Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1)

by Jeanine Croft

  “Thank heaven!” Ana’s shoulders relaxed somewhat. “You must assure me that you never shall.”

  “And why is that?” She hadn’t intended to drink his blood and nor had he offered, but she was still desirous to know why it was deemed worse than his drinking from Emma.

  “Because he is a parasite and a monster!”

  Emma set her teeth. “You show a great deal of interest in my business, Ana. If your concern truly is disinterested then tell me once and for all who you are and how it is that you know so much about Markus Winterly.”

  Ana’s gaze flitted back to her sisters. “Very well, I shall tell you who I am. My meddling certainly gives you that right.” She leaned in a fraction closer and fixed Emma with eyes that had become suddenly very pale; unnaturally pale. “But, more than that,” she went on in a terrible whisper, “it is who and what you are that will most disturb you.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Arcanum Arcanorum

  The daylight was nigh spent from the windows, and the hour Emma had given herself had all too quickly flown away. Her driver would be looking for her; the master himself would soon be looking for her.

  Emma stared hard into Ana’s anemic eyes; they were uncanny, to be sure, but they were not half as frightening as Markus’s vampyre eyes. Whatever Ana was, she wasn’t a vampyre. “I haven’t time for nonsense, I know very well who and what I am. Tell me, Ana, what manner of beast are you?”

  “I believe I answered that already—I am a watcher.”

  “A watcher of vampyres?”

  “My kind are scholars and scribes. When necessary, we are protectors.” Ana cast another leery glance at the fallen darkness lying at the fringe of lamplight beyond the glazing. Indeed, all three of the Strange sisters appeared most watchful tonight…and restless. Ana went on. “We too are an immortal race—”

  “Ahh, then you are vampyres!” Emma clapped her hands over her mouth.

  “Keep your voice down!” Mina hissed, having materialized at Emma’s ear without warning. She moved to stand beside Ana, her eyes tawny with choler. “I am no accursed vampyre, I do not siphon from the veins of the living like a damned wyrm!” Another furtive glance at the window. “Not like Markus and certainly nothing like that fiend Gabriel.”

  “So you are none of you fallen angels?”

  The sisters were evidently discountenanced by her question. “Markus told you?”

  Emma answered with a smug grin and a nod.

  “No, we did not fall from heaven,” said Ana. “My sisters and I are something else entirely. But, like you, we descend from that race—the Fallen.”

  “Me?” Emma was aghast. “But I am nothing like you!”

  Ana shook her head. “No, you are nothing like us, but you are not altogether human either.”

  “The Fallen,” said Mina, “were watchers before they fell. Vigiles Angeli—watchers from the sky. But the Lord of Death ceased to watch from his throne in the north and began to interfere.”

  “For love, he told me. He fell for love.” Without hesitation, Emma had sprung to Markus’s defense. Like, she thought belatedly, a wilting rose succoring the very worm feeding from her blighted stem. “You are only affirming his veracity, you know.”

  “Love?” Mina gave a snort. “God does not punish love, Emma.”

  Emma wanted to believe that, for she herself hoped not to be punished for her love of him, and yet how could she defend Markus against such sound doctrinal reasoning.

  “What my sister means to say,” said Ana, “is that he succumbed to self-love; to pride. You are to understand that not all angels were created alike. Some wield greater power than others and, in some cases, with that endowment of power comes the desire for more. It is universally acknowledged that the stronger the angel, the easier he is to corrupt, and the greater his susceptibility to mortal appetites. Those that fell succumbed to earthly decadence because they were covetous of man.

  “They became ruled by the same ravening mortal need for flesh and power, and for that God cast his children from heaven for their trespasses and damned them to that same realm they had so desired to occupy and dominate.”

  “For what reason was Markus disgraced if not for love?”

  “For interfering in a life he was charged only to watch.”

  The more these watchers disclosed the more questions they evoked. Emma pulled her watch from her dress. The feeling of dread gnawed all the more insistently the longer she tarried and the deeper the darkness fell upon the streets without. But she could not bring herself to leave, not now that Ana appeared ready to expound everything.

  “When they were cast out of heaven,” Ana went on, “they forged for themselves a corrupted army. From blood and violence, their legion propagated. Your sister’s friend, Victoria, is one such underling—sired by blood and death. Markus’s lover and his daughter.”

  Emma’s hands flew to her mouth to stifle the cry of disgust that escaped her. “No!”

  “He nourished her from his very veins and from his blood and venom his child was reborn to the night a new creature: a vampyre.”

  His lover and his daughter?! Emma felt her skull rending in protest. And his sister? This was all too much. “You’re lying!”

  “Why should we lie?” Mina threw her a disgusted look. “At great risk to ourselves we came here tonight to warn you.” She then turned to Ana. “I told you, we should have left her alone to her folly.”

  Emma’s fingers were like ice as she slipped them around Ana’s wrist. “What do they want with me and Milli?”

  “For the same ignoble reasons any parasite desires a host. They lust for mortal blood.”

  Well she knew that already, didn’t she? He’d admitted as much, and then last night…

  “It is the source of their immortality and strength,” said Ana. “But that is not all. Your angel of Death was far more than merely just a watcher before his downfall. You are perilously out of your depth, Emma; you have allowed into your bed a Cardinal Lord.”

  “A Cardinal?”

  Ana nodded. “There were once four of them—the gods of the four winds; the lords of the cardinal points. All of them watchers. In your Book of Revelation they are the four horsemen of the apocalypse: War, Famine, Death, and Pestilence.”

  Mina folded her arms over her chest. “Pestilence is the worst of them.”

  Emma glanced bemusedly between the sisters.

  “He is known to you as Gabriel,” Ana clarified.

  “But it is Death,” said Mina with rancor, “the blood eater, who will find you wheresoever you run because your blood nourishes his flesh.”

  “Which is why—” Mina turned her glare on her sister “—we should leave now, we have stayed too long already. He’ll be looking for her.”

  I could find you anywhere. How those words haunted her now. But that was before last night. Horror-struck by the belated and awful disclosure, Emma tore her eyes from the fire. Why had that vital detail not been disclosed before he’d glutted himself on her flesh and forged this unbidden link? She was a wretched fool for giving the fiend the very compass to her everlasting whereabouts, and a fool who’d all but handed her own sister over to him. She had given herself, her virtue, and her heart to the devil. What a witless morsel she’d proven herself to be. Finally, her tongue unfroze itself. “And whoever has fed from my sister can now do the same.”

  “Ay, until death severs the link.”

  Whatever the nature of the mark she’d seen on Milli’s throat, she had to assume that her sister had been bitten. And what of the blood Markus had shared with Milli? How would that affect the girl?

  “That is why you cannot drink his blood,” said Ana, answering her unspoken question. “It only redoubles the blood link.”

  “What do I do now? How shall I save my sister?”

  “By saving yourself. And by listening closely for I will tell you how to kill him.”

  Emma’s face blanched. Had this been done before? “You said there w
ere once four of these creatures—these angels.” Who were the other two besides Markus and Gabriel?

  “The first seraph to fall fell in love with a mortal king and died by the hand of her own daughter. She was the original grail.” And from two gods and a mortal, she begat three children before Lilith slew her.

  The Grail? The riddle in Vampyris! She could not recall the particulars exactly, but there had been mention of a grail.

  “She is the mother of your ancestors,” said Ana. “You are of seraphic provenance. A mortal king and royal star begot the first nephilim—You, Emma, are of royal blood.”

  That royal blood was rushing in Emma’s head so violently that she could hardly process this new revelation.

  “Her fall, like her brothers’, was a consequence of mortal lust. Nephilim, you see, are the forbidden fruits of such blasphemous couplings—children of gods and mortals. They defy the laws of nature and so they are smitten at infancy. All the monsters of the earth are in some way relicts of the Nephilim scourge that escaped the Blades of Heaven.”

  Emma dropped her head into her hands. “It is like drinking from a waterfall!”

  Mina made a rude hissing sound and glared pointedly at her watch.

  Ana nodded and turned back to Emma. “I truly wish we had the luxury of time to help you make sense of it all, but—”

  “What was this Fallen’s name?”

  “She had many names. By some she was known as Mother Isis.”

  “So I am some blasphemous royal bastard?”

  “You are the grail, Emma. The descendants of the Mother goddess all bear her fateful legacy; you too bear it.”

  “What?” Emma looked up. “What exactly do I bear?”

  “The blood! Blood of the gods. Continuance. Immortality. The fruit of darkness.”

  “How can you be sure that I am…a grail?”

  “A Nephilim carries a distinguishing mark over her womb—the crescent moon. The mark of the grail.” Ana’s eyes narrowed. “And by the look on your face I know you bear just such a mark.”

  No! Emma shook her head, horrified anew.

  “And you are not the only one,” said Mina.

  Dear God, poor Milli too!

  “Now Markus knows you are marked.” Until now, Ana had always been solicitude itself, but for the first time her eyes betrayed her, scathing Emma as though she herself might draw blood. “You must never lie with him again, Emma.”

  “But what does it mean to be a grail?”

  Ana’s brow furrowed with impatience. “You are the vessel through which immortals may propagate the earth. You are the wellspring that nourishes eternal life…as well as the cup that bears the spawn of the undead.”

  A descendant of Isis, the sister of Death. Was it possible? “If I bear the blood of Markus’s sister, that’s…” God help her, it was not to be borne! “That’s incest!” she cried.

  “Only insomuch as it is incestuous to believe that your father is related to your mother by blood, for they are both the children of Adam and Eve?” Ana’s smile was hard. “No, my dear, blood, as you understand it, connects only beasts and mortals. Watchers were not begotten from mothers and fathers. It is nothing so simple, nor so complicated, as that.”

  “Enough, we have to go,” said Mina, pulling her hood securely over her head.

  Emma stood abruptly from the chair. “Yes, and I’ve heard enough!”

  “Wait!” Ana was hurrying after Emma. “You would return to him after all I have told you?”

  “My sister’s life is forfeit if I do not! What would you have me do?”

  “I would have you resist him! And at all costs you must never take blood from him! In fact, do not drink anything—not even what you think is wine—if it comes to you by his hand or his bidding.”

  It was too late for that. “How can I know whom to trust? You might be lying to me about all this?”

  “Oh, Emma.” Ana gave her head a tragic shake. “I believe you are sage enough to know when the truth is spoken.”

  “Even if what you say is true, I cannot escape him now that he has drunk from me.”

  “Kill him, that is your escape!”

  Emma froze at the threshold.

  Ana’s voice had dropped so low it was nigh impossible to hear her. “But I warn you, it is almost impossible to kill a vampyre let alone a Cardinal.” She leaned in closer still. “Play his games if you must, Emma. For your sake, I hope you win.”

  “Win against one such as he?” She had no such conceit. “I’d be mad to even hope for that.”

  “Have faith, I believe he has a weakness.”

  “What is it?”

  “You.”

  She shook her head and tried to pull her arm away from the watcher, but the creature was impossibly strong and her endeavors remained futile. “How would you have me kill him?”

  “Attack him where he is most vulnerable.”

  “And where is that?”

  “The heart. Make him trust you and he will bear it to you; that is when you strike. The heart is the seat of power—lay his chest open and pierce the heart.” With that, Ana released her and slipped away.

  The cumbrous darkness swallowed the three Strange sisters in an instant, leaving Emma alone beneath the lintel. But she would not remain alone much longer. She could feel the whispering tenebrosity of the wind as it changed direction. He was coming for her.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  In Sanguis Veritate

  Emma fled into the night, ignoring the light from the inn that beckoned her return. She stumbled towards Church Street whence she’d instructed the driver to wait for her.

  A terrible north wind howled along the Esk, drowning even the roar of the waves battering the scars. Its icy breath rushed up the river as though Boreas himself, wings billowing like storm clouds, had come down from the mountains of Thrace to snatch her up. The fog was spilling onto the waterfront like the hiemal harbinger of his formidable temper. The god of the north wind—the winter god. Winterly. A premonitory fear rippled across Emma’s cold flesh as she threw a furtive gaze to the sky behind her.

  Owing to the perilous cold that saturated the night and the lateness of the hour, she was not surprised to find Church Street completely deserted of Whitby’s denizens. What did alarm her, however, was that her vampiric coachman was nowhere to be seen. A cold, dark street was no deterrent to a vampyre, so where was he?

  Emma gave a wretched sneeze and pulled the cloak tight around her neck lest the cold bite her with invisible fangs. It had already drained all the warmth from her numb fingers and torn chilblains into her cheeks with icy nails. Shivering, she began the long walk back to the castle, determined not to die this night. Leastwise not from the cold like some benighted indigent on the roadside. She lifted a wary scowl to the sky, silently cursing the clouds that smothered the moon.

  The sudden awful caw of a raven disturbed her footing and she shrieked as she fell. The raven gave another series of reproachful warnings from its shrouded espial and then all was quiet once more. Too quiet. She had not yet moved from where she’d frozen on the road, where her legs had buckled beneath her. She dared not. Even the raven had ceased its frightful squalling. Evil bird!

  A soft thud sounded behind her, accompanied by an ominous ruffling. She held her breath, but could not turn to look over her shoulder for fear that even that small movement—the rustle of her cloak—would interfere with the sound of impending danger. All the creatures of the night seemed disposed to still themselves lest they draw some evil eye.

  She unleashed a wild shriek as she was suddenly hauled up from the ground and propelled into the night sky. Her screams died in her breast as the unyielding grip tightened beneath her arms and back. Her hair, loosened by the violence of the wind, whipped about her face.

  “Release me!”

  “Do not tempt me, woman.” Markus’s voice was thick with the sibilance of cold rage.

  She bit her tongue and dug her claws deep into his greatcoat, cowing un
der the violent flapping of his demoniac wings. The wind lashed at her eyes till they were blurry with tears.

  He held her pressed firmly against his chest as he cleared the lofty mist that lay like cobbled silver beneath a breathtaking moon. Emma blinked the tears away and gasped, for a moment enthralled by the empyrean splendor lying before her. In all her life the moon had never appeared so large and infinite. The stars, her ladies in waiting, glimmered across the vast swell of woolen wisps that stretched thick across the sky. Here, above the world, so close to heaven, there existed only she, the stars, and the moon. And Markus.

  Braver now, under the reassuring glow of moonlight, Emma shifted her gaze to the vampyre in whose arms she was suspended. Fierce black eyes bored into hers. She hastily broke the contact and, instead, watched as the castle spires loomed through the clouds, jutting up like black horns.

  Without warning, Markus tucked his colossal wings and plummeted through the clouds as though he meant to impale the earth like an arrow. Emma swallowed the scream that lunged up from her chest. At the last minute, as the courtyard hurtled towards them, Winterly threw his wings wide so that all the blood shot from her head and pooled into her feet.

  The stars were now swimming not in the sky but around her peripheral. They were now mere feet from terra firma, soaring over the green towards the waiting castle. She had only to reach down and feel the lawn’s coarse coat against her fingertips. Perhaps if her fingers were not still frozen tight over his lapel she might have.

  Just as she became certain he meant to fly them through the stone wall, he swooped up at the last minute and brought his boots down hard against the library window ledge. The force of his landing shuddered the iron casement and disturbed the fire within.

  Emma stumbled into the room with a clammy hand fastened over her mouth. The ale tossed inside her, hot and forceful. She latched white fingers onto the nearest repository—a painted bowl two feet in diameter—and whimpered pitifully as her stomach disgorged the ale along with all her dignity. Once she’d spent her misery therein, she lifted her head and dragged the back of her hand across her mouth with an abject shudder, utterly disgusted and humiliated. She sat back on her haunches a moment, unable to meet the gaze that probed her heaving shoulders. She contrived to ignore the vampyre behind her. Instead, she examined the pretty, blue goldfish painted delicately across the milky porcelain beneath her fingers as if that might distract her from her churning stomach. She then rested her hot cheek briefly on the edge of the bowl, regretting its defilement.