Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1)

by Jeanine Croft

  “Tanith!” Mina hauled the wolfgirl up and held her fast as her sister arrived. “Cut out the heart before it stops!” She threw a nod towards Emma’s prone form.

  “Gladly!” As Tanith passed the wolfgirl, she sneered. “And we shall be well rid of you soon enough.” With that, Tanith unsheathed her knife, still smeared with vestal blood, and stalked towards Emma. Roughly, she flipped Emma onto her back.

  “No!” the wolfling snarled like a thing uncaged. In fact, so unexpected was the sudden force of the creature’s unleashed vehemence, that she bit Mina and then swatted her to the ground as though Mina were only a kitten.

  Mina was so stunned by the blow that, by the time she gathered her wits and leapt to her feet, the wolfgirl was already pouncing onto Tanith’s back. The little cur wrenched the necklace from her bosom and thrust the dragon pendant into Tanith’s eye, it’s tail like a pike lodging deep in the socket. When she plucked the dragon out, so too came Tanith’s poor, red eye. It sat glaring singularly on the end of the dragon tail, its roots bloody and dangling uselessly like the fateful eye of Atropos.

  The screeching that therewith ensued alerted Malach who, with a thunderous war cry, finished the staggering wolf at last. As he ripped the animal’s heart from its pulsing sinews, Mina wrestled the wolfgirl from Tanith who was clutching her empty socket and giving vent to such awful screeches that Mina feared it would only bring the black wolf the sooner. Then, quick as an adder, Tanith whipped around and struck the girl an almighty blow, her nails dragging deep, red cuts in the wolfling’s face.

  “We have to go!” Mina shoved her knee into the girl’s back and snatched both the glaring eye and the dragon away, stowing them in her cloak. “Malach, we have to go!”

  Her father whipped his head around, his eyes a feral white as he swallowed the rest of the white wolf’s heart.

  Damn! Mina should have had the heart, for black wolf venom was deadly to witches! She could already feel the fever beginning to scorch her flesh around the bite wound. Damn beastly girl! But how could Malach have known she needed the white wolf heart to counter the wehr-wolf venom.

  Her father said nothing as he knelt beside his fallen daughter, lifting Ana from the ground with careful attention despite his razor fingers.

  “Father! The girl’s too strong!” It was all Mina could do to keep the creature restrained, and she had depleted much of her power, what with the constant shifting into her familiar, to say nothing of the sepsis in her blood and the earth magic she had summoned against the wolfling brat. “Help me, Father!”

  Malach, newly invigorated by the heart of the Valkolak boy, readjusted Ana’s corpse so that his left hand was free. He threw out a blast of sticky white web at the struggling baggage in Mina’s arms. She jumped back at the last minute and watched as the thick bands began embalming the screaming wolfling, her face a horror of blood and torn flesh. In a matter of seconds she was nothing but a wriggling chrysalid, enchained in Malach’s web.

  Meanwhile, Tanith crawled atop Emma, her hair snapping out wildly as Malach summoned the fog to aid their escape and confuse the nose of the imminent wrath of William. Mina shuddered as much from the pain of the bite as from fear of the Valkolak prince. The white wolf was frightening enough—his brother was near as terrifying as Gabriel and Marbod.

  “There’s no time, Tanith!” Mina cried, hoisting the pupal sac over her shoulders. The pupa bucked and fought its bindings with so much strength that Mina could not bear the burden alone. “Tanith, there’s no time! Help me!”

  But Tanith was delirious with pain and rage and would not hear her. Her fingers were elongating with sharp intent, but she was wounded and fumbling, and the process was taking too long. The fog rushed in and the sky burbled with darksome energy—Markus was coming!

  Mina abandoned the wolfling to her father and wrenched her half-blind sister from atop Emma, intending to drag her forcibly to safety. “The heart will be dead before you get to it! Leave off, sister!”

  Malach had no trouble lifting the vigorous pupa, he merely tucked the bundle under his free arm. “Enough!” he commanded of Tanith. “There’s no time, lest you wish to lose more than your eye.” With that he sped off with Ana and the wolfgirl, leaving his daughters to follow.

  Tanith gave vent to a frustrated hiss as she sank to her knees, giving way to her snake skin. The white serpent, one socket empty and the other aflame with rancor, hastily slithered away into the thick fog after its sire.

  Spent, Mina dropped to all fours and summoned the cat. But nothing happened. She was not as strong as her sisters, had not yet ascended as they had. And been poisoned with wolf venom besides! The only thing that throbbed along her skin was the bite. “A thousand damns!” She tried not to look at the white wolf lying stiff nearby, its teeth bared in death—that dead grin taunted her with William’s fast approaching vengeance. “Concentrate, Mina!” More than ever, she steadied her thoughts and urged her familiar to the surface with a desperation that was suddenly equal to the task. She felt the animal twitch inside her at last. “Hurry!” It was happening too slowly! Their foggy veil was already thinning out and Mina could feel the heavy vibration in the air, as of a deific heartbeat growing stronger and louder: the sound of fleet and powerful wings beneath the clouds. And, below it, the dark bellow of Anubis, his canine breath preceding him in hot waves.

  “Now, damn you! Now!” Mina cried. Every cell was strained as never before and finally, finally, the red pelt sprang to the fore and encompassed her with the power she needed to make good her fleet escape. The last desperate “Now!” became a growling meow. She sprinted away beneath the stealthy aegis of her familiar; it alone would protect her from the cunning nose of the black wolf.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Death

  Markus raced along the scud, his wings beating in time with Emma’s arhythmic life-force. What had been a steady flame this morning was now only a dim and weakening glow, as of the last pulse of warmth in a dying ember.

  He hated the way this feeling—this panic—made him vulnerable and weak! He hated the way his fear was consuming him and turning his entrails inside out. Most of all, he hated himself for letting her go! Where the devil was Nicholas?

  He thrust his wings faster and harder against the air, tasting blood as his fangs ground against his underlip; the pain would sustain him—distract him—until he was at her side. If he could only fly faster! Below him, William was pounding the empty road with all the heft and might of his colossal paws. Markus would hunt Malach the rest of his days if any harm had come to Emma.

  The taste of his own blood only excited his burgeoning violence all the more. But it was not only his blood flavoring the air. The closer he drew towards Emma’s life-force, the weaker it became; a terrible irony that only chilled him the more. So much blood putrefying the air tonight. The clouds themselves tasted of death as he dove through the grey canopy that shrouded the priory like a pall. Beneath it, dusk was already dancing macabrely around the churchyard and over the scattered corpses. But his eyes searched only for Emma.

  He couldn’t yet see her but he felt her nearby. Still alive! The bond betwixt them, however, was unravelling faster than he could move. Do not let go, Emma! He sent the thought through the ether with all the power of his own life-force.

  The willow gave a shiver as he swooped beneath her boughs. The water in the pond trembled as he slammed his boots against the blood-soaked earth. And there was Emma, jealously tangled in the grass as though the earth would swallow her up any moment.

  His veins seethed with hot fury as he beheld her greying flesh, the blush of life sputtering out. As his feet ate up the distance between them, his eyes snapped up to scan the limbs overhead where his brother’s arachnid musk pervaded the willow. The tree, however, was untenanted.

  “Emma!” He knelt down beside her and lifted her head carefully onto his lap. No flicker of life passed across her features; her heart was wobbling perilously on the edge of life.

  Had sh
e been nothing more than a pet he’d marked—his property to do with as he pleased—his rage would not have been any less deadly, but she was his heart! To love and protect her was his life’s only purpose now! And so his rage shook the heavens. The dragon within roared and raged to see the flesh of his bride so ruined and violated!

  He kissed her blue lips and then swiftly opened the vein in his wrist. It was all he could do to steady himself against the bile rising in his gut. “You’re supposed to die an old woman, Emma, surrounded by sons and daughters.” Not like this! Never like this! He emptied his wrist over her open chest—the quickest way to her heart—and brushed reverent fingers against her blood-spattered brow. Dark ichor rushed from his wrist onto her torn flesh. But there was a limit to what even his blood could repair; her wounds were fatal. It was too late to save her frail humanity—she was dying! She needed an infusion of venom.

  Wretched with guilt, he thought of biting her despite what she would become—despite that she’d hate him forevermore if he made her the very thing she despised.

  “God, help me!” It had been millennia since he’d invoked the mercy of his Father. But his pride was no match for the love he bore her—if she died, so too would he; his pride be damned! She was his whole heart. Without her, he knew he’d become nothing but a mindless beast; without her, all the good in him would be irrevocably and eternally obliterated.

  Markus gripped Emma’s hand, mortally powerless for the first time, and pulled her fingers up to his lips. “Tell me to save you! Stay with me, my love!” And there upon her finger, as though in answer to his prayer, was his ring! It had somehow found its way to her from the cinders of his love letter. Markus lifted an incredulous gaze up to the heavens behind which, he knew, his Father watched. Answer enough.

  Markus wasted not another plea or thought, but plunged his fangs into her neck where the largest vein was weakly emptying the last dregs of cold blood into her heart. With might and main, he’d now compassed all within his power to save her. It was not within his capacity, nor did it suit his nature, to wait and watch for the roll of a die—for fate to cut the life thread…or not. Action was required! Seething with hatred for his malefic brother, Markus turned away.

  He was in desperate want of a diversion from this overwhelming pain. But when her heart suddenly hesitated, he staggered for a moment, overcome with new dread. Eternity was an unbearably long time to live without Emma. Better that he died as well. But her heart started up again and Markus allowed the tension in his lungs to escape on a long suspire.

  As he counted her heartbeats, each blessed thud becoming stronger than the last, he finally allowed his gaze to range over the churchyard and the violence it encompassed. Markus had been so engrossed in Emma’s wellbeing—so arrested by the sight of her—that he had yet to consider Nick’s whereabouts. There, beneath the nodding willow, he lay with not a breath of life to fill his chest; he was a corpse robbed of its most vital organ. Markus snapped his eyes to, his body vibrating with a wrathful sorrow through which he could hardly draw breath enough to roar his agony. And when the roar did come it was not from his chest that it erupted but from William’s.

  The black wolf appeared on silent feet. The sight of his brother was too much. He howled his anguish, blasted his fury to the four corners so that the clouds opened up and the wind wailed along with him. Never had Markus heard such a cry or felt such an agony evoked from so deep in his bones. And so soon after nearly losing his Emma.

  He watched the wolf with blackening empathy, but kept his distance. William was powerful enough to do great harm, and not a little unhinged besides, and in his current state…not even Markus dared approach him. Not even to offer a hand of comfort. There was no comfort on earth capable of soothing even an atom of William’s suffering. He had lost his twin forever—his better half, some would say.

  Markus’s glare scoured the wall beyond for any sign of trespassing eyes; he’d seen none when he’d landed and he saw none now, only the retreating fog. His ears and nose affirmed what he already knew. All was dead and quiet, save Emma and William. The witches had escaped. And yet there was a distinct reek of witch blood hereabout, so at least one of the little hags had been injured or slayed. The latter, he hoped, sweeping his glare over the carnage again.

  The priory sat at an adequate distance from the village, and the encroaching twilight meant that his grim duty would go unobserved. Still and all, he kept vigilance with his keen hearing as he began removing each body from where it had lain haphazardly sprawled atop another. When the last body had been uncovered, he stood up, his brows pinched as he searched the yard for Milli’s body. “Where’s Milli?”

  “Not here,” said William without glancing up from Nicholas, beside whom he was now kneeling in human form.

  There was no sound save for the carrion birds hopping eagerly nearby as they waited for him to leave them to their feast. “Not tonight, foul pests,” Markus muttered, his eyes as black as theirs. One after the other, he lifted the bodies into his arms and carried them into the nave. The headless nun was relocated last, for he’d had to retrieve her head from the pond.

  When he emerged again it was to see William standing with his brother cradled in his arms, their faces macabrely identical.

  Markus’s brow fell, but he said nothing as William stalked past him and deposited his twin beside Emma’s fallen cousin.

  After this was done, Markus ripped the boards from the wooden pews and piled the scraps of wood and kindling atop the bodies. With flint and steel, and one last look at William, he finally lit the pyre. Thereafter, they shut the church doors and stood by to watch.

  Markus’s face mirrored William’s stoney visage. The turmoil was now an indwelling daemon with a fire of retribution that overmatched even the conflagration building inside the priory. Doubtless it was the same for the young wolf. William glared with the cold detachment of an immortal grown used to death and violence. And yet, by immortal standards, he was still so very young. Already he had lost half of himself. It was unthinkable, and there was still the matter of apprising their father…and Gabriel, of course. Unthinkable loss. And that Malach had dared to eat the young wolf’s heart…!

  Control was an illusion, omniscience a sham. Markus was no less affected by the laws of fate and nature than were the mortals they all glared down upon. He was no less the thrall of love’s subjugation, and himself an author of chaos and carnage. Had it not been for his selfishness and pride, Nicholas might still be alive.

  At least Markus still had Emma—the light of his life. Whether or not she could forgive him was outside his power to control. Without her he knew he’d go mad; he would be no different than his sister, Isis, who’d been consumed by rage and maddened by sorrow when her mortal love had died betimes. And in her mad grief she’d borne the lovelorn Gabriel a son and, later, fallen victim to Malach’s artifice. It was Malach that had raped her and begotten that wretched Lilith off her. He knew not what had become of Hemera, her firstborn. Yet she and her offspring must have thrived, for how else was Emma’s provenance to be explained.

  His beloved Emma. He could not allow her to lose her sister and suffer the same fate as William—he would strip the flesh from the bones of every witch before he’d allow Emma to live only to see her sibling die an unnatural death. Moreover, he would not rest until he brought back the heart of whomever had taken Nicholas’s and watch as Marbod the Black devoured it, as was the right of a grieving father.

  The hatred coiled around Markus, insistent, like a dark caress. It was easier to give in to darkness than to brood and eat his heart out over that which he was powerless to change. How seductive that darkness, demanding death and blood. How it called to the dragon within and beckoned him away from reason. How it tugged at the fetters that leashed him to sanity. “Release me,” it whispered, eager for him to loose his chaos like the fire and black smoke that belched from the shattered windows of the priory; how easy it would be to annihilate everything in his path and scorch the e
arth with his hate and fury!

  But not yet. Not while Emma lived. He left William glaring fixedly at the flames, and stalked back to where his bride lay in her catafalque of grass and earth. If she survived, he would contain the beast within—she was the peace that gave solace to his wretched soul.

  He could hear the distant yell of voices raising the alarm. Their pyre had finally been spotted. Soon, the little priory would be overrun with smoke and soot and busy hands filling pails of water from the pond. Then again, the rain might douse the fire by morning. At the very least it would wash the stain of murder from the churchyard, though it could never efface the weight of taint. It mattered not, the fire had already made a feast of the bones and flesh, and the mystery of the priory would die with its faithful servants, forevermore entombed in soot and ash.

  He lifted Emma into his arms and threw his wings wide. Up he sailed into the night, the rush of air cooling his blood as he banked over the thick grey strata. Below, the clouds billowed with gold, but the unnatural glow dimmed as he left the crematory fire behind. And with the distance from the fire his mind cleared and the dragon quietened, content beside its mate.

  William would follow when he was ready. There was time enough tomorrow to slay witches and rescue errant young sisters, and to mourn his young friend.

  Later, as his castle appeared beneath the wisps of cloud and silvery moonlight, his mouth gave way to a peculiar smile. Only the moon and stars bore witness to that smile, tracing its enigmatic curves and the flash of white teeth as he gazed at his sleeping beauty. Only he and the night could hear the sudden change in her heartbeat. A new rhythm unlike any it had sounded before. The beat of life eternal.