour of a daisy's middle, were dull. The glow that reflected from them came from Scarlet, who sat in the hollow beneath Lalassu's ear: where the curve of her cheek met her neck. The wisp crooned to the horse, humming in their nonsense way, for which Pitch would be eternally grateful, because he felt it…the comfort in the sound.

He sank to his knees beside the Pale Horse. His stomach a painful knot, his throat, his body, aching with what it was to see his mistake laid out so plainly.

‘What do we do?' His hands hovered over her muzzle, but he feared touching her. He'd done damage enough already. ‘How do I take away your pain?'

Lalassu lifted her nose, stretching towards him. Pitch drew in a shaking breath, and gods, his eyes pained him. He shuffled nearer, and the Pale Horse rested her head in his lap, a heavy sigh leaving her. Scarlet sang softly, the nearest to a discernible tune he'd yet heard from the wisp. Lalassu's eyelids dragged, the horse fighting the urge to sleep.

A shadow cast across them, but Pitch dared not look up.

He knew Silas stood there, and it was difficult enough to look Lalassu in the eye.

If he glimpsed blame, or pain, or grief in Silas's gaze, Pitch would not find his feet again. He bowed forward, touching his forehead to the mare's cheek. She was warm. Her scent that of horseflesh, and summer days and wide open fields.

‘I'm so sorry,' he whispered.

Scarlet hummed their comfort. Silas knelt down beside him, one broad hand laying gently on Pitch's back, the other caressing Lalassu's nose. The ankou's breathing was shallow, unsteady. His tears made dark marks against the mare's pale coat.

‘I'm so sorry,' Pitch said, again.

‘She knows.' Silas rubbed his back, and kissed his hair. ‘And I know, darling.'

Go on now.

Pitch didn't flinch at the voice, though he could not say who it belonged to. The lady perhaps. Lalassu's own. One or the other. Both. He nodded, rubbing his forehead against the coarseness of the mare's pale coat, the pressure behind his eyes unbearable.

It did not matter where the voice came from, only what it encouraged.

Pitch sat up, and with a gentleness he'd not known himself capable of, settled Lalassu's head against the ground. The mare sighed again, and her mane lifted to caress his cheek. The pain behind his eyes intensified. A single, caustic tear pressed itself free, tracing a harsh mark down his face.

Red strands caught at it. Wiped it clear. Sanu stood over him, absorbing the hurt that ran from him in that watery way Pitch had always so derided in humankind.

Silas held him tightly, and drew him to his feet.

‘We must go.'

Pitch nodded, numb, and yet more sensitive than he'd ever known. He could not catch his breath, a pressure at his lungs that felt insurmountable.

The Red Horse traced her mane down his chest, over the strips of shirt that remained, and Pitch found his breath came much easier. He gulped at it, coughed as it filled lungs he'd forgotten to use. He gave her a grateful nod, and wished he could work his throat enough to say more.

‘Easy now, love.' Silas guided him towards the mouth of the cave, his cheeks shining with spilled tears. ‘Izanami herself shall guide her home, when the time comes. She gives me her word on that.'

Pitch staggered, only now understanding the weight of what Silas carried with him every day. Indeed, what any who were human, and prone to grief, must carry. He'd thought himself familiar with loss, he'd imagined he'd grieved when Seraphiel fell. He'd not known true sorrow.

‘We can't leave her like this.'

‘Nor can we stay. She is not alone, and wishes us onwards.'

Scarlet came to sit on Pitch's shoulder, warming his neck as they nestled in close.

Pitch looked back only once; when Sanu called to him, her bray sending gooseflesh rising.

He lifted his hand, and fare-welled a horse he had never deserved, but who had carried him so well, nonetheless.

Chollima stood with her, guardians either side of the fallen Pale Horse. Fae magick made the black stallion's coat gleam with sparks of blue. The earth was busy with movement, the gnomes and hobgoblins gathering around the mighty djinn steeds. Already the natural world was claiming one of their own. The moss grew upon Lalassu's legs, and over her hindquarters. Already covering over the terrible damage done.

‘They bury her while she still lives,' Pitch said, his pulses pounding. ‘We cannot leave her.' He tried to go back, working against Silas's hold.

‘It is her command I follow.' He was the firmest he'd ever been, in voice and deed. ‘Do not go back. Do not waste this gift she gives us. She will return to the earth, and find new life there. It is the way of things, for all creatures of nature. And the djinn are nature at its purest. Keep on, my love.'

Sanu wove her mane in with Lalassu's, their tails intertwining too. Together, as always, they weaved their magick. Building a forest of horsehair; a formidable barrier that crept over the shale and dirt and rock, like jungle vines and errant ivy, growing, concealing, taking on the shades of the moss and lichen. Just as those truly of nature took over the Pale Horse. Claiming her once more. Their plant life feeding off the djinn life she gave them.

The miraculous forest pushed from the earth and rose to consume what the wind and weather had stripped bare; moving up over the shale and climbing to reach the cave. The entrance vanished behind a wall of greenery; as deep and impenetrable as all the forests of the British Isles combined.

Pitch stood in the shadows, clasping Silas's hand, feeling him tremble, hearing his tears begin. The light grew dimmer, the air warmer as the entrance sealed over.

The lady's fine horses, those formidable agents of the djinn, protected them to the last.