He expected Gabriel’s leering face there when he re-focused.
It was Iblis. It was Azazel. Eyes within eyes. Glimmers of sheer exultation within the glints of angelfire.
Pitch sought to make some notable, defiant remark, but ended up dribbling useless nonsense. The heat melted his words. From midriff to heels he was all inferno. The heat was tremendous. Even the angels sweated. Perspiration streamed down Iblis’s unremarkable face.
‘Gabriel, ready the pandora.’ Azazel’s words pressed from Iblis’s damp lips.
Pitch groaned and lowered his head. What fucking foul treatment would come next? His burning gaze fell to the dark puddle beneath him, its source streaming from his toes. And a wild laugh left him. The amuletum was forsaking him too; that foul liquid created to hold down the strength at his core, needled into the huge tattoo upon his back. It poured from the tips of his toes like dark blood, and where it touched the ground the multitude of tiny runes that formed the design flared bright, before they sank into the onyx pool.
Azazel stepped back and Gabriel took centre stage once more. The Archangel swaggered in, not a mark on him, where Pitch was all mess and ruin. His ludicrous outfit sparkled madly beneath the shimmer of heat waves, but he’d gone one step further now in the theatrics, spreading his sheer wings with their suggestion of feathered light, and radiant tips like gemstones on a crown.
Gabriel curved his ostentatious appendages around Pitch’s dangling body. And, curse the bastard for all eternity, the angel laid a hand on him again. A touch of fingertips to the belly, a shift over Pitch’s blazing skin. The angel seemed lost in concentration, searching for something.
A razor-sharp smile broke out upon his lips, and he pressed in against one particular place. Where exactly, Pitch could not tell, for nothing of his body felt like his.
Gabriel raised his other hand. He held a simple box of deepest onyx, one that fit in the palm of his hand. It had no markings upon it, no gems or gilding, and it was hard to tell at a moment’s glance what the box was made of.
Pitch hiccoughed, blood pulsing from the corners of his mouth. The wildness was impatient, bucking beneath the thin veil that still hindered it. He hiccoughed again, this time certain his ribs were broken.
Gabriel finished his probing about, and raised his hand to touch at Pitch’s lips. The jerk to avoid him was instinctual, but Pitch had nowhere to go. The angel’s wing pressed at the back of his head, keeping him close.
‘Come to me now,’ Gabriel said, and leaned in, far too close. Far too quickly.
He laid an icy kiss upon Pitch’s bloodied mouth. There was no escaping it. Wriggling about achieved nothing, and the angel held his head so tight Pitch couldn’t shift an inch.
The kiss was perfunctory and brief. Neither lascivious, nor brutal. The angel did not linger, did not taunt, did not goad or belittle as Onoskolis had done.
Because this was nothing to do with Pitch at all.
Gabriel pulled back.
The wildness, so close beneath the surface, flayed every inch of Pitch’s throat as it emerged, heeding the summons of the angel.
His mouth dragged wide open, his tongue was pressed flat as the beast erupted between his teeth. His jaw stretched to its limits, and Pitch’s scream was tangled up in the emerging torrent of divine magick.
Seraphiel’s beast found freedom, its cry the scream of a lion and manticore locked in battle.
The wildness poured from him, rushing out in a spray of deceptively beautiful colours. The force of the emergence shoved Pitch’s head back. His entire line of sight was filled with Seraphiel’s burden.
The beast, the Cultivation, was beautiful.
A winged creature, a great crested bird with feathers hued like a spring sunset, peach and pastel pink, with strikes of mauve and lilac upon the extremities of its wings and lengthy tail.
Gabriel lifted his own wings. His were sheer and undefined, where the wildness had layer upon layer of feathers. The angel cut off the creature’s upward trajectory with a sweep of barely-there wing, hemming it in when it sought to reach higher. The screech that came was not so pretty as the bird, raking Pitch’s ears, bringing harsh tears to his eyes.
‘Gods, he was as sinful as he was mad,’ Gabriel shouted. ‘Do you see what Seraphiel has done here?’
The last of the wildness left Pitch, its final brush a cut across his tongue, leaving a bittersweet taste in his mouth. He clamped his lips, and his jaw cracked unkindly, but he could find no energy to lift his head. He dragged in a deep breath, lungs empty chambers in desperate need of filling.
The sorcerers were silent—or perhaps they still spoke, but it was lost beneath the steady hum that came from the beast, like the deep rumble of a furnace.
‘I see it, though I can hardly fathom it. The Primordial Flame burns in this Cultivation.’ The Exarch’s tone held a note of reverence ‘Truly, the Seraph went too far. Small wonder there is talk of Enoch’s hand in his death. With this, Seraphiel committed High Treason.’
Gabriel actually laughed, having a gay old time while Pitch hung like wrung out laundry, the numbness was shock most likely, his body had taken a horrendous battering. He was only half paying attention to what was being said, lulled into something of a trance by the resonating hum of the creature. He was certain his ears were mistaken. The Primordial Flame was all that remained of the Origin Fire. The fire from which the Celestials, the gods themselves, were formed, burning before all other life began. The Flame was an ancient power so volatile, so wild, Lord Enoch had locked it away, forbidden any to even look upon it. A power not meant for the living, not even the divine.
‘We must have the Flame, Gabriel.’ Azazel’s voice came from somewhere behind Pitch, but Gabriel’s wingspan had him in a cocoon. ‘We must have control of this creature.’
‘Of course we must,’ Gabriel returned. ‘And we shall, but it is beyond the sorcerers right now, they are done. Perhaps with some time —’
