“No, it comes away with a blackened heart,” Emma replied.
“No, indeed! Consider instead that it never belonged with the doves in the first place and was ever a crow at heart.” She took Emma’s hand in hers. “You are who God made you. Do not try to live among the doves, Emma, when you are something altogether more untamed.”
“Heavens, Mary, that savors of encouragement!” She dropped her gaze. “But can God, in His mercy, be reconciled to such a love as I bear? Lest we forget, He cast Markus from grace.”
“I think it is not wise to guess at God’s motives, for good or bad. Ay, He cast your Markus from heaven, but who are we to judge it a curse or a mercy—He cast his child out to live among the fallible creatures he could most identify with, did He not? Is that not a mercy? He sent His dove to live among the crows and nightingales where he belonged; He gave him the black wings he so desired so that he could cleave to the night. Your Lord Winterly belongs more to earth than to heaven, and it is here, among the rest of God’s earthly flock, that he found you, dearest Emma. Perhaps He loved His creation so much that He placed him here to find his heart’s twin in you. And now it is only for you to find your flock, whatever the shade of their feathers, or whether they thrive in the night or flourish by day. There cannot be night without day, both have purpose. Both are essential in nature. And sometimes the moon and the sun share the same sky.”
Even the raven nearby, it seemed, was leaning closer to listen to Mary.
“Does not every earthly creature deserve redemption?” she continued to say. “Is your vampyre’s love for you not, in itself, his own redemption?”
Emma reached into her pocket, her hand closing over the signet ring. The ring seemed to possess a life of its own, for it slipped loosely onto her thumb, warm and comforting, as though it belonged there. “Do you truly believe he loves me?”
“I do. Perhaps that unfortunate letter was merely his pride and hurt coloring his true meaning. It is evident that even immortals are as prideful and fallible as we.”
Emma allowed that to be possible. She released a heart-fetched sigh and patted her lashes dry with her sleeve. Had she not likewise allowed her own pride and hurt to blind her? There had been such truth and sincerity in his countenance the night he’d confessed his love. He needn’t have confessed it at all, for he’d already won her virtue and her blood, hadn’t he? Not if it had all been a farce from the start. She’d given her virtue freely enough—nay, willingly—along with her heart, so perhaps Mary was right.
“Now let us see if we can improve that German proverb.” A determined look came into Mary’s eyes. “Light feathers or dark feathers, it doesn’t matter—a nightingale is no less beautiful because he sings to the night. The dark does not judge his drab plumage, nor is the moon less splendid because she thrives in the dark. On the contrary, I say both are more beautiful because they belong to the night and lend it some light. I think you cannot have light without understanding the dark.”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Emma. She had a better understanding of her own nature now than she ever had before she’d met Markus.
“Moreover,” Mary continued, “sometimes we see ourselves best between one state and another: in that silver glow of dawn and dusk. In the grey. That is where wisdom dwells—in-between.”
It was a long moment before Emma felt herself equal to speak through the lump welling in her throat. “Oh, Mary, you truly are a saint!” She was reaching over to draw her cousin into her arms when she became sharply aware of an uncanny rippling along her spine. Alarmed by the sudden rush of wings, Emma froze and looked up at the raven as it fled from its perch.
Mary suddenly cried out in terror.
At the same instant, Emma felt her ears explode with a burst of pain and instant deafness. Then she was hurtling through the air. An eruption of lightning as her skull was struck against the willow bole. Deaf but for the din of thunder in her brain, she lay crumpled at its base, a broken heap. Weltering darkness swam before her eyes. But as the fury of thunder abated, her sister’s screams overpowered even Mary’s until they were all Emma could hear.
But even they were drowned out by the sinister whisper that suddenly filled her ear. “I am going to eat your heart out, little whore.”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
The Chaos and the Darkness
That voice! The Gypsy fiend from London! It was the voice of nightmare!
A pale figure swam into view before Emma, as though through chloroform. The figure was as terrible as the voice she recalled. The Nekromantis! Fragmented thoughts suddenly reformed into deranged horror as fiendish black claws, curved like some mad butcher’s bistouries, descended over her chest.
In the ravening reflection of white eyes, so like empty glass, she beheld her own face contorted in screams. Then a violent jerk of her body as he cleaved her chest open. Blood surged up like a geyser, staining Emma’s gaping mouth and tongue. She was insensible to the pain, completely overmastered by panicked incredulity, drowning in crimson. Caught in that white devil’s gaze, she was only vaguely aware of her body jerking beneath the violent rending of bone and flesh.
He gave a terrible smile, teeth long and deadly and shark-like. But it was his pincer fingers he employed like a spider to penetrate ever deeper.
But here came another awful howl—a hideous and animalistic bellow such as wrenched her from numb terror and arrested the Nekromantis. The next instant he was violently thrust from atop her.
In the chaos and throes and wreckage, another bestial rumble, and then a cold, questing snout pressed against her neck. A large white wolf materialized before her widening gaze. It blew a hot puff of animal breath against her cheek. There was a keen sapience manifest in those yellow orbs before it quickly retreated from view.
The wolf’s snout was replaced by Mary’s beloved countenance leaning over her, blood streaming from the gash on her temple. “Emma!” She ripped at her habit and then pressed the shredded fabric directly to Emma’s chest. “Hold fast!”
Emma’s face fell to the side, her eyes searching the dimming scene. Blood and tears coated Emma’s tongue like grit. As the cold seeped into her bones, she watched the white wolf lunge at the Nekromantis who feinted left and then leapt right, easily evading the wolf’s jaws. He landed with hideous grace in the willow bough above the wolf’s head and threw his black scowls down at the animal clawing at the bark with great, ferocious paws.
Amidst the taunts and growls came the unexpected shouts and cries of the other nuns, the sound of a monastic stampede drawing nearer. And the sound of Milli’s keening struggles.
“Milli!” said Emma, her voice bloodless, rasping. She tried to move, to turn her body towards her sister’s panicked screams. “I have…have to help her!”
Mary lowered her head and kissed Emma’s brow, whispering for her to be still and conserve her energy. But Mary’s words were cut short with a violent gasp. For a fleeting moment, the nun’s eyes snapped wide with pain and disbelief, her nose mere inches from Emma as her mouth slackened. Mary slumped forward like a toppling monument, her hands falling away from Emma’s hemorrhaging chest. Her coif and veil were gone and her throat yawned open with a sickening gurgle. The very next moment, Mary’s body lurched like a sack of meat as Ana pushed her roughly aside.
Raven hair, blood-spattered and caked with dirt, fell like a manteau between Emma and the awful sight of her poor cousin’s vacant eyes and that wide, red, smiling throat. It was all unreal—a sickening dream! That was not a giant wolf snarling up at the white face of Evil; that was not Mary’s throat drenching the willow roots; and this was not her friend, Ana, straddling her broken chest—aiming that vicious blade at her heart.
“Confound you, Emma!” Ana’s hands shook with some powerful emotion. Regret or eagerness? Emma couldn’t tell. “You should have heeded me!” Ana gave a sad shake of her head that was suddenly bellied by a darksome quirk of the lips. “Poor, stupid Emma. Shall I unbosom you of all your woes?” Eager
ness. Definitely vile eagerness.
Emma could not tear her eyes away, they were fixed and frozen to the blade, waiting for its descent. That brief suspension of time was suddenly broken as Milli, out of nowhere, flung herself at Ana. Swifter than the eyes could follow, Ana deflected the girl’s attack and struck Milli a glancing blow from the hilt of her blade. Eyes ablaze with rancorous red, Ana forestalled another of Milli’s attacks with a threatening swipe of her weapon.
Milli was panting, wounded and unsteady, the advantage of surprise lost. Still, she continued her zealous attempts to dislodge Ana from Emma’s chest. “Leave her alone!”
“Stay back, girl!” Ana threw out her arms out like flapping wings and sent a powerful, rushing gust towards Milli. It struck her down like a furious blow and was gone as suddenly as it had fulminated. “Stay back, I say, or it will be the worse for you!”
But Milli’s efforts were anything but vain, for Emma was not dead and useless yet. With her last dregs of strength, Emma bent her leg and snatched from her boot the weapon Valko had given her. Wasting no time, delirious and desperate, Emma made good use of Ana’s distraction and plunged the blade swiftly between the witch’s ribs with startling accuracy—the supervening force eloquent of love’s last dying act.
Shock superseded rage. Ana stilled, horror-struck as her eyes fell to the blade jutting from her chest. A virulent screeching sounded nearby. It was joined by a deep and agonizing roar so terrible that it shook the ground.
Milli scrambled forward, shaking with terror as she kicked Ana’s slumping body clear of Emma. The sisters watched as the Nekromantis soared through the air like a demon and fell upon the wolf, his claws streaking the beast’s white coat with deep crimson.
“We have…have to get away,” said Emma, her lungs straining. But she knew she could move no further and no faster than a trampled worm.
Milli whimpered obediently and began dragging Emma bodily away from the bizarre melee of wolf and witch. “Dear God…Emma, look.” Milli’s gaze was fixed not towards the monstrous combatants beneath the willow tree, but upon a different scene, though no less horrifying.
With much effort, Emma looked towards the opposite side of the pond. Atop the piled corpses of slaughtered nuns, Tanith stood, threatening, waving the severed head of Sister Margret. The witch hurled the head aside. The poor nun’s face, frozen forever in shock, flew to the ground and, with a dreadful thump, lumbered into the water and disappeared beneath the lilli pads and frightened toads. With another piercing screech, Tanith advanced on them, her glare murderous.
“Where…where is Valko?” Emma was cold. So cold. Every word she spoke was perfect torture.
Face white as a sheet, Milli aimed a shaking finger at the white wolf. “He…he…” She shook her head, ostensibly dumbstruck by what she’d seen Valko become.
I know, Milli. Emma gave a weak nod and closed her eyes against Tanith’s perilous, gnashing advance.
Valko no longer filled the constraints of human form—in his place was a creature with tapered ears and a long snout, its torso overspread with a thick, white pelt. Only his ripped britches still clung to the hairy thews of his transfigured legs, the rest of his clothing no doubt lay in tatters on the ground nearby. If he were not so terrible to behold, or not bleeding from his wounds, Emma might have found some little humor in the notion of a bipedal wolf in britches. Perhaps she might laugh another time: when they weren’t under attack, and she wasn’t dying.
The battle of beast and demon witch waged on, fierce and deadly. Emma could no longer distinguish the wolf’s snarling from the Nekromantis’s, nor could she see which of the two was the stronger. Every rending of flesh inflicted by wolfish teeth, the witch returned full force with those long, black claws so like surgeon’s knives.
Emma felt herself slipping, felt the air turn frigid in her punctured lungs, felt the world grow quiet, and felt her own watery breaths becoming ever shallower as her sister’s face blurred with vignetted shadows. Or was the sky grown darker? She was sinking into oblivion, slipping beneath the nebulous waters whence Sister Margret lay bodiless, enshrined in pond weeds and silt.
A rough jolt instantly stirred Emma’s eyes open again, pulling her forcibly back from those dark, surreal depths to which she’d sunk. But as she squinted up at the grey sky, she became aware that she was no longer moving, no longer being dragged. She was utterly alone. Milli was gone.
Emma tried to call out to her sister, but the air gurgled out of her lungs in wet gibberish. She flailed weakly, clutching at her wounds. Mary’s soaked linen was pasted to her chest. Oh, dearest Mary! Dead! Emma’s hand fell white and limp to the ground. It did not, in those final moments, escape her that this was the second time she had found herself flailing upon the tightrope between life and death. This time Markus was not here to save her. This time she could not break from the spreading maw of paralysis—that awful void whelming up through her brain like an opium fog.
Strangely, there was no more sound, just the beckoning dirge of total silence. All was deathly still as Emma stared, inert and helpless, her vision seething with spidery shadows. And within that shadowy frame, her sister appeared. Milli was struggling against Mina’s vice-like hold. From where had Mina materialized of a sudden? And why was the world suffocated in silence.
Milli thrashed and clawed at her captor, her mouth moving with unrestrained and soundless fury, her fingernails bloodied. Emma’s head fell to the side, her neck too weak to follow her eyes. Nearby lay Valko, naked but for his britches. His eyes stared from a human visage once more, but they were wide and unseeing, his chest all but torn to sinew and bone. Dead.
Emma tried to reach for Milli, but her arms bore no more life than Valko’s corpse; not even a twitch animated her fingers.
Poor brave Valko! The nuns were all murdered, heaped like unwanted carrion beneath the headless bulk of sister Margret. And poor Milli, now the only one left standing. Alone, alone, alone!
Emma felt her ebbing blood writhe and boil with helplessness, her lips gaping and foaming with wordless hatred as she watched Mina drag her sister away. When Emma blinked again, they were gone and Tanith appeared like a rearing serpent. Tanith whose face was veiled in dying shadows, the blood-soaked ropes of hair galvanized around her face like an uncanny halo of white snakes.
Every cell within Emma still flickering with life cried out and reached for Milli again and again. All in vain. Emma shut her eyes as Tanith raised her deadly hands. Talons so like her brother’s. Nay, her father’s. Her lover’s. Vile creatures, all!
Darkness settled over her, its wings outstretched, gathering like dusk. Ah, the chaos of blessed black wings come to snatch her soul away from its wretched mortal roots. She welcomed Death now; she knew him well. She willed her spirit to cast its anchor. Better that she died now than be made to watch Milli’s death unfold. Already her sight was fading. But the narrowing beam of light above her flickered suddenly as Tanith disappeared and a large shadow moved to blot the sky overhead.
Hades himself was come to fetch her away. She smiled at the darkness and sighed as her heart sputtered its last feeble beats.
Chapter Sixty
A Thousand Damns
Mina rushed towards the priory as fast as her paws would propel her. There was a wolf on her tail and she had but scant moments to warn Malach and her sisters of William’s approach.
In little more time than it took the cat to leap into the air, she was suddenly running on two legs again—two human legs—her cat pelt replaced by a manteau of red, billowing wildly behind her. Mina threw a furtive glance towards the east, her distorted shadow a long and ominous harbinger of Night’s imminence.
The half-lit moon had already bestirred itself above the horizon, its glare like a hot brand upon her back. “Hurry!” it seemed to whisper. But the exhortative murmur of dusk was not for her but for the beast that gave chase. “Hurry, she’s getting away!”
Every night that the moon’s glare narrowed, the black wolf’s stre
ngth and rage only swelled. When that eye closed upon the earth each month and swathed the night in total darkness, no witch in her right senses strayed beyond her doorstones. But even a half-lit moon was no benign thing.
The shouts and clamor, as Mina entered the churchyard, were positively terrific. No sight was more terrible and heart-wrenching, however, than that of Ana being booted to the ground, a blade sheathed in her heart. The raven witch belched her last painful cry and tumbled to the earth, nevermore to fly again.
Mina skidded to a dead halt. Malach’s ferocious roar vibrated in her heart and was echoed by Tanith’s enraged paroxysms. While Malach was still engaged in deadly battle, Tanith was free to vent her shock and rage upon a nun, severing the head clear of the shoulders with swift efficacy. But for Millicent, and the white wolf, all others appeared dispatched. Ahh, but there was life yet flickering in Emma, though her pallor was already fast turning grey. If they did not harvest the heart forthwith, its essence and power would be wasted. Mourning Ana must wait till the morrow, for the present belonged only to action and haste.
Tanith was already sprinting towards the wolfling girl, her flesh radiating with vengeful savagery. Mina knew all too well the annihilating fury of Tanith when she was allowed to fly into blind unbridled passion; it was much like Lilith’s—or so said her father. They needed the wolfgirl alive. Mina could not allow Tanith to get to the sisters first, lest she somehow damage their quarry in her blind rage.
Although Malach was obviously the more powerful of the two combatants, the wolf was proving a relentless foe. So Mina would get no help from Malach in controlling Tanith. Fortunately, Mina was the faster and could easily outpace Tanith.
The wolfgirl had dragged Emma halfway to the church gate by the time Mina reached them. She barreled into the pair with white-eyed ferocity. The ground itself leapt up at Mina’s command and sent the wolfling hurtling through the air. She fell some distance away from Emma. The shock of Mina’s attack seemed to have somehow revived Emma, for she groaned and twitched with some semblance of life.
Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1) Page 42
