“Drink it,” Winterly said, “you will feel better in the morning.”
She did as she was told, too enervated to summon up the indignity his arrogance deserved. The wine left a strange coppery tang on the back of her tongue, but overall it had a pleasing flavor. She took another sip and then another. Satisfied, Winterly withdrew from her side and settled himself across from her. The conversation returned to normal, but Emma swore that the air was now tainted somehow.
Finally, it came time to depart, and they made short work of bidding their adieus. It was not until the family were tucked away in the carriage that Emma drew in a deep breath and relaxed, boneless, into the seat. She had not realized just how tense had been her back all night until she all but melted against the side of the speeding carriage, drowsy despite her teeth rattling over the ruts. She would sleep like a corpse tonight.
Chapter Fourteen
Incubus
Dearest Emma,—I do hope you mean to replace your spectacles, if you have not done so already, I should hate for you to view London in such darksome shades. It might induce the eye to see unclearly—to see that which isn’t really there… Your affectionate cousin,
Mary.
Emma was visited by the strangest dream that night, hallucinations so lucid that she could not distinguish dream from reality.
At one point the wind rapped the glazing, the branches tapping an eerie tattoo at the window, which they had never done before. The window, she discovered, was left ajar and stood open to the night, near enough that the branches could run their skeletal claws athwart the glass. She did not recall opening it before bed, but she had been so tired that she may have done so unconsciously. Her cheeks had been aflame all night, so it was only natural to want to cool them.
The fragmentary moonlight upon her counterpane offered only a somber glow. As she shifted her sleepy eyes to the corner of her room, she was suddenly affrighted by a large shadow looming where the moonlight could not reach it.
“Who’s there?” she asked the shadowy figure. Her question was met with eerie silence. “Are you real or am I dreaming again?” Or was she talking to the shadow of her wardrobe?
“I am as real as any man, and yet nothing like a man.” The shadow’s voice was so very reminiscent of Winterly’s. How strange.
Its very strangeness convinced her at once that she was dreaming again. Such dreams! Could she not have respite from him even in sleep? “No, I must be dreaming.” Winterly would not have scaled the side of the house and entered her bedroom through the window.
“So you dream of me often then?” His tone was heavy with amusement. “That is rather provoking of you, Miss Rose.”
“That is just what the real Winterly would say.”
“Ahh, but you have already determined that I am most unreal,” he replied.
Emma sighed. “That is a relief.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, the real Winterly has no business in my bedchamber. I would not like to think more ill of him than I already do.”
“Come now, Miss Rose, we must always be honest with ourselves in dreams, must we not? You do not think nearly as ill of me as you wish you did.”
“I suppose not, but I really do try.”
“Might I ask why you persist in trying at all?”
“Well, he is…that is to say you are very confounding, for one thing, and you unsettle me abominably.”
“And in the spirit of this somnolent honesty, I demand to know in what wicked way I unsettle you.” Even the sound of this dream Winterly’s seductive whisper caused her flesh to pucker.
“I cannot say.”
“You mean you will not say.” The dark trembled softly beneath his amusement. “Then I must discover the answer for myself. And to that end…” He was suddenly leaning over her—one moment across the room and in the next instant they were nose to nose, the coverlet slipping from her limbs. Too swift to be real, which only solidified the fact that he was unreal. A beautiful, impossible dream. “I can be quite ruthless in my pursuit of knowledge, Emmaline. Even in dreams.”
“What are you doing?” Her heart leapt as he placed his palm on her chest over her heart, tugging the sheer cotton down an inch.
There was a curious look in his eyes as he appeared to inspect the flesh beneath his fingertips—something of relief and hunger there as his search concluded. An odd combination. Suddenly the palm moved away and dropped to the side of her head, his other hand paralleling the movement and effectively entrapping her in place atop her pillow.
“This is most irregular,” she said, feeling rather vivified by her phantom lover despite that he was only a figment of her dream.
“Are you not weary of pretense?” He said, sighing. “Will you not do in dreams what you fear to acknowledge in daylight?” He bent his head ever closer and her breath hitched in response. “Your gaze is not as guarded as it sometimes ought to be, you know. I see you.”
This phantom was turning out to be even more wicked than the real Winterly. “Don’t…” But her voice held no force and her body was only melting deeper into the mattress. “You oughtn’t.”
“And why not? Recollect I am only a dream, merely a wisp of smoke in the dark that vanishes by morning.” His lips were now inches from hers. “Just a revenant.”
“Yes,” she whispered, sucking her lower lip between her teeth as he watched. “An incubus.”
“A far more accurate description.”
His features appeared to pulse into stark relief despite the anemic glow through the window. So strange that she could see him clearly. Yes, definitely a dream. Moreover, the real Winterly would never have called her Emmaline. There was no harm in dreaming. No harm in doing in dreams what was disallowed in reality.
His teeth flashed in the dark as he smiled. “I can hear your heart quickening.”
“It is the sound of fear.”
“No, my rose.” He held her fast with his smokey gaze. “This is a dream, remember—you cannot lie to yourself here. Your flesh and blood betray you. Your blood sings to mine.” His mouth was positioned just out of reach, a challenging quirk lifting the corner. “If you are afeared it is only your own desire you fear.”
It was now up to her to complete the contact. To move in if she dared. “Am I really dreaming?” This felt so surreal.
Was it a trick of the light that insinuated those unholy teeth to gleam between his smile? The assenting grin of a crocodile.
“I suppose I must be dreaming.” His scent somehow pervaded her dreams too, beckoning her further and closer into sweet oblivion. With an audible sigh, she lifted her head off the pillow and closed the distance between their lips.
Never had a dream awakened her longing as this one did. Never had her blood burned with such need! His lips molded perfectly to hers as though her flesh alone had been created to fit his; to bear his every kiss.
The very moment she bridged that fateful gap and met his challenge, he swooped down with forbidden hunger and sultry promises. She relished their kiss—her very first in fact—almost wishing that it was real, and pulled his head down more firmly over hers with a confidence that she never could have affected in wakefulness. With fistfuls of his thick hair grasped between demanding fingers, she parted her lips ever wider. An invitation that Winterly was all too eager to accept, for he deepened the kiss at once.
Though pleasure threatened to consume her senses entirely, she became suddenly aware that his palm was inching up her parted thigh. His hand finally ceased just shy of where the confluence of heat and pleasure throbbed in a primeval cadence. She froze. Surely this incubus would not dare to—oh! But he did.
Emma arched her back, pressing herself into him. It was at once unbearable and sublime! With all-consuming heat, he branded her lips and then her neck. Then he pushed her chemise aside and lowered his mouth to the swollen peaks that caged her maddened heart. That such pleasure had existed within her all this time without her having ever been aware of its latency was enough to b
ring her to tears. Would that this was not a dream! Heaven help her, she almost wanted this—him—to be real.
And his hand was doing such wicked things! How could she dream this when she’d never even…known…
Doubt obtruded like a cold gust of reality, sending little wakes rippling through her mind. It was enough to disturb her from the drugging effect of the pleasure that her dream Winterly had evoked.
“Stop!” She bolted upright, ready to push his hand away if he did not obey her.
But she was alone, trembling. Her body still shuddered with need. There was nobody in her room, only the presence of a chlorotic light seeping through the window panes. Dawn approaching. He had never been there in the first place! Was she really awake this time?
Emma collapsed back onto her mattress, her breathing labored and her body aching most where his hand had last been…in the dream, of course. The real Winterly’s hand had never been anywhere near there. “Just a dream.” But why did her lips feel so tender; why did her breasts ache. Why was the window open?
She jumped from the bed to light a candle, and then secured the hasp at the window frame before backing away. She was troubled, almost certain now that she had closed the casement before she’d snuffed the first candle out.
“Just a dream,” she assured herself again. Yes, now she remembered, she’d been flushed from the wine and forbidden flirtation, and had opened the window. That made sense.
Yet by the time the sun had returned all color to her room, she was no longer so sure. Dreams did not, after all, leave marks. Yet there, in the looking glass, Emma perceived a small dark bruise upon her neck.
Chapter Fifteen
Darkness
Markus stood at the library window watching the departing carriage turn the corner of Half Moon and disappear into the night. The moon spared little light, but he required no light to see by. Darkness was the preferred milieu of his kind.
Outwardly, he knew he appeared as steady and inanimate as the granite walls of Winterthurse, but within him a hurricane was converting his ramparts into rubble.
What was he doing? He despised uncertainty, most especially when he himself was afflicted by it. Yet he knew he would see her again. Tonight. If nothing else, he would at the very least whet his curiosity. And she had such a lovely, long neck. It begged to be sampled.
Emmaline. Wasn’t that what her uncle had called her? A unique name for a unique girl. What was it about the prickly little chit that so intrigued him? He supposed she was pretty enough, in a bookish sort of way, but beauty as mortals understood it was an earthly concept—finite and transient. It held no fascination for him. So what then? Was it her sharp tongue? Or that latent fire he glimpsed in her eyes when they weren’t avoiding him?
The prim Miss Rose possessed in spades what all other women lacked, but he could not yet give it a name, whatever it was. He knew only that it was an infinite thing. It was enough to stir his curiosity and his caution. God knew he had reason to be cautious.
He knew he ought to forget her and return to Winterthurse before he did something stupid—he always felt more himself there. London suffocated him. This house and all Victoria’s garish baubles suffocated him. His bloody guests suffocated him. Not that Gabriel had been invited. Unwanted guests, all of them.
He had no sooner finished the thought when the door opened to admit the very people he had come to the library to escape. His jaw tightened, his canines snapping together audibly. Until her scent faded from his nostrils, his fangs would not retract.
“This damned city smells like hell,” Arminius was saying as he entered. “Even my clothes reek of brimstone!”
Marbod turned up his nose in agreement. “I shall be glad to leave it.”
“And when exactly shall that be?” Markus did not strain himself to hide his choler. They knew he was eager for Gabriel to return to his mountain fastness.
Gabriel joined him at the window, hands clasped behind his back and face raised to the moon. It was he that answered. “We will go when matters are in hand.”
“You might as well stay till the Solstice Ball,” said Victoria, inspecting her fangs in the mirror.
Markus shot her a glare. To Gabriel he said, “You question my competence? Rather dull of you.”
“I question your wisdom and your motives.” Gabriel turned to face him with a narrowed look. “And I’m curious about this new dalliance of yours. It is unlike you to play with your food.”
Markus spared him a sidelong glance. “Don’t be tedious, you know she’s not the sort of sport I enjoy.”
“There is more than one way to assuage a hunger.”
Victoria gave a sigh. “Do close the drapes, gentlemen, I have a complexion to consider.”
Nicholas chuckled. “Is the moon too bright for you, Tory?”
Gabriel ignored them. “What most intrigues me is why you felt compelled to bestow such a gift tonight. Care to explain?”
“When have I ever cared to explain myself to you?”
“Markus…” Gabriel’s tone had become menacing.
“I am not,” said Winterly through his fangs, “and have never been answerable to you.”
“You are interfering again. As you did in Alexandria. Have you considered the ramifications?”
With a look of boredom, Markus said, “Have you considered a vow of silence? You really ought to.”
“I shall do so when you consider a vow of celibacy. “
Markus chuckled.
“This is not a game,” said Gabriel.
“All life is a game and I intend to enjoy it. At all events, what else am I to do in aeternum? Shall I lock myself away in some necropolis the way you do, brooding in the same stupid manner you have for millennia?”
“All games have rules and you have already broken a cardinal law.”
Markus met Gabriel’s glare with a measured look. There was no vindicable reason to give because he himself did not yet fully understand his actions. “Nevertheless it is done.”
“What are your intentions with the girl?”
“Never you mind.” He was cursed tired of that question.
Nicholas scratched his jaw, thoughtful. “You don’t think she’s…”
“You could bite her,” said Victoria. “Just a little nibble ought to tell you one way or the other what she is or isn’t. Lord knows I’m tempted to nibble on Milli.”
“Or,” said Marbod, “you can look for the mark.”
“She isn’t the grail.” Markus pinched the bridge of his nose.
“You don’t know that.” Gabriel’s voice was beginning to make his ears bleed. “You could have had the sister instead of throwing an axe in an old wound and disturbing a pit of vipers.”
“Yes,” said Victoria, “Milli can at least boast of some slight pretension to beauty.”
“She’s a simpleton,” Markus said with a sneer. “Let Malach have Milli.”
“Or Nicki.” Victoria sniggered. “He seemed quite besotted.”
Surprised at being thus singled out, Nicholas looked a question at his father.
But Marbod shook his head. “He’s too young yet for matrimony.”
The boy threw up his hands. “I’m three hundred years old, Father!”
“Too young,” said Gabriel.
Victoria left the looking glass with a sympathetic click of her tongue and sashayed over to Nicholas. “Don’t worry, Nicki,” she said, trailing her finger down his arm as she came up behind him. “When you’re older I shall teach you exactly what to do with a woman.”
Nicholas swatted her hand away. “Thank you, no, I don’t care to have that viperous mouth of yours on my flesh.”
“You might like it…” She ignored his growl of denial and folded herself into an armchair. “Well, simpleton or not, I for one quite enjoy the younger Rose. Inquisitive little thing, isn’t she? Vanus, I hope you noticed her uncle’s veins when she asked about the organs. They nearly popped right out of his head, I’m certain of it.”
“Would that they had,” said the doctor, licking his lips. “I enjoy the fat ones.”
“Speaking of organs,” said Markus, “Any newsworthy deaths today?”
Vanus shrugged. “There was a body pulled from the Thames this morning, but the heart was accounted for, my lord.”
“Just a suicide,” said Troilus.
Markus steepled his fingers. “Seems the spider has had his fill for the moment. One does wonder at his lack of circumspection.”
“Perhaps we ought to pay their coven a little visit?” said Gabriel, nodding to the doctors. “Send your sawbones to teach them a lesson in etiquette.”
“No, send William.” Markus glanced at Marbod. “By the by, where is he?”
Marbod exchanged a look with Armi. “Still moody. I thought it best to keep him from your delicate Roses tonight.”
Markus gave a curt nod and then leveled an expectant glare at Gabriel.
With a reluctant grunt, Gabriel turned to Marbod. “William will act as emissary once he’s recovered.”
“He’s hardly a diplomat,” said Marbod. “I’ll go. We don’t need anymore axes thrown.”
“You and I would not get through the door. Let the boy go, it is after all to the purpose if he makes known our…displeasure. Nicholas may go with him.”
“Very well,” said Marbod, sighing. “But Nicki and I are not liable for that temper of his.”
“His temper,” said Victoria, “will be of no moment if he cannot find them, and I daresay he will not if they wish not to be found.”
Gabriel’s fangs gleamed as he smiled. “Their activities here defy a visit.”
“Then it would be rude not to take up the gauntlet,” said Markus, glancing at the clock. “Now that that’s all settled, I shall at last take my leave of you all. Goodnight.”
Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1) Page 10
